Girls Are for Loving (1973)

So, I finally got around to watching the third (and last) instalment in the Ginger trilogy: Girls Are for Loving (1973).  On the one hand, it is very much more of the same, with frequently naked PI Ginger McCallister (Cheri Caffero), taking on the bad guys through a combination of sex and violence, getting tied up and sexually abused at one point, before turning the tables and responding in kind.  On the other hand, Girls Are for Loving is notably slicker than the previous two entries, (although that isn't necessarily saying much), more smoothly shot and edited and also boasting much more of a plot.  Unfortunately, the script proves to be far too convoluted in its construction and has far too many lengthy dialogue scenes full of exposition, which badly slows down the action.  Moreover, the acting performances haven't improved much, particularly from the leading lady - who also gets to sing a couple of songs.  Not very well.  (One can't help but suspect that the fact that the director, Don Schain, was also her husband was a significant factor in this indulgence).  Notably, the film veers away from the private eye antics of the previous two films into James Bond territory, with our heroine recruited by the CIA to find out who is behind the abductions of key officials connected with upcoming trade talks between the US and an unnamed Asian country.  

The villain turns out to be a sadistic femme fatale Ronnie St Clair (Jocelyn Peters), who is hoping to find out details of which companies are set to benefit from the trade agreements in order to indulge in a bit of insider dealing before they are announced.  Bearing in mind that this is part of the Ginger series, it will come as no surprise that there is a significant sexual element to St Clair's sadism.  Nor will be a surprise that, at one point, she has Ginger spread eagled naked on a bed and abused by a henchman.  Not that this phases Ginger, who has spent a significant part of this series being variously bound, gagged, drugged raped, fondled and pawed by various bad guys.  Part of St Clair's mission is to try and prove to Ginger that they are two of a kind: strong, ruthless women who get what they want through any means.  Which they are, except that Ginger enjoys all the sex, whereas for St Clair it is merely a means to an end.  Inevitably, of course, after a fight that sees them both losing their clothes, Ginger gets the drop on St Clair and ties her to the bed.  Deciding that St Clair's problem is, basically, that she's not 'getting enough', Ginger gets a male character who was previously St Clair's captive, to give her 'a good seeing to' - which St Clair ultimately seems to enjoying.  Obviously the 'cure' is working.

These final scenes underline the fundamental problem with these films: while they like to sell themselves as being about female empowerment, with a tough and violent heroine who can kick ass - a sort of white equivalent to those Blaxploitation films starring the likes of Pam Grier - they are ultimately deeply misogynistic.  Those tough women are really only there to fulfil yet another male rape fantasy: that of dominating and 'taming' a tough, independent woman.  St Clair eventually has to submit to male domination in order to gain some form of redemption.  While Ginger might well emerge unbowed from the various sexual abuses piled upon her, the theme is the same - she really just wants to find a good man to submit to.  But in the final analysis, Girls Are for Loving is a reasonably enjoyable - if you can ignore the questionable sexual politics - low budget softcore action film.  In terms of production values it is certainly a step up from its two predecessors, with some well staged action sequences in between the sex, nudity and Caffero's singing.  Yet, despite the slickness, it still comes over as somewhat less interesting than the very rough and ready original, whose sheer crudeness made it startlingly fascinating.

Get a Sense of Humour...

OK, so last week I was on about how my ideal outcome for this latest FIFA World Cup of corruption would be an England-USA final, with the US getting thrashed in front of Trump in their 250th anniversary year, followed by rejoicing England fans burning down the White House in celebration.  Well, since then, I've though of something better: an Iran-USA final.  Maybe Trump could base the whole outcome of his 'peace talks' with Iran on it - if they win, they retain full control of the Straits of Hormuz, if they lose, the US can bomb them 'into the stone age'.  Even better, though, the Iranian players and fans could all turn out to be suicide bombers and blow themselves, the stadium and Trump to bits, win or lose.  Of course, if I were to try and run this gag past any US acquaintances, then there'd be much pearl clutching and hand wringing as they expressed shock and horror over the idea of joking about political violence.  Their sensitivity on this subject is a phenomenon that never ceases to amaze me - one of the most violent societies on earth, where the ownership of lethal weapons is constitutionally enshrined as a right and actively encouraged, where they allow their children to be slaughtered by crazed bastards exercising such rights on a regular basis, but they can't take a joke about political assassinations.  I mean, it isn't as if they haven't assassinated enough of their own presidents and political leaders to assume that this simply wasn't a sensitive subject any more.

But no, you can't joke about blowing up even a deadbeat senile sex offender like Trump, without finding yourself subjected to much finger-wagging and admonishments over 'encouraging' or 'condoning' political violence.  Oh, for fuck's sake!  Get a sense of humour!  There's a version of this sanctimonious shit this side of the Atlantic, as well, in those people - usually on the right - who bellow about how Nigel Farage having milkshakes thrown at him somehow constitutes assault.  Because, you know, next time it might not be a milkshake - it might be battery acid!  Which begs the question, of course, if the hurlers of milkshakes really wanted to harm Farage, why didn't they throw battery acid at him in the first place?  (Mind you, these self-same hand-wringers would always applaud loudly when eggs were thrown at Jeremy Corbyn or water poured over John Prescott because that so obviously wasn't assault, was it?).   It's all bollocks, obviously.  The throwing of stuff at politicians goes back to at least Roman times, when it was considered perfectly legitimate to hurl rotten fruit and vegetables at public speakers if you didn't like what they were saying.  Indeed, I recall that when I was a kid people were always throwing tomatoes at Ted Heath when he was Prime Minister and nobody batted an eyelid - there was nobody going on about 'assault' or claiming that it might encourage or condone actual political violence.  I guess it all comes down to how robust one's sense of humour is - I mean, these right wingers are always banging on about how the left are over-sensitive to stuff intended as a joke and are a bunch of snowflakes, yet throw a milkshake at Farage, which I think is hilarious, and the cry-babies start whining.  If you can't take a joke...

