Cathy's Curse (1977)

A Canadian production that is clearly aimed at cashing in on everything from The Exorcist to The Omen, taking in Rosemary's Baby along the way, Cathy's Curse (1977), in contrast to the A-movie production values of those titles, is very much a B-level production.  It's opening, a flashback to thirty years previously, with a man and his young daughter burned to death in a fiery car crash, is probably the best part of the film:  vividly filmed against a snowy night time landscape, it seems to be setting the tone for the rest of the film.  Unfortunately, though, what follows is decidedly stodgy, indifferently filmed and moving at a pedestrian pace through a series of genre clichés, none of them particularly well, or even atmospherically, staged.  From a contemporary perspective, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the script is its prefiguring of the misogynistic brainwashing that modern day so called influencers like the Tate brothers go in for.  Except that here, it isn't a young male child who has been so 'influenced', but the young girl who was burned to death at the beginning.  She and her father had been abandoned by her mother, who took her brother with her, with the father subsequently railing against the evils of women, how they are all 'bitches' and 'whores'.  The film's main plot involves the brother, along with his wife and young daughter, Cathy, moving back to the old family home, where the daughter finds herself possessed by the vengeful, woman-hating, spirit of the dead girl, her aunt.

The depiction of the possession itself is strictly by the numbers - it takes place the via the medium of an ugly looking doll she finds in the attic (which occasionally comes to life to scare people) and a photo of the dead girl, whose eyes glow green when she's getting Cathy to do especially evil things.  Cathy is predictably unpleasant to the other local kids, defies her mother and the housekeeper, but plays up to and manipulates her father and the handyman.  It's not just human females the ghost hates - the handyman's female dog (which growls at the possessed child), also ends up in the firing line.  There are all the usual manifestations of snakes and spiders, baths full of blood, food suddenly turning rotten and maggot infested and a couple of deaths.  Cathy's main target, her mother, is recovering from a nervous breakdown after a miscarriage, so, obviously, nobody believes her claims about Cathy being possessed.  It all builds to a decidedly underwhelming climax and abrupt ending.  The film as a whole has a somewhat disjointed feel, as if there are scenes missing - either cut or unfilmed - and the script serves its cast up plenty of clunky dialogue, probably one of the reasons why the performances seem detached and uninvolved.  As a horror film, Cathy's Curse is a non-starter - there is absolutely no sense of urgency in the film, either in the acting performances or the direction, resulting in a complete lack of tension and suspense, while the effects work is poor and there isn't even any gore to enliven the proceedings.  To be fair, while it most certainly isn't a good film, Cathy's Curse is blandly watchable, but entirely forgettable.  

More Billionaire Idiocy

Apparently, Elon Musk has decided that the reason his AI platform Grok keeps giving the 'wrong' answers is that the data set it uses is crap.  His solution is to 'correct' this data by 'reorganising' the sum total of human knowledge and making out sure that it only includes the 'right' facts.  In other words, he wants to bend reality to his will by rewriting the entirety of history, rather than admit that either his AI platform is crap, or that it is actually giving the 'right' answers, rather than the answers that he wants.  A bold, if futile ambition.  But this is what we've come to - unelected, unaccountable billionaires deciding that they and they alone can correctly interpret human knowledge and mould it to their own prejudices.  Not that there's anything new in such lofty ambitions: just about every dictator and totalitarian regime in history has sought, to a greater or lesser degree, to recast their local histories to suit their ideologies and whims.  Indeed, even democratic regimes like to interpret history and present facts in a way that will reflect most favourably upon themselves.  But at least in the 'free world' nobody is allowed to be the sole custodian of knowledge, so alternative views always persist and remain freely accessible.  (That said, the current US government is doing its damndest to impose a monolithic and extreme right-wing reactionary interpretation of all history and knowledge upon the country through its bullying and harassment of academia).  But, as we've seen in recent times, the capacity of social media to spread false narratives, fake facts and disinformation is seemingly infinite, posing a real threat, even in pluralist societies, to the body of human knowledge.  And, of course, Musk the would be revisionist, controls one of the main social media outlets.

Which, of course, is another reason why the power enjoyed by these unaccountable bastards needs to be carefully reigned in by governments.  I'm afraid that it is inevitable that once someone achieves these levels of wealth, they'll decide that accumulating it makes them 'special', which, in turn, means that the rules which govern lesser mortals shouldn't apply to them and that they should be able to translate that wealth into power.  Damn it, one man one vote is OK for the little people, the poor people, but surely the super rich should be entitled to more influence than that?  Governments really should be taxing these dangerous individuals into submission, entangling them in as much regulation as possible.  Except that they won't, preferring to fawn over them in order to try and gain their favour.  Getting back to the original point, although his ego will never let him, it would be much easier if Musk just conceded that his AI is crap.  It's nothing to be ashamed of - all AI models are to a greater or lesser degree.  OK, I'll concede that I'm no expert on the subject and that my experiences of using AI are limited and confined to pretty trivial tasks, but, even where such trivial tasks are concerned, they all frequently have difficulty in grasping what it is that you want them to do.  I mainly use them for creating images and no matter how detailed I make my descriptions, they consistently fail to deliver anything approximating what I want to see.  ChatGPT so far has the best hit rate for me, but even that serves up some spectacular misses, (although when it is good, it is very good).  But I certainly wouldn't expect any of them to be capable of answering any complex queries with any degree of accuracy.  There's lots of hype surrounding AI but, as with many things, most of the claims made for it aren't matched by actual user experience.  So, if I was Elon Musk, I certainly wouldn't be relying upon any form of AI to be able to rewrite the sum total of human knowledge into anything intelligible, let alone useful.

Another Unnecessary Remake

I mentioned, in passing, the other day that awful 2022 reboot of The Munsters and feel that I should elaborate.  Now, I'm not a particular fan of the original TV series, although I seem to have seen quite a few episodes of it, but it is a well made and performed half hour comedy series that can still raise the odd smile.  It's whole premise centres on the idea of a group of obvious, but amiable, monsters living in an otherwise typical American middle class sixties suburb and draws its humour from the contrast between the bizarreness of these characters and the 'normality' of their neighbourhood.  The twist, of course, is that the monsters think that they are the 'normal' ones and that everyone else is weird.  Unfortunately Rob Zombie, director and prime mover behind the 2022 film, despite professing to be a longtime fan of the series, seems to have failed to grasp this simple premise which underpins the original TV show.  Most of his film is set in 'Transylvania' where everyone seems to be a grotesque of some sort, so the Munsters seem perfectly normal there.  Even when they do travel abroad, first to Paris, then to Mockingbird Heights in the US, these locations are still presented in such a stylised fashion, that people's reaction to them seems mystifying to the audience, as the venues and their inhabitants don't seem 'normal' either.  The feeling of total unreality is compounded by the way in which the film is deliberately lit and shot - so as to complement the main characters' cartoonish quality, according to Zombie.  A statement that reinforces the feeling that he hadn't a clue as to what The Munsters was really about.

