tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22603874317221055242024-03-18T17:30:25.717+00:00NUTS4R2A symphony of books, movies, TV and music.NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.comBlogger2521125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-79408970563293488672024-03-18T17:26:00.000+00:002024-03-18T17:26:33.683+00:00 Caveat Emptor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU2lMCX7x4HaIafsFOjmff3oZgQgS1rh-btbSdzEphMvP_eV3-9ZlVkZ9FSmsbAxpkXUVmWUiFpaTWjTQOeTthoP8A9zO1p8iJKnsca7To1jPmiaA9XPEptTi8_f2fxYSHlNpkw7ZQu_lJ00__TXVlTYcpLfYSH5pxBy29729uyDC_9UGqHk3s-KsvQp2R/s1329/caveatemptormontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1329" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU2lMCX7x4HaIafsFOjmff3oZgQgS1rh-btbSdzEphMvP_eV3-9ZlVkZ9FSmsbAxpkXUVmWUiFpaTWjTQOeTthoP8A9zO1p8iJKnsca7To1jPmiaA9XPEptTi8_f2fxYSHlNpkw7ZQu_lJ00__TXVlTYcpLfYSH5pxBy29729uyDC_9UGqHk3s-KsvQp2R/w400-h164/caveatemptormontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #38761d;">At Midnight I’ll <br />Ditch Your Pre-Order</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Caveat Emptor - <br />The Long Road <br />To Coffin Joe</span></span></b></span><br /><br />Caveat emptor is right. <br /><br />Today’s article is not a review, alas. Make no mistake, it’s both a warning to physical media buyers and collectors everywhere but it also, I think, asks an important question about one of the underlying tent pegs of obtaining the latest releases in a Blu Ray marketplace, which seems to be in the midst of a ‘last chance’ inspired golden age of rarely seen releases being thrust into the UK and US marketplace. This is something of an extended rant, primarily about three specific entities involved in an incident which is the basis of this entry of NUTS4R2. Let’s call them <b><i>The Good, The Bad and The Ugly... </i></b>but I will also name them, right now! <br /><br />So we have <b><i>The Ugly,</i></b> being <b>Arrow Films, </b>who have made some mistakes over the years but always (for the most part) try to fix them. Then there’s <b><i>The Bad, </i></b>aka the usually very helpful <b>amazon.co.uk, </b>who are usually really good at customer service and a very approachable organisation. I spend a lot of money with them every year... especially at Christmas time and on many birthdays. And then there’s <b><i>The Good, </i></b>the hero of the hour if you like, aka <b>diabolikdvd.com...</b> who you will also hear more of a little later. <br /><br />Okay... so I said this would be a long one but, like a Tarkovsky or Bergman movie, the long lead in always makes for a more powerful ending, right? I hope. Anyway, so what I’m going to do is start with two flashbacks, to give a demonstration to the way two of these companies have behaved in the past. <br /><br />So, by no means the main villains of this piece but this is relevant I think, lets go back to <b><i>Fopp Records, </i></b>some years ago now. I can’t remember exactly when this was but it must have been a year or two before the pandemic. The great <b>Arrow Films...</b> and they are great, despite the constant technical problems they are apparently plagued with and the ‘money for old rope’ nature of some of their re-releases... announced for pre-order a Blu Ray box of Mario Bava films. Now, it’s not got as many films in it as the two US DVD Bava boxes that <b>Anchor Bay</b> released back in the day but, if there’s a director whose films you want to upgrade to Blu Ray then, surely, Bava must fit the bill with his beautiful shot compositions and use of bright colours. So I went to <b>Fopp Records</b> near Covent Garden, put a cash deposit down and pre-ordered the box set. Because a pre-order means you buy a copy in advance so as not to miss out if it sells out right? Or so I have always thought (otherwise what’s the point of them?). So I went to <b>Fopp</b> on the day the set was due to be released only to find that, the sets had sold out before the physical stores could get the copies they ordered. I wasn’t best pleased and, while <b>Arrow</b> themselves had no copies left either, I immediately got on my phone and ordered what turned out to be one of the very last copies <b>Amazon.co.uk </b>had in stock. And, success, it arrived. Job done, by the skin of my teeth. Although I wasn’t very impressed that <b>Fopp</b> (and I’m sure many other retail outlets) had been left in the cold with a queue of disappointed customers who had also pre-ordered the set from them. <br /><br />Okay, so my takeaway was... maybe if I wanted something this badly, I should just pre-order direct from <b>Arrow</b> and so, this is what I was doing for a time. And it was great because they give reward points every time you shop so I managed to get a few free films off of them too. All was good until the incident that leads me into...<br /><br /><i>Flashback number two. Sometime during the pandemic lock down, UK location undisclosed... <br /></i><br />One day the postman brought me a completely flat-packed, sealed cardboard box... well it wasn’t a box because it was still flat, despite having the cardboard strip to unwrap it still intact. I opened it and, unsurprisingly given the appearance of said object, there was absolutely nothing inside. I had a few things on order so I emailed a few companies who I thought it could be before, eventually, finding the phone number of the company on the address label via the internet and giving them a call (after a couple of days of attempts they finally answered). I found myself talking to the manager of a packaging and fulfilment centre who told me the package would have come from <b>Arrow</b> films. Okay, so that narrowed it down to one thing at the time, the pre-order of their <b>Yokai Monsters</b> boxed edition (you can find my reviews of the four films <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2022/10/100-monsters.html" target="_blank">here,</a> <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2022/10/spook-warfare.html" target="_blank">here, </a><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2022/11/along-with-ghosts.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-great-yokai-war.html" target="_blank">here</a>) which I desperately wanted to see as, to the best of my knowledge, they’d not been released in this country before. <br /><br />So I got onto <b>Arrow</b> who... really did not do well at sorting this out. They said it was nothing to do with them (possibly true given the box was sealed) and eventually suggested I fill a form out at the post office if the postman had stolen an item. Again, it was a sealed, flat piece of card... so if anything was stolen, it would have been by one of the workers at the distribution centre they were using, surely? It took me to ‘offer’ to write about the whole experience on my blog for <b>Arrow</b> to finally replace (I use the term replace fairly loosely) the <b>Yokai Monsters </b>boxed set. So hoorah but, lesson learned. I never, to my knowledge, ordered anything directly from <b>Arrow</b> films again... despite their rewards points being very enticing. <br /><br />Okay... bang up to date and now onto the main story. Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me and made it through this far...<br /><br />Sometime in the third quarter of last year, Arrow announced pre-orders for a complete <b>Coffin Joe </b>Blu Ray set entitled, <b>Inside The Mind Of Coffin Joe.</b> Essentially a more complete and somehow even more beautiful package than the<b> Platform Entertainment</b> DVD box set a decade or so before. So, having learned from my mistaken trust with both <b>Fopp</b> and <b>Arrow, </b>I mistakenly pre-ordered it from <b>Amazon.co.uk </b>(the real villains of this piece) on 29th September 2023, with an expected delivery date of 4th December 2023. And that was that... or so I thought. <br /><br />The first sign that there would be any trouble was when somebody, it might well have been Arrow themselves, posted on <b>Twitter</b> that one of the films on the third disc in the set was faulty in that the English subtitles cut out after half an hour. Now I’ve had Blu Rays from <b>Arrow</b> before with similar kinds of errors where either something didn’t work or it was the wrong cut or an advertised extra was accidentally left off. And, sure, it’s sloppy quality control but, to their credit, they always followed it up with a general repressing and disc replacement scheme for all those affected by this. Which, to be fair, is what they did this time around. I just figured it would eventually filter through to <b>Amazon</b> and they’d delay the, already significantly delayed delivery date while they waited for a replacement disc. <br /><br />However, and here’s where things take an almost sinister twist... a few days later, maybe a week, Amazon emailed me to inform me the order had been cancelled completely. No reason was given. Which is crazy right? Like I said earlier, a <b><i>PRE</i></b>-order is what you do to guarantee a copy because you think the discs might sell out. It’s an agreement between you and a company that the product will make its way to you. So I did what I usually do... I went on to Amazon to find it in my order history so I could contact them. Here’s the thing though... and I’ve never heard of Amazon doing this before... they didn’t just cancel my order... they erased it. It was actually deleted from my order history completely. I’d never heard of this happening, even when I’ve had the occasional order cancelled. They were just making it as hard as they could for me and the gazillions of other people who had ordered the <b>Coffin Joe</b> box set from them to complain about it. <br /><br />I didn’t let that deter me... too many important films were on the line... I found a way to eventually bypass it (after all, I still had the order number in my original email) and got them on the phone. I explained to the guy why this had happened and he told me to wait while he found out. His answer was... <i>the order’s been cancelled.</i> <i> </i></p><p><i>Not what I asked,</i> I explained, I wanted to know why it’s been cancelled when a pre-order is supposed to be a guarantee, as far as I knew, that the order would eventually be here. I didn’t care how long I had to wait for the product, I didn’t want my order cancelled. There was another long wait while he again talked to his line manager and when he eventually returned it was with the news that... um... my order had been cancelled. What the heck? Again I explained to him that I already knew this and so I enlightened him once more as to what the issue was with <b>Arrow</b> and how I’m sure there would be a replacement disc coming at some point. So he put me on hold again for a while more and talked to his line manager once more and, you know what he said? He said my order had been cancelled. <i>Yup, I said. I am aware. It’s not just been cancelled it’s been erased. </i>Did I need to get a Delorean, go back in time and take actions to stop my order being erased from history? I asked to speak to his manager. <i>Oh certainly sir, </i>was the reply. He transferred the call only for his manager at <b>Amazon</b> to deliberately hang up without saying a word to me, ending both the call and any trust I’d built up with <b>Amazon</b> over the past few decades. <br /><br />Okay...meanwhile, I’d done some asking around. At a film fair I went to, one supplier hadn’t even received his shipment of <b>Coffin Joe </b>boxes. Another had received his own personal copy but he was still awaiting a replacement disc for their last release which was wrongly pressed, let alone getting a replacement disc for this. And, when I was buying some stuff from <b>Fopp</b> (just so I can write about cool stuff for my lovely readers) I casually asked about the <b>Coffin Joe</b> box to be met with a tirade of... well let’s not say swearing, this is a family blog, but met with a tirade of negative energy against Arrow who have ‘pulled this stuff’ one too many times. Apparently there are a lot more instances of this happening with this company than I realised (and again, to their credit, <b>Arrow</b> always did something about this). It’s fair to say though that the general perception of the company from the people who shift their product for them is not particularly glowing, it turns out. <br /><br />Okay... enter the hero of the hour... <b><a href="https://twitter.com/diabolikdvd?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank">@Diabolikdvd.</a></b> A brief exchange on the Twitternet with this US based speciality store convinced me to get one of the faulty copies as soon as I could because it was selling out fast and wouldn’t be reissued (it <b><i>has</i></b> been reissued and gone on for resale on both <b>Arrow</b> and <b>Amazon, </b>it turns out, but that information was emphatically not what was being said at the time so that’s not <b>Diabolik’s</b> fault). So, having at least being refunded the money from <b>Amazon</b> (I’d purchased those with vouchers so redirected those to grabbing the third volume of <b>Shout Factory’s</b> <b>Shaw Bros</b> boxed sets), I ordered one from <b>Diabolik</b> in the US (for a heck of a lot more money than the UK version, what with all the postage... again, not the fault of the supplier) and it arrived in around a week. Good service and I shall consider ordering from them more than I do already when it comes to new releases, I think.<br /><br />I won’t dwell on the various claims from <b>FedEx<span style="color: red;"><i>*</i></span></b> trying to get taxes for the shipment both before and after they delivered it, when <b>Diabolik</b> had made clear that it was all pre-paid up front as part of the price... I looked on the internet and it seems <b>FedEx</b> have been doing this to a lot to people lately, incorrectly, for whatever reason. So I then put in a claim to Arrow who... after literally four emails worth of toing and froing about their disc replacement scheme and a further follow up last week (by the time you read this blog post) when I queried why some people had received them but I still hadn’t... finally sent me a replacement disc yesterday (again, just under a week before this blog post is published). I haven’t checked this yet... I’m almost afraid to. The replacement disc has the UK certification on it over the same disc artwork as the US version I got but I’m assured by all and sundry that this is only a cosmetic difference and that the content is exactly the same. <br /><br />So there you are, after six months of stress about this title, I finally have the whole thing. But, I’m understandably, I think, not very happy with <b>Amazon</b> at all about all of this trouble. And so, I’ll leave the reader with the same question I pitched earlier, because I think this is the long term take away from all this... apart from not trusting <b>Amazon</b> again. And it’s this... <br /><br />Is a pre-order of a physical item supposed to be a way of guaranteeing you get a copy before they sell out? And, if not, then what the heck is the point of having a pre-ordering system anyway, if it doesn’t benefit the customer? Food for thought. <br /><br />Meanwhile... if you have a multizone Blu Ray player then <a href="https://diabolikdvd.com/" target="_blank">https://diabolikdvd.com/</a> is worth investigating, for sure.</p><p><span style="color: red;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <b>*</b>A few days after writing this, FedEx sent me another letter threatening legal action, for the sake of £22.24 they thought I owed them. I have now, finally, been able to contact FedEx and settled that matter once and for all. </span></i></span><br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-3206188743011989562024-03-17T08:16:00.000+00:002024-03-17T08:16:14.008+00:00Immaculate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEpQqeFJcEAb9bIJ7RwGKOGamNKhO7exDHGnTPLgUx7a2_teF4ehK_ZOWzdRsAXUEjVKYV_yWHitI9P1UmGrHYVF2qZhYajCCBqsOj0BgqWOp0yp3lks_4xROg5wMYC320DOK8XoLsBO9rbYjX_VqcNq-zndf3QNjULyiN_bgjY8-qNAI9JEJ6_nHFzl9S/s1329/immaculatemontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="556" data-original-width="1329" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEpQqeFJcEAb9bIJ7RwGKOGamNKhO7exDHGnTPLgUx7a2_teF4ehK_ZOWzdRsAXUEjVKYV_yWHitI9P1UmGrHYVF2qZhYajCCBqsOj0BgqWOp0yp3lks_4xROg5wMYC320DOK8XoLsBO9rbYjX_VqcNq-zndf3QNjULyiN_bgjY8-qNAI9JEJ6_nHFzl9S/w400-h168/immaculatemontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Hot Cross Nuns</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Immaculate</span><br />Directed by Michael Mohan <br />Italy/USA <br />2024 Black Bear<br />UK Cinema Print</span></i></b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #741b47;"><b>Warning: </b>Some slight spoilers as this is a celebration of the film as much as it is a review.</span><br /><br />Wow... just absolutely wow. <b>Immaculate</b> is an amazing film which, I suspect will get enthusiastic reviews from horror fans of a certain age and bad reviews from anyone else. I absolutely loved it and hats off to Sydney Sweeney, not just for her continually impressive acting talent but for her to get this thing produced and finally accepted after it stalled some years ago.<br /><br />Okay, so this one is a blisteringly wild and deeply satisfying ride of a motion picture. The basic plot is, after dying in a <b>Damien Omen 2</b> inspired, accidental swim under some ice when she was a kid, Sister Cecilia, played by Sydney Sweeney, is revived after almost ten minutes and tries to find out what the heck God has saved her life for. She joins a monastery in the US but is then rescued... when that goes under due to a lack of attendance... by a convent in Italy. We already know, though, that things are really bad there from the pre-credits scene, when four sinister nuns break the leg of another nun and then bury her alive because she was trying to escape. <br /><br />Then, as Cecilia is getting used to the spooky place, she undergoes a trauma, which she and the audience perceive as a nightmare/dream sequence, only to awaken pregnant. Since she is still a virgin, carrying a seemingly immaculate conception, the various nuns worship her for the miracle she is hosting but, as you may guess by now... demonic things are afoot. <br /><br />That’s the basic intro and I have to say, this one impressed me so much. It totally goes where most modern horror films don’t go these days. It doesn’t quite make the nunsploitation genre... I think topless, lesbian nuns and whips would be needed to sell that one... but it has torture, violence, gore (and wet, flimsy, see through habits which leave absolutely nothing to the imagination) and it absolutely feels like a 1970s/early 1980s Italian exploitation/horror film. I mean it when I say that this tongue slicing, foot branding, face pummelling, womb cutting, umbilical cord chewing movie goes the whole hog and, if it had been released on video tape in this country in the 1980s, it would have easily made the Video Nasty list, for sure. In fact, I’m surprised that the censors let this one in the country right now, to be honest. <br /><br />And not only that, the movie really embraces that vibe right from the start. I mean, Will Bates’ cimbalom infused score with chorus and atonal colourings is absolutely brilliant (please, somebody release a CD of this). This included an astonishing moment where the music actually acts as a surrogate for the character. When somebody is getting a cross branded onto the sole of her foot, the sound has dropped out without detection and Bates’ score is already standing in, giving voice to her scream with high pitched notes! And, boy, was I surprised when a whole montage sequence of Cecilia settling into the convent needle drops Bruno Nicolai’s exquisite main theme from the giallo <b>The Red Queen Kills Seven Times</b> (one of my favourite pieces by this composer). It’s admittedly striking to the point of distraction but, heck, it’s toe tapping as hell and I was surprised to see that none of the other audience members were getting down the beat, as it were.