Social Indifference

While alluding to on old movie in yesterday's post, it occurred to me that I used to talk a lot about old and obscure films here.  Indeed, at times, such posts dominated the content here.  But it my enthusiasm for writing up such films has waned.  In large part, I think, because of the dent my confidence in my movie reviewing abilities took after I joined Blue Sky.  In an attempt to reinvent myself social media-wise, I decided to focus on putting up my various articles there - such things seemed to be of interest to other users, judging by some of the accounts I followed.  But, I found my efforts met with utter indifference.  In fact, they elicited no reactions - positive or negative - whatsoever.  Which can get pretty confidence-sapping after a while.  I mean, I wasn't expecting to be awash with likes and re-posting, but my writings on the subject had always had a mild level of interest from readers when originally posted here, so I thought that, if nothing else, I might be able to reach a wider audience of those with similar interests.  After all, with web search apparently permanently buggered by Google and its AI obsession, I figured that I had to find some way of reaching a wider potential audience.  Blue Sky, though, apparently isn't it.  In fact, its indifference has killed my enthusiasm for writing about movies altogether.  (Interestingly, though, all of my previous movie posts seem to be of huge interest to the various AI bots swarming over the web at present).

I have to say that, overall, I've found using Blue Sky a desultory, soul-destroying even, experience.  There is a certain 'clique-ishness' to most social media platforms, often making it difficult for new users to gain traction, but Blue Sky is probably the worst I've ever encountered.  It feels as if there is a strict hierachy, with early adopters at the top, that rules the roost there - your job as a newcomer is simply to follow more established accounts and boost them with likes and re-postings.  Moreover, everyone there seems so concerned with being 'right-on' and displaying the 'right' attitudes, (it is the anti-Twitter, after all), that they frequently seem reluctant to like or re-post anything for fear it might be the 'wrong' thing to like.  Maybe I'm being oversensitive because Blue Sky doesn't want to recognise my obvious genius, but I'm not the only user that has noticed the cool indifference of Blue Sky - Hell, I get more responses to stuff I put on Threads and I barely have a presence there.  I suppose that it doesn't help that I keep disparaging the pretensions of those Blue Sky members who put stuff like 'working on my book' in their bios and like to casually repeat it in posts.  Look, if you've actually written a book, great, by all means brag about it.  But anyone can say they are 'working' on a book.  Plus, my embracing of AI for creative purposes doesn't help my cause, either.  I'm surprised that when I've posted links to the 'After Hours' podcast there, (I've actually given up doing so, as its utterly pointless), I haven't ended up facing the Blue Sky equivalent of a lynch mob, waving burning torches and accusing me of witchcraft.  This Luddite tendency is another deeply unappealing aspect of the platform.  Not that I intend shutting down my account there or returning to Twitter any time soon, I'll just stick around and be as indifferent as all the other buggers on there.

Was the Cosmic Man Right, After All?

I was just watching The Cosmic Man (1959), one of a number of cheaply made knock offs of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) that appeared in the fifties. (You can tell just how cheaply made it was by the fact that it top-lined John Carradine - who'd appear in anything for money in order to finance his stage work - and Bruce Bennett, one time serial and B-movie star.  Not that either were bad actors, they just tended to appear in movies featuring in the bottom half of double bills).  Like all of these movies, taking their cue from the original, the film features a lot of sermonising on the part of the title character on the subject of how potentially dangerous to the rest of the universe that mankind was, because his intellectual and moral maturity hadn't reached the same level as his technological achievements.  Humanity just couldn't be trusted not to abuse such things as nuclear power and rocketry in order to destroy each other, but also not to spread this irresponsibility into outer space, threatening any other civilisations they might encounter.  I remember that, as a kid, I always thought this sort of attitude, particularly when propounded as piously as it was in these films, as being incredibly patronising.  After all, juvenile me reasoned, we've had the bomb for thirty plus years, but have refrained from using it in anger since 1945, despite the number of regional conflicts in that time, not to mention the tensions of the Cold War.  Which, I thought, showed considerable responsibility and restraint on the part of our leaders.  Moreover, we were pushing out into space, not militarily, but in a spirit of exploration and discovery.

