Viking Women and the Sea Serpent (1958)

The title of this Roger Corman produced and directed AIP cheapie just about sums the movie up, although, to be fair, the sea serpent is the least of their worries, with most of the film's action centring on their conflict with the Grimaults, a savage tribe who take them prisoner.  The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, to give the film its full on-screen title, was apparently the brainchild of a pair of special effects experts, Irving Block and Jack Rabin, who convinced Corman that they could provide the effects the film's script required to a high standard, on a modest budget.  As it turned out, they couldn't.  To be absolutely fair, for this type of low budget B-movie, the miniatures work is above average, but still nothing like convincing.  The titular sea serpent itself is somewhat underwhelming and only makes a couple of relatively brief appearances.  

Exactly where the women - who are in search of their missing men - actually voyage to is never clear, with the film's ideas on geography being vague, to say the least, with everywhere, from Scandinavia to the, probable, Mediterranean locations, all look rematkably like California.  The fact that the villainous Grimaults are a swarthy looking bunch, dressed in vaguely middle-eastern looking costumes, implies that the location is somewhere in the Mediterranean.  Several critics have remarked upon the fact that while the Grimaults are slightly dark skinned, (being played by white actors in 'brownface' and degenerate, the Vikings, both male and female, are all fair haired, muscular and heroic.  Except, of course, for the token dark haired Viking woman, who is wracked by jealousy and betrays her fellow Vikings, before redeeming herself with an act of self-sacrifice.  The cast is packed full of familiar B-movie faces, including Abby Dalton, Susan Cabot, June Kenny, Richard Devon, Micheal Forrest and Jonathon Haze.  Not a great movie, but relatively entertaining while it is playing, Viking Women and the Sea Serpent at least has the virtue of running only sixty six minutes.

Let's Glow 2026

The past couple of days have proven somewhat stressful for me, for various reasons, so I'm following yesterday's example and being lazy with my posting today.  This is a quick video of the recent Let's Glow event held here in Crapchester every February.  This only covers the sections of the event in my local part, (which, to be fair, constitutes the main part of the light trail, although there is a smaller section running from the town centre to the park).  Quite a bit of this footage was shot during the set up and testing of the light show, so not all of the effects (in particular, the sound effects) are in evidence.  Nonetheless, it gives a pretty good representation of what has become a popular event.  Certainly, I always enjoy it, as it provides a welcome burst of illuminated joy at what otherwise often a pretty bleak time of year.

Anyway, posting will, hopefully, be back to normal after the weekend! 

After Hours

Another podcast.  This one, unlike the last couple I plugged here, is composed of entirely new material and is, in effect, the pilot for a series of shows with a similar format, replacing the old, eponymous, podcast I used to do for Onsug.  In common with those other recent podcasts, not to mention the short Nothing is Real series I also recorded for Onsug, I don't, personally feature in After Hours.  The scripts are mine, but they are 'performed' by a dramatis personae of AI created voices.  Most of them are amongst the most sophisticate Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems you can use these days: Google AI Studio and GPT Reader, for instance.  In order to get some British accents in, though, for one segment I've had to use the older, less expressive, voices from Free TTS (which, only a few months ago, seemed incredibly advanced).

As I said, this is a pilot, so it is still a little rough around the edges and includes some features that might not make it into subsequent editions.  Overall, though, I'm reasonably pleased with it.  The Google AI Studio feature which allows the creation of a dialogue between two voices, without the need for all the tedious editing required when you have to stitch together recordings of two separate voices.  It's taken a while to come up with this new format and - as indicated - it is still evolving.  The next episode won't try to simply replicate exactly the format of this structure but will, hopefully, start introducing some new features.  'The Man in the Pub', though, is intended to be a more or less permanent feature - he's also a link with the previous podcast series, having appeared in the last three of those, (although he was never referred to as 'The Man in the Pub' and it was never obvious that he was in one - he did have a name, actually, but it was never mentioned).  

So, some credits for the technical side: After Hours was created using Google AI Studio, GPT Reader, Free TTS and TextSpeakPro.  Music and sound effects by Freesound Community, Luis Humanoide and Universefield - all via Pixababy.  

 

Listen Here: After Hours. 

Paranormal Not Caught on Camera

You know, the downside of the new series of Junk and Disorderly being on Blaze is that it means that I have to put up with Blaze's promotions for the rest of their whacked out programming in the commercial breaks.  I remember that, once upon a time, Blaze used to be full of stuff like Junk and Disorderly and  while some vestiges of it still remain, most of their schedule these days seems to be chocked full of UFO-related and paranormal nonsense.  Just this evening, for instance, they were pushing Paranormal Caught on Camera, which seems to be the supernatural equivalent of those shows where people would send Harry Hill their home video footage of their 'hilarious' mishaps, like decapitating their pet dog with a lawn strimmer, in the hope of winning the 'star prize' of a ten quid voucher for your local kebab van.  Except in the case of the Blaze show it is their home video footage of supposed supernatural phenomena in their homes.  You know the sort of thing: doors apparently opening of their own accord, things falling off of shelves, chairs moving.  It's all bollocks and undoubtedly faked, of course.  Because, the more earnestly and straight-faced that someone is on TV, telling you that they were genuinely terrified by something falling off of a shelf, the more convinced I am that it is a scam.  

I was once told that the way to approach such 'genuine' footage is always, when viewing it, to ask yourself how you could replicate it without involving supernatural agency.  If you could come up with a way to fake it, then what you are watching was probably faked in a similar fashion.  You know something?  I've never yet seen one of these videos and not been able to work out a simple way in which it could have been faked.  Of course, quite apart from moving chairs, opening doors and so on, we have the videos allegedly actually showing ghosts and/or spirits, usually in the form of orbs, but also various other glowing streaks and the like.  There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that there aren't simply camera artefacts, dust motes or insects caught by the camera when filmed under particular lighting conditions.  But such considerations are usually airily dismissed in shows such as this, because, after all, they are made primarily for an audience who already believe in this sort of bollocks.  Just like Junk and Disorderly is made for those of us who can identify with middle aged men rummaging around in sheds and barns to uncover and buy automotive related junk, restore and sell it.  The difference being that it is far more believable that they might be able to turn a profit on a rusty old petrol pump than it is to swallow any of those other videos as evidence of the paranormal.

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.