<br /><br />And Sydney Sweeney totally leans into the atmosphere of the film completely, giving a really brave performance that is an absolute powerhouse (more so even than her brilliant turn in <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/06/reality.html" target="_blank">Reality, </a></b>reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/06/reality.html" target="_blank">here</a>). There’s something primal about the way she pulls this one off and the last five to ten minutes of the film are totally owned by her. Talk about pulling out the stops. <br /></p><p>The ending was a satisfying moment, too. This doesn’t do the Hollywood thing where we cut to an epilogue releasing the tension of all that’s come before and giving a nudge towards closure. No, this ending reminded me specifically of a late 1960s/early 1970s Hammer horror movie like <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2012/02/quatermass-and-pit.html" target="_blank">Quatermass And The Pit</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2012/02/quatermass-and-pit.html" target="_blank">here</a>). At the time, those films would usually end with whatever surviving protagonist(s) just wallowing silently in the aftermath of the sheer grimness of what they’ve just survived, their minds adjusting slowly to what they’ve fought through. This one does exactly that and... yeah... the film is intense and grim but, if you are not too distracted by the harsh suspense of certain scenes, there’s also a thread of somewhat blasphemous humour shot through it as well.<br /><br />And, honestly, I have nothing but good things to say about <b>Immaculate</b> and it looks truly beautiful (just as an Italian horror film from that period would). I hope that a boutique Blu Ray label such as <b><i>Severin</i></b> or <i><b>Vinegar Syndrome</b> </i>or <b><i>Arrow</i></b> pick this one up for release because it certainly wouldn’t look out of place with certain parts of their catalogues and I know they could do some amazing extras with the correct kind of context. Talking of which, I absolutely cannot wait to get this one on Blu Ray so I can watch it again. Unfortunately, limited time and a slew of ‘to be seen’ cinema releases for the next month or so means I won’t be able to experience this one at the cinema again but, back in the day, I would have been going back to this one a couple of times, I can tell you. So there you go, if you are into 70s/80s Italian horror movies then... run, don’t walk, to your nearest cinema and check this one out. Such a treat. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-39245430671373734382024-03-12T17:49:00.001+00:002024-03-12T20:02:09.646+00:00The Brides Of Dracula<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO5wMl5sk5GoeDyRnzv22Ivj46bQXXinUpOBxwlkLNRvN4FzAG3_NcRhE13RZ5UomdWuWvJ3zv4lDfgXd0rn7eaReEvRsR3OVR0yLe2cT7swsLJUneqoSjON2D1xPXJL4DBwp5ZPdsw5tWWm1eLmd5jRhHVh5tX-vBqQWKIegcQgqlotLP33mwYvqgcZ-8/s1329/bridesofdraculamontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="631" data-original-width="1329" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO5wMl5sk5GoeDyRnzv22Ivj46bQXXinUpOBxwlkLNRvN4FzAG3_NcRhE13RZ5UomdWuWvJ3zv4lDfgXd0rn7eaReEvRsR3OVR0yLe2cT7swsLJUneqoSjON2D1xPXJL4DBwp5ZPdsw5tWWm1eLmd5jRhHVh5tX-vBqQWKIegcQgqlotLP33mwYvqgcZ-8/w400-h190/bridesofdraculamontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Meinster Mash</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Brides Of Dracula</span><br />UK 1960 Directed by Terence Fisher<br />Hammer Films Blu Ray Zone B</span></i></b></span><br /><br />I remember that when I first saw <b>The Brides Of Dracula</b> many decades after I’d seen the other films in Hammer’s <b>Dracula</b> sequence, most of which I saw in my pre-teen years. I remember being hugely disappointed with this one and had a similar reaction in subsequent revisits. <br /><br />My initial disappointment was that neither Dracula nor, it could be argued, the <i>Brides of Dracula </i>actually feature in the movie... unless you want to argue that various female vampires created by the film’s vampire villain Baron Meinster, could be given this title as a kind of extended metaphor for the brief narrative introduction to the movie, where the audience are told that, after Dracula’s death, his cult of vampirism lives on. Christopher Lee did not want to reprise his successful role two years after his initial appearance in <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2013/10/dracula-horror-of-dracula.html" target="_blank">Dracula</a></b> (aka <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2013/10/dracula-horror-of-dracula.html" target="_blank">Horror Of Dracula,</a></b> reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2013/10/dracula-horror-of-dracula.html" target="_blank">here</a>), for fear of being typecast in the role. Which he kind of was, of course... and he made a fair few <b>Dracula</b> movies after this one (at least one of them wasn’t even for Hammer). <br /><br />Of course we have Peter Cushing returning here in the role of Van Helsing and, in one of a few factors which completely shoots the continuity of the series where he’s concerned, we are told that we are in the last years of the 19th Century. Cushing, of course, is always watchable and I’d maintain he’s one of the few reasons why<b> The Brides Of Dracula</b> is worth a watch. It has to be said, I’m not the biggest fan of this entry into the series but I do like the director and I can appreciate some of the things he, along with his set designer, brings to the production. I do find myself quite at odds with Fisher’s biographer Tony Dalton, it has to be said, in that he says in his recent book about the director, reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2021/11/terence-fisher-master-of-gothic-cinema.html" target="_blank">here,</a> that he thinks <b>The Brides Of Dracula </b>is one of the best films in the series. Then again, he also doesn’t have much of a good word to say about my favourite movie in the sequence, <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2020/03/dracula-ad-1972.html" target="_blank">Dracula Ad 1972</a></b> (reviewed by me <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2020/03/dracula-ad-1972.html" target="_blank">here</a>), so there you go. <br /><br />After the opening narration we are treated to a bumpy coach ride (Michael Ripper is a rough coach driver, I can tell you) and we are introduced to the main female protagonist Marianne (played by Yvonne Monlaur), who is on her way to teach at a private school in Transylvania. Unable to get to the school due to an incident (which half involves a man who lurks around in various scenes looking threatening and mysterious before dropping out of the narrative completely, still leaving me with no idea who or why the character was) she stays the night with Baroness Meinster in Meinster Castle, releasing her son from his imprisonment, not knowing that he’s a vampire... <br /><br />Chaos ensues but she is found and helped the next morning by Cushing’s Van Helsing character, after a lengthy series of set pieces which means he doesn’t enter the film until the 30 minute mark. Which is similar to what was done in the previous <b>Dracula</b> movie, where a fair piece of narrative action leading into the story was dealt with before the entrance of the title character’s arch nemesis. Lots of shenanigans ensue as Van Helsing tries to help with the local vampire problem and save Marianne from being made... well... a Bride Of Meinster... yeah, that stupid title really makes no sense for this film. <br /><br />The story is not great, it has to be said but it’s the magnetic presence of Cushing and the interesting direction of Fisher which just about keeps it vaguely watchable. He moves the camera a fair amount to good effect and quite often uses the height of the actors to create vivid triangular patterns in the compositions, something which I’ve noticed him doing a lot before. Another trick to make the staging interesting is to use areas of the set which are lit just slightly darker than others and to shoot the actors in these patches before having them move forward into the light, to increase the impact of their lines as their faces are suddenly lit up. Indeed, there’s one scene in this film where he does it in rapid succession with the only two actors in the scene, a real double whammy as one steps ito the light and then the other does the same in the reverse shot. <br /><br />Indeed, he uses a lot of good little tricks to create interest in the dialogue heavy scenes. For instance, a shot where Peter Cushing is standing about two thirds of the way to the right of screen, talking to a local priest who is seated on the left. We can see the priest talking to him from both the left of the screen and also in reflection in a mirror behind Cushing on the direct right of the screen, as he's nicely sandwiched between two of the same talking head, so to speak.<br /><br />Another nice thing Fisher does is bring a lot of value to his sets, partially by using the old Roger Corman trick of ‘leaving the doors open’. One fantastic instance of this is in the first scene shot in a very narrow tavern. The set goes back a long way with various protuberances coming in from the sides and then with another room seen through the back alcove which is lit in a completely different colour to the first... bathed red in stark contrast to the rest of the set, highlighting the sense of depth. Very nice stuff. <br /><br />There are some real problems with the ideas about vampires though. For instance, after being bitten by one, Cushing cauterises his neck with a red hot iron and this, combined with some Holy Water, stops what is presumably a viral, chemical reaction from taking place and turning him into a vampire... somehow. It’s a nice idea but makes no sense as far as I’m concerned. Furthermore, using the shadows of the blades of a windmill to project a cross and thus stop Meinster escaping is a wonderfully creative idea... except it only works if the body of the windmill would bizarrely project no shadow, which it doesn’t in this, somehow. There is no earthly set of circumstances in the world where the shadow of the crossing blades would be seen in isolation as they are here. <br /><br />And another big problem is the continuity between this picture and the previous one in the sequence. In <b>Dracula, </b>Van Helsing clearly states that the idea that a vampire can change one’s shape into a bat is a fallacy. In this one, however, he clearly states that a vampire can change into a bat.... which the vampires in this movie do quite frequently... at least into a dodgy looking rubber bat at any rat. <br /><br />I’m curious as to why Fisher wasn’t able to tap James Bernard for repeat scoring duties on this one. Instead, the score is provided by Malcolm Williamson. Good musical continuity, at least, is kept between the two films in that, although Williamson’ doesn’t use Bernard’s famous <b>Dracula</b> theme, the orchestration on this is very similar to the score from the first one and provides a modicum of auditory glue between the two films. So that’s okay at least but, despite some nicely creative shots, I wouldn’t recommend <b>The Brides Of Dracula</b> to many people, it has to be said. I’m not saying it’s the worst <b>Dracula</b> picture that the studio put out but, it’s very far from the best, it seems to me. Still, I look forward to revisiting the next film in the series fairly soon. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-77766640832468599482024-03-11T17:40:00.000+00:002024-03-11T17:40:00.135+00:00The Ice Cream Blonde<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB-zu6ruM1FETMjD3W9-9eMzxOWpEzTk7eMD-YRlp8rrKtaD4y9QEaRUryfoS5HfshyuOIPMecW5tHpi7Imzc4rrbvoSbAKBKGZ0DPbDTycoADieZGRQfGLtF1rA6udCRd1kJ-mcU0EA8yr4GRrUtM3Q53SJ1xesszKAjgkuB3akiCa7-6CwUqboSeUb20/s1329/icecreamblondemontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="1329" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB-zu6ruM1FETMjD3W9-9eMzxOWpEzTk7eMD-YRlp8rrKtaD4y9QEaRUryfoS5HfshyuOIPMecW5tHpi7Imzc4rrbvoSbAKBKGZ0DPbDTycoADieZGRQfGLtF1rA6udCRd1kJ-mcU0EA8yr4GRrUtM3Q53SJ1xesszKAjgkuB3akiCa7-6CwUqboSeUb20/w400-h178/icecreamblondemontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Todd’s Laughter, <br />Todd Slaughter</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Ice Cream Blonde -<br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;">The Whirlwind Life And <br />Mysterious Death of Screwball <br />Comedienne Thelma Todd</span><br />by Michelle Morgan<br />Chicago Review Press<br />ISBN: 9781613730386</span></i></b></span><br /><br />Just a short review of a wonderful book given to me by a good friend for Christmas. Subtitled <b>The Whirlwind Life And Mysterious Death Of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd, </b>Michelle Morgan’s tome <b>The Ice Cream Blond </b>paints a compelling picture of the actresses life, doing exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak, in as breezy and entertaining way as possible. <br /><br />I remember seeing Todd as a co-star in various Laurel And Hardy shorts as a kid (back when they were regularly shown on television throughout the 1970s) but I didn’t really discover her until I took notice of her as a pretty wonderful co-star opposite Groucho Marx in two of the five, absolutely brilliant films starring The Four Marx Brothers (as they were known before Zeppo left the fold) which they did while still under contract to Paramount... which as far as I’m concerned were their greatest films... more so, even, than their first couple of films for Irvin Thalberg at MGM. Those two films being their third and fourth features, <b>Monkey Business</b> and <b>Horse Feathers.</b> Thelma is pretty brilliant in these two, especially in the former film as a gangster’s moll... she certainly fills the void left by the former and, soon back again, foil Margaret Dumont in the Marx Brothers’ movies.<br /><br />I’d heard there was possibly some sinister side to her very early death over the years but, I thought the time was right to finally investigate it. This book lays it all out on the line, beginning with what is thought of to be either accidental death, suicide or, perhaps as likely when you ponder certain post mortem findings... murder. So the book starts at the point when the housekeeper finds her 29 year old dead body, filled with carbon monoxide and with blood on her face, in a car (also with blood in it) in a garage beneath her apartment, by the cafe she co-owned and ran. She then proceeds to tell her story from early life, where many things I didn’t know about the actress were revealed to me for the first time. <br /><br />Indeed, it seemed that Thelma was no stranger to trauma, having been the sole witness, when she was just four, to her unsupervised seven year old brother being accidentally mangled to death in a machine at her local creamery. It then tells of her going into tomboy mode to please her father in the absence of his son and how she won beauty contests she wasn’t really interested in going in for that much and training to become a school teacher, before accidentally being ‘discovered’ by a husband and wife who wanted her to be in their new show. </p><p>We then follow her as she goes from being one of the first pupil’s in Paramount’s acting school to being one of their most successful graduates... and how she got into films and how much of a beloved star she became while under contract to Hal Roach. I hadn’t realised that he’d set her up in a series of shorts partnered firstly with ZaSu Pitts and then, when Pitts didn’t get the money she wanted to continue after a period of time, in similar films partnered with Patsy Kelly. Indeed, these physical slapstick films were said to be as popular as the ones she made with comedy duo Laurel and Hardy at the time<b><i><span style="color: red;">*</span></i></b>... I had no idea (although, I will now seek them out now, for sure). <br /><br />Another interesting thing about her when she was just starting out is her part in Howard Hughes’ famous movie <b>Hell’s Angels,</b> which, due to the very long editing and reshoot process going on for years, eventually ended up with her role falling on the cutting room floor, alas, with co-star Jean Harlow reaping the benefits from that one. <br /><br />So yeah, lots more besides this and lots of stuff I didn’t know, including what an upbeat, super intelligent and kind hearted person she was. It also talks about her possible gangster connections... or rather connections she didn’t want in her life... as well as a year (the one in which she died) of death threats for money and various other things which were a huge worry to her, involving herself ‘locking down’ for a small period of her life. There’s not really any new fresh, compelling evidence to suggest that her death wasn’t accidental or a suicide but, given the comments by the police and various things said over the years by people who lived through this at the time since the case was closed, it seems a fairly likely possibility that she was murdered for refusing to let the mob start up a gambling racket in her well frequented and very successful cafe. Indeed, it’s strongly implied that director Roland West, who she was having a second, long term affair with and who co-owned the cafe with here, might have either been complicit in her demise or, possibly just hastily covered up for it (with some very contradictory testimonial he delivered in court). <br /><br />It’s a short book and, if it seems a little bit like a quick read, it’s as much to do with the highly entertaining and enlightening way in which Michelle Morgan has put together and presented all the relevant facts, as much as it is to do with the brevity of Thelma’s existence, to be sure. So, as I said, a short review but, if you are interested in this iconic actress (although much less well known these days, it seems to me) then I would thoroughly recommend <b>The Ice Cream Blonde - The Whirlwind Life And Mysterious Death Of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd </b>as a good starting point for both you and your movie related book shelf. A breezy tale about a bright light snuffed out far too young. Give it a go.</p><p><i style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>*</b>Indeed, they apparently made a cameo appearance in one of her shorts and were at her funeral.</span></i><br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-72763707805032302972024-03-10T08:33:00.004+00:002024-03-10T08:41:14.571+00:00Imaginary<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYUoYw5N5kEZv5RmbzYgCkd-5yrUfgARtEP2upOypPEBig8YTWiM95b7Xx13MM1iXyvkfL9dgodoqhZdKmUxYgQ9m2Jl4U4-vgCrIxR7Eds2u-YDmo6SICssVqqpLgPoL6bfYIQsNpiR7V3ZtP69bEp2W1cXo6ZcWhMkQkD4ol8BR4_Wrmm_avJ-CJYCRu/s1506/imaginarymontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="715" data-original-width="1506" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYUoYw5N5kEZv5RmbzYgCkd-5yrUfgARtEP2upOypPEBig8YTWiM95b7Xx13MM1iXyvkfL9dgodoqhZdKmUxYgQ9m2Jl4U4-vgCrIxR7Eds2u-YDmo6SICssVqqpLgPoL6bfYIQsNpiR7V3ZtP69bEp2W1cXo6ZcWhMkQkD4ol8BR4_Wrmm_avJ-CJYCRu/w400-h190/imaginarymontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Imaginary Fiend</span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Imaginary</span><br />Directed by Jeff Wadlow<br />USA <br />2024 Blumhouse<br />UK Cinema Print</span></i></b></span><br /><br />Okay, so the latest from successful horror movie company Blumhouse is <b>Imaginary</b> and, I have to say, I really quite liked this one. I’d also have to say that I don’t think it’s going to be that successful with some audiences but, hopefully I’ll be proven wrong on that. <br /><br />The film stars DeWanda Wise as Jessica, step mother to two new children (played by Taegen Burns and Pyper Braun) who, with their father, moves back to her former home where, it turns out, she had a definite ‘childhood trauma’ event... though she certainly didn’t remember just what that was all about until something laying in wait reminds her. And when her boyfriend goes away on a concert tour (he’s presumably in a band) she’s left to look after the two girls, the youngest of whom has taken an ‘imaginary friend’, who takes the form of an old Teddy bear named Chancey. <br /><br />And then things start going wrong and getting traumatic as Chancey isn’t ‘just’ an imaginary friend and, as it turns out, has his own agenda to abscond with the younger daughter, for reasons (perhaps way too obvious reasons) which come to light nearer the end of the movie.