Nowadays, though, the landscape has changed dramatically.  Not one, but two Trump pesidencies have amply demonstrated that, even in supposedly civilised democracies, utterly irresponsible, reckless, stupid and venal leaders can be put into office and allowed to rule without restraint, leaving us subject to their childish tantrums and whims.  Leaders who have no qualms about abusing the power they control.  It isn't just Trump, though.  He has been the herald of the rise of all manner of extreme right neo-Nazis across the globe, some of whom have also gained power, while others have grown in strength and influence, raising the spectre of yet more of the world's most dangerous technologies falling into the hands of the evil and immature.  These arseholes have a knock on effect - they are propelled into power, or near power, by the ultra-wealthy, who bankroll them with the expectation that they will do their bidding: lowering the taxes they pay, reducing the restrictions, such as health and safety for their workers and environmental protections,, that are placed upon them by responsible governments.  This sort of de-regulation results in the likes of Altman at OpenAI, who apparently thinks that their work should be unrestricted as a few 'bad' things happening as a result of them being allowed to do whatever they please, is a small price to pay for progress.  (Just so long as those 'bad' things don't happen to them, presumably).  This folks, is that unfettered capitalism which is much vaunted by the right.  All of which brings me to the inevitable conclusion that the likes of the Cosmic Man might have had a point.  Perhaps we really are too immature to be trusted to actually utilise our technologies responsibly.  Maybe reality has finally caught up with those old movies.  

Earlier and Earlier Every Year

I remember that years ago there was a Freeview channel called Great Classics which was basically the owners of the 'Great' channels equivalent to Talking Pictures TV, designed to exploit the Sony film library.  Except that it was only Great Classics for something like eight months of the year - the rest of the time it transmogrified into something called Great Christmas, which showed wall-to-wall crappy made-for-TV Christmas themed movies.  Now, I know what you are thinking - four months of Christmas movies, when the festival itself lasts only twelve days?  Yup, four months, kicking off in October and carrying on, right through Christmas into January.  I mean, who the fuck wants to have to endure four bloody months of those horrible movies and their cloying, utterly fake, sentiment?  Well, apparently there must be a few, as Great Christmas is still a thing - Great Classics long ago died a death and was replaced by Great Romance, (wall-to-wall horrible made-for-TV romance movies), but when October rolls around, it's back to Great Christmas for another four months.  In fact, this year, I think that it started even earlier.  Really, I just don't see the point - surely no sane person wants Christmas to be anywhen other than December, during the depths of Winter, from which it offers a brief respite.

But it isn't just Great Christmas.  Over the Summer, Pluto TV had a channel titled Christmas in July.  What the fuck?  What don't these people understand about the fact that Christmas is inextricably linked with Winter, in particular the Winter solstice?  Unless you live in Australia, where their seasons are arse about face, so that December is the height of Summer.  Arguably, for them it would make perfect sense to have Christmas in July, as that would place it back in mid-winter.  The fact is that the  version of Christmas that is peddled to us these days is essentially an invention of Northern Europe - hence its association with cold, snow and long dark nights.  It just isn't right to try and celebrate it any time else - especially not in Summer or Autumn.  Unless, of course, you are a TV company desperate to cash in on the 'season of goodwill' - to the extent that you are prepared to uproot it from its proper time and place.  Commercialism has no boundaries and certainly no shame.  But, to get back to one of my favourite refrains, the fact is that these constant attempts to start Christmas season early and artificially extend it, (for purely commercial purposes) simply serves to erode the sense of 'specialness' that the season is meant to have - if it happens every bloody day then it quickly becomes a bore.  Moreover, I find it particularly galling that these bastards want to extend the season in the name of profits and sales, yet, at the same time, when it finally arrives, they are then reluctant to allow us the traditional twelve day festival, trying to hustle back to work by 2 January at the latest, usually after Boxing Day.  Bastards. 

