Tech Hysteria

There's a lot of hysteria surrounding AI.  I mean, hardly a day goes by without my seeing a headline somewhere asking whether some proprietary AI has become 'self aware' or 'sentient'.  (The answer is always 'no', in spite of the best efforts of assorted panic-mongers and IT nerds to convince us otherwise, there is no evidence that any current AI system does anything other than process requests and instructions originating with human beings.  They might show something resembling initiative in carry out those instructions, but they still don't spontaneously start their own tasks or create their own art work, etc.).  But it isn't just the in the press that I see these knee-jerk reactions.  Increasingly, in social media, I keep seeing truly ridiculous overreactions to any kind of AI-originated creative work - you'd think that we were talking about the works of the devil, such is the extremity and vehemence of the commentary.  At the very least, it is dismissed as 'slop' that is undermining 'true creativity'.  Most reactions are more extreme.  The other day I was struck by the sheer unpleasantness of the reactions to a user of an online music community who had had their entire library of work deleted after adding some new music they had created with AI assistance - 'good', 'serves them right' were the mildest reactions, with absolutely no sympathy amongst the vituperative gloating over their downfall.  'Oh come on', was my reaction, 'It isn't as if this person hadn't been creating original material without AI for years, but decide to experiment with it as a creative tool or aid and they are suddenly possessed by the devil and condemned to eternal damnation?'

Because, at the end of the day, that's all that AI in its current form is: a tool which can be used to aid the creative process.  If we are to condemn people for using it creatively, then we might as well also condemn artists for using brushes instead of their fingers, or musicians for using instruments instead of just clapping their hands.  OK, I can't deny that I have a dog in this race, so to speak - I make use of AI for various creative tasks I don't have the skills to carry out myself.  If you go over to The Sleaze, you'll see that I make extensive use of images I created using AI to illustrate the stories.  I have no artistic abilities myself, but I know what I want to create in terms of imagery.  AI allows me to do that. It also gets me over the potential hurdle of copyright claims on any image I use, (even the royalty-free images available from many sites are fraught with peril, as their originators could change their licensing terms at any time, without warning, leaving users of them vulnerable to copyright claims).  Do they have any artistic merit?  Clearly not, but that's not the point.  They exist simply to illustrate the story, which was written by a human - me.  Luckily, I haven't had any kickback about these images, but some other AI artwork I devised - a series of satirical fake sixties comic book covers - drew all sorts of anti-AI commentary when I published them on my Tumblr blog last year.  There was an implication that they somehow represented some form of deception.  In the end, a terse footnote I put on the last one - to the effect that they were clearly not real and a joke and created by AI because I wasn't going to pay a real artist just for the sake of illustrating a comic idea that I'm making no money from - seems of cut off this line of 'criticism' entirely.

Right now, I'm editing together a podcast on which I've used AI created voices from several AI assisted TTS systems.  I've done similar stuff before, both complete podcasts and inserts to otherwise human podcasts.  But this time around, the tools used are, in general, more sophisticated and more realistic sounding.  Doubtless, there will be many who won't like this but, as before, I'm a one man band putting my creative work out for free, so I'm hardly going to employ a bunch of actors to enact my scripts, am I?  And that's the point - the 'actors' in this podcast might be created by AI, but the words they speak are written entirely by a human - me.  The structure of the podcast - again, all me, as are all the ideas and characters.  AI is simply being used as a creative tool.  With it, I can create a far more sophisticated piece of audio than I'd be able to just working on my own, with only my voice.  So, while I'm as wary as anyone regarding the hype surrounding AI and the many dubious uses politicians and corporations are trying to put it to, as an individual creator, I'm also quite happy to embrace those aspects of it that I can put to use as a tool.  Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to AI.    

The Alien Files

So, Trump's latest ploy to distract from the Epstein files is to announce that he's going to order the relevant US departments to publicly reveal what they know about aliens.  Or is it just a ploy?  Is he hoping that in these 'Alien Files' there will be documents, better still photos, implicating previous presidents, preferably Democrats, in having sexual relations with underage aliens.  Hell, they wouldn't even have to be underage, (although what that would mean in alien terms is anybody's guess - if, for instance, they had average lifespans of five hundred of our years, then maybe shagging a forty year old alien would constitute peadophilia), as they aren't human, then perhaps having relations with even an adult alien might, under existing law, constitute bestiality.  Who knows?  Anyway, some photographic evidence of, say Joe Biden, enjoying an alien anal probe, or Jimmy Carter being pleasured in every orifice by a multi-penised alien with genitalia like tentacles, would be pretty damning stuff and would definitely divert attention from Trump and his Epstein connection.  Of course, there'd always be the risk that Trump himself could turn up in the files - I mean, what's the betting that Epstein had some kind of deal going with aliens in order to furnish him with an 'Epstein Planet' where all human - not to mention alien - depravities could be indulged.  Maybe the aliens were shapeshifters, even, able to take the form of thirteen year old girls, so that sex with them, technically, wouldn't be illegal as they were actually adults, not to mention not human.