<br /><br />Okay, so let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. There are no real surprises a lot of the time but, that being said, there are a couple. A lot of the stuff is telegraphed way too soon, such as Jessica’s dad, when he visits her in hospital, talking about CB... I was just kinda waiting for an hour for everyone else in the movie to play catch up on that one. <br /><br />And another problem is that the film suffers a little bit from is the dreaded curse of most modern day horror films... sound design that lets you know things are about to get tense and scary long before you’re supposed to realise this stuff on anything other than a subconscious level. So as soon as the ambient sound changes, you are on the alert right away. Don’t get me wrong, I think you are supposed to be unsettled by this audio phenomenon... I just don’t think your brain is meant to be aware of it while you are watching. So, yeah, that element, which is the modern cinematic equivalent of an old 1970s horror movie using a heartbeat on the soundtrack, kinda lets it down a bit. However, that being said, the sound cliché also happens to absolutely work... so you may know why you are feeling unsettled in certain scenes but, dammit, knowing it doesn’t make it any less effective, for sure. <br /><br />Now I said that half the twists in the film don’t work and are telegraphed but, guess what? Yeah, that means the other half of the twists did actually work well. The director actually uses things like the bear appearing in different positions and beginning to move a little as a really nice piece of misdirection for a certain twist that is revealed when a child psychiatrist comes to visit the younger daughter. I really fell for that one hook, line and sinker so... yeah, this film sure has its moments. And I loved that the film goes full on into creating a surrealist world which the main characters get to visit... the element which I think may be too much for certain ‘hip’ young audiences who are, of course, the main target here. But I loved that the movie leaned into this surreal stuff for the end game and I found it refreshing, to be honest. <br /><br />And now, I suppose, I should address the elephant in the room because, there’s a reason I went to the cinema to see this one. And that reason was... Mario Bava. There’s a moment, right at the end of one of the trailers, which it turns out also made the final cut of the movie, that is a dead steal of a famous moment in Mario Bava’s 1977 movie <b>Schock.</b> In that film, a kid rushes towards Dario Nicolodi and, runs off the bottom of the screen only to pop back up immediately into the frame as a different, grown up person. It’s a beautiful shot using a practical piece of sleight of hand with the photography to pull off the effect (something which Mario Bava was known for when making his movies). And it really is a complete copy of that moment used in this movie... I mean, it’s not as deftly done because, due to the subject matter, the shot has to use a lot of CGI but, it does deliberately echo the camera movement from Bava’s movie and, yeah, I’m sure the director knew exactly what he was doing here. It’s a nice piece of homage which, I think they should have left out of the trailer because... well... now the audience will see it coming.<br /><br />Other than that... not much else to report. The score of the movie is nice and it’s credited to Sparks & Shadows... which is a company formed by Bear McCreary (one of my favourite modern day composers) so I’m guessing the score is a group effort by him and some of his colleagues/friends/apprentices. I’d love to hear this one away from the movie but, no such luck as it doesn’t seem to have had a proper CD release... so I guess I won’t get to listen to it, which is a shame. <br /><br />Other than that, though... yeah, <b>Imaginary</b> is nicely acted, well put together, could have had more surprises but still, it’s nicely done and I could imagine picking up a Blu Ray of this one at some point. Like I said though, I suspect it’s not going to be as well received by everyone so... time will tell, I guess. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-79569385540544178322024-03-05T17:39:00.001+00:002024-03-05T17:39:53.734+00:00The Pearl Of Death<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcq4kyLLdWZnZhZJr1J01uZiMfa6AysCUe56_9d05KIp11OcfLxiZnFPiZwAuepcrxKFC_JUCdLqQAQgXYYdFcQn6d3lMpVYP9iRmc20IaT81HYDescu9bekeBq1Tue8_6DVIM4TL2PmjDiyor_oI4R4lnb5SF1UXTruxFRPkFucsltXZrJmxbP8x2K-ht/s1329/thepearlofdeathmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="1329" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcq4kyLLdWZnZhZJr1J01uZiMfa6AysCUe56_9d05KIp11OcfLxiZnFPiZwAuepcrxKFC_JUCdLqQAQgXYYdFcQn6d3lMpVYP9iRmc20IaT81HYDescu9bekeBq1Tue8_6DVIM4TL2PmjDiyor_oI4R4lnb5SF1UXTruxFRPkFucsltXZrJmxbP8x2K-ht/w400-h143/thepearlofdeathmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Rondo Macabre</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Pearl Of Death</span><br />USA 1944 Directed by Roy William Neill<br />Universal Blu Ray Zone B</span></i></b></span><br /><br /><b>The Pearl Of Death</b> is the ninth of the series of <b>Sherlock Holmes</b> films put out by 20th Century Fox and then Universal. This one toplines Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson again but, unlike the last film in the series, <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-scarlet-claw.html" target="_blank">The Scarlet Claw</a></b> (reviewed by me <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-scarlet-claw.html" target="_blank">here</a>), we have the return of both Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson and Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade. It’s based on Arthur Conan Doyles story <b>The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons. </b><br /><br />The plot of this one involves Giles Conover (played brilliantly by Miles Mander), a master criminal who is after an enormous pearl with a bloody history. Holmes, in the guise of a clergyman... after Conover’s accomplice Naomi Drake (played by Universal monster scream queen Evelyn Ankers) steals the pearl from a secure location on a cruise ship... uses his disguise to have her relinquish the pearl, hidden in a camera, so it can get through customs and, due to Holmes ingenuity, she doesn’t realise her mistake until they’ve parted ways and Holmes, Watson and Lestrade deliver the pearl to the <b><i>‘Royal Regent Museum’</i></b> (no such museum in London, I can assure you), waiting for the precious pearl. And this is where it gets interesting because Holmes doesn’t trust the electronic eye security in the museum... so, in a twist to the way these tales are usually set up, Holmes disables the system momentarily to prove a point but, in that moment, Conover steals the pearl and hides it before the police can catch up with him. So Holmes has inadvertently allowed the pearl to be stolen... which doesn’t do his reputation much good. <br /><br />After Conover is released on the grounds that there’s no evidence, people are found with their backs broken at various locations, midst a pile of smashed china (smashed to hide the one thing which is being smashed during the murders, to muddy up the scene of the crime). Holmes... after surviving a couple of attempts on his life, including a wonderful death trap of a ‘jack-in-a-box’ knife in a book which is thrown up into the ceiling because Holmes is suspicious of it... deduces that, when Conover was running from the police, he hid the pearl inside one of six wet busts of Napoleon. It’s up to Holmes, Watson and Lestrade to try and find the pearl before Conover’s sinister, back breaking heavy <b><i>The Hoxton Creeper,</i> </b>of whom I shall say more in a little while, can finish their murderous spree and make off with the stone. I have to say though, it’s unintentionally hilarious when, after surviving the dagger in a box gag, Watson proclaims the obvious with his, <i><span style="color: #38761d;">“Great Scott. That was meant for you!”</span></i><br /><br />And it’s another wonderfully entertaining slice of a movie, of course. The cast is perfect and Rathbone plays Holmes with a certain amount of anger since he’s the one who, after recovering the pearl at the start, allowed it to be stolen again. His temper is very thin in this one, especially in dealing with Lestrade’s usual fat-headed deductions. There’s some lovely, comical support from Watson in this one too, including a nice scene where he’s sticking a newspaper article in his scrapbook and loses said article. <i><span style="color: #38761d;">“What would Holmes do?”,</span></i> he says, and reconstructs his movements with the paste and tea cup until he relocates the cutting, stuck to the underside of his sleeve (where the audience can see it all along). <br /><br />Also, producer/director Roy William Neill seems to be thinking more about his shot compositions here. There’s a column suddenly grown now in 221B Baker Street, used to separate the actors within via the vertical split on screen and, similarly, he has a bizarre arch put into the middle of a room at the museum so he can use it the same way. These visual devices aren’t wasted, however... he uses them to full advantage visually. <br /><br />And then of course, there’s <b><i>The Creeper,</i></b> played by the iconic actor Rondo Hatton. Hatton was exposed to poison gas during his service in the First World War and, as a result of that (it’s believed), went on to develop a rare disease called <b><i>acromegaly,</i></b> which does something to the bones of the face and warped his into the sinister visage he’s known for. He was a tall guy and this, when combined with his unusual features, made him perfect casting for <b><i>heavies</i></b> in Hollywoodland. This film, made when he was fifty, kinda catapulted him to success but... too late. Just as Gail Sondergaard, the villainess from the <b>Sherlock Holmes </b>film <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-spider-woman.html" target="_blank">The Spider Woman</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-spider-woman.html" target="_blank">here</a>) had made another film playing a ‘spider woman’ to trade in on the name (if not the character), so Rondo Hatton made a further two films as a different back breaking menace called <b><i>‘The Creeper’ </i></b>the year after this. Alas, before they were both posthumously released in early 1946, Hatton had died of a heart attack due to his acromegaly. </p><p>He would, of course, leave a lasting legacy and he has been referenced in many things over the years such as a villain made to look like him in the movie version of <b>The Rocketeer</b> and even <b>Judge Dredd</b> disguised himself as his likeness in one of the early issues of <b>2000AD,</b> if memory serves. And, of course, there are the annual <b>Rondo Awards,</b> made to celebrate the best in classic horror research, creativity and film preservation... which were named after the actor and which actually are miniature likenesses of him. So, he died young but was definitely, in his own small way, an influential presence on the pop culture scene. And if you want to know more ‘shady facts’ about acromegaly, take a look at the giant spider movie Tarantula sometime (review coming soon). <br /><br />And that’s me done with<b> The Pearl Of Death. </b>Another great entry in what is surely one of the best film series of all time. It’s also a film where Holmes is forced to kill someone at the end of the picture (I won’t say who) which is a regrettable outcome. I must make a point to try and track down those <b>Creeper</b> movies at some point though. If they have survived the years, that is.<b><i><span style="color: red;">*</span></i></b><br /><br /><span style="color: red; font-size: x-small;"><i><b>*</b>Since time of writing, <b>Eureka Masters Of Cinema</b> have released one of them last year as part of a box set.</i></span><br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-7707990157371684792024-03-04T17:35:00.000+00:002024-03-04T17:35:08.205+00:00Midnight Mass<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8QMQJLo7WEbXj1KXhIvlx_VcIYYlFrrIEK0dZQCwIQ_HmkzwXKFQvN-K0hcsE83DgnAHrAN57jTMLs4xNfQA18ujAVo2wK8ytMG9P4jPVQblkhYb8dp6uF4nNCd8YZw3_r6ZmqRgFEdA4esRTni7thde0fR9CjuQ8k1O9eS36PvKQmDEZEohSegVYWnsk/s1329/midnightmassmontage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="639" data-original-width="1329" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8QMQJLo7WEbXj1KXhIvlx_VcIYYlFrrIEK0dZQCwIQ_HmkzwXKFQvN-K0hcsE83DgnAHrAN57jTMLs4xNfQA18ujAVo2wK8ytMG9P4jPVQblkhYb8dp6uF4nNCd8YZw3_r6ZmqRgFEdA4esRTni7thde0fR9CjuQ8k1O9eS36PvKQmDEZEohSegVYWnsk/w400-h193/midnightmassmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Fallen Angel</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Midnight Mass</span><br />TV Mini Series <br />7 episodes September 2021<br />Canada/USA<br />Directed by Mike Flanagan</span></i></b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #741b47;"><b>Warning: </b>All the spoilers... well, many of them implied, at the very least. If you don’t want to know, don’t read.</span><br /><br /><b>Midnight Mass</b> is the third recent(ish) hit series created by Mike Flanagan, who is a director I find a little hit and miss. I loved <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2014/10/absentia.html" target="_blank">Absentia</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2014/10/absentia.html" target="_blank">here</a>) and <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2019/11/doctor-sleep.html" target="_blank">Doctor Sleep</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2019/11/doctor-sleep.html" target="_blank">here</a>) for example but hated <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2014/06/oculus.html" target="_blank">Oculus</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2014/06/oculus.html" target="_blank">here</a>) and was fairly entertained but ultimately disappointed in his hit show <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-haunting-of-hill-house.html" target="_blank">The Haunting Of Hill House</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-haunting-of-hill-house.html" target="_blank">here</a>), which took more than just a few liberties with the original source material. Although some of the cast from that show and his follow up adaptation of <b>The Turn Of The Screw,</b> aka <b>The Haunting Of Blye Manor,</b> are still working with him here.<br /><br />And that was one of the good things about this show... the acting in this is, once again, incredible and the highly talented cast, including such people as Zach Gilford, Kate Siegel, Hamish Linklater, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli and Henry Thomas... are what keep you watching. That and the way the script unfolds although, I have to say, I did have a few problems myself in that I was disappointed in the way the story chose to develop, the lack of any surprises and what I also think might be a major mistake in terms of the inner ‘physics’ of the series that seems to have been overlooked (unless a load of stuff was cut out which would originally explain a certain oversight). <br /><br />The series has a strong theme of Religious faith, practice and, ultimately, fanaticism and the story deals, on the surface of the first episode, with a new priest transferred to a small island community who, well, starts bringing little miracles with him. Indeed the seven episodes are named after biblical terms so we have <b><i>Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs, Lamentations, Gospel, Acts Of The Apostles </i></b>and <b><i>Revelations.</i></b> The majority of the small population of the island are Christian, asides from a Muslim sheriff and his son... and the more they attend the Sunday service and take the sacrament, where they eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, as proxied by wafers and wine... the more their senses start to sharpen, some of them begin to look younger, a paralysed girl walks... and so on. The only real non-practicing Christian character is a young man who has just served four years in prison for drink driving and killing a woman as he fell asleep at the wheel. He is haunted each night by the corpse of the woman watching over him as he tries to sleep and he is the one who really starts to question what he’s seeing on the island when things start to get... miraculous. <br /><br />Okay, I will say that I loved the show, it held my attention, I was hooked and entertained for all seven episodes and I would recommend it to all my horror loving friends... but...<br /><br />Okay, here’s the thing. It telegraphs itself heavily as it goes. By the end of the first episode I realised who the mystery priest really was due to the story being a little too heavy handed with its hints... something not ‘revealed’ until the end of episode three. In the second episode I realised just who the father of the young lady who is the island doctor was. And added to this, my first reaction at seeing a lot of the people in this show was... why are they all wearing ‘old person’ make up. Ever since I was a kid and I saw the <b>Star Trek</b> episode <b>The Deadly Years, </b>I’ve been disappointed with ‘ageing’ make-up. You can tell right away when someone has been done up with this, even if they’ve only been aged a little... so I knew very early on that it was only there to slowly come off as the show progressed and that the only common catalyst that could get this reaction in people was the sacrament. I figured out the priest, played absolutely brilliantly by Hamish Linklater in a riveting performance, was putting something in the wine and, yes, that it was probably something like blood. <br /><br />The story felt just a little too much like <b>‘Salem’s Lot</b> to me but, that’s okay, I love that book and the original TV mini series. And the reason it disappointed me a little is because, when it’s revealed that the ‘angel’ in the desert who de-aged the priest was a kind of flying demon of some kind, the story went directly into vampire mode, with the priest mistaking the word of God for vampire mythos (although the word vampire is never referenced and none of the characters seem to have any point of reference for them... which frankly they could have used by the time they’d get up to episode seven). Also, the priest in question has already died and been infused with vampire blood before he returns to the island as a young man... so he really should already be sensitive to light and start burning up in the sunlight (like everybody else in the story) but, no, he kind of dies again and then starts going through that whole process... which really makes no sense compared to the ‘rules’ that exist for everybody else. So, yeah, bits of this really annoyed me, to be honest. <br /><br />That being said, I did like the flying vampire guy who is somewhat reminiscent in appearance of a winged version of <b>Nosferatu</b> (who was, of course, the basis for the look of the vampire in <b><a href="http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/salems-lot.html" target="_blank">‘Salem’s Lot, </a></b>my review of the TV show can be found <a href="http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/salems-lot.html" target="_blank">here</a>). However, it also seems clear to me that his look is greatly inspired from Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell’s iconic painting of a winged demon entitled <b>Vampire’s Kiss... </b>which has inspired a few movie monsters in its time, I believe. So, I guess, if they had to go down the vampire route... at least we have one in this series which looks really great, it has to be said (and who eats a lot of cats, too).<br /><br />However, asides from these gaping plot holes and going down the vampire route instead of, well, maybe exploring the ways religion taken as a literal thing can also overlap with vampire folklore, which I think would have been more interesting, I thought <b>Midnight Mass</b> was a pretty addictive show and certainly worth a look for fans of horror. Also, there’s some great imagery introduced into the show, like waking up to a beach full of hundreds of dead cats one morning... lots to look at but, ultimately, it felt as flawed as it was entertaining.<br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-57581313339472312362024-03-03T09:02:00.001+00:002024-03-03T20:01:39.055+00:00Dune Part Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH9BaTaMwLc_abCXFHpHMCBmj6VT5b-4Zq7LhN-UjPLQ1JqDVcuQe9hi4MLsPIF05NKiwS5q60e9adjhNdF3ufCBDZ_BhRM_AOANyaEEkkwM7lulFH-O1a1zK9YWMBSZcWIjguZ88JCk_sQZSFGHqjWjZXGvfDWsZlrqGTo22tgSnDc_NTCoopzgwBVP-M/s1329/duneparttwomontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="1329" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH9BaTaMwLc_abCXFHpHMCBmj6VT5b-4Zq7LhN-UjPLQ1JqDVcuQe9hi4MLsPIF05NKiwS5q60e9adjhNdF3ufCBDZ_BhRM_AOANyaEEkkwM7lulFH-O1a1zK9YWMBSZcWIjguZ88JCk_sQZSFGHqjWjZXGvfDWsZlrqGTo22tgSnDc_NTCoopzgwBVP-M/w400-h164/duneparttwomontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Harkonnen <br />The Barbarian</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Dune Part Two</span><br />Directed by Denis Villeneuve<br />USA/Canada <br />2024 Warner Brothers<br />UK Cinema Print</span></i></b></span><br /><br />Okay, so I quite liked Denis Villeneuve’s first attempt to film Frank Herbert’s landmark science fiction novel <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2021/11/dune-part-one.html" target="_blank">Dune</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2021/11/dune-part-one.html" target="_blank">here</a>) and, I have to say, I really liked the second one too. People are maybe over hyping this a little and calling <b>Dune Part Two</b> a great masterpiece. I can appreciate it may feel like that due to the epic scale of the production (although, I think that’s something of an illusion) but, out of Villeneuve’s various films I’d say that some of his others, such as <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2016/11/arrival.html" target="_blank">Arrival</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2016/11/arrival.html" target="_blank">here</a>) are much better.