A Man's Messiah?

Sometimes I read some news item and think 'I could have written that for The Sleaze, in fact  I should have written it for The Sleaze'.  So it is with that story doing the rounds about that American dude who claims to have spent eighteen days with Jesus while he was in a coma for, well, eighteen days.  Which, in itself, isn't unusual - the media loves these sorts of near death experience tales of 'afterlife' experiences.  But what makes this one stand out is the guy's description of a 'macho Jesus', who stood nearly six feet tall and certainly wasn't woke.  This Jesus was a 'man's Messiah', apparently, bristling with anger toward sinners and injustice.  The physical descriptions of Jesus seem to place a lot of emphasis upon his manly physique and general masculinity.  Which leads me to suspect - on the basis of no supporting evidence, whatsoever, but that's never stopped me before - that the guy claiming to have had this experience is either now, or has been in the recent past, a hardcore MAGA supporter, probably a gun owner with strong views on race, women, homosexuals and transsexuals.  That said, he did describe his Jesus as being of a dark, Middle Eastern, complexion, so perhaps not quite as reactionary as one might assume.  Whatever the truth, his is a pretty conservative version of Jesus - certainly not the liberal, tolerant, do-gooder preaching love and understanding who tends to dominate modern interpretations.

I suppose that we should be thankful that this description of a 'masculine Messiah' didn't go further, with claims that he regularly shagged ten women a night with, miraculously, no sign of fatigue, for example.  Or even a description of a 'two-fisted Jesus', engaging the enemies of God with fisticuffs - a very Trumpian vision of Christ, standing up for the 'righteous' (who, of course, would all be Trump voters).  Obviously, we could be unkind and point to the homoerotic undertones of this version of Jesus, which rather undermine the non-woke overtones of the story, which clearly seeks to position this manly Jesus as a riposte to 'liberal' speculations about a non-gendered or, even worse, a female God.  Ideas which make the right and Christian traditionalists very uneasy.  But there's no doubt that a macho, muscle-bound Jesus does sound like some sort of homoerotic fantasy, (and let's not forget that, according to scripture, Jesus spent his time hanging out with twelve other guys and never married).  Ultimately, the story disappoints me - I was hoping for a tale of ascension to a heaven that looks like the saloon bar of a pub, where there is no closing time and the pumps never go dry.  I was also hoping for tales of this ripped Jesus engaging in barroom brawls with Satan, every time he tried to sneak in, despite having been barred an eternity ago.  But I guess that some people's imaginations have a limit...

Doctor on the Slide

We're on the final leg of Rewind TV's repeat run of London Weekend's 'Doctor' series, derived from the Richard Gordon novels with Doctor on the Go.  (Unless they are going to show the Australian spin-off series, Doctor Down Under or the brief BBC revival Doctor at the Top, as well).  Doctor on the Go, which ran from 1975-77, was the fifth incarnation of the series, which had debuted in 1969 with Doctor in the House.  By this time, only three of the original cast of characters were left - Robin Nedwell as Dr Waring, Geoffrey Davies as Dr Stuart-Clarke and Ernest Clarke as Professor Loftus - with original star Barry Evans having left to do sex comedies after Doctor at Large, while George Layton had departed at the end of Doctor in Charge (although he continued to write for subsequent series) as had Richard O'Sullivan, who went onto TV sitcom superstardom with Man About the House.  Consequently, Doctor on the Go feels a pale shadow of previous incarnations, despite its attempt to return the series to its origins with a hospital setting and medically based gags after the eccentric digression of Doctor at Sea.  The trouble was that, by this time, they'd already used up the best medical gags in earlier series (not to mention the preceding series of films derived from the novels), so it all feels more than a little bit repetitive.  Moreover, by this time, the main characters look and feel far too old to be engaging in the kind of shenanigans which had seemed amusing when they were medical students, but now, with them as qualified and experienced doctors, just seem utterly irresponsible.  You can't help but sympathise with  Professor Loftus as he bawls them out and threatens to sack them on a weekly basis.