Of course, it could all be a cunning ruse by Trump, who, as president, would obviously know that Roswell, Area 51, alien abductions and the like are all utter bollocks and there are no files to back any of it up, but by calling for their disclosure, he's trying to deflect attention from the fact that, somewhere in the Epstein files, there is evidence of him shagging aliens.  Maybe there really is a super-secret US government establishment where captured aliens are kept for study, (with Area 51 simply being a disinformation operation to distract the conspiracy nutters), and there is video footage of Trump raping an unconsenting alien.  Because, if he really is the colossal and degenerate pervert that he is claimed to be, then you can guarantee that, if he ever heard of the existence of a real live captive alien, he'd want to have sex with it.  Maybe he'd see it as the ultimate, out-of-this-world shag that only the presidency could buy. And if such footage did exist, then you can guarantee that billionaire sex offender Epstein would have gotten his hands on it to use for the purposes of blackmailing the Trump administration into protecting him.  Which was doubtless why he had to be murdered while he was in prison.  So maybe this alien file release is really a distraction within a distraction within a diversion.  

Deportation De Luxe

So, here's the latest from the whacky world of Trumpland (as he will doubtless insist the US be re-christened before his term is out) - a leased luxury jet used to ferry the Homeland Security head, Kirsti Noem, around is to be bought outright and used for deportation flights.  At least, that's the administration's justification for spending $70 million on a private Boeing 737.  Of course, they also say, it will still be used as an executive transport when it isn't shuttling Noem around.  But hey, let's give those sons of fun the benefit of the doubt for a while - maybe they are on to something here: letting deportees travel in style.  Because, after all, surely that's the reason that all these illegals Trump wants to kick out of the US sneaked in there in the first place - they came from what Trump himself described as 'shit holes'.  Which, naturally, is why they are reluctant to be deported.  Indeed, why would anyone want to swap the luxury lifestyle provided by a low-paid, exploitative and undocumented job with no health benefits or pension in the US for a life of abject poverty and political repression in some 'shit hole'?  So why not incentivise deportation?  Guarantee them that, at the very least, they'll get a few hours of executive travel experience on the jet taking them back?  Lay on the booze, the gourmet food and the girls for their return trip.  They'll be queuing up to get on that 737, believe me.

But why not take it a step further?  Don't just promise them a luxury ride back home - why not also promise a luxury home to return to?  That could be the solution to the whole immigration business - the Trump Corporation could maybe start buying land in those countries it is sending most of the immigrants back to and build luxury condominiums there to house the returning deportees.  They could be part of huge luxury resorts, which would provide work for those same deportees.  Again, they wouldn't have to send those ICE thugs out to hunt down illegals - they'd be queuing up to be deported.   OK, there might be some resistance from the countries involved, (although these resorts and condos could be presented as investments in their economies), but then the US could maybe go to Plan B.  Way back when, they established that homeland for freed slaves in Africa, which became Liberia.  Well, why not do the same now?  Create a luxury free homeland for the deported?  Maybe that's what Trump's peace plan for Gaza is really about: kicking out the Palestinians, levelling the place and building a deportee paradise?  These ideas have many potential benefits, not least that, if you are sending immigrants off to a life of luxury, then that should undercut any domestic protests about the issue.  I mean, who could possibly object to the idea of, quite literally, sending them to a better place?  Mind you, if this was all a success, you'd probably then have people from developed countries getting on small boats and trying to illegally enter these luxury deportee havens...

Trial by Combat (1976)

Despite the ongoing decline of the British film industry during the seventies, with many of the smaller production companies falling by the wayside, British studios increasingly found themselves occupied by runaway US productions in search of tax breaks.  Nevertheless, various low-budget, independently produced, films continued to appear, often boasting impressive-looking casts, as actors formerly well employed appearing in UK productions found themselves otherwise unemployed.  Trial by Combat (1976) is one such example.  Produced by experienced independent US producers Paul Heller and Fred Weintraub and shot entirely on location, the movie is clearly designed to play upon the sort of quirky Britishness lapped up US TV viewers in the form of series like The Saint and The Avengers.  Indeed, its script plays out like an unused script for The Avengers, with its eccentric, vintage car driving, older male lead, in the form of John Mills as a retired Metropolitan Police Commissioner, its country mansion settings, colourful but cheery working class criminals and as its villains, a group of upper crust vigilantes who dress up as medieval knights to mete out 'justice'.  Indeed, in terms of production values, Trial by Combat comes over like a misplaced TV episode, or even an unsold TV pilot, with the small screen feel reinforced by a supporting cast of familiar British TV faces, including Brian Glover, John Savident and a first screen appearance for Bernard Hill.  

Directed by Kevin Connor, following up his success with The Land That Time Forgot (1974), the film even seems to be trying to emulate the feel of the late sixties Avengers episodes, mixing a flippant, jokey approach with elaborately staged and frenetic action sequences.  But whereas the TV series had achieved an agreeable form of surrealism, perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist of the era in which it was made, Trial by Combat, with its broad characterisations and leaden dialogue, comes over more like the sort of strip you'd find in the average British comic of the time.  (Not in itself a bad thing, but surely not what the film's makers were aiming for, the cast alone suggesting that they were aiming for something more 'sophisticated').  While the two imported token American leads - David Birney and Barbara Hershey - make next to no impression at all, the film is carried by the impressive supporting cast, including Mills and Donald Pleasance as the main villain.  There's also a welcome, but too brief, extended cameo from Peter Cushing.  Most memorable though are Mills' cheerful gangster ally Brian Glover and his mother, played in her last role by Margaret Leighton (she died before the film's premiere).  Glover injects a welcome burst of energy into the film's second half, pulling out all the stops and giving the sort of performance a film of this nature needs.  In fact, he is probably the movie's saving grace, as any film which features Brian Glover single-handedly taking on (and besting) a group of knights in armour, mounted on horses, is surely worth watching.  Originally released in the UK on a double bill with The Swiss Conspiracy (1975), a thriller with similarly modest ambitions, Trial by Combat isn't exactly a bad film, but rather an undemanding, lightweight, production of the sort that, by the mid-seventies, really didn't have much of an audience as far cinemas were concerned - it was simply no better than what audiences could see for free on TV in the comfort of their own living rooms.