<br /><br />Nevertheless, this is a pretty entertaining film with an incredibly long running time which, honestly, doesn’t feel like anything half as long. The reason I say the epic scale is a bit of an illusion is because, honestly, the majority of this one takes place just on <b>Dune</b> (aka Arrakis) itself... with the only other scenes being set on the worlds of the Emperor and Baron Harkonnen. But they are brief scenes in the scheme of things and, the majority of the action here follows the plight of Paul Atriedes, played pretty well by Timothée Chalamet (I’ll get to that in a minute) and Chani, played wonderfully by Zendaya. So it’s a lot of running around in the sand with some really great guerilla warfare action scenes and lots of stuff like sandworm riding. And it really doesn’t get dull.<br /><br />Oh... and about that. The special effects in this are great but, UK readers of a certain age will, I’m sure, know exactly what I’m talking about when I say the sandworm riding scenes are like something straight out of <b>Michael Bentine’s Potty Time.</b> It was all I could think of while watching these sequences throughout the movie. So, I also got a lot of smiles mixed in with the drama. <br /><br />There are a lot of great actors in this including the almost wasted Rebecca Ferguson (that’s just me... I always want her in more scenes no matter what film she’s in), Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård and Charlotte Rampling (who is very underused also, compared to the build up of her role in the first movie). Everyone’s great in this but... I do want to just say something about Chalamet and two other actors in the movie, namely Christopher Walken as the Emperor and Florence Pugh as his daughter. Who are all good in this but, I don’t know, seem a little inappropriately placed, it seems to me.<br /><br />Okay, so Chalamet is always good in whatever he’s in but, towards the end I don’t think the casting suited him. Lets look at another film series which borrowed heavily from Dune (not to mention a load of other science fiction literature such as Edgar Rice Burroughs <b>Barsoomian</b> novels), namely <b>Star Wars.</b> Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy goes through a similar arc in that he goes from being an inexperienced young man who leans into his ‘mystic powers’ and comes out, by the opening of<b> Return Of The Jedi,</b> as a powerful badass who can take down an empire if he so decides. By the end of <b>Dune Part Two, </b>Paul Atreides is in a similar state but, as good as the frenetic fight scene at the end between Chalamet and a psychotic bad guy is... and for all his posturing and ‘using his voice’... well, I just didn’t buy it. It felt undersold to me. <br /><br />And Christopher Walken, who is absolutely great as always, also felt inappropriately cast... unless the Emperor is supposed to feel like a flimsy old man who doesn’t seem to be able to ever have acquired and held on to the power he has, that is. Why would anyone throw down their allegiance to this guy in the first place, was my main thought in his casting. He was great saying the lines but, like Chalamet, seemed to lack the gravitas his part required... and I’m really surprised to hear myself saying that about the legendary Walken, for sure. <br /><br />Thirdly... what the heck Florence Pugh? I felt she was being totally misused here as an actress. Literally, from her opening of the film as a kind of a ‘recap girl’ and onwards, she seemed to be just there to provide a narrative clarification for the audience in most (if not all) of her scenes... which is a shame because she’s actually an important bargaining chip in Paul Atreides’ end game. <br /><br />I also spotted a nice cameo from one of my favourite actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy but, it was literally just a very small scene as a character who won’t enter the narrative properly for another 25 years or so later in the saga. So, yeah, I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing much more of her in the inevitable sequel, to be honest. I looked for her name in the cast list at the end and she wasn’t there so, I thought I’d just imagined it but, no, her own IMDB page confirms her inclusion in this film, for sure. <br /><br />And, of course, the other big star of the film is Hans Zimmer’s wonderful score, which does provide both atmosphere and gravitas and, honestly, probably makes the film sound more epic than it actually is. I can’t wait to get my hands on a CD release of this one soon (I’m assuming they’ll be releasing one on proper CD... the first movie got two albums, one of which was also a double album, if memory serves). The leitmotif follow through on this one is pretty strong so, at times it does almost feel like they’ve tracked in parts of the previous score... but it works really well and, yeah, hoping to have the opportunity to hear a proper physical release of this one at some point in the near future, for sure. <br /><br />And I think that’s me done on the quite wonderful <b>Dune Part Two </b>other than to say, the film has something of a cliffhanger ending again so... I hope Villeneuve is called in to direct <b>Dune Messiah</b> pretty soon. I shall be looking forward to it. Also, the film jumps around a bit and, I suspect there was a lot of it cut out from various sequences which, giving Villeneuve’s hatred of showing deleted scenes, I suspect I won’t get to see in my lifetime (although future lovers of cinema might get to see them once the director is dead, is my guess). <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-30633450562696907852024-02-27T18:46:00.002+00:002024-03-03T20:48:37.756+00:00The Living Dead Girl<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwAJJtc0N7ZVyFIqYqa5EIpK33Nt8ZPW4WUOIwvygzNIP54PViTZTxx9hkwXWBf9wu-nWfUDA5HoGke3uRJn3E-_fQEUi2e7Dc8SevibP0jxEjxOyqcv9VAfS_nwJOkl1iOLYu0l0-m1o4xcn1gXlUd6F2cWdiY323lUatexacKztretEnxsoSgyHyuyyw/s1329/thelivingdeadgirlmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="579" data-original-width="1329" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwAJJtc0N7ZVyFIqYqa5EIpK33Nt8ZPW4WUOIwvygzNIP54PViTZTxx9hkwXWBf9wu-nWfUDA5HoGke3uRJn3E-_fQEUi2e7Dc8SevibP0jxEjxOyqcv9VAfS_nwJOkl1iOLYu0l0-m1o4xcn1gXlUd6F2cWdiY323lUatexacKztretEnxsoSgyHyuyyw/w400-h174/thelivingdeadgirlmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Very Gone Girl</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Living Dead Girl</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">La morte vivante</span><br />France 1982 Directed by Jean Rollin<br />Redemption Blu Ray Zone A</span></i></b></span><br /><b><br /></b><span style="color: #741b47;"><b>Warning: </b>Big story spoilers but, honestly, who watches a Jean Rollin film for the story?</span><br /><br />I remember watching this one quite a while ago and being blown away by the emotional performance on this one... something I’m really not used to having to be dealing with on a Jean Rollin film. Revisiting it now on a gorgeous US Blu Ray from Redemption (some of Rollin’s films are still, bizarrely, cut in the UK... so really, don’t buy British)<b><i><span style="color: red;">*</span></i></b>, I’d have to say that the emotional performance at the heart of the film by the title character is maybe a little diminished in power but I’m mostly putting that down to knowing exactly where the movie is going. It’s actually a bit of a mixed bag though and I’d have to say now that, although I was remembering a lot more from this movie than I actually got, it’s still a resonant film but it pales a little in the wake of Rollin’s previous film, the truly emotional <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-night-of-hunted.html" target="_blank">The Night Of The Hunted</a></b> (reviewed by me <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-night-of-hunted.html" target="_blank">here</a>). <br /><br />Although there are no actual vampires again in this movie (Rollin would return to his favourite night creatures later in life), it does still continue his idea of having a duo of protagonists in the film... who also double as a duo of antagonists, it has to be said, depending on your point of view. The two in question are two childhood friends and... it’s heavily implied... lovers. They are Catherine Valmont played, impressively, by Françoise Blanchard and Hélène, played by Marina Pierro (the actress/later muse of Walerian Borowczyk). <br /><br />The film starts off with Catherine deceased for two years before she is accidentally resurrected by three gentleman dumping toxic waste drums into the family crypt... in the most improbably manner and in a coincidental and less than credible series of incidents when they are trying to steal whatever is on her, completely non-decomposed body. Don’t go there... it’s a fantasy movie, after all. Anyway, in her newfound, revived by fumes, zombie status, she kills one by gouging his eyes out, another by tearing his throat out... the third has already died by having his face accidentally melted in the chemical spill. <br /><br />The film plays out like a series of bizarre coincidences, as Catherine returns to her house... more like a castle... and eventually kills the estate agent who is staying at the place while she is trying to sell it, as she is making love to her boyfriend. Then Hélène turns up and discovers Catherine has been resurrected from the dead and, their bond reunited, reminds Catherine how to speak, in a sequence not totally unlike, in Blanchard’s impressive performance, the famous blind man sequence in the 1931 version of <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2019/05/frankenstein.html" target="_blank">Frankenstein</a></b> (reviewed by me <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2019/05/frankenstein.html" target="_blank">here</a>). Shenanigans ensue as an actress/photographer is trying to find and take more pictures of the dead Catherine who she snapped in the field earlier in the film. Meanwhile, Hélène is starting to gather human victims for her dead friend in order to keep her alive, when it’s found that birds or animals are not good enough as a decent food stock. <br /><br />But it’s not the story, which kind of hangs together in spite of how it sounds here, that’s the thing that keeps you watching. Nor is it all of the performances as, like Rollin’s early pictures, it’s all a bit hit and miss in that department, with some people doing good and others... best left uncommented on. But Blanchard and Pierro are spot on and the film explores the relationship and the way that Catherine’s zombie is increasingly, through her own growing self awareness (and attempted suicide by drowning... something which doesn’t really work when you’re already dead), seeming less of a bad person while Hélène is actually becoming the evil one of the two, attempting to procure living victims for her friend (indeed, Catherine actually cuts one of them free to help her escape before Hélène returns again). <br /><br />The film ends with a moving moment where Catherine, driven by her own hunger, eats her willing friend and is left totally alone in the world with an uncertain future. It’s a bleak, nihilistic ending with Catherine screaming at the bloody demise of her friend by her own hand and, I guess it is quite powerful at that. <br /><br />The film is somewhat atypical of Rollin in some ways. I mean, there’s some nice camerawork, for instance, when Hélène has left a body for Catherine she goes into a small tower filled with pigeons to get away from the screams and, looking up at the ceiling, the camera rotates on a POV from her viewpoint... which is cross cut with the camera rotating the other way at the same speed as we watch Cathrine eat her latest victim. However, there are also various things which I don’t remember seeing Rollin typically do that often, if at all, such as zoom shots, repeats of a shot in slow motion with a phased sound in the background to emphasise a moment early on in the film... and a section of the film shot in jerky, hand held camera and edited to give a kind of chaotic vibe. So, yeah, I guess he was trying something new here too... although there is some confusion about a simultaneous American version made on the same sets at the same time on a different camera in English and shot with a different, quite hostile and aggressive director by all accounts, which never got released... so I’m wondering if some of those shots maybe made their way into the French version.<br /><br />Another thing is that the goriness of the violence is quite high for Rollin and one wonders if that was a natural progression to be more explicit in the graphic violence or whether that was a condition imposed on him by the producer? It’s kinda interesting but, shot by Rollin, it nevertheless looks incredible. The score however, by one of Rollin’s earlier musical collaborators, Philippe D'Aram, seems a trifle ‘against the grain’ in certain parts of the film. Also, there’s a musical group playing in the village square who have obviously been overdubbed with something completely different... the big giveaway being that they’re seemingly playing an instrumental track but this doesn’t stop the singer belting out whatever song she was singing, with absolutely no vocal on the audio. Um... yeah, okay.<br /><br />Either way, <b>The Living Dead Girl</b> looks fantastic with Rollin’s usual penchant for the naked female form coming to the fore, mingled with buckets of blood (usually splashed all over said female forms) and some beautiful looking shots. It’s a nice enough movie and, still unusually for Rollin, has an emotional depth to it barely approached by the majority of his movies... but I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a jumping on point if you’ve not seen any of his other masterpieces, for sure. Great if you’re a Rollin fan but maybe best to seek out some of his other movies first, if you are not in the vicinity of that particular fanbase. <br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>*</b>Actually, the recent Indicator editions, which are also quite beautiful in their limited edition versions, seem to be free from cuts in the UK... although it’s very telling as to which of the more famous Rollin titles have not been released by them over here yet. So far they’re safe releases so far but, you know, do your research.</span></i></span><br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-68387481606437584322024-02-26T18:49:00.000+00:002024-02-26T18:49:53.173+00:00The Target Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBY36zQ4gSWTv-bDIndzbnP9Q5b5htuk_ain4lEu1YnQKVpd-1SZhZjmtLYFwpu7gc-abqHnHo3_VEqW_6rpfxKBteX5BJWtdONIQNEshqN0BYabbUkMBqi5yqPcuVvfpSQvXsgKHbwu4ymI_J6ID-RS8EsE8gStjZX5umDmpjcpTsjl8_FSWawohAs8Ok/s1329/thetargetbookmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="1329" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBY36zQ4gSWTv-bDIndzbnP9Q5b5htuk_ain4lEu1YnQKVpd-1SZhZjmtLYFwpu7gc-abqHnHo3_VEqW_6rpfxKBteX5BJWtdONIQNEshqN0BYabbUkMBqi5yqPcuVvfpSQvXsgKHbwu4ymI_J6ID-RS8EsE8gStjZX5umDmpjcpTsjl8_FSWawohAs8Ok/w400-h200/thetargetbookmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Lest We Target</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Target Book - <br />A History Of The <br />Target Doctor Who Books</span><br />by David J Howe<br />Telos Publishing<br />ISBN: 9781845831844</i></span></b></span><i><br /></i><br />Just a quick shout out of a review to a wonderful book my cousin got me for Christmas. <b>The Target Book - A History Of The Target Doctor Who Books</b> will, I’m sure, bring back lots of memories and rushes of childhood nostalgia for many fans of <b>Doctor Who, </b>above a certain age. I think I had maybe around 60 of these as a nipper (I gave up buying these when I felt I’d outgrown them, very soon after the first few Peter Davidson adaptations were released). Although, the point is made in the book that many of the authors and readers thought of these as being a bit more pitched at an older audience than just the kiddies, as evidenced by the fact, perhaps, that during the Tom Baker era of the series, two of the Baker adaptations, <b>Robot</b> (aka <b>Doctor Who and the Giant Robot</b>) and <b>The Brain Of Morbius</b> were also reissued as separate, ‘dumbed down’ junior editions. <br /><br />This book is a long and loving look at the history of Target which, despite having a few other titles on its books, became a publishing phenomenon purely on the<b> Doctor Who</b> titles, which sold millions. This takes you right through the history of the company - the rise and fall, so to speak - starting off with a guy called Richard Henwood joining the Universal Tandem publishing company, initially based at Gloucester Road in South Kensington, in the early 70s and starting off a new imprint of the company which he called Target (and which had that distinctive logo that was a sign of quality and adventure to the... um... ‘target audience’ everywhere. The rights to the three <b>Doctor Who</b> novels previously written for the BBC and based on William Hartnell stories were, perhaps somewhat hesitantly, purchased by Henwood and reissued in new covers and... within a month he knew he needed to commission loads more to feed that very popular furnace... they sold like the proverbial hot cakes. <br /><br />And so it was a deal was struck by the BBC and he approached writers to novelise various existing stories, many of them earmarked by Terrance Dicks, who was synonymous with the Target books and who has written a nice foreward to this very tome. He and other writers delivered the goods and the series went from record sales to more record sales.<br /><br />The writer then charts the full history of Target up until its demise, when all the stories they were able to get (which was almost all of them) had been adapted and the well ran dry, at which point they semi successfully started commissioning both ‘new’ and ‘missing’ adventures when they were owned by Virgin (the missing ones being stories that existed as scripts for the show but then weren’t, for whatever reason, produced).<br /><br />The book is absolutely chock full of colourful illustrations including the entire range of <b>Doctor Who</b> Target books up until they were acquired by Virgin and the decision was made to stop using the imprint (it’s back now, with new <b>Doctor Who</b> adventures put out in covers imitating the style of the ones used in the early seventies, by original artist Chris Achilleos no less... who sadly passed away back in 2021, after this book was first published). There are also many previously unpublished illustrations such as various original cover sketches, many of them nothing like the final covers which adorned the finished books. <br /><br />In addition to this there are constant sidebars throughout, covering the writers - such as Dicks, Malcome Hulke, David Whittaker etc - and the various cover artists - such as Achilleos, Jeff Cummins and Andrew Skilleter - not to mention the odd member of the production staff through various eras of the company. There are also some interesting nuggets such as tables of the various alternate titles used, when the original story title was not deemed exciting enough to capture the imagination of the reading public. I’d forgotten about this and there were a fair few than I’d remembered but, for example, <b>Spearhead From Space </b>became <b>Doctor Who And The Auton Invasion, The Web Planet</b> became <b>Doctor Who And The Zarbi, The Silurians </b>became <b>Doctor Who And The Cave Monsters, Terror Of The Zygons</b> became <b>Doctor Who And The Loch Ness Monster... </b>and so on. <br /><br />My only criticism with this wonderful tome would be two glaring omissions in terms of the stories behind the novels. One was... well most fans of the series would know when I say <b><i>KKLAK!