But the film isn't just off visually, everything about it seems 'off', from the terrible script that never succeeds in capturing the spirit or humour of the TV show, (with a plot that never develops into something, instead just presenting us with a disjointed series of scenes and situations), to the acting performances and characterisations.  The latter are particularly jarring, with writers and actors seeming to think that long hair and lots of gesticulating encapsulates the character of Lily, while clearly believing that the make up alone is sufficient to define Herman and Grandpa as characters.  Herman is particularly poorly characterised - not to mention acted - while I wouldn't expect any actor in the role to give an impersonation of Fred Gwynn , this version of the character was so far from the original as to be unrecognisable.  In the TV series, Grandpa's gripe with Herman was simply that he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, but in this film version he simply outright hates him - and who can blame him, as this Herman comes over as, not just stupid, but an obnoxious prick with no redeeming qualities.  Gwynn's performance as Herman was, by contrast, masterful, bringing out the character's innate warmth, gentleness, good humour and child-like glee at anything that seems novel to him.  Ultimately, though, the biggest problem the 2022 film faces is that it comes over as a glorified home movie, with the main roles being played the director's wife and friends.  At best, it is a piece of fan fiction, falling into the common trap that bedevil such creations - it represents what a fan or fans think that the show should have been like, projecting their own interpretation - which doesn't match the expectations of the wider audience familiar with the material - onto the characters and situations.  The Munsters (2022) stands as a dire warning to studios everywhere as to how careful they should be in terms of who they allow to get their hands on their most beloved intellectual properties.

Voyeur With a Camera

Getting back to that perplexing question of how best to approach the remaking or revamping of classic films and TV series, it occurred to me that sometimes the title of an old property can suggest the direction a new version could take.  (OK, I know that we haven't really been discussing this subject here of late, but the matter has been on my mind of late after having recently sat through that utterly dire 2022 The Munsters reboot).   Actually, it was one specific old TV show that started me on this line of thought: by chance I caught an episode of the fifties US TV series Man With a Camera, an early starring vehicle for Charles Bronson, about the exploits of a freelance press photographer covering everything from crime stories to human interest stories.  But while a title like that doubtless seemed perfectly innocuous back in the fifties, before 'Paparazzi' were reviled, but rather held up as heroes of the free press and possession of a camera was still a relative rarity, the mark of a professional, nowadays it would carry other connotations, namely that of the peeping Tom.  Now, to be perfectly fair, even back in the fifties, there were people doing nefarious things with cameras - unscrupulous photographers snatching furtive shots of film stars in flagrante to sell to the scandal rags, (or worse, to use for blackmail).  But this sort of invasion of people's privacy has long since moved out of the domain of professional photographers (or sleazy private eyes), with the increasing availability of cheap cameras and later digital camera technology, into the domain of everyday voyeurs and perverts.  The advent of the camera phone has undoubtedly been the greatest technology boost in history for the voyeur community, with the advent of the web giving them a platform to share all of their furtive photos with the like minded.  

Obviously, the increased availability of such technologies has also seen a shift in the nature of victims, from the great and the good, celebrities, politicians and the like, to ordinary people.  Because if there's one thing the average voyeur covets more than a candid topless shot of Sydney Sweeney (or whoever the current object of internet slavering might be), it is a nude shot of that pretty girl next door who always ignores them.  So, a contemporary rendering of a series entitled Man With a Camera would surely feature, as its protagonist, a voyeuristic man who obsessively and secretly photographs and films women.  Episodes could centre around just how he is going to get this week's prized nude shot without detection, highlighting his skills at climbing drainpipes to take pictures through open bathroom and bedroom windows, or his skill in creating telephoto lenses in order to get long range shots of nudist beaches, perhaps.  There's something quite amusing in imagining a stone-faced Charles Bronson busily snapping such pictures, then gazing at them in the privacy of his sad bedsit, his expression completely unchanging as he looks at them, maybe occasionally groaning slightly.  Obviously, Bronson himself is now long dead, but there's always digital technology, or even that Bronson lookalike beloved of low budget film makers.  If you wanted to take such a series to the next level, you could always introduce a story arc whereby he inadvertently films or takes a shot of a murder, identifying the killer.  Obviously, he can't go to the police for fear of his pervert activities being exposed, but the murderer has seen him and proceeds to stalk him for the next ten episodes, in a game of cat and voyeur.  There's all sorts of variations you could work in:  perhaps the killer could start knocking off all of the voyeur's targets, at the moment they are being secretly photograghed, or maybe the killer could try and frame the voyeur for killing one of them, or simply take secret photos of the voyeur spying on women and taunt him with them.  Hell, I should be trying to pitch this to a producer, shouldn't I?  It's miles better than most of the crap put out by streaming platforms!  Mind you, if I see anything looking remotely like this turn up, be warned, I'll be suing for royalties!  

Memorial Valley Massacre (1988)

There's an argument to be made that the two films whose success triggered the whole slasher movie boom of the late seventies and eighties, Halloween (1978) and Friday the Thirteenth (1980), also established two strands of the genre: the urban or small town set slasher and the outdoor slasher, respectively.  The latter takes summer camps, forests and country parks as their main settings, with teenagers, hikers, park rangers and the like as protagonists.  It is this category into which Memorial Day Massacre (1988) falls, with its action taking place at a campsite set in a remote country park.  A late entry in the cycle, Memorial Day Massacre is clearly desperate to find some new angle for the slasher movie, but ultimately comes up short.  Its main 'innovation' lies in its antagonist.  Where the killers usually featured in such movies are revealed as maladjusted psychopaths triggered by some trauma, who otherwise can pass as normal, Memorial Day Massacre gives us a murderous caveman rampaging around, killing campers, with a desire to protect his 'territory' being his apparent motivation.  Now, if this had been made in the fifties, this would have been a real caveman who had somehow been thawed out of a glacier or similar.  But this was the eighties, so a more 'rational' explanation was required: which was that this 'caveman' was actually a kidnapped child who had escaped into the wild and grown up feral, living in a cave, wearing animal skins and hunting stuff with homemade weapons, like flint-tipped spears, axes and the like.  In a plot 'twist', it turns out that the Head Ranger at the campsite is actually the child's father, convinced that he is still alive and using his job to try and track him down.  Which is also why he's so keen for the campsite to open, despite a series of deaths and accidents that have accompanied its development.