Whitewashing the Racists

In view of today's political developments in the UK, your regular reminder that we don't elect prime ministers.  Parliament, in effect, does that, in that whoever can command a majority there can form a government.  We get to elect the parliament.  That's why it is called a parliamentary democracy.   Hence, there is no requirement to have a general election every time the prime minister changes.  Which also means that if you are one of those people who bangs on about 'unelected prime ministers' every time the ruling party changes leader, then you are politically and constitutionally illiterate and thus too ignorant to be commenting on UK politics.

Back to business.  Still politics, though.  I read an article from the Daily Telegraph recently that noted with shock and horror that Rupert Lowe's Restore party was being financed by white supremacists.  Well, golly gosh, who would have thought it, eh?  An extreme right-wing party that advocates the forced removal of immigrants and allegedly doesn't want non-white people standing for it as candidates, regardless of whether or not they are UK citizens, is being supported by a bunch of Nazis?  I found the Telegraph's apparent naivety somewhat perplexing, bearing in mind that they, along with the rest of the right-wing press have been busy turning out the sort of hateful rhetoric and right-wing propaganda which has helped create the sort of discourse in which these extremist parties can be nurtured.  There is, of course, a catch to all this: the story goes on to claim that Restore are so extreme that even Stephen 'Tommy Robinson' Yaxley-Lennon, convicted mortgage fraudster and violent football thug, thinks that are just too, well, Nazi.  Yes indeed, this is really another media attempt to normalise Robinson and his thugs, with the article going on to tell us how uneasy Restore's attitude to race makes him.  Because Tommy, after all, is now peddling his brand of hate under the 'Unite the Kingdom' banner, claiming that it is a movement unifying all true British citizens, regardless of race, in a patriotic campaign to save British values.  Yeah, and pigs might fly.

Apart from whitewashing Robinson, there's another underlying theme to this and similar articles in the right-wing press - that Restore, by attracting the hardcore Nazi nutter vote, is weakening Reform UK at the polls.  Reform UK and more specifically Nigel Farage, being the current darling of the billionaires who currently own most of the UK's press.  Despite them not living in the UK or paying taxes here, these guys see him as their best hope to lead Britain into becoming a low tax (or no tax for billionaires), low regulation, (especially any of those pesky workers' rights), playground for them.  So, anything that threatens his ascendancy has to be discredited.  The thing is, though, that it isn't just the Restore vote which is eroding Reform's support, as the Makerfield by-election result shows. (See that folks? See how I've brought us back to the first, apparently unrelated, paragraph?  Neat, huh?)  As it turned out, Andy Burnham was able to win the seat easily with a majority far more than the combined votes cast for Reform and Restore.  This despite the right-wing press' constant parroting of Reform propaganda claiming that it was going to be a 'close contest'.  (Just like they were salivating over that referendum in Switzerland about reducing immigration by capping the country's population - that, too was going to be a 'too close to call', but the proposal was actually decisively rejected by the Swiss electorate, 55% to 45%).  The reality highlighted at Makerfield is that there is a strong progressive, decent or whatever you want to call it, vote out there who simply don't want Reform, Restore, Tommy Robinson and their ilk - it is notable that the Greens and Lib Dems offered only token campaigns to avoid splitting this vote too much, giving Burnham a clear run.  So, there you go - if you want to keep theses neo Nazi nutters out, then be prepared to vote tactically in order to ensure the least worst outcome.

An App for Everything?

You know what I'm getting sick and tired of?  Apps, that's what.  It's the new obsession amongst retailers, service providers and the like - you can no longer simply use their website to interact with me - oh no, you have to download and install their bloody app on your phone.  I just find it extremely frustrating as most of these apps are poorly designed and barely work.  Indeed, often what used to be a simple process taking seconds on their website now becomes a long drawn out ordeal on their bloody phone app.  Take my mobile phone provider, for instance: I used to be able to top up my credit really easily, in seconds.  But now they've forced all of us pay-as-you-go customers onto their app.  Which, I found after I downloaded it, isn't fit for purpose.  It steadfastly refused to take a payment directly from my debit card, (my usual method of payment, crashing not just the app, but the whole phone, every time I tried.  After doing some online research, I found that this is a widespread problem, which the provider knows about but either can't or won't rectify.  Instead of this most simple and direct form of payment, you instead have to either buy a voucher from them, (which means going back to their website), the code of which you then have to enter into the app, or to pay by debit card via Google Pay.  I took the latter option simply because it was undoubtedly quicker, but it means that Google now has my current card details which, bearing in mind their recent track record with regard to protecting my data, I'm not happy about.