The Girl Hunters (1963)

A British-made Mike Hammer film - and is if that isn't bizarre enough, The Girl Hunters (1963) also features Mickey Spillane himself playing his most famous creation, in an adaptation of his 1962 novel of the same name.  Thankfully, the British connection involves the fact that the studio scenes were shot at  Elstree, while exteriors were actually shot in New York.  So, thankfully, we don't get Borehamwood's high street trying to masquerade as Times Square.  The other main evidence of a British connection lies in the presence of Shirley Eaton (sporting an American accent) in the main female role.  Apart from Eaton, the other 'star' name the cast boasts is veteran American character actor LLoyd Nolan, playing Hammer's FBI contact.  It has to be said that Spillane's casting as Hammer, ('Mike Hammer is Mickey Spillane' the credits shout at us), not only makes sense in terms of Hammer being an idealised fantasy version of the author, but also in terms of the lack of polish and roughness he brings to the character in his performance.  Previous actors to have played the part in screen adaptations of Spillane's work, while having the physical presence of the character, always seemed to lack the hardness and sheer vulgarity of his literary counterpart.  Spillane, by contrast, might have lacked the physical presence of Hammer, but has toughness and vulgarity in spades.  He also looks the part for this version of Hammer, jolted out of a seven year alcoholic stupor to take on a new case related to the disappearance of his assistant Velda - Spillane really does look as if he'd been scraped off of the floor of some backstreet dive after a week-long bender.

The film itself follows the plot of the source novel quite closely.  The book had basically been a 'comeback' outing for Hammer, seven years after the previous novel had been published (likewise, this was the first film adaptation in nearly seven years, after 1957's My Gun is Quick), explaining Hammer's absence by the fact that he had become an alcoholic wreck following Velda's disappearance on a case.  The film likewise opens with a drunken Hammer being picked up with by the cops as a dying witness will speak only to hum.  At odds with former police buddy Pat Chambers, who had also been in love with Velda, Hammer allies with FBI agent Rickerby after the dying man, who had been an undercover FBI man himself, gives him information implying that Velda is still alive and somehow linked to the recent murder of a US senator.  Like the book, the film version of The Girl Hunters marks a firm move into espionage territory for the series - although the fourth book of the series 'One Lonely Night ' (1951) had featured domestic communists as the antagonists - a move possibly inspired by the growing popularity of Ian Flemings Bond novels and their subsequent film versions.  Most of the plot sees Hammer searching for a communist assassin known as 'The Dragon', working for a Soviet-controlled espionage network known as 'Butterfly Two', who were behind the senator's murder and are trying to destabilise western governments by assassinating and undermining 'patriotic' politicians.

Despite the espionage trappings, the film still contains all of the classic Hammer elements: brutal violence meted out by good guys and bad guys alike, sadism, misogyny, treacherous women and Hammer taking the law into his own hands.  Whilst still not as brutally violent as the source material, The Girl Hunters is still notably more graphic in its violence than previous Spillane screen adaptations, with hands being nailed to the floor, for instance.  Which isn't to say that Hammer is portrayed as being simply a mindless thug - the film does provide him with some 'character development' compared to his earlier incarnations, in that, despite still being alienated from mainstream society, his patriotism overrides this sufficiently for him to form an alliance with an establishment law enforcement organisation like the FBI.  The film's fidelity to the book, however, is also its downfall, with needless plot complications slowing the pace down and dragging the film out to excessive length.  An overblown musical score from Philip Green, which feels as if it belongs to a completely different film, doesn't help much, either.  That said, veteran director of Hollywood B features Roy Rowland does manage to imbue the film with a modicum of atmosphere and makes the most of his New York exteriors, although the UK studio interiors feel far too bland and generic.  He also makes the most of the action scenes, with Spillane's Hammer engaging in some energetic, brutal and very well choreographed fights.  Unfortunately, also due to its fidelity to its source, the film ends on an anticlimactic note, with Velda still not found, although Hammer now has an address where she might be found.  This mirrored the book, whose ending had led into the next novel in the sequence: 'The Snake' (1964).  Producer Robert Fellows also had the rights to this book and had planned to film it as a follow-up to The Girl Hunters, tying up all of the loose ends from that film, but the movie never materialised, leaving The Girl Hunters forever teetering on the edge of a never-to-be-resolved cliffhanger.  In spite of its many faults, The Girl Hunters still stands as probably the most 'authentic' adaptation of a Mike Hammer novel until 1982's I, The Jury which, while taking liberties with the novel's plot, presented Hammer (Armand Assante) as not just brutal and misogynistic, but downright sleazy, to boot.