As a result, it is far more difficult to sympathise with either of the leads.  Indeed, by Doctor on the Go, you find yourself praying that Stuart-Clarke is going to get struck off, so incompetent and dangerous to patients he has become.  He was bad enough in Doctor at Sea - lazy, crooked and disloyal - but by Doctor on the Go he is insufferable.  Watching seventies sitcoms is, more often than not, a disconcerting experience, so different were the attitudes and humour displayed in them, compared to today, a sobering reminder of how radically things can change over a relatively short period of time.  Sexism, racism and bigotry of all kinds are treated as the norm, with all manner of misogynistic and racist terms happily bandied about without consequence.  But even as the seventies progressed, things began to change and Doctor on the Go, even in 1975 seemed somewhat old-fashioned in its humour - by 1977 it seemed positively prehistoric.   Which is something that reverberates down the decades when you see it again now - whereas the earlier series, despite their problematic, by modern standards, aspects, are actually still amusing and entertaining to watch - Doctor on the Go just seems tired, a cynical attempt to wring some more mileage out of the format.  Doctor in Charge, which showed from 1972-73, probably represented the series at its peak, reflected in its ratings at the time, despite its relatively crude (by modern standards) production values, still retains a degree of freshness and manic energy, both of which Doctor on the Go lacks.  Even Stuart-Clark isn't quite insufferable, despite his incompetence.  Maybe I'm biased because Doctor in Charge is the first of the 'Doctor' series I have a clear memory of watching, but I can't help but feel that it was all downhill for the format after that.

When Executions Go Wrong

My money is still on it being some kind of criminal fuel scam, possibly involving siphoning red diesel from farm vehicles then selling it back at sky high prices.  Certainly the petrol in those vans seems to indicate something to do with under the counter fuel sales, but the authorities - probably to cover up their own incompetence - still seem determined to try and pin the whole Fairford debacle on Iran and somehow 'prove' that it was terror-related.  So, now they've arrested some Anglo-Iranian guy in London on terror-related charges and are trying to link him to the guys they've already had to bail because of a lack of evidence of them being terrorists. Still, the British police have always been good at fitting people up for crimes - whether they actually committed them or not, so I've no doubt that they'll eventually come up with some kind of dodgy 'evidence' that they foiled a major terror attack.  But enough of the nonsense going on here in the UK, what about the latest outrage in the US?  Two attempts at lethal injections and still they can't manage to kill a death row prisoner.  This debacle just goes to underline the barbarity of capital punishment - the fact that someone has been found guilty of a heinous killing doesn't justify killing, (or trying to kill), them in cruel and agonising ways, in front of an invited audience.  But what else do we expect from our blood-thirsty, violence-obsessed transatlantic cousins?  Frankly, I'm only surprised that their cable TV networks haven't invoked some kind of constitutional amendment in order to get their cameras in there and broadcast executions live - this one could have been featured in 'When Executions Go Wrong'.

Now, I know that we shouldn't, in any way, make light of something as inhuman and unpleasant as a botched execution, particularly when, instead of killing the condemned, it leaves them in a critical condition in hospital, but, I couldn't help but think that they were bloody lucky this wasn't a B-movie.  Because usually in such films, when someone survives an execution, they are usually revived as a blood-thirsty zombie.  At least the woman they were trying to execute didn't suddenly revive, tear off her restraints, leap up from the trolley she had been strapped to and start tearing out the throats of guards and officials with her teeth, before attacking the ghouls in the audience.  These zombies are always impervious to bullets, so there would just have been no stopping her - she could have gone on an orgy of revenge killings.  But at least it was only a lethal injection she survived - if they'd been trying to fry her in the electric chair and she survived, then she would have been electrically supercharged and been able to zap people with bolts of electricity from her hands - like an ICE agent wearing those gloves - as she burst out of the chair, glowing and crackling.  As for the gas chamber, well, she would probably just have sucked up all the gas, giving herself super powers in the process, then blown it out into the faces of everyone nearby as she broke out of the chamber, fatally gassing them.  So, I'd say that they all had a lucky escape - the prison authorities are probably only facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit, rather than a rampaging zombie hell-bent on revenge.  But, as I said, we really shouldn't be making light of any of this dreadful business.  You should be ashamed of yourselves...