So this supposed step forward in customer convenience actually represents several colossal steps backward - the whole process ultimately took me over an hour!  It isn't just my mobile provider - a while ago I was trying reschedule a Royal Mail delivery I'd missed but found that I could only do it via their app rather than on their website.  At which point I gave up, as I decided that there was absolutely no way that I was going to download and install yet another app to my mobile, which is already cluttered up with the bloody things, particularly I would only ever use for this single task.  Everywhere I'm being exhorted to download people's apps - if I go on eBay now they keep trying to get me to install and order via their app, when I'm already on their site in the process of bidding on something.  FFS, I'm not wasting time to download more junk onto my phone in order to carry out the same task I'm currently carrying out on my main interface with the web - my laptop.  Which, I suspect, lies at the crux of the problem - that companies seem to think that we spend all our time on our phones.  Maybe it's my age, but I really don't see why anyone would use a phone to access the web in preference to a laptop - those tiny screens make it difficult to read or see anything and also make it difficult to navigate properly.  Moreover, I don't grasp why dedicated apps are considered such a great idea when, via a decent web browser on my laptop, I can access any website of any organisation with ease.  Which again, I suspect is part of the problem: it's the 'walled garden' mentality that service providers can't seem to shake, the idea that they have to lock you into their own proprietary section of the web, for fear that you'll click away and look at someone else's content, instead.  Which is surely the point of the web.  

Glorious Counter Revolution

'He's fat, he's got piles.  He's in the Epstein files.  Trump the cunt!  Trump the cunt!'  Ah, there are times I'm proud to be an Englishman - that has to be the chant of the 2026 World Cup.  Certainly it has got FIFA spooked, who have warned England fans that they could find themselves kicked out of stadiums if they keep singing it.  Let's hope for an England-USA final, which Trump would doubtless attend, forcing him to listen to the chant - maybe it will help keep him awake.  Actually, an England-USA final is my dream outcome for this World Cup, for many reasons.  If it happens then I sincerely hope that England fans turn up to the stadium dressed as Redcoats, I'd also hope that England would thrash the USA in this, their 250th anniversary year and that fans would celebrate by burning down the White House, (preferably with Trump in situ), in memory of the War of 1812.  In fact, maybe we could take such a situation as an opportunity to launch a counter-revolution in the US.  I mean, we've got all those football fans over there, perhaps we could get them to seize various strategic locations and raise the Union Jack over them.  Look, it shouldn't be difficult to persuade them to throw off the shackles of the evil despot Trump - face it, his popularity ratings are currently slightly below those of the Boston Strangler, but still marginally ahead of Jeffrey Dahmer - and come back into the warm embrace of the British fold.  Heck, we could offer them self-governing dominion status, like Canada, Australia and New Zealand had back in the days of Empire, so it wouldn't be a case of them reverting to being a colony.  They'd just have to accept that nice King Charles as head of state and some worthy political has-been as a governor.

Then, of course, we could start the Herculean task of re-educating Americans in order to rectify the lies perpetrated by their founding fathers.  Because folks, the US was founded on a lie: namely that the American revolution was an uprising against a despotic absolute monarch.  Except that George III, the monarch in question was, like every British monarch since the 'Glorious Revolution' and the reign of William and Mary, a constitutional monarch with very limited powers.  Sure, things could be done in the name of the King, but in reality true power lay with parliament - an elected body.  The real reason for the American Revolution was that a group of wealthy colonials decided that they didn't want to pay their fair share of the money required for the defence of the US from the French.  Because that was what the taxes they so objected to were intended to finance: Britain's defence of its empire and colonies during the Napoleonic Wars.  So they decided to rally the masses to their cause by perpetrating the lie that these were unjust taxes arbitrarily imposed by a despotic monarch.  'No taxation without representation'.  Except, of course, that they had representation via the fact that they could petition the UK's representative in the US, the governor, who was directly appointed by the UK government.  Not exactly democratic by modern standards, to be sure, but perfectly normal for the times and appropriate for the nascent US's status as a group of colonies.  Then, to add insult to injury, the perfidious Yanks aligned themselves with that scion of democracy, Napoleonic France.  (Not to forget their further act of perfidy when, in 1812, when we were in the middle of a crucial stage in the Napoleonic Wars, with British forces stretched to breaking point, they stabbed us in the back again by declaring war on us.  But we had the last laugh there as we set fire to the White House - that's why its white, they painted it to try and cover up the scorch marks).   So, there you go, World Cup commentary and a history lesson.  All together now: 'He's fat, he's got piles.  He's in the Epstein files...'

Virtual Invasion of Privacy

Well, I've been investigating the wild, wild world of VPNs again.  Actually, there's nothing wild about them really.  But we are getting to the stage where I fear that they are going to become a necessity if you simply want to continue surfing the web without finding yourself continuously blocked and challenged over your age and identity.  Because, of course, the whole issue of social media bans for under sixteens has raised its ugly head again.  The supposed protection of children from online harm by restricting everybody's freedom and privacy has become a perennial obsession for UK governments of both left and right.  It apparently isn't enough that we've already had that law passed which forces age verification on UK visitors to 'adult' sites, with the verification methods being dodgy in the extreme.  (Also, open to abuse - only the other day I had some scammer on Tumblr impersonating the site's admin and claiming that I needed to verify my age by giving my bank details to some third-party site.  Yeah, like that's going to happen.  Needless to say, I reported them, for what little good that will do).  I have so far steadfastly refused to engage with such nonsense, but with the prospect of being denied access to any site the UK government classifies as 'social media', the only long-term solution will be to circumvent the problem by surfing from behind a VPN.