The film's problem is that, in spite of its bizarre choice of killer and a location that would seem to offer plenty of opportunities for interesting slasher action, it never really seems to get going.  The build up seems interminable, as more and more characters and accompanying sub-plots are introduced, not to mention entirely uneventful.  The characters, though plentiful, are all stereotypes - a gang of middle-aged bikers, an obnoxious couple and their even more obnoxious son, a trio of teenagers and a retired general and his wife who just want to spend the whole weekend in their luxury camper van - and none of them are particularly likeable, so when they do, inevitably, get offed, you just don't care.  Then there are the staff, the aforementioned Head Ranger with a secret, who is assisted by the token older black dude who you just know is going to become a victim and the son of the park's owner, an environmentalist out to try and stop the park's ecosystem from being damaged.  The conflict between the Head Ranger and the owner's son becomes the film's main source of conflict, plot-wise, with the killer's appearances being relatively sparse and his presence unsuspected for a large part of the movie.  On top of all that, none of the killings themselves are particularly interesting or well staged.  In fact, there is a decided lack of gore altogether, which, along with the lack of any sex and nudity, just adds to the TV movie feel of the whole film.  (There was a version released in some overseas markets under the title Son of Sleepaway Camp - a different and unconnected slasher franchise - which included hardcore inserts).  On the plus side, Memorial Day Massacre does feature both Cameron Mitchell and William Smith in its cast.  Unfortunately, neither features that prominently, with Mitchell appearing early on in an extended cameo, playing the park's sleazy owner, while Smith has a slightly larger role as the general.  Neither, however, is used particularly effectively in a film that badly needs their characteristic brand of scenery chewing.  Smith's role has potential but, disappointingly, he never gets to face off with the killer before being killed off.

To be fair, Memorial Valley Massacre isn't especially bad, it's just bland, with flat and uninspired direction from Robert Hughes which never properly exploits the locations or the movie's premise. (Most of Hughes' work has been in video and TV production, doubtless explaining why the film feels like a TV movie).  It also doesn't help that the caveman killer, frankly, looks ridiculous and, despite the fact that he kills at least a dozen people in the course of the film, is strangely unmenacing.  While the film is actually quite watchable while its on, it is entirely unmemorable.

Understated Stoicism - Thoughts on The Classic British War Movie

Apparently, British war movies were never popular in the US.  Not just because they were a reminder to Americans that they hadn't won World War Two single handed, not to mention the fact that the war had actually started in 1939, not at the end of 1941.  No, I suspect that the main reason that they couldn't find an audience in the US is because, in the main, British war films are about stoicism, about the fact that there are some things you have to endure.  Which is hardly surprising as, for most of the UK's population, that was their experience of war - it wasn't something happening 'over there', far away from their homes, but rather it was happening 'right here', with the home front as the front line.  During the Battle of Britain, the 'Thin Blue Line' of RAF Fighter Command might have been performing heroics in the skies, defending the UK from the Luftwaffe, but for people on the ground, the rain of bombs that destroyed homes, lives, families, whole communities, was something they had to endure as best they could.  Moreover, even after the RAF had established control of the skies over Britain, they still had to endure the night bombing of the Blitz then, later in the war, the rain of first V1s, which could be defended against, then V2s, which couldn't be defended against.  It's also important to remember that Britain kicked off the war with a series of set-backs, from the fall of France and Dunkirk, to the unsuccessful campaign in Norway, culminating with the loss of Crete and defeat in Greece, not to mention the early part of the Desert War, which saw British forces continually on the defensive, pushed back across North Africa.  And that was just the European and Mediterranean fronts.  The blows kept on coming: even at sea, the Royal Navy kept losing major assets like HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales. All that Britain could do was to meet these set backs with stoicism and keep faith in the hope of victory in the long-term.

So it shouldn't be surprising that British war films, particularly those made in the immediate aftermath of the war, during the fifties and early sixties, should reflect this.  Even where these films depict British victories - The Battle of the River Plate, the sinking of the Bismarck or the Dambusters raid, for instance - they tend to do so in a low key way, focusing on the people involved and the effects upon their lives and the lives of their wider families and friends.  The most powerful moment in The Dambusters (1954), for instance, isn't the destruction of the dams, but a subsequent scene where the camera pans across the rooms of crew members who didn't come back, clocks still ticking, clothes laid out, pictures and mementoes silently awaiting owners who will never return.  These films are, more often than not, less a celebration of victory than a solemn contemplation of the human costs of those victories.  Even The Battle of Britain (1969), despite its spectacular recreation of the aerial combat, feels essentially downbeat, with pilots coming to understand that, often, simply surviving the battlefield is the best you can hope for and that individual victories in the air can do nothing to guarantee the safety of loved ones on the ground.  For the US, while the war might have started with the shock of Pearl Harbor, for the most part, it subsequently saw the US victorious on all fronts they participated on, while their homeland remained untouched.  Not surprisingly, their war movies reflected this experience, with them being far more action-orientated and upbeat - they didn't stoically endure, they kicked ass.  At least in Hollywood's mythologised version of World War Two they did.  The quiet, stiff upper lip stoicism of British war heroes was eschewed in favour of gung ho, conspicuous heroics.  For a lot of the people who watched US made war movies, World War Two was something that had happened far away and hadn't affected them directly, whereas for British audiences, in the fifties and sixties, it wasn't just traumatic memories of the war that persisted, but also its physical scars in the shape of the very visible damage done to Britain's cities.

Of late, I've watched quite a few British war movies from the fifties and early sixties and been struck by their quiet stoicism.  In truth, when I was a child, I far preferred watching US war movies on TV - there was always a guarantee of some action, of tanks rumbling around and blowing each other up - finding their UK equivalents relatively dull and downbeat.   But as an adult, I can see how clearly they encapsulate an enduring and defining characteristic of the British - that capacity for simply and quietly enduring everything that is thrown at you and patiently waiting for your time to come.  It was an ethos that I was brough up with and still informs my perspective on life: spectacular heroics are all well and good, but they alone won't win the long game - that requires a quieter, more subtle approach.  What also struck me was just how many British war films involved PoW camps, underlining that, thanks to that difficult start to the war that Britain had to endure, for many who served, being a PoW was their main experience of the war, rather than combat.  Not to forget the number of British war movies that celebrate the efforts of those on the home front and their contributions to victory, or the efforts of the Merchant Navy in keeping supplies flowing to the UK and its allies.  All a far cry from the average Hollywood war movie, which, more often than not, were in essence just action pictures with the war rather than the Old West as a background.  Which isn't to say that there aren't good and thoughtful US made films about World War Two, but just that even these are different to their British equivalents, being informed by a different experience of the same historical event.

Site Down

 It's a fucking disaster.  The Sleaze is currently down, deactivated by the host due to a 'payment failure'.  This, despite the fact that I had an automatic renewal set up - which I checked only recently.  The host, it seems, left it to the last minute to try and get the payment, then e-mailed me warning the site could be deactivated, which it did so about a half hour later!  Sending e-mails in the early hours expecting a response is hardly constructive, or good business practice.  I've now paid with my card, yet the site is still down.  You've got your fucking money, now give me what I'm paying for!  (If they can expect a response to their e-mail, I don't think I'm being unreasonable for them to restore the site immediately upon payment).  This situation really is intolerable.  Ordinarily, I'd just move the site elsewhere, but in this instance, with their actions being so swift and unheralded, I haven't had the chance to download a backup of the files and databases, so I have no choice but to pay as my entire site is now, in effect, being held hostage.  Really, you'd think that in situations like this you'd either get more warning or a grace period in the case of a 'failed payment' in order to rectify their error, (payment, after all, had been set up).