</i></b> Yes, the time Chris Achilleos experimented with using a comic book style piece of onomatopoeia on the cover and made himself unobtainable so the art department at Target, that hated the idea, had to run with it. </p><p>The other was when former screen companion Harry Sullivan... who was played by actor Ian Marter, who wrote a fair few Target adaptations himself (and who tragically died in his forties) introducing something which is almost a swear word into one of his books. Now, I’ve never seen this discussed anywhere but, when his adaptation of the Patrick Troughton story<b> Enemy Of The World </b>was published, a decade or more since the story first aired, I distinctly remember Marter having one character call another a ‘bastard’. This caused a sensation in the playground because, for one, everyone assumed Target was an imprint for children and secondly... and much more controversially for me... since it was a BBC family show, there was no way that word would have been used on the original broadcast (and since tapes of the original broadcast version of that show were happily discovered a decade or so ago, I can confirm that the word is definitely missing from the televised edition). So, yeah, I always wondered if there was any controversy within the headquarters of Target at the time but, this book doesn’t shed any enlightenment on that one, I’m afraid. <br /><br />But even so, <b>The Target Book - A History Of The Target Doctor Who Books</b> is an outstanding tome for fans of the show who were buying these things in the 70s and 80s (and beyond although, the novelisations stopped becoming special when home video arrived, obviously) and it also gives a fascinating insight into the thought processes and contract deals behind the release of these, once very popular novels. Not to mention some little panels called <b><i>VWOORP! VWOORP!</i></b> which reprint various Target writers’ descriptions of the noise the TARDIS makes when it materialises and dematerialises. And, also, it was nice seeing the cover of <b>The Doctor Who Monster Book </b>again (although I might have actually hung onto that one, somewhere, maybe in the loft).</p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-91806542421755053282024-02-25T08:09:00.003+00:002024-02-25T08:09:29.832+00:00The Five Venoms<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRDuhmzZeyNEcjdI7qqH8u3P2YHFLd3uCIO2Wi3E5MiTkYXS7-b-_2y90WFnOnunsUrhK4EINiuvc2uPBrvHRWLArSSql4UldOfYemXQYKULYtj1w2JwZBg2JObFEZkM5-R8Tb0cm__eSUsMG8hMoo3HTE7ylS614cQpWZqlQ4yLgfmBBVFwK9eCbZOZyH/s1329/fivedeadlyvenomsmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1329" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRDuhmzZeyNEcjdI7qqH8u3P2YHFLd3uCIO2Wi3E5MiTkYXS7-b-_2y90WFnOnunsUrhK4EINiuvc2uPBrvHRWLArSSql4UldOfYemXQYKULYtj1w2JwZBg2JObFEZkM5-R8Tb0cm__eSUsMG8hMoo3HTE7ylS614cQpWZqlQ4yLgfmBBVFwK9eCbZOZyH/w400-h130/fivedeadlyvenomsmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Spied A Man <br />Fighting Venom</span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Five Venoms</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">Five Deadly Venoms</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">Wu du</span><br />Hong Kong 1978<br />Directed by Cheh Chang<br />Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures<br />Arrow Blu Ray Zone B</span></i></b></span><br /><br />Ninth up in the recent(ish) Arrow films ShawScope Volume 1 boxed edition is <b>The Five Deadly Venoms </b>and it’s one of just two of the films presented here which I had already seen. The last time I watched it was on my old Region 3 Celestial pictures DVD under the title which I personally think it’s still more well known as, <b>Five Deadly Venoms. </b>I think I quite liked it the first time I saw it but, I have to say, catching up with it again now I feel it drags quite considerably compared to many of the other films in this set. <br /><br />This one starts of with an old master trying to cure himself of some unspecified illness by boiling himself in a large cauldron of medicine. He is alone in his house with his young student. However, that particular house he is the master of is the... drumroll... <b><i>House Of The Five Venoms.</i></b> The young student he has taken on recently is technically the sixth venom but, he is not fully trained up in martial arts yet. The old master is a villain and the Venoms have committed unspecified evils against martial artists over the years as they are ‘anti-martial arts’. All have since gone into the world under special aliases and continue to do things that some may find could be be considered regrettable. <br /><br />And then we are shown each of the five venoms in training scenarios practicing martial arts as the master breaks down their special skills to the kid. Which, excuse me, makes absolutely no sense since they are an organisation opposed to martial arts but, who am I to argue with the ways of kung fu. So, in the training sessions, each of the five venoms wears an elabourately painted face mask that makes each one look like a member of rock group KISS. The only real difference being that each has the animal of his special skill stuck as a kind of 3D relief on the mask on the forehead (don’t worry folks... it looks sillier than it sounds). <br /><br />So we have Thousand Hands... who practices the Centipede Style and can move his hands around very fast to make it appear he has lots of hands (kind of). We see him smashing lots of plates to somehow demonstrate this. We have Snake Spirit, who does Snake Style... his hands imitating the style of the head and tail of the snake (originally this was supposed to be a female character in the original script). I don’t think they needed to explain that one to me too much, I would say since, later in the movie, whenever he fights, his hands make hissing, snakey noises for emphasis. We also have three more venoms practicing in Scorpion Style, Gecko Style and Toad Style. Yeah, don’t ask.<br /><br />Anyway, the old master is repentant of running a house of evil masters and so he knows that an old man living in a town with the secret of the treasure of the five venoms, will be under threat from these five. He says that youngster venom number six would be no match for any of these guys but if he teams up with any of them who may show that they still have a sense of righteousness, if he can find them, he will be able to defeat the others and then get the secret of where the treasure is, so it can be used for charitable purposes. The old master then dies, leaving his new ward with his noble mission.<br /><br />So we have a backdrop of a small town with a police force but the five venoms, some known to the audience and some not but, certainly, at this stage, unknown to each other (since none of them knows what each looks like or what name they have taken) are also in town. Two of them murder the old man and his servants but don’t get the location. The mysterious scorpion, whose identity remains hidden but... well... I worked out which one it was from very early on in the film, over an hour before he reveals himself... does have enough intelligence to discover where the treasure map is hidden. Then, when people who are mostly hidden venoms get implicated in the murder, he starts playing people off against other to whittle down the number of surviving venoms Meanwhile, the local police and magistrate, who are taking things very seriously... also have more than a couple of the venoms hiding within the system (yeah, saw through those right away too). In fact, the police take things very seriously indeed and I think modern policing could learn from this method. The officers are told they have ten days to solve the case. The first outstanding day where the case is not solved they will get ten strokes of the cane and the second day, twenty strokes and so on. If only Cressida Dick could have employed these same methods, she may well have had a more efficient police force and still be in charge of them today, I suspect. <br /><br />There’s not much more to the story than that but I would say that the film is big on mystery, conspiracy and intrigue and little on actual action. There are a few small set pieces including the inevitable fight at the end between four surviving scorpions and the young novice (who has teamed up with one of them) and the action is good, especially the wirework which allows two of the actors to suddenly jump up and stand on a wall at right angles to everybody else like <b>Spider-Man </b>without showing the faintest trace of the wire work. So this stuff is very well done but... there’s just not enough of it to maintain any kind of pace for the movie and it feels a little uneven in that way. There are also some pretty mean spirited torture scenes in the movie which I could have done without.<br /><br />So yeah, that’s my short take on <b>The Five Venoms</b> and, although the film is highly revered by many, I still can’t see what all the fuss is about on this one and personally I wouldn’t recommend it as a jumping on point for Shaw Brothers. Certainly not the best of the films in this set but still fairly entertaining if you’re not expecting too much from it, I would say. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-54987757709588398642024-02-20T17:23:00.003+00:002024-02-20T17:23:34.808+00:00Madame Web<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivnQ1On0CHA6eqwfBTCEMyF71qlytcFqtA-ybKM8eJDkKzvLnk__q0PJ17poQTGo7jeXHLDOWiyOkD651Wmg4dd_jd9iRZqHRM6hyVGl0EVTdyRoZRbswCkKTIB5aqs5cWYf69KOaELmPvijGl_tP4B6gOm9oNRYHZ_A7AUQ8lntdLxo03cKTlV8fbcSwD/s1329/madamewebmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="786" data-original-width="1329" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivnQ1On0CHA6eqwfBTCEMyF71qlytcFqtA-ybKM8eJDkKzvLnk__q0PJ17poQTGo7jeXHLDOWiyOkD651Wmg4dd_jd9iRZqHRM6hyVGl0EVTdyRoZRbswCkKTIB5aqs5cWYf69KOaELmPvijGl_tP4B6gOm9oNRYHZ_A7AUQ8lntdLxo03cKTlV8fbcSwD/w400-h236/madamewebmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Uncle Ben’s <br />Responsibility</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Madame Web</span><br />Directed by S.J. Clarkson<br />USA/Canada <br />2024 Sony/Columbia<br />UK Cinema Print</span></i></b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #741b47;"><b>Warning:</b> Some spoilers, if you care enough.</span><br /><br />Hmm... okay, <b>Madame Web</b> is the first of three Sony films released this year as part of their extended Spider-Man universe. You would think that now they have absconded again with the rights to the character, that they would, at least, feature <b>Spider-Man</b> in these three stories but... oh no. Or rather, actually, yes kinda in this one but... okay I’ll get to that in a minute. The film stars Dakota Johnson as the titular character (although she’s never once referred to as that in the film... which makes total sense when you see the movie) and, due to shenanigans involving her birth and special powers she doesn’t realise she had (like Diana in the first <b>Wonder Woman</b> movie), she is trying to protect three ‘teenage’ girls from the movie’s main villain, who sees future versions of them killing him at some unspecified point. When I say teenage... Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor and Sydney Sweeney are all in their twenties, the latter only a few ears away from 30 but, still, it’s Hollywoodland and they’re all supposed to be between about 16-18, it seems to me. <br /><br />Anyhow... the movie itself has got some of the worst reviews (bearing in mind it wasn’t even screened for critics) I’ve heard for a Marvel related movie but, I have to say, though it’s inferior to almost any of the MCU branded Marvel films, it’s actually not the disaster that people are reporting it to be. Saying that though, I can totally see why it has got that reaction because the structure of the movie promises way more than it gives in terms of what the content of the film is actually going to be... the people making this weren’t that smart not to realise what they did, I think.<br /><br />So, yeah, Johnson’s character is someone who gets brief glimpses of the very near future, like a very strong deja vu, so she can change things just before they are supposed to happen. So the director will sometimes use a big sound (like a champagne cork being pulled) or sometimes, quite cleverly, a distinctive camera movement, to usher in a replay of the events as they are about to repeat. And although it’s an obvious concoction the first time she does it, it is done pretty well throughout and the visual and audio shorthand built on those key aspects does the job very well. <br /><br />You also have a couple of good performances, especially Sydney Sweeney (who was so brilliant in last year’s <b><a href="ttps://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/06/reality.html" target="_blank">Reality,</a></b> reviewed <a href="ttps://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/06/reality.html" target="_blank">here</a>), who really does well with facial expressions and so on to make her ‘bizarrely teen’ teenager come to life in quite sophisticated ways. However, although there are some good and likeable performances here, the structure of the film undermines a lot of the work being done.<br /><br />Here’s the thing, all the stuff in the trailers where the three girls are in costume and using their spider powers are... just seen as brief, visions of the future in the heads of both the title character and the villain. So there are maybe three brief moments, maybe totalling less than a minute and a half, where you see the girls in costume, at some undetermined future date. In fact, whatever superpowers the three ‘teens’ do acquire... they don’t get them in this movie. It’s for some ‘future’ movie which, I’m guessing, might not even get made... and with Dakota Johnson jokingly downplaying the movie when she’s supposed to be promoting it, I’m guessing the four leads would have to be locked into contracts before they return to those characters. Which may well be the case actually but, I’m guessing this movie won’t be doing the numbers enough to make the next film worth making. This is obviously, like the up and coming <b>Venom 3 </b>and <b>Kraven The Hunter </b>movies, supposed to be leading to the Sinister Six, which started happening (again, it’s Sony’s second lead in after the Andrew Garfield <b>Spider-Man</b> movies) in <b>Morbius</b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2022/04/morbius.html" target="_blank">here</a>)... when Morbius and Michael Keaton’s Vulture character met at the post-credits on that film. But, if the other two perform badly (I suspect <b>Venom</b> will do well but I can’t see the new <b>Kraven</b> doing much better than <b>Morbius</b>), then that may still not happen. <br /><br />To that end though, there are some really bizarre references to the <b>Spider-Man</b> universe in this film... asides from the Spider powered natives in the Amazon plus the main villain all dressing pretty similarly to <b>Spider-Man. </b>The thing is, though, Sony are making references and shouting them out while simultaneously keeping a lid on things a little with their linking materials. If you are a <b>Spider-Man </b>fan and are not distracted by the visuals, you’ll ‘get’ who a couple of the characters are supposed to be... and one of them is teased but not named, even though fans will know exactly who he is.<br /><br />The main action of the movie takes place in 2003 and I couldn’t figure out why they did this. Until Dakota Johnson’s character Cassie, a paramedic, calls her partner by name. He’s... drum roll... Ben Parker. Yeah, that’s right... future Uncle Ben. And the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ line, which has been a core <b>Spider-Man</b> ingredient since his first comic book appearance in 1962, is dangled about like crazy in slightly reworded terms. And, that’s not all... Ben’s sister is pregnant and the girls are trying to protect her so she can give birth at the end of the movie. Casual viewers won’t twig it because he’s not named (despite an earlier ‘guess the name of the baby’ scene calling attention to it in the most obvious manner) but by the end of the film she gives birth to Peter Parker... aka <b>Spider-Man.</b> I guess the actor who was/is supposed to be playing that role in ‘films to come’ for Sony is not yet decided, is my guess. Or... you know... not yet given a big enough pay hike to return to that role.<br /><br />But the biggest problem with the film, as I eluded to earlier, is the fact that it keeps telegraphing the gals suiting up and being super heroes... and so this is what the audience is expecting to happen at some point in the movie. So many people may not be aware that the climactic action scene is exactly that until it's over, I’m guessing, because they are waiting for the superhero element to come into play. It never does and that’s why I suspect we’ve had the huge negative reviews on this. It’s just an overly complicated set up for a film to come (with a poor ending, it has to be said). But, like I said, it’s not a terrible movie... just an unsatisfying one so, yeah, I can totally understand why it’s getting the word-of-mouth that it has. <b>Madame Web</b> is not a crowd pleaser but it’s also not as bad as, say, <b>Morbius</b> was so... there’s that. I had an okay time with it... I’d probably watch it again. Just not anytime soon. Maybe worth watching to see how it locks into the next few Sony Spider-movies perhaps but, there’s absolutely no post-credits scene on this one so, something tells me that rug may have already been pulled. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-84407443567235040982024-02-19T20:27:00.000+00:002024-02-19T20:27:48.266+00:00Doctor Who - The Chase<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8BPoHjVTFHztjNHiCGEBTWjzcPSuhgkce_1PpoYV5-N9tFfkOhKHyrmSZxNT0Zj6tUhhy5QymEqiOcJCpQ8euh_jSEoOHUzhJf9LIJmr9bG19W2J4N9CvI56W5BcwEtLWHSAcux8Z_QX0WNGdATt6h8A9rW2capOecw9eGwv43LlDFQaBc3YKEWrZEeX5/s1329/doctorwhothechasemontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="407" data-original-width="1329" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8BPoHjVTFHztjNHiCGEBTWjzcPSuhgkce_1PpoYV5-N9tFfkOhKHyrmSZxNT0Zj6tUhhy5QymEqiOcJCpQ8euh_jSEoOHUzhJf9LIJmr9bG19W2J4N9CvI56W5BcwEtLWHSAcux8Z_QX0WNGdATt6h8A9rW2capOecw9eGwv43LlDFQaBc3YKEWrZEeX5/w400-h122/doctorwhothechasemontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Mechanoid Mayhem</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Doctor Who - The Chase</span><br />Airdate: 22nd May - 26th June 1965<br />BBC Region B Blu Ray <br />Six Episodes</span></i></b></span><br /><br />I’d never seen the <b>Doctor Who</b> story <b>The Chase</b> before. It’s actually down in records as the least popular of the Dalek stories but, I certainly preferred it to a few fair others I’ve seen with those creatures in it, including some which other people consider absolute classics. There’s lots going on in these six episodes but with little actual plot... the Daleks have somehow invented a time machine and are pursuing The Doctor (William Hartnell), Ian (William Russell), Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) through time and space in order to destroy their timelord enemy and his companions once and for all, after their defeat in the <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2016/08/doctor-who-dalek-invasion-of-earth.html" target="_blank">Dalek Invasion of Earth</a></b> (which I reviewed in TV form <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2016/08/doctor-who-dalek-invasion-of-earth.html" target="_blank">here</a>). <br /><br />The TARDIS crew go to a fair few locations such as a desert planet, the Empire State Building, a ship (more on that soon), a horror themed fun house and, finally, the planet Mechanus. So this review is going to be a hotch potch of facts more than anything else... but lots of interesting things, to say the least. <br /><br />Like the fact that one of the humanoid/formerly aquatic/sand dwellers in the opening two episodes is played by Hywel Bennett in his first role. Or the fact that some of the Dalek props were mismatched, borrowed versions from the first movie version of <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/11/dr-who-and-daleks.html" target="_blank">Dr. Who And The Daleks</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/11/dr-who-and-daleks.html" target="_blank">here</a>). <br /><br />This is also the first <b>Doctor Who </b>story to feature a doppelganger of The Doctor, a robot version constructed by the Daleks to ‘infiltrate and kill’. Unfortunately, the actor standing in for Hartnell as the doppelganger (who was his acting/stunt double on set anyway), looks nothing like him... so it sounds rather disturbing when they dub Hartnell’s voice over his. Having said that, the quality of the signal reception in those days may well have hidden the inadequacies of the character from the original audience.