None of this is to say that I don't sympathise with the idea of keeping kids away from potentially harmful content, but what the government has done so far and is proposing to do in the near future, is to once again put the onus of prevention upon ordinary web users, instead of trying to make those who run social media sites more responsible with regard to the kind of material they allow.  Moreover, it also seems to absolve parents of all responsibility to restrict their children's web access - indeed, it represents a further erosion of the whole concept of parental responsibility.  If your child is a horrible little bastard then, well, it's your fault and down to you to do something about it, not the rest of us.  Anyway, getting back to the responsibility of tech firms for the content their services carry, I'm also pretty sick and tired of them hiding behind the excuse of 'free speech' to justify their lack of regulation.  Yes, Elon Musk, I'm looking at you here - the man who thinks it OK for to have an AI app accessible by, well, anyone, which will create sexualised and naked images of children for public consumption.  Not just children, anyone, in fact.  It isn't as if it is difficult to stop this sort of thing - just about every other AI app has built in safeguards to prevent this sort of thing.  (It's incredible, actually, the number of things that ChatGPT will tell you that it isn't allowed to do - it won't even allow the creation of satirical images of politicians, for example).  

But to go back to Musk, his AI and those images, one has to ponder, just why are he and his acolytes so keen to put in place safeguards that would prevent their creation?  Could it have anything to do with the fact that they are part of 'Generation Epstein'?  A bunch of unhealthily wealthy people who seem to think that their money means that normal rules and social conventions don't apply to them?  Is that why they were all so drawn to Epstein and his procurement of underage girls for his rich buddies?   Do they see the sexualisation of children as one of the ultimate taboos they can break in order to reassure themselves that there is nothing their wealth won't allow them to do?  Is that why we have an AI app that allows the creation of such images?  Because they are trying to normalise the sexualisation of children in order to justify their own behaviour?  Maybe the government should be looking at taking action against them rather than trying to force the likes of me to give credit card details or photos of myself in order to verify my age just so that I can look at some model railway videos on YouTube?  But, of course, they'll just cry 'freedom of speech!' - and it isn't just the billionaires who try this defence.  A while ago on a webmaster forum, the issue of the UK government trying to force Musk to prevent the creation of this stuff via his AI got the reaction from a US contributor 'that's just censorship!'.  No, buddy, it's called 'protecting the vulnerable', a concept apparently unknown to even ordinary US citizens.  Which simply reinforces my opinion that they are a nation of psychopaths.  Pervo peado psychos, at that.  After all, they voted an adjudicated rapist and possible peado into the White House.  Twice.

Death by Persuasion

I saw a headline the other day about some British dude who had been found guilty of trying to induce some American guy to commit suicide via the internet.  Now, on the face of it, this seemed like pretty heinous behaviour.  But then I got to thinking about it: just how heinous this is depends upon the potential victim.  i mean, if this British bloke was really skilled at persuading Yanks to top themselves, perhaps, instead of jail, we could set him to trying to persuade Trump, Vance, Hegseth et al to take their own lives.  That way, he'd be doing the world a favour and would deserve a medal.  Maybe even a knighthood.  Obviously, I don't know just how he does his persuasion - maybe he's just incredibly dull, with a droning voice which, after a few hours of him describing his collection of used bus tickets to them, would drive anyone to cut their own throat - but surely, in these days of defence spending cuts, he could be a huge national security asset.  Far cheaper than maintaining a nuclear deterrent, that's for sure.  Because maybe this is the way ahead for Labour in the whole defence spending debate - eschewing conventional weapons and warfare for an unorthodox approach that directly targets hostile leaders.  After all, it's not as if we're ill equipped as a nation in terms of individuals who can bore people, quite literally, to death: pubs are full of them and if that isn't enough, just read the comments section under the average online local newspaper story.

Why stop at natural bores and weirdo persuaders who can get people to kill themselves?   Why not go the full psychic warfare route?  We could really put all those cranks out there who claim to have 'special powers'.  Why not set up a programme to develop mutant powers, with Keir Starmer as Professor X, (he, after all, has well established powers to make peoples' beards spontaneously ignite, as Jeremy Corbyn found to his cost)?  Let's see, for instance, if Astral Projection might have offensive capabilities - maybe someone could project themselves to the White House and see if their astral body could throttle him to death while he slept.  Or get one of those 'firestarters' to burn down Mar-a-Lago remotely.  If we were really lucky, we might be able to identify some of those 'scanners', who can make heads explode.  The best thing about this approach is that there is no way that it could ever be proved that HMG was behind any of these assassinations or sabotages.  But why confine their use to overseas enemies?  After all, this could present the government with an ideal opportunity to deal with all those racist bigots and neo Nazis currently clogging up British politics.  If, for example, Rupert Lowe's head was suddenly to explode, nobody would suspect psychic foul play, instead it would just be put down to the result of a dangerous build up of internal hate and outrage.  Likewise, if Nigel Farage was to suddenly keel over clutching his chest as his heart was crushed by an astrally projected assassin, people would just put it down to a fatal heart attack, the result of his excessive drinking.  Damn it, the possibilities are endless!