After Hours: Drugs, Sex and Violence on the Buses

We take another journey After Hours to discover a lost PG Wodehouse classic: ‘Steady On, Jeeves’. Can Jeeves’ secret photography studio in the pantry save the day for Bertie? Will the proceeds from the Drones Club nude calendar raise the funds to pay off Aunt Dahlia’s gambling debts? ‘Consumer Eye’ looks into a dodgy sexual deviant dating app, while The-Man-in-the-Pub tries to sell his re-imagining of classic British sitcom ‘On The Buses’. Is the world ready for his vision of drug dealing bus crews and drive by shootings by double-decker bus? Plus, just why was a kebab shop burned to the ground by soldiers in hazmat suits? One man recalls how one bad takeaway terrorised an entire town. Across the pond – is ICE sourcing its equipment from providers of ‘adult’ toys? Hear top reporter’s hard-hitting in-depth investigation. Finally, join Harry and Stan as they dig up some more graveyard relics and try to restore them in ‘Dead and Buried’.

Written and Produced by Doc Sleaze

After Hours was created using FreeTTS, ChatGPT Reader and Google AI Studio. Sound effects by Freesound Community via Pixababy.com. Music: ‘Midnight Charleston’ versions 1 & 2 by Cosmiczebra via Suno.ai. Opening theme ‘Twilight Static’ and closing theme ‘Twilight Sunder’ by Doc Sleaze via Freemusic.ai.

As promised, Episode Eight incorporates some of the material bumped from the previous episode - the two parts of 'Steady On, Jeeves', to be precise.  The 'Man-in-the-Pub' segment I pulled from Episode Seven still doesn't get a look in as, once more, I felt that it just didn't fit with the rest of the material, so I came up with an alternative.  I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with that loose segment, but I'll fit it in somewhere, some when.   This episode continues the trend of sourcing some of its material from outside of the pages of The Sleaze, with 'Dead and Buried' being entirely original and 'Steady On, Jeeves' and the 'Takeaway of Terror' being derived from posts here on Sleaze Diary.  I'm still not sure whether or not I actually like the completed episode - while, individually, the segments are quite strong, I'm still not convinced that they hold together as a whole.  Plus, the title was a compromise and I'm still lukewarm about the artwork.  But both were the best that I could come up with.  Still, I am happy to say that, for the first time since the very first episode, it runs under my target of thirty minutes!

Premature Publication

Once more, the media trumpet a dastardly foreign terror plot on British soil, only for the whole story to rapidly start unravelling.  This time around, the press were all slavering over the idea that the guys arrested near RAF Fairford might be Iranians Hell-bent on attacking vital defence assets.  After all, Fairford had been used by the USAF to launch bombing missions against Iran, so that aspect of the story seemed to be a shoe-in.  Except, except, it turns out that the suspects are all British nationals from London.  Just to add insult to injury, they've now all been released on bail.  Which tends to indicate that they most probably aren't dangerous terrorists.  Indeed, bearing in mind that the three vehicles they were using have been subject to 'extensive examination with the support of military assets and forensic experts', yet there has been no announcement of huge caches of explosives being found in them, it seems, right now, that the only thing that they are guilty of is driving white vans at night in the back of beyond.   It's probably going to turn out that they were driving around looking for a venue for an illegal rave.  Even the reasons behind their arrest seem confused.  On the one hand, we have some local biddy saying that she encountered these vans blocking the road and her driveway as she drove home and the five guys ran off when they saw her headlights, so she dialled '999', (having tried the MoD police first - they couldn't be bothered to answer, which is pretty much par for the course for them).  So, we have her crowing to anyone who will listen that it was her call that foiled a major terror attack, yet, on the other hand, we have the Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, saying that it wasn't that simple and that there were other, unspecified, factors involved.  Then we have police sources telling us that the arrests weren't 'intelligence lead'.