A Question of Identity Solved

I finally had a decades old mystery resolved in the cereal aisle at Lidl earlier this week.   Ever since I moved to Crapchester, many, many years ago, I've been plagued by complete strangers on the street shouting 'Frank!' at me - they are clearly disappointed when I don't respond.  Because, obviously, my name isn't Frank.  Nor is 'Frank' an alias I've ever used in any of my nefarious activities.  To be fair, these incidents tailed off over the years and I can't now recall the last time it happened, but it has still bugged me.  Who is 'Frank'?  Why do people think that I'm him?  Why the fuck do they feel it necessary to shout his name across the street?  I speculated that, perhaps, I was living some kind of Jekyll and Hyde existence, transforming periodically into 'Frank' and associating with the sort of idiots who bellow that name at complete strangers, but having no memories of these deprivations when I turned back into me.  Either that, or I had an evil doppelgänger roaming the streets of Crapchester trying to ruin my non-existent reputation.  

Anyway, earlier this week I was in Lidl one evening, doing my shopping, when this bloke starts shouting down the aisle at me.  He clearly thought that he knew me, although he was a complete stranger.  He approached me and insisted that he knew me and that he'd recently trimmed my hedge (he was a gardener and tree surgeon).  He seemed taken aback that I didn't recognise him and that I assured him that I didn't have a hedge to trim.  He was adamant, though, that he'd done this job for me at my house on one of Crapchester's estates (one quite close to the branch of Lidl we were in, as it happens).  Eventually, I convinced him that he was mistaken, but he insisted that he'd done this job for someone who looked like me (and more disturbingly, dressed like me).  So, I had to ask him, was this guy called Frank, by any chance?  He was pretty sure he was, but double checked by consulting his client list and work schedule on his phone:  yes indeed, this double was called Frank!  So there you have it, it turns out that 'Frank' is a flesh and blood bloke - with a hedge - who happens to look like me.  Which I find perplexing - like most people I like to think that I'm unique.  Sure, I have brothers to whom I have a family resemblance, but none live, or have ever lived, in Crapchester.  Even more perplexing is the fact that my previous job often took me to the housing estate in question, probably to the very street where this guy lives, yet I never saw him, nor did anyone there mistake me for him.  But hey, with the central mystery solved, why create more side mysteries?  I'm just going to leave it there - maybe grow a beard and change my wardrobe, just to make sure I'm not mistaken for him again.

Use It or Lose It

Is it contrarianism or cognitive dissonance?  Whatever it is, the press still likes to gloss over the inconvenient facts.  I'm talking about the latest in a round of media reports about the alleged 'death of the high street' and how voters blame 'the government', with the press gleefully predicting dire consequences for the Labour government if they don't do something about it.  What, of course, such reports fail to do is mention whether their polls also asked correspondents about their preferred shopping habits - do they actually use high street retailers for purchases?  Because I can guarantee you that a majority of those bewailing the demise of the high street will also happily admit to doing a lot of their shopping, particularly for more expensive items, online.  Either that, or going to out-of-town retail outlets or, at the very least non-high street retailers located in retail parks, away from the town centre.  I'm not criticising them for doing so, I do it myself, with my main grocery shops being done at Aldi or Lidl, but surely they must grasp that such a shift in shopping habits is precisely what is driving the gradual running down of more local retailers?  It's no good blaming the government, any government, for the situation - if you really love your high street so much, then you have to use it.  But, as noted, the predominantly right-wing media don't want to highlight this fact, as it would deprive them of a stick with which to beat the government.

Such disconnected thinking isn't confined to the issue if the dying high street.  You'll find it echoed in discussions of public services and public spending.  If asked, most people would say that they wanted things like the NHS, but, at the same time, would tell you that they also wanted lower taxes.  But lower tax revenues, of course, mean less funding for public services - if you want these things, then they have to be paid for.  Such people will usually try to rationalise their position by saying that whilst they were in favour of things like the NHS, or education, say (ie the things that they use and directly benefit from regularly), they will point to other areas of public spending which 'cost too much' or are 'a waste of money' - usually the sort of stuff falling under the loose rubric of 'benefits', which don't benefit them directly.  Of course, if and when their situation changes, you'll find them rapidly reversing their position on 'benefits'.  A large part of the problem is the lie that we've been fed for decades - one embraced by both sides of the mainstream political spectrum - that we can somehow have adequate public services without paying taxes.  It is something that few politicians seem to have the courage to challenge, fearing a voter backlash.  But really, it clearly has to be spelt put to the electorate:  If you want these services you claim to love, then they have to be paid for.  Moreover, not all essential public services will benefit you personally in the short term, but they do benefit society in general in the long term.  Selfishness is a poor basis for decision making when it comes to social policy.  Unfortunately, though, that's where we seem to be these days: the cult of the self, which seemingly prevents people from understanding simple cause-and-effect when it comes to their own behaviour: pay less tax and have poorer public services, use the high street or lose it.

Trix Warship

So, another new addition to my loco collection.  This one is the Trix model of the BR Western Region 'Warship' diesel.  It was produced from around 1960 until around 1970 and is probably one of the commonest Trix loco models you will find secondhand.  