Travis McGee (1983)

Along with Darker Than Amber (1970), this is one of only two attempts that I'm aware of to translate John D McDonald's 'Travis McGee' series to the screen (several more recent attempts never made it to production).  Like the earlier film, Travis McGee (1983) was intended to start a series, albeit a TV series in this case, rather than a series of movies.  Indeed, when looking at the 1987 TV movie, it is important to see it in this context: a pilot movie for a series that has to establish characters and situation.  Whereas the 1970 film seemed to assume that everyone would know who McGee was and be familiar with the books, (they were pretty much at the height of their popularity when the film was made), this pilot spends a little more time establishing exactly what he does - he 'recovers' lost property for clients, for 50% of their monetary value - the fact that he lives on a boat and who his friend Meyer is and what role he plays in McGee's life.  All of which means that the TV movie has a much slower pace than the 1970 film.  This along with some key changes to the original texts, most notably that McGee now lives on a yacht rather than a houseboat and that the location has been shifted from Florida to California, dissipates the film's authenticity - it just doesn't feel like a McGee story, (even though it was adapted from one of the novels - 'The Empty Copper Sea' (1978).  After all, the sort of man who lives on a yacht is somewhat different to the sort of guy who lives on houseboat.  Moreover, the Florida settings are big part of the novels' appeal - back in the sixties, when the character debuted, it was a reasonably unusual setting for a crime novel.  Back then, urban venues, like LA or New York were the preferred milieu for tough detectives, making the sun drenched Florida locations of McDonald's novels seem novel - and the novels are full of local detail, capturing the exotically tropical feel of the area.

It was clear, though, that despite all these alterations to the source material, the makers had high hopes for Travis McGee.  The script was by Sterling Silliphant - a high profile and accomplished writer for both film and TV - and it was directed by Andrew V McLaglen, a hugely experienced director for TV and film, specialising in action movies, including several John Wayne vehicles.  They also cast strongly for a TV project, with Sam Elliott (and his moustache) as McGee, Gene Evans as Meyer and Katherine Ross (Elliott's real life wife) as McGee's love interest, along with Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Farnsworth and Vera Miles in supporting roles.  Yet it all feels somewhat flat - the change in location doesn't help, with California feeling somewhat less exotic than Florida, while the strictures of US network TV means that the action is somewhat subdued.  Which is a big problem, as violent action is a big feature of the books, with McGee frequently getting involved in brawls and fist fights.  Here, though, he's confined to only one brawl which, while well choreographed and staged by McLaglen, isn't a patch on the brutal looking climactic fight from Darker Than Amber, where Rod Taylor's version of McGee squared off against the great William Smith.  

Ultimately, one of the big problems in adapting first person narrative, action driven stories like the McGee series to the screen is that, shorn of the protagonist's internal voice and perspective, their plots are often exposed as slim and simplistic.  Which is certainly the case with both McGee adaptations.  While in Travis McGee Elliott is given some voice over narrative, it is never very effective, failing to recreate and impose the literary McGee's voice and perspective upon the film.  The plot, which involves McGee agreeing to help a yacht skipper regain his licence, after he lost it when a wealthy developer apparently fell overboard and drowned while he was supposedly drunk at the wheel, starts intriguingly enough, but quickly becomes routine, despite a number of promising sub-plots.  Overall, Travis McGee feels like a real missed opportunity.  As it stands, it provides an interesting contrast to Darker Than Amber, taking a different approach to McGee than the earlier film, eschewing the muscular machismo of Rod Taylor's interpretation for Elliott's more thoughtful and laid back characterisation.  This, though, wasn't enough to get it commissioned for a series - which is probably no bad thing as, on the basis of this pilot, what we'd have got was a watered down version of the character who would inevitably be forced into becoming simply another TV detective, with all the clichés that brought back in the eighties.

Nightwish (1989)

Another title in my recent trawlings through eighties low-budget movies, Nightwish (1989) has a certain degree of potential in its basic concept, which, unfortunately, it fails to properly fulfil.  Part of the problem is that it effectively telegraphs exactly what its big twist is going to be in its opening sequence: a girl getting chased around deserted streets as if in a slasher movie, but waking up before she is killed to reveal that she is part of a university experiment into dream manipulation.  At which point you just know for sure that the whole subsequent plot is going to be revealed as a dream.  The only question is - whose?   Once the scene setting is out of the way the students involved in the project are invited by the professor running it to a remote old house in an area known for UFO sightings, to conduct further research.  The abrupt cut between the invitation made in the lab to the majority of the students suddenly in a van heading through the desert toward the house, filling in the details of the rumours of alien abductions and creature sightings through their conversation, should provide viewers who have seen enough such movies with another big clue that it is all a dream.  On arrival at the mansion, things quickly escalate, with the professor apparently turning into a mad scientist, complete with hulking half-wit assistant and the students chained up in a dungeon as experimental subjects.  Things escalate through apparent murders to alien experiments in the mine shafts below the mansion and even the odd ghost.  Ultimately, of course, it ends the way all horror  movies involving dreams end - with a character waking up just in the nick of time to reveal that none of it was real, only for another, inevitable, revelation that this might still be a dream.

None of which is to say that Nightwish is a bad film.  On the contrary, it is actually pretty slickly made, with decent production values and steady, if not exactly inspired, direction by Bruce R Cook, (this film being one of only two directorial credits for him).  Cook's direction becomes most effective in some eerily shot, green tinged dream sequences (or dream-within-a-dream sequences, to be strictly accurate) part way through the movie.  These, along with the opening sequence, are, not surprisingly bearing in mind the director's previous credits as a camera operator and director of photography, very well framed and shot.  Nightwish also boasts a better-than-average cast for this sort of low budget production, most notably Jack Starrett, director of Race the Devil (1975) as well as a noted character actor, as the professor and Robert Tessier as his assistant, (this was to be a last film for both actors, who died in 1989 and 1990 respectively).  Brian Thompson is also on hand as one of the students, whose inconsistent behaviour should also be another red flag to viewers that the main plot is a dream, while Elizabeth Kaitan, (some of us fondly remember her and her breasts from the later Vice Academy films), is also on hand as the film's main focus for its gratuitous female nudity quotient. Ultimately, though, what undermines Nightwish is its sheer predictability in terms of plot outcome.  Which, to be fair, isn't a problem unique to this film, it is a problem intrinsic to films which are built around dreams - their writers can never resist trying to put in what they all seem to think is a wildly original idea of revealing that, even at the end, we're still in a dream, despite it being the biggest cliché for this genre possible.  At least Nightwish does try to do something different by challenging the viewer to work out which of the characters is actually dreaming, (although even this shouldn't be difficult to guess).  Still, while Nightwish's conclusion might be predictable, the journey to that conclusion is at least enjoyable.