Not to forget the 'Trump Factor', as we had the fat fuck deciding to 'comment' on the arrests, rambling on about how 'they' had been 'watching these guys' for time and 'now we've got them'.  Except, fat boy, you didn't gey them, we did.  Not that we know what exactly it is that we've 'got' them for.  While, taken at face value, Trump's burblings would seem to bolster the idea that the arrests were part of some large scale international counter-terror operation, foiling a major attack, I think that we can safely dismiss anything that he says.  He's clearly senile and spends much of his time fantasising - just look at his claims about being pulled from the rubble by firemen at 'Ground Zero' on 9/11.  Utter bollocks - he was in New York at the time, but nowhere near the Twin Towers.  We know this because he was actually phoning in to a local radio station bragging about how, with the World Trade Centre destroyed, he now owned the third tallest building in the city.  In fact, I'm surprised that he hasn't claimed that it was actually him, personally, who took down the five guys at Fairford - launching himself at them and bringing all five down with a flying football tackle.  But, getting back to the original point, this whole business just underlines (yet again) the perils of the media going off half-cocked with stories which quickly fall apart once some actual facts start to emerge.  They got so over-excited at the prospect of being able to indulge in a bit of xenophobic, Islamophobic panic-mongering, that they suffered the journalistic equivalent of 'premature ejaculation'.  Equally disappointed are the likes of Nigel Farage, desperate to distract from all that stuff about his finances, (which just won't go away), who thought that they could use this 'foreign terror plot' to whip up some more anti-immigrant hatred.  As ever, the moral here is that you really need to keep your powder dry until you are in possession of some actual facts.

Ginger Whinger

I'm genuinely distressed by the hate and bad vibes being directed at Ed Sheeran, just because he allowed his support act to be kicked off of his tour for expressing pro-Palestinian views.  The poor guy feels that everyone, including friends and family, have abandoned him - he's lost all of his support acts now and ticket sales for his concerts are falling.  Look, it is outrageous that people have turned on him over this issue - the fact is that you should already have hated him because he is patently shit.  I mean, everything about him is crap, his 'look', his attitudes, his music: it all epitomises the utter blandness and mediocrity that nowadays represents artistic endeavour.    Really, he and his music are completely and utterly bland - meaningless and instantly forgettable.  The fact that he has turned out to be a complete cipher with no apparent convictions, let alone loyalty, should come as no surprise.  Yet, the ginger whinger still expects us to feel sympathy for him and seems to think that a few tearful words about the situation in Gaza - which still manage to avoid establishing any actual moral position - are all that are needed for forgiveness.  But that seems to be par for the course these days where what pass for 'celebrities' are concerned: don't take a moral stance on anything, for fear that it might be the 'wrong' one.

Now, I know that there are plenty of big name celebrities who do take public positions on all manner of  issues, but these are generally those who are so big that they are going to get contracts and keep working regardless, (Hell, even Mel Gibson, whose drunken rantings revealed him as some kind of racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist religious extremist, still gets work in Hollywood).  I can also respect those who, like the late Dolly Parton, preferred to avoid overt political statements in order not to alienate sections of her audience who might disagree - but, like her, they often express a clear moral position through their charitable work and personally financed platforms.  What concerns me is that lower level of 'celebrity'.  Not just pub singers like Ed Sheeran who have inexplicably escaped onto the world stage, but those non-celebrity 'celebrities' who have sprung up, like fungi, thanks to the existence of the web - influencers.  You'd think that, as 'influencers', they might actually be interested in trying to influence opinion toward decent causes and values, in reality, of course, they are only really interested in influencing their followers to enrich them by clicking on their sponsored videos of them making cocks of themselves.  It scares me that these soulless non-entities are what pass for mass entertainment these days.  Sure, I'm well aware that ninety per cent, or so, of entertainment and entertainers in the pre-internet age were also shit - but generally, there was at least some quality bar they had to reach in order to get exposure on radio and TV networks.  Ed Sheeran is living proof that such standards no longer exist.