  

This one, however, isn't entirely original.  Trix  modelled the locomotive in its earliest form, without a yellow warning panel or head code boxes, (early locos instead carried a bracket on their nose to take the train route reporting boards used on Western Region steam locos, with head code boxes fitted as new to subsequent locos and retro-fitted to the early examples), but a previous owner has added both.  Up close, you can see that the head code boxes are actually painted on, but nonetheless are surprisingly effective, capturing the front-end of the real locomotives as most remember them.  (Trix never, as far as I know, fitted head code boxes, but did, from 1967, add a yellow warning panel in the form of a crude and non-prototypical yellow strip across the nose at each end).  The lack of originality of this particular example worked to my advantage, as it put off the collectors and ensured that I got it for a reasonable price.  

The 'Warship', in common with most sixties Trix, is an extremely good runner and here is seen on the layout: 

It's seen hauling a rake of my Trix coaches, (some still have the Peco-style couplers at at least one end to facilitate their use with locos likewise equipped).  At one point it passes my other Trix loco, a Standard Class 5 (the other commonest Trix loco available secondhand and of similar vintage), also hauling some Trix coaches.  The Standard 5 and its train were actually meant to feature more prominently, but the coaches decided not to play ball, with the trailing four constantly uncoupling from the front coach every time the camera was running.  Another reason I dislike Peco couplings - many swear by them, claiming that they are 'oh-so-superior' to the Tri-ang type coupling, but I've never had an entirely satisfactory experience with them, finding them ready to uncouple on even the mildest of curves.

The Trix 'Warship' models D801 'Vanguard', the second, I think, of the class built and named for the Royal Navy's last battleship.  The real 'Vanguard' had a relatively brief career, falling foul of the fact that, by the late sixties, all of the Western Region's diesel-hydraulic locomotives were deemed 'non-standard' and slated for withdrawal in favour of diesel-electric locomotives.  After around only ten years in service, 'Vanguard' was withdrawn in 1968.  Many of its sisters lingered until around 1972 - I can vaguely remember, as a young child, seeing them at Salisbury station in the early seventies, when they were still being used on Waterloo-Exeter services.  So, the model has long outlived its prototype and is still going strong, as can be seen.

Dracula and Son (1976)

Another French vampire comedy from the seventies, the Christopher Lee starring Dracula and Son (1976) does have a link with 1974's Peter Cushing led Tender Dracula in the form of Bernard Menez, who appears in both.  While in the earlier film he is a supporting role as one of the two hapless writers who end up as guests at Cushing's castle, here he has the co-starring role, playing the 'Son' part of the title.  Dracula and Son is a far more straightforward parody of the vampire genre than Tender Dracula, lacking the surrealism of the latter.  The plot is simple - Lee's vampire count, (never named specifically as being Count Dracula, but close enough to make no difference), finally has a son after his marriage to a non-vampire woman (who he vampirises once she has given him a child), but to the Count's disappointment, his offspring doesn't actually enjoy being one of the undead, refusing to bite living humans to get blood.  Indeed, he grows up to be a shy, socially awkward, young man.  When, in the twentieth century, they find themselves effectively evicted from their ancestral Romanian home after it is taken over by the communist government, they decide to seek a new home abroad, but find themselves inadvertently buried at sea after co-opting the coffins of two dead French sailors.  While the Count washes up in the UK, his son is picked up by a French trawler and ends up in France, living amongst other illegal immigrants and trying to eke out a living as an undocumented worker, working as a nightwatchman.  The Count, meanwhile, finds himself accidentally becoming a film star who specialises in playing vampires.  When a new production brings him to France, father and son are reunited, but fall out over a woman - an advertising executive whose firm wants the Count to advertise a toothpaste brand.   Each tries to destroy the other in an escalating battle over the girl.

Dracula and Son opens like a Hammer film, with a lengthy prologue set in the nineteenth century in which a group of travellers in a stagecoach fall afoul of vampires as they travel through a spooky forest after dark.  Unfortunately, though these scenes are well staged, the nineteenth century interlude simply goes on for too long, chronicling Lee's seduction of a girl kidnapped from the carriage and the birth of their son, robbing the film of its early impetus.  A whole sub-plot involving a young man who was also a passenger on the coach and who encounters the vampirised girl years later, ultimately adds little to the plot, either, turning out to be a contrivance by which the mother can be eliminated from the narrative.  The film's main plot finally starts when the action flashes forward to the then present day and the two main characters are propelled, reluctantly, into the modern world.  Much of the humour of this section of the film revolves around the tribulations of characters who, in their own time and homeland, were feared members of the aristocracy, who find themselves much reduced in stature when robbed of their natural environment and resources.  While the son adapts somewhat more easily to his new life, he still finds himself constantly having to make excuses to his friends as to why he doesn't eat regular food and is never active during daylight hours.  His father finds life in London, at first, at least, to be something of a trial, forced to wander the streets by night looking for random victims, none of whom have the slightest fear of him, having no idea of who or what he is.  Once he becomes a movie star and effectively a member of the modern aristocracy - a celebrity - the film shifts to trying to explore how a traditional vampire might live in contemporary times.  His desire to have a coffin in his hotel room, or work only after dark, for instance, are indulged as simply being the sort of eccentricities that celebrities are prone to.  Visual gags, such as he and one of his vampirised female stars having their coffins side-by-side on a double bed, for instance, abound.