Boardinghouse (1982)

Boardinghouse (1982) is frequently touted as being the first horror movie to have been shot entirely on video.  It shows.  Not only is it incredibly cheaply made, with a no-name cast and terrible script, but it also features various video effects to indicate the presence of a murderous paranormal force and computer screen text to carry various plot points.  The film tries to combine elements from a number of horror sub-genres, encompassing themes from haunted house thrillers and slasher movies, before finally lurching into a no-budget version of The Fury (1978) for a conclusion.  I recall the horror writer Ramsey Campbell describing his experience of watching direct-to-video movies that were so bad that it was impossible to watch them in one continuous sitting - you have to break every twenty minutes or so and do some vacuuming or ironing in order to maintain your sanity, they are so excruciating.  Well, Boardinghouse falls into this category - I lost count of how often my attention wandered and I had to wind back in order to pick up the plot again.  Anyway, the plot is simple: young dude inherits a house infamous the number of murders, suicides and unexplained deaths that have occurred there over the years and decides to let it out to boarders - beautiful female boarders - who end up being murdered in various bizarre ways.  On top of this, the young dude is experimenting with developing paranormal powers, most specifically telekinesis - he sits cross legged on the desk of his office, in only his Y-fronts, practicing his ESP meditation, while the original owners of the property were ESP researchers.  Of course, it turns out that one of the boarders - the one living in the attic - is actually the unhinged daughter of the researchers, herself possessed of psychic powers, out to reclaim the property she believes is rightfully hers of interlopers, using her powers to kill.  Inevitably, it climaxes in a deeply unimpressive psychic showdown between her and the hero and one of the boarders he has been training in ESP.  

Like many such bottom-of-barrel low budget epics, Boardinghouse was something of a pet project for its instigators - John and Kalassu Wintergate, with John Wintergate writing, directing and starring (under a fake name), with Kalassu Wintergate playing the heroine.  Produced for around $10,000 and shot mainly in one location, the resulting film is predictably terrible, confusingly constructed, abysmally acted and poorly shot. A multitude of sub-plots ultimately go nowhere and, in truth, little of interest ever really happens.  Even when something does happen, it is so poorly and cheaply staged that it has no impact whatsoever.  Now, to be absolutely fair, the film was apparently originally written and shot as a horror comedy, but the original distributor wanted a straight horror movie and had as much of the humour as possible cut.  Which probably explains the finished film's extremely odd and uneven feel, with obviously comedic characters turning up at disconcerting moments for no apparent reason and various events unfolding in the most ludicrous ways - a cop character, for instance, becomes possessed at a party at the house, randomly shoots a guest, then himself, with nobody seemingly noticing for several hours.  Unfortunately, there's nothing in the surviving comedic sequences to suggest that Boardinghouse would have been any more effective as a comedy, but the wholesale re-editing does, at least, explain the film's disjointed feel and underlying air of absurdity.  While the film exists in various different edits of varied running times there is, incredibly, a 157 minute 'director's cut' in existence.  I can only imagine that this is the video played to visitors to those Swiss euthanasia clinics - long before the 157 minutes are up, any doubts about ending their lives will have vanished and they'll be begging to drink that lethal cocktail...

Ghosts of Hanley House (1968)

Ghosts of Hanley House (1968) is another of those incredibly obscure low-budget movies that has gained a new lease of life thanks to the advent of streaming and its insatiable appetite for content.  The fact that it is in the public domain means that you can find it absolutely everywhere - consequently, it has undoubtedly been seen by countless more people than it ever was on its initial release.  Watching it, the grainy black and white footage, with its tinny mono soundtrack - which frequently fades out - makes you think it was actually made at least ten years before its official 1968 release date.  But the clothes, cars, haircuts and incidental details tell you that no, this really was shot in the late sixties.  The film has many of the shortcomings typical of such shoestring productions - a cast of, at best, semi-professional actors, poor production values, poor pacing and weak dialogue - yet it exerts a certain fascination while it is playing.  It can best be described as a no-budget version of The Haunting (1963), with its scenario of a small group of people accepting a bet to spend the night in supposedly haunted house from which the previous occupants disappeared without trace.  The lack of budget means that the supernatural manifestations experienced by the group are minimalist, to say the least: a disembodied knock on the door, disappearing car keys, voices in the night, for instance.  The most violent thing that happens in the house is one character being choked by a pair of phantom hands, while the main ghostly apparition is simply a glowing disc.