I've only been with this host for a year and until now, things had been running smoothly, but now I'm reviewing the situation (and downloading a back up as soon as I get access again).  I suppose that I should have expected this, as a while ago, the service was sold to a new owner.  My previous experiences of hosts changing hands should have tipped me off to the possibility of this sort of shit: all too often such takeovers lead to a deterioration in the services you are paying for.  So it looks as if, once I regain control of the site, I'll have to start the tedious search for yet another new host.  If I'm quick enough, I might be able to get at least part of this year's fee back,  Otherwise I'll be looking to next year to move the site, again.  A quick check, but no, it's still down.  It's amazing how quick they are to disable the account, yet drag their feet when it comes to restoring it.  I've tried raising a support ticket (still unanswered) and their 24/7 help chat - which just gave an automatic reply telling me to raise a support ticket.  Come on guys, this is unacceptable, you've got your money, now give me back my site.  Really, if it isn't back up soon, then I'm going to start naming and shaming the bastards.

Terror in the Jungle (1968)

A truly terrible movie - amateurishly made with bargain basement special effects, non-professional actors, negligible production values and atrocious dialogue - Terror in the Jungle (1968) is nonetheless quite fascinating, with an oddly structured plot and a final lurch into apparent fantasy.   That the movie feels like three shorter, linked, films roughly bundled together shouldn't be surprising, as that is, in essence, what it is, with three different directors credited.  The original director, Tom De Simone, has actually written on IMDB about his involvement in the production.  He apparently shot the opening third of the film, which features various characters boarding a DC3 airliner to fly from the US to Peru.  At this point, it seems to be shaping up to be some kind of disaster movie, as we learn the backgrounds of the various passengers, who fulfil all the usual stereotypes for this sort of movie:  an exotic dancer heading South to appear in a film, the wealthy guy she hooks up with, a woman just acquitted of the murder of her husband, a pair of nuns accompanying the coffin of a dead colleague and an unaccompanied young boy going to see his mother.  So, it's no surprise when the plane runs into trouble during a storm, while flying over the jungle.  Panic ensues, one of the nuns jumps out in act of self-sacrifice in order to lighten the load, the possibly murderous widow gets hysterical and her husband's money falls out of her bag and so on.  Of course, the plane then crashes into a river and an heroic stewardess manages to get the surviving passengers and crew off.  But those in the audience expecting a jungle survival drama are immediately frustrated, with the passengers in the river being eaten by crocodiles and the stewardess and captain perishing as the burning plane explodes.  Only the little boy, who has been placed in the dead nun's now empty casket, survives and floats away down the river!

The sudden demise of most of the characters was dictated by the fact that, according to De Simone, the film was running over budget and location filming in Peru yet to start.  At this point he departed the film and the producer found another director to supervise the Peruvian shooting.  Most of this comprises the young boy wandering around the jungle, crying and snivelling, (which might well be a realistic reaction for a child of that age in such a situation, but is nonetheless extremely irritating and leaves you hoping that those crocodiles might come back and eat him), while his father tries to organise a rescue expedition.  The boy is found by a local tribe, who declare him to be the son of their god.  A government search team in a float plane find evidence that the boy is still alive, but one falls foul of a poison dart.  Eventually, the father secures help from a couple of missionaries who accompany him into the jungle.  All of this location shooting is heavily padded out with lots of  stock footage of wildlife.  Still feeling that something more was needed, the producer decided to add in a new sub-plot involving the natives' temple and some kind of conflict between rival factions, one wanting to sacrifice the boy, not believing in his divine status, the other trying to protect him.  As the Peruvian shooting had ended, a temple set was built in Griffith Park in LA and a third director supervised lots of extras dressed as natives running around and fighting each other.  This section gets quite bloody, with a number of graphic stabbings, with close ups of knives being thrust into bare torsos.  It also, at its climax, turns to the fantastic.  As the chief bad guy native is about to stab the boy, having chased him back into the jungle, the child's toy tiger he has dropped, inexplicably turns into a real leopard and kills the native.  Which is problematic on multiple levels, not least the question of why a toy tiger would turn into a real leopard (a completely different species), particularly as leopards aren't native to South America - it should surely have been a jaguar.  Even if we accept the scene at face value, with its implication that the boy really is divine, it is so ineptly filmed that it simply raises laughs - it is painfully obvious that, in the close ups, the man is wrestling with a glassy eyed stuffed leopard, while the real animal is clearly tethered by a very visible leash.

After this, the boys runs away, straight into the arms of his father who turns out to be conveniently nearby.  The father dismisses the kid's story about the leopard as fantasy.  As well he might, as he was in Peru while it was happening in Griffith Park.  Indeed, it is painfully obvious that the temple sequences were shot on a completely different location, with the park proving a poor match with the real jungle.  overall, the film leaves the viewer feeling utterly bewildered as to exactly why anyone would ever have wanted to make it, let alone release it.  But you can't help but admire the way in which this patchwork quilt of footage has been cobbled together so as to resemble some approximation of a feature film.  There's no denying that the sudden narrative shift, with most of the cast who have just been built up as major characters, are abruptly obliterated, is, on first viewing, quite breathtaking, a bold choice which completely throws the audience expectations to the kerb, you might even think.  Unfortunately, its failure to follow it up with anything resembling a coherent story, or to provide strong new characters, (the father and those priests are about as interesting as house bricks, while the natives are a bunch of wildly overacted stereotypes), sinks audience expectations completely.  The first third of the film actually isn't that bad - it isn't great, to be sure, but, bad acting and dialogue notwithstanding, it's reasonably competent for a low budget film,  The rest, however, is woeful.  The stumbling, episodic nature of the film, along with the lack of any sympathetic character for the audience focus on, means that there is no suspense, no tension and no sense of peril.   Yet, Terror in the Jungle isn't quite the chore to sit through that many bad movies are - there is enough about it that is utterly bizarre and out of left field, that it keeps you watching.

The Blood Suckers (1967)

Thank goodness for those small islands off of the European coast which are accessible only by irregular boat services and are sufficiently remote that groups of people can be stranded there and menaced by various perils, be it vampires, werewolves, cannibalistic maniacs, aliens, monster mutants or even deadly bees.  In the case of The Blood Suckers (1967), it's blood drinking plants picking off the guests at a castle located on such an island.  Exactly where this island is situated is never clear, although all the indications are that it is somewhere in the Mediterranean, close enough to an unidentified European country for people to make day trips there.  Unfortunately for the tourists featured in this film, they find themselves forced to stay overnight at the castle of Baron von Weser, a mad horticulturist who has been breeding various strains of plants not native to the island - which is otherwise unpopulated as the locals all fled after a 'vampire scare'.  Thus, the stage is set for one of those films where the guests get mysteriously killed one-by-one, their blood drained from their bodies, in between various characters wandering around the spooky old castle, where von Weber has a lab, not to mention a creepy non-speaking servant.