The film's final act, as father and son vampires battle over a girl, moves the narrative into farce, with the various failed attempts of the pair to eliminate each other: coffins are thrown out of hotel windows, clocks are changed to try and give the impression that it is still night and cause an accidental exposure to sunlight, for instance.  Much of it is mildly amusing, but never likely to provoke hilarty.  It's always difficult to fully assess foreign language films on the basis of an English dub, but doubly so when the film is a comedy,  Certainly in the case of Dracula and Son, one suspects that, as is often the case, much of the subtelities of the humour translates into English only fitfully.  (That said, I was at least able to see a dubbed version of the full movie, rather than the original US release version, which was heavily cut and dubbed with 'comedic' voices following a different script).  Despite these problems of translation, the film is actually very well mounted and, particularly in the opening scenes, quite atmospheric.  The central idea, of trying to imagine how a traditional Gothic-style vampire might exist in the modern world is a good one, (and was explored by a number of 'straight' horror films of the era, most notably the Count Yorga series), ripe with comic potential.  But Dracula and Son, while creating some enjoyable imagery and plot developments with regard to this concept, never really manages to develop them sufficiently to be entirely satisfying.  Nevertheless, Dracula and Son, even in English, is a well produced and sometimes amusing film, with decent performances from its leads - Lee plays his entire role completely deadpan, as if he was playing Dracula in a Hammer movie, lending the character a degree of dignity, even as the situation turns farcical -  and is well directed by comedy specialist Eduard Molinaro, who, a couple of years later, had a major international hit with La Cage aux Folles (1978).  It's not Love at First Bite (1979) or Young Frankenstein (1974) in terms of horror comedies, but Dracula and Son, thankfully, isn't Old Dracula (1974) either, delivering a gentle, low-key comedy of vampirism, with satirical asides on the nature of celebrity and the treatment of illegal immigrants, instead.

More Dream Analysis...

So, I had another of those weird and vivid dreams the other night.  As ever, I can only partially remember it, but the bit I recall most clearly involved me watching a TV report profiling some high profile Tory MP.  Now, when the archive footage of him rolled, I was - in the dream - shocked to see that he had this weird head, with no neck, its base almost as wide as his shoulders.  A bit like a Sontaran from Dr Who, (in fact, I remember thinking, in the dream, that this was the case).  But even more disturbingly, each side of his bloated head, apparently growing from his shoulders were a pair of fleshy protuberances which seemed to have a life of their own.  The best I can describe them is as being a bit like the head and neck of a seahorse, but larger, less well defined  and made of human flesh.  Each had only one eye, on the side furthest from his head and what appeared to be a mouth.  As the camera went in for a close up, I got a good look at the right one, as its eye turned to look into the camera and the mouth weakly tried to open.  But the weirdest thing about it all was that nobody involved in the TV show seemed to find anything strange about the MP's appearance - even when we had the close up of one of those shoulder things, nobody said a word about it!  Jesus Christ, I thought (in the dream), what's the matter with you people?  Can't you see that he's some kind of alien, or mutant, or at the very least grossly deformed?  Isn't it obvious that he isn't normal?  Somebody say something!  But they didn't.

I've thought a lot about this dream fragment since - it was so striking and surreal that it was impossible not to.  Inevitably, my thoughts turned to the question of whether it had any kind of deeper meaning.  The most obvious explanation was that my subconscious created the bizarre vignette as an analogy for what increasingly seems to be going on in real life news media.   Over and over again, politicians and other public figures seem to be allowed to do and say things which would have been unthinkable a few years ago, yet their words and actions are now treated as if they are somehow normal.  Nobody seems to want to call them out or draw attention to their outrageous positions and policies.  Moreover, so many contemporary political figures are so obviously insincere grifters, motivated entirely by personal ambition and greed, yet nobody in the media seems capable of seeing this, yet alone commenting upon it.  To be fair, the electorate themselves seem incapable of exercising any kind of critical judgement with regard to these individuals, seemingly not noticing their avarice and evil until they've elected them, then acting shocked when they turn out to be dangerous bastards.  So maybe someone looking like a Sontaran with two extra weird 'heads' growing on their shoulders could get elected as an MP and reach a position of prominence without anyone commenting on the fact.  Having said all that, it is, perhaps, a mistake to think that this is a new phenomena.  While I think it true to say that, in the past, certainly the post-war period, there were more politicians around who seemed motivated by things like civic duty and committed to the public good, people were still pretty bad at spotting the outliers, no matter how obvious they were.  Going back a bit further, let's not forget that much of the UK press (not to mention politicians) liked to try and characterise Hitler and Mussolini as normal democratic leaders (despite all the evidence to the contrary), decent chaps who, ultimately, would play by the rules.

But, getting back to that dream, maybe, as ever, I'm reading too much into it.  Maybe it was just a random weird dream, fuelled by watching too many monster and b-movies.  After all, dreams don't actually have to mean anything - they are a product of the subconscious and it is our conscious, waking, minds that seek to try and make everything fit into neat patterns with neat explanations.