But the sheer simplicity and mundaneness of the incidents, coupled with the fact that the film is shot in a real house, giving proceedings a slightly claustrophobic feel, contribute to the strange sense of eeriness that accompanies this main portion of the film.  It all makes a stark contrast to the preceding scenes on the sunny streets and gardens of the small California town where the house is located.  Despite a frenzied opening, involving screams in the night, axes and an unseen killer and a flurry of action toward the end, with the dismembered bodies of the ghosts haunting the property being dug up (although we only, briefly, see a severed head) and some graveyard action, the reality is that not a lot actually happens in the film.  It's all about atmosphere and the psychological effects on the characters of the various goings on - which the cast, unfortunately, aren't really capable of doing justice to.  Yet, it remains an intriguing film.  Not a good film, by any measure, but certainly not as bad as some would have you believe.  Ghosts of Hanley House seems to have been something of a labour of love for writer/director Louise Sherrill, for whom this remains her only directorial credit, (although she has a number of later acting credits), hovering on the brink of almost being a home movie, of sorts.  The only recognisable professional actor in the cast is character actress Elsie Baker, who had credits stretching back to the silent era, in her last film role.  Ultimately, the atmospheric section of the film taking place in the haunted house elevates Ghosts of Hanley House slightly above the average micro-budgeted semi-professional B-movies of its era.

Bring Back British Breeders

As it is all down to declining birth rates and an ageing population that we in the UK - and Europe, generally - need to have so many immigrant workers, you'd think that Nigel Farage would capitalise on this to try and propose a new policy that might be popular.  'Bring Back British Breeders' could be the new slogan as he and his merry crew of maladjusted pound shop fascists at Reform UK urge Britons to shag more.  Yes, indeed, that could be the new policy: 'Bonk for Britain' with Farage advocating more sex, perhaps even introducing weekly quotas for making love, accompanied by severe restrictions on the availability of contraceptives.  Because, obviously, this sex drive isn't about pleasure, but rather producing more babies - British babies.  Of course, if such a policy was to have any chance of succeeding in replenishing the ranks of true Brits, then there would also have to be measures introduced to ensure that the right people were having more sex.  For one thing, there could be compulsory contraception introduced for immigrants, Brits in mixed race relationships and non-white people in general - maybe there could be a 'colour chart' introduced for retailers of contraceptives to check the eligibility of those having them dispensed: the darker you are, the more you get.  

Of course, for such a policy to have maximum effect, heterosexual intercourse would have to be made compulsory and any form of same sex relationship outlawed - you can't have all that effort and semen being wasted on sexual activities that aren't going to produce babies.  Similarly, male masturbation will have to be closely monitored - if you want to knock one out then you'll have to do it into a test tube, which will then be sent off to a sperm bank.  Now, you ask, why would you need sperm banks if sex was made compulsory?  Well, let's not forget those lesbians who can no longer have sex with other women - well, if they refuse to 'convert', then you could have compulsory insemination.  Which would also be the case for chronically ugly women unable to attract a man.  Yes, I know this all sounds offensive, but that's Reform's trademark - normalising what initially seems unacceptable and turning it into policy.  Anyway, getting back to the policy proposal, to ensure maximum productivity, perhaps Farage might consider legalising polygamy.  Or maybe just encouraging everyone to do what hypocritical extreme right politicians do and simply have a dozen or so mistresses on shagging terms.  Maybe single women could be rounded up and put in 'Love camps', where they can be 'serviced' by members of the Reform UK youth wing.  You see, the possibilities are endless and I'll certainly be sending this policy initiative to Nigel Farage himself - I mean, a man prepared to exploit a murder in order to whip up racial hatred, division and social unrest would surely jump at the chance to embrace something that combines misogyny, racism, homophobia and ignorance in one package, would he?

It's a Mad, Bad, Hateful, Corrupt World

Just lately, for the first time in my life, I've found myself serious considering moving overseas in the face of the rising tide of hate and fascism in this country.  The key question, of course, is whether there actually is anywhere else in the world where these fucking right-wing extremist bastards aren't trying to seize power and would be anywhere I'd actually want to live?  I'm still pondering that one.  In the meantime, I've got the World Cup coming up to distract me.  Or not, probably.  I avoided the last one, that fake World cup they played in December, disrupting domestic football seasons, because corrupt FIFA had given it to a country too hot to stage it at the correct time.  The upcoming one is, at least, taking place, as it should, in the Summer, but it is partly being held in the world's current Global Fascism Central - the US.  Which, of course, means that FIFA is having a field day in corruption terms.  With Trump in the White House, everything and everyone can and will be bought - which suits FIFA down to the ground.  They've already had a dry run with the ridiculous and irrelevant Club World Cup, (which FIFA shouldn't have been organising, anyway, because it is not meant to be directly involved in club football), which they made a mint from by ruthlessly exploiting fans and blowing smoke up Trump's arse.  FIFA is the only organisation I can think of that actually became more corrupt after going through a supposed corruption crack down, which saw the departure of Sepp Blatter.

But we currently live in a world where corruption is no longer something to be ashamed of - it's no longer about brown paper envelopes stuffed full of cash being furtively exchanged in deserted car parks in dead of night.  No, nowadays it is all about lucrative contracts being awarded to friends and relatives of the powerful, who have all made generous 'no obligation donations' to politicians, or have donated them aircraft, vehicles, fake awards and the like.  It's all done in the light of day, right in front of us, usually live on TV.  There's no shame involved on the part of those participating in it all because, hey, it's all just the art of the deal, isn't it?  Everything's transactional.  Everyone and everything has a price.  Whilst, obviously, I hold Trump (and the American electorate for being so fucking stupid to elect him not once but twice) for this new era of blatant corruption, he isn't alone and the US, whilst the epicentre of this corruption, isn't the only country infected by it.  Let's not forget our own Boris Johnson, utterly venal and determined to leverage any public office he held to his own financial advantage, but even he wasn't the first, with the groundwork being laid by Cameron's Tory government, with its 'pay-for-access-to-ministers'fund-raising events.  Then there's Nigel Farage and his ever changing, but actually all the same, political vehicles, who'll take 'donations' from anyone - Russia, ex-pat tech billionaires, etc - he'll even record birthday greetings for the likes of 'Hugh Janus' for eighty quid.  The most disturbing thing about this new wave of public corruption is just how quickly it seems to have been normalised - obvious backhanders are flying about and politicians nakedly being bought, yet it raises barely a shrug from the public.  Damn it, I'm going to have to look harder for an overseas haven...