There are, of course, no prizes for guessing that the perpetrator of the blood draining is a perambulating vampiric tree created by von Weber.  Yet, despite all the obvious clues, the characters stranded on the island take virtually the film's entire running length to work this out, instead spending their time accusing each other, before chasing the servant to his death in the local graveyard.  A West German/Spanish co-production, The Blood Suckers was released under a variety of titles, according to market, including Maneater of Hydra and Island of Doom.  Directed by Us ex-pat actor Mel Welles, the film is shot against some very attractive Spanish locations and features some half decent camera work.  It is also patchily atmospheric, particularly in the interior scenes at the castle.  Unfortunately, it is too slackly plotted and sluggishly paced to build up much in the way of suspense or tension.  In its favour, the monstrous plant, if not exactly convincing, is quite impressively realised.  It also boasts, for its era, a surprising amount of gore, particularly at the climax, when the hero inevitably takes an axe to the tree.  The cast give hugely variable performances, which are further compromised by some equally variable dubbing for the English language version.  The most notable performance not surprisingly comes from Cameron Mitchell as von Weber.  Fairly restrained by his standards, he is, nonetheless, enjoyably over-the-top, oozing weirdness and menace in his every scene.  Thanks to the vagaries of dubbing, he seems to have ended up with Edmund Purdom's voice in the English dub, making Mitchell's performance seem even more bizarre and disconcerting.

The film's climax is almost worth sitting through the whole movie for - with the tree oozing blood, mortally wounded by George Martin's axe blows, a distraught Cameron Mitchell rushes to its side, embracing it and wailing about the loss of his beloved plant, which has clearly been the object of his affections.  You are left wondering whether it is only his fingers that are green.  Naturally, in a desperate attempt to save itself, the tree drains the blood from a willing Mitchell - to no avail.  A suitably bizarre ending for the film.  All-in-all, The Blood Suckers is a pretty typical low-budget sixties Euro horror which, despite some striking locations and half decent production values and colour photography, still contrives to look scruffy, hastily shot and roughly assembled.  The perfect sort of late night viewing for lovers of schlock, in fact.

It's Alive (1974)

I was watching Larry Cohen's 1974 killer mutant baby picture It's Alive recently and thinking that I was amazed that no one had remade it as a cheap direct-to-video release.   As it turns out, somebody did, in 2009.  A remake so bad and obscure that it completely passed me by.  It seems, based upon what I've been able to glean about it, the remake made the cardinal mistake of straying from the original concept, with its killer baby apparently not a mutant, just a cannibal.  It also tried to play the subject matter as a straight horror film, whereas Cohen's original was, like most of his output, was as much black comedy as it was horror film.  Indeed, the concept underlying the original film is so patently absurd, that black comedy is the only way that it could be played without the film becoming completely ridiculous.  Because, on the face of it, the whole idea of a murderous mutant baby that can kill grown adults and terrorises an entire city, crawling around the sewers to avoid detection as it attacks milkmen, stealing their deliveries and slaughtering armed policemen sounds like a parody.   Yet, Cohen manages to turn It's Alive into a reasonably effective and very memorable, shocker, with the outbursts of black comedy effectively 'normalising' some of the film's more absurd aspects.  As expected from someone as adept at producing exploitation films as Cohen, It's Alive taps into several popular themes of the era, most obviously the idea of possessed or evil infants popularised by Rosemary's Baby, but also contemporary concerns about the role of drugs and other external factors in a rise in birth defects.  In particular, the whole Thalidomide scandal was breaking at the time of the film's conception and production.

Killer children, of any age, are, of course, a perennial favourite horror trope, bringing with them, as they do, all sorts of moral questions when it comes to dealing with them.  Virtually all films on the subject make great play upon the fact that, in most societies, the harming of children represents a major taboo, posing the question of whether this taboo can be overcome by adults when those same children become an existential threat.  It's Alive is no different, with the film focusing on the parents of the murderous newborn and their reactions to the creature - for the mother, maternal instinct triumphs, whereas the father finds himself torn between acceptance of the danger the infant poses and his growing protective instincts toward his offspring.  At first, he goes into denial, refusing to accept that the child is anything but a dangerous aberration, but later accepting a degree of parental responsibility, trying to protect the child from the authorities and urging them to confine and study it rather than destroy it.  As with most Cohen films, there are times when the moral dilemmas and questions about the nature of humanity threaten to bog down the film and It's Alive develops into the usual uneasy mix of schlocky action and sometimes pretentious talk that characterise the director's work.  It also features the usual patches of clunky dialogue, surreal twists, uncertain plot development and patchy production values (I don't think any of Cohen's films could ever be described as 'slick', all having the rough and ready feel of an independent B-movie).  Nevertheless, Cohen also gets some good performances from his cast - particularly John P Ryan as the father - and creates some suspenseful sequences around the baby's various attacks, with lot's of low angle shots from the infant's point of view.  The mix of the mundane (such as the scenes at Ryan's office or the interaction of the expectant fathers in the hospital waiting room), with shock sequences like the massacre in the delivery room help give the film the pleasingly off-kilter feel typical of Cohen's work, with the audience never quite sure where the film is going to go next.  

Cohen sensibly keeps the mutant baby off screen for most of the time, using point of view shots during its attacks, combined with brief glimpses of an articulated model created by Rick Baker.  The end result is surprisingly effective, with the baby never seen enough to appear entirely risible.  Now one of Cohen's best known films, It's Alive had a chequered release history, with a change in management at Warner Brothers resulting in it getting a very limited initial release in 1974.  Another change in management saw the film given another chance, with a heavily promoted re-release in 1977, which proved financially successful - to the extent that the film spawned two sequels, both written and directed by Cohen.  As with much of Cohen's directorial output, It's Alive is a film with some interesting ideas at its core, some well executed scenes and good performances from its cast, but which ultimately feels as if its ability to develop these elements to their full potential is compromised by its lack of resources.

Streaming Rebel

No, I don't want to watch Jeremy Clarkson's TV series about his pretend farm.   Nor do I want to watch various TV series ground out as spin offs from various successful film series.  I don't even want to watch the latest iterations of Star Trek.  Yet, I have streaming companies and their media lackeys constantly trying to convince me that my life is empty and meaningless without these things and I should, therefore, take out a subscription to their services.  According to their thinking, I'm some kind of weirdo for not having any streaming subscriptions.  Although I suspect that I'm not that unusual in this respect.  Despite all the propaganda telling us that convention linear TV channels are dead because 'the kids' don't watch them, I'm afraid that I don't buy the stats they always bandy about to justify shutting down terrestrial TV.  The reality is that 'the kids' have never watched linear channels in the way that older people do - when I was a child a lot of my TV viewing was intermittent, confined only to programmes that interested me or that I was forced to sit through.  It was only when I was old enough to own my own TV in my own home and therefore control the remote, that I began to watch it more.  Even then, it wasn't until I started going through my thirties and spent less time going out, that I found that I had the time to watch more linear TV.  I suspect that the same is still true and that when all these current non-linear TV watching 'kids' hit middle age, they'll start wanting the simple pleasure of just crashing on their sofas and letting an evening of pre-programmed TV wash over them.  Except that they won't be able to, because the streamers will have ensured that linear TV no longer exists.  