Lethal Impact: GBH 2 (1991)

The last completed film of Cliff Twemlow, Lethal Impact: GBH 2 (1991) is, as the title implies, a direct sequel to his first feature, GBH (1983), with Twemlow (billed as 'Mike Sullivan', in common with a number of his later productions), returning as club bouncer extraordinaire Steve Donovan.  The character's apparent demise at the end of the earlier film is brushed aside with a passing reference, mid-way through the running time, to the police marksmen having missed him.  Rather than being six feet under, it seems that Donovan has spent the intervening eight years living in Malta, where we find him early in the film.  He quickly finds himself drawn back to Manchester, with former adversary Keller informing him that Donovan's teenaged niece has been drawn into the world of child pornography, appearing in an illicit video.  Keller has his own motivations for wanting Donovan back in Manchester - the same gang behind the child porn videos are also threatening his club.  Back home, Donovan finds the situation has gotten worse - his niece has committed suicide.  Naturally, Donovan goes on a lengthy rampage, tracking down those who made the video and violently disposing of every one of them.  He then expands his vengeance by taking out the gang of women used by the gang to recruit victims by luring them into a van, before working his way through the ranks of the entire gang.  People have shotguns fired up their backsides, ('How's that for a blow-job, boys?'), are blown up, burned to death and even decapitated after their tie is trapped in a descending lift's door.  Beatings and gunfights proliferate and the bodies pile up, attracting the attention of the police, although the Inspector in charge of the case isn't unsympathetic to Donovan's crusade as the death toll amongst gang members and peadophiles racks up.

As is the case with sequels, Lethal Impact is very much GBH, but bigger, with more fights, more guns and more of the sleazy side of Manchester's club scene.  Even Donovan's sidekick Chris, played by Brett Sinclair, turns up again - only to end up gravely ill in a hospital bed again, (although this time we at least see him make a recovery).  The difference is that this time around, it is all far darker, driven by the peadophile plot, (which encompasses every of the tabloids' contemporary 'peado panic' tropes - Donovan even finds time to deal with a peado priest), with the humour toned down and a dour atmosphere.  This version of Donovan, driven purely by revenge, spouting self-righteous justifications involving protecting children, for his bloody killing spree, feels far less sympathetic and Twemlow's natural charisma, abundantly evident in the first film, only shines through intermittently.  The film is also decidedly overlong, lacking the original's snappy pace, with the litany of killings eventually feeling repetitive.  On the plus side, bearing in mind the film's meagre resources, the fight scenes are well staged, as is the rest of the action.  Indeed, overall, Twemlow regular David Kent-Watson's direction is efficient, if unspectacular, handling the cast and locations effectively, with the streets, bars, clubs and hotels of Manchester giving the movie a feel of raw authenticity.  But even these virtues can't hide a certain air of desperation permeating the film.

There's no doubt that Lethal Impact represented one last roll of the dice for Twemlow.  Finding financing for his films was becoming more difficult, with several of his projects not progressing beyond demo reels.  To get Lethal Impact into production, Twemlow reportedly had to secure financing from some very dodgy Manchester clubland figures, which left some of the cast and crew uneasy.  The film also cannibalised one of those unrealised projects for the peadophile plot line, which feels very much as if it has been inserted into a straight gangster story, sitting somewhat uncomfortably with the gangster elements.  As with several of his other films, though, Twemlow was able to secure the services of a better known, mainstream, actor in a supporting role, in this case Terrence Hardiman, who plays Donovan's bereaved brother, Bill.  With a shorter running time, more humour and the peadophile and gangland aspects of its script better integrated, Lethal Impact would, undoubtedly, have been a far stronger film, much more in the mould of GBH.  As it stands, it is still intermittently enjoyable, but not as exhilarating an experience as the first film, which revelled in its lack of resources and rough edges.  Ironically, it is the greater slickness of Lethal Impact, the result not just of a better budget, but also the increased film-making experience of Twemlow and his crew, which makes it a less interesting film than its predecessor.  Not only did GBH have a certain novelty value, a perfect post-pub direct-to-video movie that had  seemingly come out of nowhere, it was its sheer roughness and gritty feel that gave it a distinctive feel.  Morever, the sheer enthusiasm of its makers comes through the screen, with the whole enterprise imbued with their joi de vivre.  The sequel, by contrast, feels more solemn, perhaps even a little jaded.  Still, it's always good to see Cliff Twemlow doing his stuff on screen - he might not have been the world's (or even Manchester's) greatest actor, but he had genuine screen presence and the sort of energy that could carry an entire film.  It seems fitting that his time as a low-budget filmmaker should have come full circle, beginning and ending with Steve Donovan.  Although the film ends apocalyptically, with a wedding massacre in which everyone seems to have been mown down in a hail of bullets, the end credits still promise us another sequel.  Sadly, though, it wasn't to be as, within a couple of years of Lethal Impact's debut, (in a club owned by one of those dodgy financial backers), Twemlow was dead at the age of 55. 

No Accounting for Some...