<br /><br />Episode three marks the first role in this serial for Peter Purves, who plays a bizarre and highly comical American tourist in the third episode. Now William Russell and Jacqueline Hill, much to the consternation and regret of Hartnell, had decided this was to be their last <b>Doctor Who</b> story. The BBC had no contingency plan to replace them with other companions but, because Purves got on so well with Hartnell for the third episode, Maureen O’Brien suggested to the people at the top that he would be someone who could get on with the sometimes cantankerous Hartnell on set and so, for the final episode, Purves returns in a different role, who would be the new companion opposite Vicki for the next year or so. <br /><br />There are some terrible things which make no sense too. Continuity wise, for example, The Doctor refers to having built the TARDIS himself. This then, is before the established back story that he did, indeed, steal it (unless, maybe he built it then stole it?). But the worst glitch comes in Episode Four, which The Doctor explains, incorrectly, all takes place in the human mind. The crew meet both <b>Dracula</b> and the <b>Frankenstein</b> monster (the latter being somehow totally based on Jack Pierce’s make up job for the Universal horror films... how did this lot not get sued?). However, when the Daleks show up and try to exterminate both these creatures, their death rays do not affect them at all. Indeed, the guy playing the <b>Frankenstein</b> monster must have been pretty strong because you see him pick up a Dalek and throw it. However, a pull back at the end of the episode shows it to have been a futuristic fun house... why then did the Dalek rays not kill or destroy the creatures therein? Make no sense.<br /><br />But at least, according to <b>Doctor Who</b> lore, we now know why the Mary Celeste was empty. There are shenanigans afoot when the TARDIS arrives but, of course, when the Daleks arrive on the ship, the entire crew are scared and flea to their deaths in the sea. Mystery of the Mary Celeste solved, I guess. It was the Daleks all along!<br /><br />I’m glad to say that this version of <b>The Chase</b> is uncut (but only the <b>UK</b> Blu Ray version... everywhere else the sequence I talk about next has been sliced out). So you will see about a minutes worth of footage of <b>The Beatles</b> (the only surviving footage of them left in existence of their appearances on <b>Top Of The Pops</b>) although, how Ian can sing along with a song (<b>Ticket To Ride</b>) that hadn’t been released before he got on the TARDIS is anyone’s guess. <br /><br />And then there are <b><i>The Mechanoids</i></b> from the last episode (and a brief appearance at the end of the fifth). These robot creatures were supposed to be the next big thing after the Daleks but, this was their (to date) only proper appearance. My best guess as to why they never took off is... yeah... they’re really pants. Not good monsters at all although, it has ot be said, their English/Basic (computer language) speech is kinda interesting. There is a big battle between them and the Daleks which is all superimposed action montaged together... trying to make it look spectacular and, to be honest, failing at that. <br /><br />There’s also a ‘still’ montage of Ian and Barbara returning to Earth two years after they’ve left. It’s very Richard Lester inspired, it seems to me but, at least they got a nice send off. As the episode closes, Peter Purves new character is lost, presumed dead but, yeah, I think I know where he is... pretty sure he stowed away on the TARDIS so, we shall see in the final story in this Blu Ray Series Two boxed edition, which is one I’ve always wanted to take a look at. My verdict on <b>The Chase </b>though is that it’s mostly tosh but, so what? It’s very entertaining and interesting tosh so, I’m happy with that. This particular serial was supposed to have been the basis for a third Peter Cushing <b>Dr. Who</b> movie which, alas, never came to fruition. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-35334385087850423662024-02-18T08:48:00.000+00:002024-02-18T08:48:02.466+00:00Vampire VS Vampire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuu4-BQr4e7GyqenLD-BF_Ym7GwtxTUM_rrWHiOphYkGEDJIAK18vasMUqCanHBV1YdrfrE3Milfvix43iCYAwR3FsBCkVZV-d6CDlVnjRSoxmQIo65bo8HpcwATaF6Bm2ByHiH4AoeaT2N_kz6xzGWzMm8d9hl1gTStK0R2Wo-yO4OED_uBm2XENRf1p/s1329/vampirevsvampiremontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="1329" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuu4-BQr4e7GyqenLD-BF_Ym7GwtxTUM_rrWHiOphYkGEDJIAK18vasMUqCanHBV1YdrfrE3Milfvix43iCYAwR3FsBCkVZV-d6CDlVnjRSoxmQIo65bo8HpcwATaF6Bm2ByHiH4AoeaT2N_kz6xzGWzMm8d9hl1gTStK0R2Wo-yO4OED_uBm2XENRf1p/w400-h245/vampirevsvampiremontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Eyebrow Humour</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Vampire VS Vampire</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">Yi mei dao ren</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">New Mr. Vampire 2</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">Mr. Vampire V</span><br />Directed by Ching-Ying Lam<br />Hong Kong 1989<br />Golden Harvest/Eureka<br />Blu Ray Zone B</span></i></b></span><br /><b><br />Vampire VS Vampire</b> is the final film presented in the <b>Hopping Mad - The Mr. Vampire Sequels</b> Blu Ray set from Eureka Masters Of Cinema and sees, after his absence in <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/02/mr-vampire-saga-iv.html" target="_blank">Mr. Vampire Saga IV,</a></b> the return of Ching-Ying Lam in a role very similar to the Taoist priest role he played in the three films prior to that. Lam, a former Shaw Brothers and Bruce Lee collaborator, also marked his directing debut with this feature, playing One-Eyebrow Priest. The young hopping vampire kid also returns for this movie, dressed pretty much as he is in the previous ones and the other main vampire in this, midst various other threats such as a ghost and a banana tree spirit, is more the traditional, superstrong, non-hopping variant you would find in the west. There is also a bunch of Chinese nuns following Christianity in the movie.<br /><br />Now, I have to be honest (and this is why you are getting another fairly short review in this case), while it’s not worse than the previous movie I reviewed in the series (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/02/mr-vampire-saga-iv.html" target="_blank">here</a>)... it’s also certainly no better. I quite like Lam and wish he’d made a better movie. Although, in his brief life, he certainly made a mark as a Chinese action icon, in his own way... he was dead from liver cancer at the age of 44, 8 years after directing and starring in this movie. But, yeah, although he’s good in it, it’s a fairly awful and forgettable film.<br /><br />Although it does, kind of, have a through line on a story element, mostly, it’s really just a lot of comedy action incidents which are edited so that, if you don’t question what’s going on too much, just about hold on to the idea of a story. However, it’s a very thin thread by which the various set pieces are stitched together and that makes it tough to follow sometimes, I thought. <br /><br />My main problem, with this one... and it’s my main problem with most of the <b>Mr. Vampire </b>films in general (if, indeed, this one really should be credited as a sequel, rather than just a hopeful declaration as such by the marketing people at Eureka Masters Of Cinema), is that it’s really just not funny. These movies are known for their slapstick, very obvious humour, to be sure but, slapstick is not really my favourite form of comedy either. Even so, this has no laughs in it, as far as I’m concerned. <br /><br />Some of the stunts are to be admired, I guess but, even the wire work seems a bit poorly done on this one, I thought. And it’s not helped, either, by the similar sounding ‘comedy score’ that's credited to three composers, which really works against it and which I am assuming is either just needle dropped in from other films of those composers or, possibly, it might be library music. Once again though, it sounds kind of cheap and synthesiser based which, <b><i>might</i></b> work with something more sinister like a horror film but utilised in a more light hearted tone here, it just doesn’t really come off well. I got the feeling that the music is trying to cue the audience in to when they are supposed to laugh but, yeah, it certainly didn’t work for me on this one. <br /><br />And that’s about all I have to say in the case of <b>Vampire Vs Vampire</b> and the <b>Hopping Mad - The Mr. Vampire Sequels</b> Blu Ray collection in general. Of all the films in the series, the only one that really worked for me was <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/01/mr-vampire-iii.html" target="_blank">Mr. Vampire III</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/01/mr-vampire-iii.html" target="_blank">here</a>) but, yeah, the other ones felt a little like a chore to watch, to be honest. I probably won’t look at these ones again for a very long time but, I do appreciate the label putting out films like this in the UK. That can only be a good thing, right? <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-75042265590337669612024-02-13T17:39:00.004+00:002024-02-13T17:41:36.135+00:00After Blue - Dirty Paradise<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhreMit0X0WGIDpHOlP4bujvDFp0hQAa7vxEHgJ5SZ_6DDI6s5B9GD-3uJJSO5_Xft2uR33u25Pn90FKpBs5GuvsqsOVCRuZWxV_-iKFSbcpJCyVmZzrcvR9sbzBNg302085BpcZ_SimNY45QJp12MFyDtTqmid2aXY1TvJXHj7LkGsekWtL9-XLWRtet-v/s1329/afterbluemontage.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="1329" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhreMit0X0WGIDpHOlP4bujvDFp0hQAa7vxEHgJ5SZ_6DDI6s5B9GD-3uJJSO5_Xft2uR33u25Pn90FKpBs5GuvsqsOVCRuZWxV_-iKFSbcpJCyVmZzrcvR9sbzBNg302085BpcZ_SimNY45QJp12MFyDtTqmid2aXY1TvJXHj7LkGsekWtL9-XLWRtet-v/w400-h186/afterbluemontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Blue Angels <br />Killing Kate Bush</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">After Blue - Dirty Paradise</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">After Blue - Paradise Sale</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">After Blue</span><br />Directed by Bertand Mandico<br />France 2021<br />Vinegar Syndrome Blu Ray Zone A</span></i></b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #741b47;"><b>Warning:</b> Conceptual spoilers ahead. </span><br /><br /><b>After Blue - Dirty Paradise</b> is a relatively new movie, being a real feast for the visual and aural senses for cinema goers who are less invested in the mechanics of a plot and more interested in the dazzling excesses of the medium to create a sense of atmosphere, it seems to me. Actually, of the few people I’ve seen writing about this film for short summaries, there seems to be a complete lack of understanding or, perhaps, just a blanket statement that there isn’t much of a story or plot to latch onto. Some people are saying it’s completely impenetrable/ incomprehensible or plotless too. Well, there certainly is a story to be found in this one but it’s simplistic and, well, kinda redundant in terms of much of a follow through.... the writer/director seems far more fixated on the substance of the stylistic splendor, it seems to me, rather than add any more layers of detail to the through line. Although, his world building is perhaps also obfuscating the view for some people, I suspect.<br /><br />Okay, the plot is fairly simple and so I will deal with it here. <br /><br />We have Roxy (aka Toxic) played by model Paula Luna (she does a pretty good job here) and, as her mother Zora, the community hairdresser, there’s Elina Löwensohn. Yep, <b><i>that</i></b> Elina Löwensohn, from the Hal Hartley movies... I think the last thing I saw her in was the excellent<b> Let The Corpses Tan </b>(reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2020/03/let-corpses-tan.html" target="_blank">here</a>) and, it has to be said that, despite the film featuring oodles of female nudity and girl/girl relationships throughout, I actually just picked this one up because I wanted to see what Löwensohn was doing these days. But I digress... after Earth has perished, the survivors find a planet they call <i>After Blue</i> and live in segregated, racial colonies (the Scottish contingent seem a bit aggressive), following the rules of the planet. The men all perish because the atmosphere of the world causes all their body hair to grow inwards and smother them from the inside (if I’m understanding the opening premise correctly). <br /><br />Anyway, one day Roxy unearths an assassin who has been buried up to her neck in sand, waiting for the tide to come in and drown her. Her name is Katarzyna Buszowska (played by Agata Buzek) but she is generally known as Kate Bush. She grants three wishes to Roxy but leaves after she construes Roxy’s secret wish is to kill her friends and so she does. She also has a third eye which appears in her vagina. She disappears and then the community aggressively send Zora and Roxy on a mission to hunt down and kill Kate Bush. </p><p>The film then becomes a road movie where they meet interesting people such as Sternberg (played by Vimala Pons) with her male looking android, strange places such as forests populated by both art and some unusual, organic, sinister tree like beings called Indiams and, of course, the gals get into strange and mostly philosophical adventures as they verbally explore their surroundings on their quest. That’s the whole thing more or less and, there’s a certain sense of closure to the story but not much as the success of the mission, it seemed to me, is not as cut and dried as it might have been (and for an extra layer of doubt, stick around for a short, post credits scene). <br /><br />But the story is not what the film is about. It’s a completely psychedelic romp with all kinds of heavily saturated hues bombarding the visuals at all times. It’s also not a traditional road movie either... at one point the local community are all dressed up reminiscent of Meiko Kaji in the <b>Female Prisoner Scorpion</b> movies and, not long after when Löwensohn adopts the same hat, brandishing her winchester-like <i>Chanel</i> (all the weapons seem to be named after perfume or fashion brands)... it becomes clear that this particular road movie is also very much a revisionist western. Indeed, it certainly did remind me of the kind of hollowed out, soulless Spaghetti Westerns people like Lucio Fulci were making at the tail end of the 1960s and into the 1970s. <br /><br />Now the film has been compared to <b>Barbarella</b> quite a lot (and I’m guessing that’s to both the cinematic version and the original strip) and I can see how the director has certainly tried to look back to these and other psychedelic films of the late 1960s but, for me, it feels like it’s been filtered through a 1980s lens. It’s exactly the kind of movie I would have expected to see ‘back in the day’ in a venue like the Everyman, Hampstead (back when it was a great cinema with essential programming) or the SCALA. One especially vivid sense of 1980s inspired deja vu comes in the opening as we are asked to follow a female voice into the story in precisely the same kind of way as we are invited by Max Von Sydow to do the same at the opening of <b>Europa</b> (which I think was called <b>Zentropa</b> in a lot of countries other than the UK). So, yeah, it hits a certain kind of audience member right in the 80s, I suspect. <br /><br />The voice interrogating Roxy is what then gives us the story but the flashbacks to the story are also intruded upon by the narrative. You at first think the character is breaking the fourth wall but it soon becomes apparent that she’s speaking to her interrogators from the memory of her experiences and that, occasionally, people in those memories think she’s talking to them... which is kind of a nice, stealth reveal when the realisation sets in. And as I write these words now, I’m struck by the realisation that the post credit scene of the film actually reveals exactly who she’s talking to... so I’m glad I waited until the next day to let it sink in before I started to write this review. <br /><br />And it’s a joy to watch, not just for its visual ideas but also for its conceptual ideas. For instance, when Roxy crawls under her house she delves into a tin of worm like creatures (obviously contraband) and then lights one as it wiggles around and smokes it like a cigarette. Or a nice visual moment where a table is held up on legs clothed in Wellington boots. And it all looks incredibly beautiful, of course. Completely stagy and fake but, that’s part of it’s charm. And, cliché of an expression or not, the colour palette throughout totally looks like Mario Bava was tripping on some kind of psychedelic drug. There’s a fair amount of rain in the movie too... which is something I quite like to see and, this combined with the heightened, saturated colours certainly gives a nice visual treat. For instance, a shot of Elina Löwensohn rolling around in the mud near the end but with her body and environment bathed in a neon green is pretty interesting. <br /><br />And that’s me pretty much done with <b>After Blue - Dirty Paradise</b> for the time being... I wouldn’t recommend it to everybody but it’s pretty good for fans of pure cinema where the style is as important (if not more so) than the story content. I also think that when I revisit this one, it’s going to grow on me a lot more and be a much richer experience than my first peek, that’s for sure. And, lets face it, where are you going to find another film with lines like... <i><span style="color: #38761d;">“I felt Kate Bush in my mouth.” </span></i>So, yeah, if you get the opportunity, maybe take a look at this one... I’m glad I did. I'm looking forward now to trying to the same director's new <b>Conan</b> movie... where the spelling is changed to <b>Conann</b> and the character is played by five different actresses at different stages of his life. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-87938551483221427082024-02-12T17:41:00.001+00:002024-02-12T20:03:58.432+00:00MCU<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdhQyYT-p2UTuFuEkeRpcviA3NKYs-LIS1PH1_NlX79C1v19p93SlMP2FR8xHOnrqdOJ4v7umXM_MUmhyphenhyphensf45Gbi1zS0zf0UL74641Tk_K8sCr0-z6Hr1j1ugITtUw5wWOhnaS2lxOvOo_R6AdLvxBZ-mK5Wxwl6uMj2GFc0axpV42CEC016Wk4JJ9H1Gm/s1329/MCU-Montage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="1329" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdhQyYT-p2UTuFuEkeRpcviA3NKYs-LIS1PH1_NlX79C1v19p93SlMP2FR8xHOnrqdOJ4v7umXM_MUmhyphenhyphensf45Gbi1zS0zf0UL74641Tk_K8sCr0-z6Hr1j1ugITtUw5wWOhnaS2lxOvOo_R6AdLvxBZ-mK5Wxwl6uMj2GFc0axpV42CEC016Wk4JJ9H1Gm/w400-h178/MCU-Montage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Some <br />Assembly Required</span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">MCU - The Reign <br />Of Marvel Studios</span><br />by Joanna Robinson, <br />Dave Gonzales & Gavin Edwards<br />Headline Books <br />ISBN: 97811472270733</span></i></b></span><br /><br />To say that the new book <b>MCU, </b>subtitled <b>The Reign Of Marvel Studios, </b>is an unauthorised look at the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be to skew into understatement somewhat. In an introduction, the writers reveal that, after a number of interviews with various players in the history of the famous studio, Disney (who now own the studio) told everyone to stop talking to the writers. I think they must have got wind that this wasn’t going to be a puff piece and, like many of the characters who make up the MCU, would not be pulling any punches. <br /><br />Perhaps a better subtitle for the novel would be <b>The Rise And Fall Of Marvel Studios</b> because, as the book comes to a close somewhere after the flop that was <b>Ant-Man Quantumania</b> (perhaps deservedly so) and a little before the flop of <b>The Marvels</b> (which was less deserved, as far as I’m concerned), it’s definitely painting a less than idyllic picture of the culture of the studios, where they are today and, well, while 2024 is going to be a weird year for all iterations of the Marvel movies based on their comic books released by different companies (see my <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/01/my-2500th-blog-post.html" target="_blank">2500th Blog Pos</a></b>t <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/01/my-2500th-blog-post.html" target="_blank">here</a> for clarification on that matter), I think they’re going to have to really rework all their plans quite a bit to try and resurrect themselves to return to their former box office pull, it seems to me. A reinvention may well be in order, I suspect. <br /><br />Okay, so the book is an interesting one. It doesn’t just deal with the MCU branded Marvel movies in the opening of the book... which is split into five multi chapter sections, Phase Zero through to Phase Four, reflecting the chronological stage in time with the marketed ‘phases’ of the Marvel Cinematic Universe... it also deals with other movies (most of which would be swallowed or folded into the MCU much later) and talks about some of the people behind them. Indeed, it’s a well written book and the writers introduce you to key players in the MCU and beyond, introducing people like Avi Arad and the influential Kevin Feige into the mix and showing you just how they fit into things. <br /><br />And it’s a compelling tome because, while there’s tonnes of stuff I knew from my constant monitoring of Twitter about various stories (well, monitoring is a strong word, the stories just appeared in my timeline because they are well loved movies), it’s all very much encapsulated here in one place and, there’s also plenty of stuff I didn’t know too. For instance, there are some times in the history of these movies where the studio really rolled the dice and risked total bankruptcy to get the resources they needed to make the movies they believed in. Such as mortgaging the rights to most of their own characters for the money to make the first <b>Iron Man... </b>a risk that definitely paid off big time. <br /><br />And there’s stuff I didn’t know such as the ending of that particular movie being rewritten and recreated in the editing room and with some reshoots to completely change it and give it more of a climactic finale. There’s also the disturbing, to me, element... considering just how good some of the Marvel movies are... of that thing where people off the cuff say... oh, they just made that movie to sell toys. Unfortunately, it turns out that’s completely true in the upper echelons. <b>Iron Man</b> and <b>Hulk</b> were picked to be the stars of the first two MCU films purely because a bunch of kids they play tested thought they would be the coolest characters to buy as toys. Indeed, there’s huge tension throughout most of the history of the studio, since Marvel was bought by Toy Biz before these films, between the creatives and the head suit who didn’t even want female superheroes or characters in the movies because the historical wisdom suggested kids don’t buy female action figures (and, yes, that’s exactly why there were none to few <b>Black Widow</b> toys tying into the first couple of <b>Avengers</b> movies, with the character being replaced in play sets with other figures riding her motorbike). Thankfully, it transpired that Feige and others managed to push back on the inclusion of female characters and a fair few other issues so that, while the majority of the Marvel movies were definitely kickstarted for what they call their ‘toyetic’ value, quality films were still made from the beginnings of these projects. <br /><br />Another thing which surprised me was the way the artists drawing spectacular visions of Marvel characters out before each film’s conception were dictating scenes which would be in the movies, rather than the other way around. I’m surprised that none of the writers of this book realised (or at least stated that they did) that this is actually a parallel to the way respected Marvel maven Stan Lee used to write the original comics, what he called the <i><b>‘Marvel method’,</b> </i>where after a basic storyline was given, the artists would be free to come up with their own panels and Stan and others would then put the dialogue on over the bubbles and tie it all together retrospectively. <br /><br />And there’s a lot of stuff that people who have followed the studio’s trials and tribulations will recognise in some form. For instance, Edward Norton and Joss Whedon don’t particularly come off very well here. And you get the feeling that some, if not many, lessons were learned from writer/director Edgar Wright’s original, legendary <b>Ant-Man </b>script... which led to some bitterness, for sure. The effect of Covid on the later shoots is also detailed, as are the various spats between the studio and it’s creative talent both behind and in front of the camera. James Gunn’s firing and re-hiring, for example... or the row about simultaneous streaming and theatrical releases as a result of the pandemic that rightly brought actors like Scarlett Johansson out to start law suits against the company. Not to mention the bankruptcy of various special effects companies like <b>Rhythm And Hues, </b>put out of business by being locked into absurdly agreed, low fees for effects work that was, for companies like Marvel, a constantly moveable feast. I suspect that’s still playing out right now because, hmm, I haven’t seen the third <b>Spiderverse</b> movie debuting this April as originally stated... not to mention the number of MCU titles now pushed back to next year. <br /><br />Another thing I found interesting was the reveal on various intricacies and machinations of just who <b>Spider-Man</b> belongs to in any given film (it’s Sony) and how the MCU movies which feature him were actually negotiated as big profit makers for Sony rather than Marvel, who were helping to bankroll them (although they were, themselves, raking in money on the toys associated with these films). And I also learned about a newish thing instigated by Marvel for character creators called the Special Characters Contract... and how that is also sometimes abused to maintain low payments to some of the creators of the original characters in the comic book universe. <br /><br />And that’s me done with <b>MCU - The Reign Of Marvel Studios, </b>I think. It’s not ever going to be able to look at all the product they’ve put out in any great detail (it's already well over 400 pages long) but the casual reader like myself will find that it’s very well written and lays out how some of these movies and deals are put together in an easy to understand fashion. And pay heed, future readers. After the end notes of the book start, don’t just assume you’ve come to the end because, to mimic the style of the post and mid-end credits scenes in the MCU movies themselves, the writers have hidden an extra chapter right in the middle of this section... which is a nice touch. I really enjoyed this book and, all I can say is... I hope the writers would consider putting together a similarly themed tome for the DC Cinematic Universe at some point. That’s also a book I’d love to read. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-52542394572706308552024-02-11T08:36:00.001+00:002024-02-11T19:55:05.125+00:00Mr. Vampire Saga IV<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj76FvImISgdMmJs_XkNU97lr88Dctr_TNtwIbOtLeVeUjdMoVevO_Xp5pOSOwEZjDg9xTZy8nEX6kjQa5Ll5-HPD9oh_HRgMUa1Vq5RndDg7uF-IHKbfYVTSSonqng8hEZu4H3otyFJ_vSrRj8xF4DLXZFvuGxvK2m5QUNx4ESzF9GpFq52X3uAAnzYrNm/s1329/mrvampiresagaivmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="1329" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj76FvImISgdMmJs_XkNU97lr88Dctr_TNtwIbOtLeVeUjdMoVevO_Xp5pOSOwEZjDg9xTZy8nEX6kjQa5Ll5-HPD9oh_HRgMUa1Vq5RndDg7uF-IHKbfYVTSSonqng8hEZu4H3otyFJ_vSrRj8xF4DLXZFvuGxvK2m5QUNx4ESzF9GpFq52X3uAAnzYrNm/w400-h173/mrvampiresagaivmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Tatty Taoists</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mr. Vampire Saga IV</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">Geung see suk suk</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">Uncle Vampire</span><br />Directed by Ricky Lau<br />Hong Kong 1988<br />Golden Harvest/Eureka<br />Blu Ray Zone B</span></i></b></span><br /><br />Wow, this is terrible. Now I actually quite liked the third film in the <b>Mr. Vampire</b> series, <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/01/mr-vampire-iii.html" target="_blank"><b>Mr. Vampire III</b></a> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/01/mr-vampire-iii.html" target="_blank">here</a>), even though it had no vampires in it, hopping or otherwise. <b>Mr. Vampire Saga IV, </b>the third of the four films in the <b>Hopping Mad - The Mr. Vampire Sequels</b> Blu Ray set from Eureka Masters Of Cinema, sees a return to the hopping vampires as the main supernatural menace in this movie but, alas, it’s just not a good film. <br /><br />The story is about two Taoist monks and their respective apprentices (one male apprentice and one female, throwing in the inevitable comedy love interest vibes) who are neighbours and who hate each other. After a series of makeshift ‘duels’ between the two masters, such as a food fight and a couple of scenes where they possess each other’s bodies, the titular vampires get loose and the four of them, plus a kid who they are trying to save from eternal damnation after being bitten, have to defend the two homes against a bunch of vampires, including one genuinely aggressive and powerful one, despite all that hopping (I suspect it was this guy that Kim Newman must have based the hopping vampire in his first <b>Anno Dracula</b> novel on). <br /><br />Like the last movie in the series, the film is quite fast paced and, more or less, just goes from one comedy action set piece to another without much let up and, while that somehow worked in the previous film’s favour, I have to say that it really didn’t help that this film wasn’t, in any way, funny to me. I rarely find slapstick funny unless it’s done really well (such as The Marx Brothers or early period Woody Allen) but, even so, I didn’t have one occasion in this one where I found myself even cracking a smile, to be honest.<br /><br />That being said, some of the stunts and the timings of the comedy duels and the acrobatics of the four main characters are certainly to be admired. You won’t be doing very well in one of these movies if you are in any way unfit and the actors and actresses (including a more effective scene with a lady playing an aggressive fox spirit) are all more than up to the task. It looks like they’re doing many, probably all, of their own stunts in this one too, including athletic jumps, back flips and other, probably quite dangerous stuff. So, like I said, you do have to admire some of this stuff even if, as in my case, it isn’t quite your cup of tea.<br /><br />Like the previous installments, the music is unsubtle and broadly comic which, I suspect, doesn’t really help things. I’m guessing a more subtle, less ‘on the nose’ score might well have made this fourth installment more palatable to me but, as it is, it just didn’t do it any favours, that’s for sure. <br /><br />So apologies but, it’s another very short review for one of these films as, yeah, <b>Mr. Vampire Saga IV</b> just didn’t do much of anything for me. That being said, I am quite looking forward to the next in the box set because the main actor from the previous three movies, who is very good, is in it. However, I am slightly suspicious that <b>Vampire Vs Vampire</b> is not one of the <b>Mr. Vampire </b>sequels at all so, goodness knows what it’s doing in this set. I’ll take a look soon and let you know, I guess. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-9955281207793686192024-02-06T17:31:00.001+00:002024-02-07T21:24:19.252+00:00Argylle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaSvaUkit3vEGStWvAi6lIxaDTiKkWp4GWYnimcavysAsENDMmLwtNKO3qljjs3jfueLgdJmyudN9QQ0QXVhLXgxy311JfwvqlhMcZd3hiFJOTyIcL3YCc02Ju4q6W_Kter-Sj73-sy6NAClcEEYsfT-4VaOL6AVlClYV-szgY3xXaObOSM59rkhRYqSNm/s1329/argyllemontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1329" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaSvaUkit3vEGStWvAi6lIxaDTiKkWp4GWYnimcavysAsENDMmLwtNKO3qljjs3jfueLgdJmyudN9QQ0QXVhLXgxy311JfwvqlhMcZd3hiFJOTyIcL3YCc02Ju4q6W_Kter-Sj73-sy6NAClcEEYsfT-4VaOL6AVlClYV-szgY3xXaObOSM59rkhRYqSNm/w400-h174/argyllemontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Diamond Geezah!</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Argylle</span><br />Directed by Matthew Vaughn<br />USA/UK <br />2024 Apple Films<br />UK Cinema Print</span></i></b></span><br /><br />Now I loved Matthew Vaughn’s first <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2015/02/kingsman-secret-service.html" target="_blank">Kingsman</a></b> film (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2015/02/kingsman-secret-service.html" target="_blank">here</a>) and, after seeing the trailer for <b>Argylle,</b> it looked like a movie tailor-made for me and very much in the same kind of ballpark. And then the warnings started coming in... I mean, really bad word of mouth about it. Indeed, it seems to be both a critical and financial bomb which is really not going to do the director any favours. Still, I soldiered on to the cinema because the trailer really had been enticing, in the hopes that I was out of step with other audience members... remembering that some of the best films made met with a similar lack of enthusiasm. <br /><br />And, wow, all I can say is... the kinds of people who are not appreciating <b>Argylle</b> are obviously the same kinds of audiences who don’t appreciate films like <b>Barbarella, Modesty Blaise, Our Man Flint</b> and any other number of psychedelic masterpieces you could mention. This is seriously good cinema and I can only hope that, since it’s made by Apple, they see fit to give it a proper physical release because I want to grab the Blu Ray of this to show some people as soon as possible. <br /><br />Now, a full on blow by blow of the plot would possibly spoil things for the slower thinkers in the audience but, I feel I can at least say as much as the trailer gives away, to give a flavour of the story. Secret agent <b>Argylle, </b>played by Henry Cavill, is the typical James Bond (more like a halfway house between Derek Flint and Matt Helm) who opens the film with a particualarly strong dance, shoot and chase scene.... before it’s revealed to the audience that he’s actually the lead character in the book series of successful writer Elly Conway, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. That’s the first twist. The second twist, also revealed in the trailer, is that she meets a guy played by Sam Rockwell on a train journey and he really is a secret agent, who is then trying to save her life as an evil agency wants what’s in her head. Oh... and she has a funny cat which she carries around in a satchel. And that’s all you’re getting in terms of plot from me. There are more twists and turns and I’m guessing most people will definitely see them all coming long before they happen... but that doesn’t stop this thing from being a very watchable movie. <br /><br />The film turns into a funny, deadly, glamourous and certainly colourful action spy movie which, not for even one second (I’m glad to say), takes itself even remotely seriously. And perhaps that’s what turns some people off... the film loses contact with reality at some point and the tone shifts into an absolutely stylish mix of psychedelia and silliness... which is right up my street. I do apporeciate silly situations and even silly people when the right ones enter my life (<i><span style="color: red;">Hi Katrin!</span></i>) and, this movie has it in spades, it has to be said. <br /><br />There’s a whole host of famous actors in this too, including Samuel L. Jackson, Bryan Cranston, John Cena and even the great Sofia Boutella... and they all do a good job here playing things as straight as they need to doing with this kind of coherent brand of ridiculous shenanigans. Howard and Rockwell are both especially good in this one, it has to be said. <br /><br />Also great is Lorne Balfe’s quite beautiful and sweeping score which, I really wouldn’t have guessed was by this composer at all. Alas, the damn thing isn’t out in any kind of format to date (not even a proper CD) so I’m not going to be able to listen to this one as a stand alone experience anytime soon, I’m guessing. Which is a shame and, once again, shows the short sightedness of the people on these movies who make that kind of decision.<br /><br />All in all, I’d have to say I had a very good time with <b>Argylle.</b> The tonal shift from ‘just about credible’ to full-on bonkers is probably going to put off many people (as I think is evidenced by the box office) but I loved the film, especially (and without trying to give too much away), the ‘Tommy Crown’ coloured smoke, dance assault scene and the ‘oil skating’ scene, both of which were big hits for me. I don’t understand why, as is already clear, some people aren’t able to embrace this kind of audacious cinematic spectacle but, there you have it, it’s getting bad reviews and doing poor business but... I don’t care. I loved it and I think people who are into 1960s ‘camp/spoof’ cinema especially will have a good time with it. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-53789262059002221502024-02-05T17:44:00.000+00:002024-02-05T17:44:15.642+00:0087th Precinct<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj65IYBO47BcL5VMwYFS4zpklwTcFI_RA8Hznjd9L7dilhNWRMBry3qWIz7Mjk0Kqmosva0p9peygjglPILDH6u81UQgM8l0ZgdZ25bJbolY6cYWLC1fNvmTYS7KRzY3-kOID10Qehg1niT00cDErR2kb2NQJKc2e2qie1QN8ddEYbweelJpL3DSukpgT45/s1329/87thprecinctmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="1329" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj65IYBO47BcL5VMwYFS4zpklwTcFI_RA8Hznjd9L7dilhNWRMBry3qWIz7Mjk0Kqmosva0p9peygjglPILDH6u81UQgM8l0ZgdZ25bJbolY6cYWLC1fNvmTYS7KRzY3-kOID10Qehg1niT00cDErR2kb2NQJKc2e2qie1QN8ddEYbweelJpL3DSukpgT45/w400-h131/87thprecinctmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Revellers <br />And Carellas</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">87th Precinct</span><br />Airdate 1961 -1962<br />30 episodes<br />Timeless Media Group</span></i></b></span><br /><br />I’ve never read an Ed McBain novel but he’s probably best known in literary terms for writing the many <b>87th Precinct</b> books over the decades... from which there have been many movie adaptations and ‘inspired by’ credits... such as the novel <b>King’s Ransom</b> forming the basis of Akira Kurosawa’s <b>High And Low.</b> They even used some of the stories from his <b>87th Precinct </b>books for TV shows, such as the odd episode or two of <b>Columbo.</b> <br /><br />Ed McBain is also the pen name of one Evan Hunter, who wrote film and TV scripts such as <b>The Birds</b> with Alfred Hitchcock. As I said though, I’ve not read his books (yet, is there a nice big omnibus?) and I don’t know that much about him. But I knew of him mostly because, when I was a kid, my dad used to grab a lot of books from the library. Seemed like he’d get through quite a few books a week when travelling to and from work and also in his rare downtimes and, yeah, he read a lot of Ed McBain’s stuff. So I was absolutely delighted when, early last year, I stumbled upon a little known TV show based on McBain’s <b>87th Precinct. </b>And what’s more, it had actually made it onto DVD in the US so, I imported one over for my dad’s birthday and sat down to watch the first episode with him, totally getting hooked on them myself too. We watched an episode a night and got through them in a month with my only puzzlement being, why the heck was this not picked up for a second series? <br /><br />There are thirty stand alone episodes, of which, many are based on the original novels and some of which also have a screenplay by McBain. And they’re mostly pretty good. They are, like I imagine the novels are, ensemble pieces. Police procedurals involving a number of police detectives who work in the fictional <b>87th Precinct. </b>The series takes four of the characters (another turns up for a single episode late in the show’s one season run) with some episodes getting equal play from all four characters and other episodes highlighting one or two of the four but, still with a little help from the others. And, there are an absolutely brilliant bunch of actors playing this lot too...<br /><br />The top billed lead is Robert Lansing as Detective Steve Carella. I’m sure he’s best remembered by many now for the single episode of <b>Star Trek</b> he appeared in, <b>Assignment: Earth, </b>where he played mysterious intergalactic secret agent Gary Seven (one of my favourite episodes as a kid). That episode was supposed to be a stealth pilot episode for a new series highlighting the adventures of Mr. Seven but, alas, that did not come to pass. </p><p>Then there’s Ronald Harper as Detective Bert Kling. Some may remember him for his later stint as Virdon on the TV show version of <b>Planet Of The Apes.</b> Next, my favourite of the bunch, Norman Fell as Detective Meyer Meyer, another actor who’s been in tonnes of stuff but finally found fame in the US as their version of George from the US versions of <b>Man About The House</b> and <b>George And Mildred</b> (got no idea what they were called over there, sorry). Finally there’s Gregory Walcott as Detective Roger Havilland... who I’m told is not written like the corrupt, unliked cop he is in the books but, heck, he’s pretty good in this regardless.There are a few other regulars but these are the main ones.