I strongly suspect that the real problem that the steamers and their supporters have with conventional linear TV is that, in general, it is broadcast free-to-air.  No expensive subscriptions necessary.   Which is a challenge to the streaming model - many of them already have to run commercials because subscriptions alone won't cover their costs and as long as linear TV exists, people who don't want to pay still have a free alternative.  Conventional linear TV channels are also a pretty good way of discovering new content.  I've stumbled across many an interesting show simply because I couldn't be bothered to change channels or switch off after what I'd originally tuned in for finished.  Even channel hopping between various linear channels can turn up new content - if you find yourself lingering on something as you flip through the channels, odds are that you are going to end up watching it in full and maybe become a regular viewer.  Streaming TV, by contrast, wants you simply to accept all those 'great' shows it thrusts at you - many of which don't get recommissioned, or have gaps measured in years between series, making viewer engagement difficult to achieve and disaffecting would be regular viewers.  I find it a very unsatisfactory viewing experience.  Because, yes, I do have access to on demand streaming, via my Roku box, through which I can access a variety of free, ad-supported services.  (Not to mention a fair number of highly dodgy services carrying what is clearly pirated content).  I frequently find that all the choices I am presented with freeze my decision-making processes when trying to find something to watch - just finding stuff that happens to be  playing somewhere is a lot easier, not to mention more interesting.  Indeed, increasingly I find that it is the livestreaming channels with linear schedules that I find myself drawn to on Roku.  But getting back to my original point - I could, if I wanted to, watch all that stuff the streamers want me to sucscribe for, thanks to the wild, wild world of online piracy, (the sites are easy to find and, provided you exercise caution, are mainly safe to watch).  The thing is, though, that I still don't want to watch them.  Not even for free.

The Unified Conspiracy Theory: A Proposal

So, according to some newspaper reports, many UFO reports were actually disinformation put out by the US government in order to distract attention from various secret aircraft development programmes.  Like the ones that go on at the so called 'Area 51'.  Well, I never, I would never have guessed, was my reaction.  (OK, it was more along the lines of 'No shit, Sherlock?' or even 'Fuck my hat, I never knew that!', but I'm trying to clean things up around here).  These are the most stunningly obvious 'revelations' I've come across in a long time.  At the same time we've got self-styled former MoD 'UFO expert' Nick Pope bemoaning the fact that the whole of UFOlogy is being brought into disrepute by all those nuts claiming to talk to aliens and the like, who are turning it into a quasi-religious cult.  Yeah, I think you are trying to shut that stable door just a little too late, Nick.  At least fifty years too late.  I've remarked here before that UFO sightings just aren't as much fun as they were when I was a kid, when they tended to be simple glimpses of shiny things flying behind cars, or landed in fields.  Now, the whole thing is a multi-million dollar business that requires a constant stream of sensational multiple sightings, abductions and implanting of alien devices.  Oh, not to forget the conspiracies and cover-ups - they are essential to modern UFOlogy, regardless of the lack of evidence for them.  Indeed, it is the conspiracies which are already being used to try and discredit the newspaper story about the US military creating UFO reports as disinformation and distraction.  The UFO nuts are already dismissing this as a conspiracy theory, deliberately leaked to the press, in order to discredit them, as they are getting too closer to the 'truth'.  That's the trouble with conspiracy theorists: you can't reason with them as they'll just pull another conspiracy theory from their arses to counter any holes you knock in their original crackpot beliefs.

Anyway, I'm beginning to ponder as to whether it is possible to come up with a 'unified conspiracy theory' that somehow incorporates and reconciles all the other major conspiracy theories.  It seems a daunting task as such a theory would have to encompass  UFOs, Bigfoot, Yeti and other cryptids, 'mysterious' celebrity deaths, assassinations, shape shifting lizards, all the Q Anon devil worshipping child sacrificing pedo nonsense, the hollow earth, fake moon landings and much more.  On the face of it, much of this craziness contradictory, but I remain convinced that it should be possible to come up with an overarching theory that links together all of this stuff, from the weird phenomena to the moon landings to Elvis not being dead in a coherent manner.  It would mean abandoning some of the fundamentals of individual theories, such as UFOs being alien craft and things like Bigfoot and Yetis being prehistoric survivals, for instance.  To this end, my first stab at this 'unified conspiracy theory', would see these supposed 'apemen' as being reincarnations of those 'mysteriously' slain celebrities - part of their journey of ascension to a higher level of existence.  Quite literally higher as they always seem to live in mountainous area.  Perhaps the altitude and thin air is needed for their transformation to their next manifestation as non-corporeal entities - the shining things we see in the sky and call UFOs.  Maybe, released from the confines of conventional space and time, they can travel back along the time lines and actually instigate their own deaths in order to kick-start their transformation - was the shooter on the grassy knoll actually a manifestation of future JFK?  Could that person who got Princess Di's driver so drunk that he crashed actually her, but from the future?  Or maybe she was that 'paparazzi car' that supposedly chased the limo, causing it to crash?  Did future evolved John Lennon 'possess'  Mark Chapman and guide him to shoot 1980 John Lennon?  OK, so I still haven't been able to work in the fake moon landings or the lizards, but just give me time...

The Black Cat (1981)

I had a not entirely satisfactory weekend of movie viewing.  My mistake was in watching too many 'modern' films (ie, ones made after 2000), which I rarely find satisfying in the way that I do older stuff.  Even the recent B-horror I saw, which, to be fair, at least tried to do something different in terms of style and approach, felt more like an extended episode of an anthology TV series, (it actually had a very strong resemblance to an episode of The Twilight Zone).  Still, I did fit in my annual viewing of The Longest Day (1962) on Sunday afternoon and caught up with a British comedy of similar vintage that I hadn't seen in years.  All of which brings us, finally, to the subject of this 'Random Movie Trailer', Lucio Fulci's 1981 version of The Black Cat, which I caught up with again after watching a particularly disappointing big budget horror film of very recent vintage.  The Fulci film actually does have slightly more to do with the Poe story than the Luigi Cozzi's later version - for one thing, it actually features a black cat front and centre as one of the main protagonists and someone does end up being walled up alive with the cat, whose cries alert the hero.  As you'd expect from a Fulci horror film, The Black Cat features plenty of bloody and bizarre, murders, all instigated by the titular beast and is full of strange characters and strange goings on which, sort of, make sense.  A lot of it is quite atmospheric and suspenseful but, like most Fulci films, overall it is barking mad.