One of the perennial refrains of Britain's right-wing press goes along the lines of 'Isn't it outrageous that Labour wants to persecute our brave soldiers/policemen by investigating and sometimes prosecuting them for alleged war crimes and/or excessive use of force?'  Which ignores the fact that this doesn't just happen under Labour governments and that accountability is a cornerstone of any democratic system.  People can't be allowed to use 'It was a war' or 'We were just enforcing the law' as a cover for committing illegal acts - regardless of circumstances, they still must be held accountable for their actions, they have to be able to justify what they have done.  What the foaming-at-the-mouth headlines in the likes of the Telegraph, (which is fast outpacing even the Mail for insane and utterly delusional, fact free, right-wing rants masquerading as journalism), fail to mention, of course, is that the soldiers against whom prosecutions have been brought (or, at the very least, have been investigated with a view to possible prosecution), stand accused of the killing and abuse of non-combatants.  Regardless of whether such things happen in a war zone or not, they might well constitute war crimes, depending upon on the circumstances , and those involved have to be held accountable.  The same applies in police killings.  Strangely enough, we can't just take peoples' word that their actions were justified, otherwise every criminal prosecution would inevitably end in an acquittal.  Except, the right-wing press seem to be saying, these chaps are soldiers and policemen, for God's sake!  British soldiers and coppers at that: if we can't accept that they are beyond reproach, then who can we trust?

It's all part of the right's quest for exceptionalism.  While they like to pay lip service to the idea of political and criminal accountability, in truth, they think that it should only apply to 'other' people: the poor, non-whites, the left, immigrants and so on.  'Their' people should be excepted from the rules because, well, they are just of a 'better' type, or they represent a revered conservative institution, particularly things like the military and the police, that can be used as tools of repression against those great unwashed masses.  It's not even the big stuff that they feel that they should be excepted from in terms of accountability.  There's a whole stratum of white collar crime they quite clearly feel shouldn't be treated as crimes - fiddling the expense account isn't embezzlement, just a perk or breaking the speed limit isn't a crime if you are a middle class BMW driver as, obviously, you are far too superior a driver to cause an accident.  This view extends to stuff like tax evasion, which isn't a crime as long as the wealthy are doing it, but benefits fraud most definitely is, as it is only committed by nasty poor people.  Not that this call for exceptionalism is confined to the UK, it's a phenomenon you'll find, in one form or another, across the globe.  In recent times it has been fuelled by the rise of the super-rich, who definitely don't see why they, or their corporations, should be constrained by the puny laws of mere mortals.  Indeed, as right-wing politicians have, increasingly, cosied up to the billionaires in order to get their financial backing, the situation has become worse as it is clear that the price for their endorsements is a loosening of regulations and weakening of enforcement of relevant rules and laws.  All of which brings us back to the UK's right-wing press and their outraged cries for exceptionalism for soldiers and policemen accused of murder, corruption and abuse of power - their strategy is clear, if you can set a precedent for excepting one group from certain laws, hen you can free other groups and entities from those pesky chains of accountability.  Future Tory or Reform UK governments, for instance...

The Wrong Sort of Films?

Sometimes I worry that the kind of films I enjoy more than slightly undermine that veneer of sophisticated intellectualism that I like to project, revealing me instead as a rather shallow thrill-seeker.  Instant gratification, some might say, is the underlying theme in my cinematic tastes, whether that be in the form of a shot of furious action or a wallow in some sleazy exploitation.  It's not that I don't watch and enjoy other types of films:  I watch a lot of those continental films with subtitles - and not just the Italian ones with the gore and nudity or the French ones with Belmondo as a rogue cop beating up suspects and driving fast cars, or Delon as a charismatic criminal for whom women tear their clothes off at first sight.  No, indeed, I've watched my share of art movies and serious dramas.  All of this came to mind when, the other day, I sat down to watch Quest for Fire, the supposed intellectual and historically and anthropologically correct riposte to all those sixties and seventies caveman movies featuring the likes of Raquel Welch wearing fur bikinis.  You know the one - it was much vaunted sat the time as the cavemen all spokes 'languages' devised by Desmond Morris.  But that fact alone underlined one of the film's problems - if the language is unintelligible to modern ears and there are no subtitles, then what, really, is the difference between that and all the grunting that passes for dialogue in films like When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)?

One of the selling points of Quest for Fire was that the prehistoric environment it depicted was far more accurate than that depicted in earlier films: no dinosaurs anachronistically interacting with cavemen, it aimed only to depict the real fauna of the era.  Except that it didn't.  In fact, apart from the primitive humans, the fauna was a bit thin on the ground.  Sure, we got some circus elephants in fur coats pretending to be mammoths (much in the manner of 1940's One Million BC) and some supposed sabre-toothed cats.  Except that the latter were just lions with false teeth, whereas, real sabre-tooths were actually a completely separate branch of the cat family from modern day big cats, with extremely powerful shoulder and jaw muscles to best use those long teeth and short tails.  Moreover, sabre-toothed cats were found in the Americas, while the film seems to be set in Europe (although the habitats the cavemen travel through in their titular quest seem to range from Scotland to Africa - a heck of a journey for cavemen on foot, luckily, their tribe hasn't moved from the spot they last saw them at, despite a quest that must have lasted months, at least).  But Hell, Quest for Fire is very worthy in its intent, with every frame screaming 'Look, this is a serious film'.  Nonetheless, Philistine that I am, I kept hoping for a dinosaur or two to turn up and liven up the action.  I mean, it's very well made and does boast of featuring Rae Dawn Chong clad only in body paint for her entire performance, but if any film was ever in need of a girl in a fur bikini being carried off by a pterodactyl, it's Quest for Fire.  I'm sorry, I know that it marks me out as some kind of pleb, but really, I like my movie viewing to include something at least resembling action and excitement.