Summer of Idiocy?

Well, Summer's here at last. Meteorologically speaking, that is, yesterday being the start of meteorological Summer.  If you go by astronomical seasons, though, you'll have to wait until the 21st.  Personally, I prefer to follow the meteorological calendar so, as far as I'm concerned, it's Summer.  Typically for the UK, though, as soon as Summer officially begins, the sun vanishes and the heavens open.  I got drenched on my way to and from the pub last night.  It's become very fashionable, I know, to complain about the heat whenever we get a run of consecutive days of sunshine, as we did here at the end of May, but personally, I love the heat.  It wasn't always so - when I was much younger I suffered badly from hay fever, so associated summer heat and the sun with raised pollen counts and me suffering excessive congestion and coughing and wheezing miserably.  But I eventually outgrew these allergies, (I still suffer some reactions to high pollen counts, but they are usually very mild these days), so nowadays I welcome the sun and warmth and embrace summer wholeheartedly - even when it kicks off with torrential rain and thunderstorms.  Apparently global warming means that we'll have to get used to living in a warmer climate.  Yeah, well bring on those post thirty degree temperatures that we had last week - they help compensate for the damp and freezing Winter months we're forced to endure.  

Of course, the climate change deniers would tell you that it's all bollocks, that the increasingly early occurrences of very hot weather we've been experiencing in the UK for the past many years isn't evidence of global warming, but rather some kind of 'natural cycle' which they can't actually explain because they are talking bollocks.  But they're generally all extreme right-wing loonies who nobody in their right mind would pat any attention to, would they?  Would they?  Would they?  Well, with Reform UK allegedly polling highly in the UK, (I say 'allegedly' because a lot of these polls are becoming increasingly suspect with regard to their methodology - take that one claiming that Farage is more popular than Labour amongst trade union members: as union membership lists are confidential, how exactly do they know that they are polling actual members?), which indicates that a lot of British people are fucking idiots.  Certainly, anybody who actually votes for Reform UK is a fucking idiot.  Especially if they say they are doing it as some kind of 'protest' against mainstream politics - all you are doing is enabling a bunch of fascist thugs led by an oafish grifter.  If you really want to register a protest, then simply spoil your ballot paper or vote 'Monster Raving Loony Party', or maybe even Liberal Democrat.  But then, personal experience has taught me that most people are fucking idiots.  Uneducated idiots who revel in their own ignorance.  There really should be some kind of restrictions put on who is allowed to vote - an intelligence and/or morality test, perhaps.  Because, as Winston Churchill once opined, 'the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.'  Still, at least Summer's here, so can at least look forward to some nice weather before the idiots vote the fascists into power, then wonder where all their rights have gone and why we don't have elections any more....

After Hours: My Life as an Urban Gorilla

 

Another episode of 'After Hours', which can be heard here:

After Hours: My Life as an Urban Gorilla 

Once again, keeping the running time down was a challenge - this one's just over thirty minutes, but not by much.  It did, however, result in one segment, which was scripted, being dropped in favour of a shorter piece.  It will, however, be held over for the next episode.   Editing this episode taught me another lesson in how carefully you have to monitor AI apps when you use them for producing content.  When I did my first listen through of an edit of the complete show - in movie terms it would have been a 'rough cut' - I realised that Google Ai Studio had duplicated one stretch of scrip, (the duplicate being in completely the wrong place) and had skipped part of the script for another segment.  While the former problem was an easy edit, the second required a re-recording of the whole segment's script as, due to my laziness, I couldn't recall which AI voice I had used originally, (I really need to start taking notes of which ones I use for which characters), so I just started from scratch.  Ultimately, though, I'm reasonably happy with this episode - which was largely created during those hot nights last week when it was impossible to sleep due to the heat.

 'After Hours’ was created using Google AI Studio and Chat GPT Reader.  Music and sound effects by Freesound Community and ShadowsandEchoes- all via Pixababy.

Once again, for the benefit of the knee-jerk AI-haters out there, I should emphasise that the AI part of 'After Hours' is simply the AI generated voices that provide the dramatis personae.  The words they speak are entirely scripted by a human being: me.  So think twice before you go off on some rant about 'AI Slop'.

As a final footnote, the show art, as ever, was generated using an AI app using the simplest prompts possible - in this case 'gorilla sitting in armchair, wearing trilby hat and reading newspaper in a cage in a zoo'.  While the resulting imagery was actually pretty good, I find it disturbing that the gorilla appears to be wearing my new hat. (Which, strictly speaking, is a fedora, not a trilby - the latter traditionally having a shorter brim which rolls up at the back).  How did the bloody app know that I'd just bought a brown fedora?  Is it trying to mock me?  If I was Richard Dawkins, I'd take that as proof that it sentient, rather than simply accepting it as an amusing coincidence...