It's biggest problem is a meandering script which tells its story in such an unfocused way that it often becomes difficult to keep track of exactly what is going on, with characters suddenly appearing, dominating several scenes as if they are about to establish a new sub-plot, then being abruptly killed off.  Consequently, the film has an irregular rhythm and never manages to establish an even pace.   Set in an English village, the film boasts some excellent exterior filming across a number of Buckinghamshire locations, all used to good effect.  It also boasts a strong cast, led by Patrick Magee as a retired academic who hangs out in the graveyard in order to record conversations with the dead and who may or may not have psychic abilities.  He is also the owner of the very hostile black cat of the title, that repeatedly claws him, but is, apparently, also enacting Magee's subconscious hatred of the local villagers in its reign of terror.  The cat, which hypnotises its victims into crashing vehicles and stepping in front of cars, is, it has to be said, a pretty bad actor., sometimes looking as if it is about to fall asleep under the studio lights and quite obviously having had to be bribed with food to perform the simplest tasks for the camera.  I'm afraid that I have never found domestic cats remotely menacing, (they're anybody's friend in exchange for a saucer of milk), so the cat's performance here just undermines the film's central threat even further for me.  Still, David Warbeck, as a motorcycling Scotland Yard man, and Mimsy Farmer, as an American tourist who gets drawn into the plot, are on hand to make up for the weakness of the feline's performance.  Whilst not quite prime Fulci, The Black Cat is hugely enjoyable in a typically, for this director, eccentric way.

What's in it for The Messiah?

So, if we were to get that much delayed Second Coming, would it take place in the US and would Trump try to take credit for it, like he has the World Cup and Olympics, despite having nothing to do with securing them for the US, (well, the US, Mexico and Canada in the case of the World Cup)?  In a way, he might well be responsible for this imagined Second Coming, as there surely are few countries as in dire need of saving (in a spiritual sense) than the US under Trump's second term.  Of course, Trump being Trump, not only would try to take credit for a Second Coming, he would undoubtedly seek to exploit it for political and commercial gain, seeking the new Messiah's endorsement for MAGA policies and candidates, not to mention products either directly related to Trump businesses and those of Trump supporters.  'Crypto Christ' ('A financial miracle for you!) maybe, or 'My Resurrection Pillow' (cue Mike Lindell telling us 'One night's sleep with this pillow will bring your tired body back to life').  More to the point, being in the US, would the new Messiah charge for miracles?  Would he only heal those with adequate health insurance cover?  Come to think of it, is healing by the laying on of hands covered by basic Medicare, or do you have to check whether you have 'Part Three' cover, whatever the fuck that is, (for God's sake, just get a proper health care system like the rest of the civilised world, America).

That's the question: would a Second Coming in this current transactional world bring forth a transactional Messiah?  After all, our Gods tend to reflect the times in which they are invoked, so why shouldn't a contemporary manifestation expect to get something in return for saving us all (apart from our immortal souls, obviously)?   It wouldn't just be pay-per-miracle, I'm sure.  There would also be all the perks that he'd get for bestowing blessings on politicians, companies, sports teams and the like - the free cars, suits, properties and the like.  Then there would be the groupies.  Ah, the groupies!  It would make Jesus' hanging out with a prostitute the first time around look like a vicarage tea party.  Who would the disciples be this time around?  Would the new Messiah follow the Trump playbook and gather together a group of billionaires to be his acolytes?  Could we see Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg attending a new Last Supper?  You can guarantee that holier-than-thou grifter Mike Lindell will be desperate to gate crash.  Who will be Judas this time around?  Will the TV and streaming rights to the new Last Supper be pre sold?  Will the film rights be up for grabs?  Will Tom Cruise play the new Messiah in the movie, or will his devotion to Scientology be a stumbling block?  With many trying to tell us that the world is currently hurtling toward Armageddon, we surely need to be addressing the questions and preparing ourselves for the coming of the corporate Christ.  But is anyone actually doing anything to ready the world?  Of course not.  As ever, the mainstream media and politicians just aren't interested.  Damn it, at this rate, the first we'll know of a Second coming is when the Messiah is a guest on that slap head Joe Rogan's show.

No Kind of Hero

I see that many on social media are having one of those 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' moments with regard to the falling out between Musk and Trump, with the former being seen in some quarters as some kind of hero for denouncing the 'Orange Shitler'.  While it is fun to see two utterly unspeakable arseholes of their ilk bad mouthing each other, the fact remains that they are still both unspeakable arseholes.   Musk doesn't get to be a hero for opposing Trump's 'Big beautiful Bill' the president is trying to push through Congress - he isn't doing it for philanthropic reasons.  He hasn't had some 'road to Damascus' revelation which has opened his eyes to the shittiness of his actions while in Trump's employ: he still doesn't give a flying fuck about all those federal workers he is responsible for firing, or the massive damage he has done to aid programs.  This opposition is simply about a disagreement over how best to screw the US economy for ordinary people whilst rewarding the ultra-rich.  He's afraid that he won't get as big a piece of the pie as he thought he would.  He certainly doesn't get to be a hero for claiming Trump is on the 'Epstein list' as a guest at one of that late millionaire's alleged child molestation parties.  Because in the same breath (or Tweet, to be more accurate), he reminds us that it was thanks to his money that Trump won the White House and the Republicans took control of Congress.  Basically, what he's telling us is that he was instrumental in putting a peadophile into the Oval Office and that he knew that his man was an alleged peado, (if we are to take his statement at face value).  He's admitting to be an enabler.

Of course, former enemies suddenly becoming friends has a long history - usually driven by expediency.  Let's not forget, for instance, that the Soviet Union started World War Two as, effectively, a German ally thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact.  Indeed, the UK actually conducted military operations against the Soviets during the 'Winter War' of 1940, when they and Germany jointly invaded Finland.  But, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, they suddenly became our friends and horrible communist dictator Josef Stalin suddenly became jovial 'Uncle Joe' Stalin in UK and US propaganda.  Likewise, some years later it became expedient for the UK to have Israel as an ally in the Suez debacle, despite the fact that only a few years earlier Israel's leaders had been terrorists (in the eyes of the UK) murdering British soldiers in Palestine.  So it is with Musk.  It has become expedient for him to distance himself from Trump and to try to get back onside with popular opinion.  After all, his businesses have been negatively impacted by the association by Trump, so he needs to rehabilitate his public image.  Plus, he' possibly suffering 'buyer's regret', in that he isn't getting what he thought he was paying for when he backed Trump - the doors of power haven't opened up to him in the ways he thought they would and it has become clear that Trump isn't going to be the Messiah creating that Ayn Rand inspired billionaire Utopia that Musk dreamed of ushering in.  Trump is all about Trump, not other peoples' dreams.  The only person, ultimately, that Trump wants to enrich is himself.  So Musk isn't the hero, the brave fighter rebelling against bad man Trump that he now wants us to think that he is - rather he's someone who used to like define himself as being some kind of outsider who has finally realised that he made a big miscalculation by becoming an insider.  The enemy of my enemy is still a self serving arsehole.