Trader Horn (1973)

As I've noted many times before, sometimes it turns out to be a mistake to revisit some film or TV show that you have fond childhood memories of - more often than not, you find that from an adult perspective, they are actually pretty ropey.  But sometimes, you remember something as actually being pretty crappy and when you finally catch up with it again, decades later, as an adult, it turns out that your first impressions were actually right.  It's a surprisingly rewarding sensation to find that your childhood critical faculties weren't always lacking.  So it turned out to be with Trader Horn (1973), a film I have vague memories of having seen on TV as a kid and not being terribly impressed.  It was one of those films which subsequently seemed to have vanished, with no video or DVD releases, no further showings on UK terrestrial TV that I can recall and which has proven impossible to find on any streaming service.  Until now, that is, when it turned up on a Roku app which specialises in such material.  The version they have is a fairly poor quality off air recording from a US cable channel screening, but, right now, it's all that's available.  Trader Horn is a fascinating film for all the wrong reasons.  It was originally conceived by MGM as a big budget adventure film, a counter point to the more cynical and realist movies that were dominating the box office in the seventies.  Star Rod Taylor was very enthusiastic about the concept, hoping that with the end of the Vietnam war, a new cinematic era could be ushered in with such productions.  Ostensibly a remake of the 1931 film of the same title, itself based upon the eponymous book which purported to chronicle the supposedly true real life adventures of African explorer and guide 'Trader' Horn, the 1973 takes a detour into H. Rider Haggard and African Queen territory, with lost platinum mines and a World War One background.  It was clearly intended to evoke memories of classic African adventures like King Solomon's Mines and even Edgar rice Burroughs' Tarzan.

With a decent budget and production values, Trader Horn might well have been a success and have kick started the big budget action/adventure genre, something that would have to wait a few years more and the arrival of Star Wars.  But, at some point, MGM got cold feet - the budget was slashed and the scope of the film drastically scaled back.  Instead of location shooting in Africa, most of the footage ended up being shot on the MGM backlot and other nearby Californian locations.  All of the exotic African 'flavour' was provided by stock footage taken from earlier colour MGM African escapades, most notably King Solomon's Mines (1950) and Mogambo (1953).  Which meant that the costumes and hairstyles of the main characters had to be matched to those worn by the leads in those films in order for long shots from them to be incorporated with the new footage.  (There's a scene where female lead Ann Heywood gets her hair tangled in some bramble-like bushes which exists purely as an excuse for her character's hair to be cut shorter, to match long shots of Deborah Kerr in King Solomon's Mines).  The overall result is, unsurprisingly, somewhat underwhelming, with the pace, plot and action sequences of the new footage effectively being dictated by the availability of suitable stock footage.  Consequently, the pace is languid and the style flat and TV movie-like.  It doesn't help that many of the sets and locations are overly familiar from previous MGM films and TV series, (many would continue to be used for years to come - the main house set, for instance, later provided the interior of Mr Roarke's house in Fantasy Island).  MGM's downgrading of the project is even evident in the choice of director: Rexa Badiyi, a prolific TV director who, most importantly, had also created many notable TV opening title montage sequences, (most famously that for Hawaii Five-O), making him the ideal choice to piece together from variously sourced footage this montage of a film.  Not a commercial success, it is hardly surprising that MGM seemingly did its best to bury the film following its initial release.  I actually have a suspicion, bearing in mind my age when I first saw it on TV, that it might not even have had a UK cinematic release, instead going direct to TV.  The cast try valiantly to make something of the movie, but they can never lift it above the level of a TV movie.  The aspect to be appreciated, however, is the skill with which the stock footage is integrated with the new, which is far above average in terms of cut-and-paste filmmaking.

(Trader Horn shouldn't, of course, be confused with Trader Hornee (1970), a porn movie that came out three years earlier and was actually a parody of the original 1931 Trader Horn).