The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973)

Another on my list of films whose titles and plot synopses intrigued me in my youth, but that I was never able to see, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973), with which I have finally caught up, has several points of interest, beyond the catchy title.  Notably, it reunites star Kerwin Matthews with director Nathan Juran, who had previously worked together on Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jack the Giant Killer (1962).  It is also a Universal production, so follows in the footsteps of its previous lycanthrope films, such as Werewolf of London (1935), The Wolfman (1941) and Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf (1961), which Universal distributed.  Unlike those earlier films, this movie doesn't explore the whole lore of the lycanthrope and try to place its furry protagonist in any kind of cultural or historical context, with its title monster subsequently feeling a rather generic werewolf, sitting outside of any particular folk tradition.  The plot of Boy Who Cried Werewolf is straightforward enough, with a boy realising that his father has become a werewolf, after being bitten by another lycanthrope during a trip to the mountains.  But, of course, nobody believes him, with the local law and media instead thinking that either a madman or some kind of wild beast is responsible for the ensuing series of killings.  The father himself, has no recollection of turning into a werewolf every full moon or of the depravities he commits, although he increasingly begins to realise that something is wrong.  Matthews actually handles the role of the increasingly troubled father well - there is the added complication of his separation from his wife, with whom the boy lives - conveying his growing self-doubt quite convincingly as he grows ever more ill at ease with himself, especially as the full moon approaches.  

His hairy alter ego, though, is another matter entirely.  To be absolutely fair, the make up used makes it impossible to tell whether it actually is Kerwin Matthews playing these scenes, although no other actor is credited, but whoever portrays the werewolf, they clearly have no idea of how to play the part, with over-exaggerated gestures, unconvincing snarling and a propensity for jumping around a lot.  It doesn't help that the facial make up for the beast makes him look more like Lassie than a wolf.  To top it all, he does some very un-werewolf like things - at one point the boy spies him using a spade to dig a hole in which to conceal some grisly trophies: the heads of a couple of his victims.  Regardless of his demeanour, the werewolf is, at least, allowed to conduct a fair number of killings, which include causing a rather well staged car crash, when his presence in the road distracts a truck driver, (who he proceeds to attack in the wreckage before killing the occupants of a car also involved in the conflagration).  He also gets to attack and kill a sympathetic couple who have helped his son, sending their bodies over a cliff in their caravan.  Despite the frequency and ferocity of the killings, the film is actually devoid of any real blood and gore - we're only told that victims have been decapitated, for instance, the camera cuts away before the deed and we never see the severed heads.  This, combined with much of the story being told from a child's perspective, leave one wondering whether the film was originally intended for a younger audience - a family friendly werewolf film?   

The direction from Juran, (whose last film this was- he came out of retirement to direct it), is as professional and efficient as you'd expect from a director with his experience in fantasy subjects, decently paced with well-staged set pieces, although he never gives the impression that he has any real interest in directing a real horror film.  The film, instead, veers more toward fantasy, a darker version of the sorts of films he's previously made with Matthews.  Consequently, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf tends to lack any real atmosphere of menace or sense of suspense.  It doesn't help that it was clearly made on a limited budget, which often makes it look more like a TV movie than a feature.  Still, it is quite entertaining and has some nice touches - this being the early seventies, there is inevitably a group of hippies on hand, camping in the woods and getting harassed by the sheriff.  But in a twist, these turn out not be the usual Satanist hippies who tend to turn up in seventies horror films, but are instead a bunch of evangelical Bible bashers!  Bob Homel gives an amusing turn as their leader, shocked to find that there really is a supernatural devil beast on the loose near the encampment.  But this, in itself is problematic, as the comic relief provided by the hippies is somewhat incongruous in the context of what is meant to be a horror film, underlining the problems the film seemingly has in establishing a consistent tone throughout.  The hippies do, at least, eventually serve a purpose, plot-wise, as it is their huge crucifix that the werewolf is eventually impaled upon as he flees a combined mob of lawmen, locals and hippies combing the woods for him.  Overall, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf is a reasonably effective film that never quite seems to know exactly what genre it falls into or, indeed, who its target audience is meant to be.

Going Backwards

I see that yet another of Elon Musk's rockets exploded the other day.  How many is that now?  I've lost count.   You know, I can remember the days when rocket launches seemed to be just routine - they blasted their payloads into space without blowing themselves up over Florida.  But that, of course, was before it was decided that private billionaire crank cases like Musk were a better option than bodies like NASA or the ESA, with their decades of experience and expertise, for the exploitation of space.  They could do it all better, cheaper and more efficiently.  Except that this 'step forward' seems to involve taking several steps backward - back to the days of exploding rockets which were inherently unfit for their primary purpose.  Which seems to be the story of our modern world: we seem to continually going backwards, abandoning the tried and tested in favour of going back to policies, technologies and ideas that were proven undesirable or unworkable decades, centuries even, ago.  So we have Trump trying to drag the US (and the world, by extension) back to the nineteenth century in terms of economics, foreign and social policy, Starmer trying to drag the UK back to a world of Thatcherite fiscal targets and spending restrictions and Putin trying to drag the world back to the Cold War.  It's like the lessons of previous decades have suddenly been forgotten.  History?  Who needs it?

But it isn't just in the world of politics and technology that we seem to be going backwards.  Even in the more trivial matter of entertainment, innovation is increasingly being sacrificed on the altar of profit.  Why take risks on something new, when you can instead flog to death a tried and tested format or property.  In the cinema, we get served up endless remakes and sequels instead of anything new.  It's the same on TV, with the streaming giants who now dominate production trends with their money, giving us a diet of movie spin-offs and remakes, 'reimaginings' lof old series that nobody asked for, shows that are as much like other successful formats as possible without invoking copyright laws and stuff hijacked from poorer terrestrial networks that paid for their development into successful formats.  Again, little in the way of originality,  Even when something new is tried, if it isn't an instant success, the streamers will unceremoniously axe it.  Never mind nurturing and developing new stuff - if it doesn't make a buck from the start, it's of no use to them.  But this constant looking backward also increasingly affects established TV shows on conventional networks, with their growing reliance on call-backs to previous episodes and characters to cover up a lack of innovation.  

It's a lazy way to try and please existing fans but ultimately makes it more difficult for new viewers to get into the series without laboriously sitting through every previous episode.  The idea of the 'casual viewer' seems to have been discarded, or forgotten about, in this era of streaming and 'binge-watching', (I'm afraid that I don't have the patience to sit through sixteen consecutive hours of a TV show just to be able to understand the current episode).  Publishing is no different, with High Street bookselling dominated by a handful of big players, who only like to stock the tried and tested via a few established distributors.  Increasingly, they don't like to have names people won't recognise on their shelves, hence the current slew of titles, both fiction and non-fiction by TV personalities and the like. It doesn't matter whether they are any good, people will buy them (they hope) on the basis that potential readers like the author's TV show.  (I'm actually a terrible snob in this respect, refusing point blank to buy and read anything by a 'celebrity').  Again, it raises the question of just how anyone is expected to break into writing if they don't have a track record of already being famous for doing something entirely unconnected.  Self-publishing?  Largely a con, in my experience - plus, most of the self-published stuff I've encountered is pretty dreadful, testimony to the value of experienced editors and proof readers.  Will we ever stop this backwards movement to old ideas and formulae and start progressing again?  I honestly don't know.  Sometimes I fear that we're unwittingly wandering into something like Philip K Dick's Counter Clock World, living our lives backwards, disinterring the dead rather than burying them, getting younger instead of older and watching every human achievement progressively erased as we move backward through our history.  Sheesh!  What a depressing thought for a Monday!