<br /><br />Also joining them for four episodes, randomly spaced throughout the season, is the great Gena Rowlands playing Teddy, Carella’s deaf/mute wife. She’s pretty good in the episodes she’s in and a few of the other spouses and girlfriends of the gang are also very watchable. Plus, there the usual slew of people who were guest stars almost, in that they were already famous, popping up for single episodes... such as Robert Culp and Victor Jory (who played <b>The Shadow</b> earlier in his career)... not to mention various people who hadn’t quite reached a level of fame yet such as Peter Falk, Bernie Hamilton and Sidney Klugman (who I used to love in <b>Cagney & Lacey</b>). <br /><br />The plots are all great and it took the episode based on <b>King's Ransom</b> for me to realise just how much Kurosawa expanded and changed the material (and maybe the TV show did too. for all I know)... using the same story idea but making something completely different from the source (no train sequence or pink smoke in this one either). But what did surprise me, keeping in mind the years in which it was broadcast, is how gritty and edgy the show can be. </p><p>For instance, in the first episode, Robert Culp is playing a very modern serial killer with a fair degree of mental illness and, while it’s a cliché these days, possibly... it’s certainly a step up in overt craziness compared to what other films like, say, <b>Psycho</b> were expressing at the time. And, quite often but not always, there’s no redemption for some of these characters, including the inevitable episode based on a well respected ex-87th Precinct cop pulling a string of brutal robberies. <br /><br />Also, what really impressed me was the acting ability and imagination of the four leads. For example, someone may be scribbling an address down from a book held by another character while they’re in mid conversation and one character may close the book thinking the other has finished noting it down and then the other character will grab it and reopen it to the right page as he’s still talking, to finish writing down the lead (that one courtesy of Lansing). And there’s lots of little acting details like this which really show a bunch of thespians absolutely at the top of their game and all pulling together to bring a high level of believability and authenticity to their roles.. I think McBain used to ride around with the cops to get an ear for the dialogue and an understanding of police procedure and it really wouldn’t surprise me if some of these actors did the same here to get into their roles.<br /><br />One last thing... the majority of the show is scored by Morton Stevens, who also supplied a superb piece of hard hitting, main title music. Why has this thing not been released on CD? A few of the shows also had scores by other people including a young Jerry Goldsmith on one. Morton Stevens would, of course, go on to become one of Mr. Goldsmith’s most trusted orchestrators.<br /><br />And that’s me done on <b>87th Precinct.</b> If you like cop shows and police procedurals then you’ll find this is a brilliant show. And with its hard hitting stories and sharp humour, I’m surprised it’s not better known. This one gets a solid recommendation from me any day of the week. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-35951354602627404122024-02-04T08:32:00.001+00:002024-02-04T08:32:59.520+00:00The Scarlet Claw<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1GIqVktb2K8lH_UZ90Zd0QR5jVm8UatkGlnw1gMEUJLZpmcZKAAttn8vT5Xp1BAlwYCI4xM4JGiwXWgg1t6gX2z6IJ0U7lEMuZWkKynaS6TqgrHA9gwsj6GOxY3HJxVsM5kQsHW1re3PUVHCpN-GYRz2z739yjnuRftG96zaiJofD-hMk8gJYZk70CR2m/s1329/thescarlertclawmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="1329" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1GIqVktb2K8lH_UZ90Zd0QR5jVm8UatkGlnw1gMEUJLZpmcZKAAttn8vT5Xp1BAlwYCI4xM4JGiwXWgg1t6gX2z6IJ0U7lEMuZWkKynaS6TqgrHA9gwsj6GOxY3HJxVsM5kQsHW1re3PUVHCpN-GYRz2z739yjnuRftG96zaiJofD-hMk8gJYZk70CR2m/w400-h214/thescarlertclawmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Sanity Claws</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Scarlet Claw</span><br />Directed by Roy William Neill<br />USA 1944 <br />Universal Blu Ray Zone B</span></i></b></span><br /><br />The eighth of the series of wonderful <b>Sherlock Holmes</b> movies finds Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson without the aid of Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, for once. This is because the story of <b>The Scarlet Claw... </b>which is one of the concoctions of the studio writers as opposed to being based on anything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle actually wrote, asides from the main protagonists, of course... is set not in England but Canada. <br /><br />This film more closely aligns to the kind of set up of the classic Universal Monster movies of the time (indeed, Rathbone had already played the lead role in <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2020/06/son-of-frankenstein.html" target="_blank">Son Of Frankenstein, </a></b>reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2020/06/son-of-frankenstein.html" target="_blank">here</a>) as it starts off with a woman with her throat ripped out, ringing a church bell for help while, on this dark and foggy night, the rest of the village of La Mort Rouge (yeah, the Red Death... great name for a village, I guess) are hiding in their beds or in the local pub. The rumours have started up again, midst a bunch of nightly sheep killings (found with their throats torn out) that the famous monster of La Mort Rouge has once again returned to prowl the village. So, yeah, this werewolf sounding premise is certainly in keeping with their current flock of horror movies at Universal and, luckily for most in the village, Sherlock Holmes and his trusty Watson happen to be in the area, 12 miles over, to attend an international meeting of <i><b>The Occult Society...</b></i> primarily to debunk the idea that there are various sinister phenomena at work in the world (something certainly in keeping with the spirit of Holmes, of course, but Conan Doyle would surely have found himself standing in strong disagreement with his most popular creation on this issue).<br /><br />Lord Penrose, who opposes Holmes involvement, happens to be married to the lady who perished at the start of the film and, against his wishes, Holmes and Watson soon find themselves working the case in La Mort Rouge, primarily due to the delivery of a letter asking for Holmes assistance, sent to them by the murder victim but arriving long after she has left this mortal coil. <br /><br />This one’s a real good one, yet again (did they ever make any bad ones in this series) and there are lots of village pubs and scenes of sneaking around on the boggy mires... I suspect the writers were asked to come up with something similar in tone and spirit to the famous <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-hound-of-baskervilles.html" target="_blank">Hound Of The Baskervilles, </a></b>which had kick started this franchise when 20th Century Fox started it (you can find my review <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-hound-of-baskervilles.html" target="_blank">here</a>). This would make sense for Universal, when you think of all the fog shrouded, stalking monsters of their horror output. <br /><br />This was the third of the series to include actor Gerald Hamer in its cast and he does a good job here in a more expanded role. He would also be in a couple more of these films after this one and the series certainly seems to have a good stock of actors regularly called upon to fill these roles out. He’s just one of many who interact with Rathbone and Bruce in some wonderful scenes with the usual amazing performances. </p><p>I remember discovering once how Warner Oland used to pause when speaking in a conversation when he was playing <b>Charlie Chan</b> to give an authenticity to a character who would have been trying to work out in his head the best way of saying his thoughts in English. Rathbone is similarly thorough in his performance of Holmes and this is another one where he proves his worth as an actor. Look at the intensity of his gaze at various people when conversations are going on around him. He perfectly conveys someone who is watching everyone like a hawk... studying and noticing any and every clue and always alert for any giveaway a suspect may accidentally drop in his words. <br /><br />And Nigel Bruce is on his usual fine form as both the bumbling comic relief (probably a little more overtly here, even, than usual) but also someone who is willing to share the dangers of Holmes’ cases and, indeed, even manages to inadvertently save Holmes’ life at one point. There are some wonderful conversations he has with the locals including a long set of tongue twisters about whether a certain sound made by a car horn is a honk or a hoot. Bruce finally concludes <span style="color: red;">“I don’t give two hoots whether it’s a honk or a hoot!”</span> Rathbone’s lines are no less ostentatious but he also delivers them very well, making lines like <span style="color: red;">“His orgy of crime is not complete!”</span> seem positively common in their usage. <br /><br />The murders in this one are committed by an ex-actor who goes about disguising himself as various characters and commits the murders using a five pronged garden instrument to mimic the claws of the mythical beast... probably the very same prop, I suspect, as the one used in a similar fashion two years later in <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2021/12/she-wolf-of-london.html" target="_blank">She-Wolf Of London</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2021/12/she-wolf-of-london.html" target="_blank">here</a> and a film which, incidentally, included Dennis Hoey in its cast playing a very similar role to Inspector Lestrade, who doesn’t turn up in <b>The Scarlet Claw, </b>again... because it’s set in Canada). <br /><br />One of this murderous actor’s roles is a ghostly apparition which, his clothes covered in a phosphorescent coating, looks particularly effective as he stalks Holmes on the marshes (I’m surprised Universal didn’t use this ‘special’ effect more often). It’s unusual to see somebody else donning the disguises in a <b>Sherlock Holmes</b> film but, by the end of the picture, Rathbone does indeed adopt a disguise in order to catch the villain... made up to look like one of the other actors in the cast, although I did spot it beforehand this time around. <br /><br />And that’s me done with <b>The Scarlet Claw, </b>I think. Another mini masterpiece in this amazing franchise of movies, one of the best series of films about a running character that’s been committed to celluloid. And, yes, although it has its detractors, not least because of the way the source material has been changed (including the obvious contemporisation of the characters), I still believe these are the best <b>Sherlock Holmes </b>films to date and are a real treat for all fans of the art of cinema. Once again Rathbone concludes with a patriotic quote from Churchill about the importance of Canada, <span style="color: red;">“the linchpin of the English speaking world”</span> and, yeah, it’s clichéd but even that brings a smile to the face at the end. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-89589920994367644702024-01-30T17:50:00.000+00:002024-01-30T17:50:02.218+00:00Mr. Vampire III<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi33BCdN8kVB3b5zpdNTcYa9LgWIi7mlfSQw4WZ1UEa0ln2q3pzcthFoipf1lOiD2-kUB4j8bhw3x4TCPOfhpRbgxvzT6ge9Zzft2SHzpjT8qLR86znN4OmB93MyJWugp6Q8ljgc7uHeRnkvZV37RFRCN5lnKVDCgQ1buFmORXcleykR_Es9UaObfQ3eAbH/s1329/mrvampire3montage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="917" data-original-width="1329" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi33BCdN8kVB3b5zpdNTcYa9LgWIi7mlfSQw4WZ1UEa0ln2q3pzcthFoipf1lOiD2-kUB4j8bhw3x4TCPOfhpRbgxvzT6ge9Zzft2SHzpjT8qLR86znN4OmB93MyJWugp6Q8ljgc7uHeRnkvZV37RFRCN5lnKVDCgQ1buFmORXcleykR_Es9UaObfQ3eAbH/w400-h276/mrvampire3montage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Frying Tonight</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mr. Vampire III</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">Ling wan sin sang</span><br />aka <span style="font-size: large;">Mr. Supernatural</span><br />Directed by Ricky Lau<br />Hong Kong 1987<br />Golden Harvest/Eureka<br />Blu Ray Zone B</span></i></b></span><br /><br /><br />Well this one is pretty great but, before I get on with giving you a short flavour of this movie, I have to first give you a word of caution about <b>Mr. Vampire III.</b> As the second film presented in a box set entitled <b>Hopping Mad - The Mr. Vampire Sequels,</b> you might expect to see some of the trademark hopping vampires in this movie. But you don’t... there’s not even a single vampire that enters the story at any point here, let alone a hopping one. A warning might have been conscientiously provided by Eureka on the Blu Ray box, one might have thought. <br /><br />While the main actor from the previous two films, Ching-Ying Lam, returns as a character with the same name, who may or may not be the Taoist priest from the first movie (the action returns to ancient times for this movie, preceding the action of the second film, which was set in the 1980s), there is little to connect the two stories.<br /><br />Having said all that, this movie starts off pretty strong with a comedy action packed opening sequence which then dovetails into... lots more of the same. In fact, one of the strengths of this movie over the other two is that it’s almost non-stop action with just the odd pause to explain to the audience what’s going on and to set up the next scene... but without lingering too much on the story mechanics and, thankfully, without taking itself too seriously in that department.<br /><br />Okay, so no vampires but the film starts with a wandering Taoist priest, played by Richard Ng, who is conning a family by pretending to exorcise their very real ghosts for money. He uses his own ghosts, who collaborate with him to get the money and then are ‘exorcised’ safely in a taoist prison (in this case an umbrella he carries around from town to town) once the con has been performed. However, almost as soon as this comedy action sequence is complete, the real ghosts who have been bothering the homeowner arrive, a whole clan of them, who kick the priest and his ghosts out. So they flee to the next town where...<br /><br />They are temporarily mistaken for horse thieves by a group of people protected by the wise Taoist monk played by Ching-Ying Lam. It’s not long before the real band of horse thieves attack the village and are revealed as black magic sorcerers and demons. From that point on and for the rest of the film, it’s a battle of wits... but mostly a battle of cleverly choreographed kung fu style moves, as the comedy and action sequences land one after another and, with this many going on, at least a few should be pretty entertaining. And I’d have to say that, yeah, it worked for me. Despite the absence of the titular hopping vampire, this one was a fast and energetic blend of similar elements to the first film but, done much better and this one didn’t drag in the slightest. <br /><br />Lam and Ng are great as their respective Taoist monk characters and they make a great pairing here. Unfortunately the music is played for the comedy again, rather than supporting the comedy already inherent and, although there is a credited composer, Chin-Yung Shing, I also noticed in the credits that the use of an entity called the Cavendish Music Library was tapped so, I’m going to have to assume that some of this very broad comedy scoring was just needle dropped in (I hope).<br /><br />And that’s really all I need to say about <b>Mr. Vampire III,</b> I think. The acting is not subtle (apart from Lam and Ng, I would say) and the basic story is not going to tax anyone or give them much they wouldn’t expect... except maybe the partially deep fried ghost who comes out of hot oil and attacks Ng, looking like a deep fried version of <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-oily-maniac.html" target="_blank">The Oily Maniac </a></b>(reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-oily-maniac.html" target="_blank">here</a>). But the film works in spite of all this and I had a good time with it. I’m quite looking forward to the next one now. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-41278638887781756802024-01-29T17:31:00.002+00:002024-01-29T22:09:06.931+00:00My 2500th Blog Post<p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><b><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"></span></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLKPDv7GKzcxym60W5w1fNrcRoYJ3lVLfAMYvjy-Jubl1ryQPBdDx089gzRLljQckND_eNtEAlWv4dPGgYacKGRWns-6GJX8eglPfaKFIJSTaOZrJTcH_cBaXWS5L6hOf1U_14kYUDPvTkHz7fJlyu36mn9MuLhVIMZ4Py1JKTLtxpa-dVteeAQCsD4g_j/s1329/post2500.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="1329" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLKPDv7GKzcxym60W5w1fNrcRoYJ3lVLfAMYvjy-Jubl1ryQPBdDx089gzRLljQckND_eNtEAlWv4dPGgYacKGRWns-6GJX8eglPfaKFIJSTaOZrJTcH_cBaXWS5L6hOf1U_14kYUDPvTkHz7fJlyu36mn9MuLhVIMZ4Py1JKTLtxpa-dVteeAQCsD4g_j/w400-h127/post2500.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /><br /><br /> </span></b><p></p><p><b><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Where Are All <br />The Heroes?</span></span></b></p><p></p><p><i><b><span style="color: red; font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: large;">2500th Blog</span></span></b></i><br /><br />For my <b>2500th Blog Post</b> I thought I’d have a look at the current cinematic battleground for two competing comic book companies, Marvel and DC... giving my views on just what is happening with these two behemoth’s in 2024. And I don’t mean specifically movies based on comic books (which can be a whole other thing)... I mean super hero movies, which are the dominant strand of that genre, to be sure. <br /><br />So... is superhero fatigue really setting in? <br /><br />I know it did for some people around about seven years ago, when regular Marvel/DC consuming friends and acquaintances I know just stopped going to see either company’s movies. I am, I guess, a hanger on but, I think it’s about to get really interesting sometime next year. So, musicals and westerns are two genres I can think of off-hand which were huge with cinema audiences at one stage but, though they’re still occasionally made, the box office for these things dropped considerably (some decades ago) and getting one greenlit in either category seems like the exception to the rule these days. <br /><br />Now, here’s the thing... Marvel and DC haven’t got a lot going on this year. DC are busy turning their back on all the good work they’ve been doing for the last decade or so by rebooting the franchise completely (a foolish decision in my humble opinion), sometime for a 2025 <b>Superman</b> movie to kick it all off again. So that means the only film they have coming, in October of this year (at time of writing) is the stand alone, non DC universe sequel <b>Joker - Folie à Deux. </b>Marvel are kind of in a similar situation in that they have only one pure Marvel Cinematic Universe movie coming up this year, a sequel to two non-MCU movies... namely <b>Deadpool 3.</b> Now, there are also three of Sony’s sideways Marvel spin offs coming in 2024 but they’re all based on supporting characters from another character’s comics (all of them being <b>Spider-Man, </b>in this case) and so they’re <b><i><span style="color: red;">a)</span></i></b> not closely associated with the MCU brand of Marvel and <b><i><span style="color: red;">b)</span></i></b> not exactly top tier characters... so we have movies of <b>Madame Web, Kraven The Hunter</b> (why, for goodness sake, do this classic <b>Spider-Man</b> villain without <b>Spider-Man?</b>) and, what may possibly be the only successful one of the lot... <b>Venom 3. </b><br /><br />And none of those are guaranteed successes (even <b>Deadpool 3,</b> if they handle it badly). Now, the studios are making it known (probably with a degree of exaggeration) that the writer and actor strikes affected their plans badly but... I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I think what’s going on is bad box office. Off the top of my head, <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/05/guardians-of-galaxy-vol-3.html" target="_blank">Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/05/guardians-of-galaxy-vol-3.html" target="_blank">here</a>) was the only superhero movie that made any real money (enough to be considered a strong success to the company, at least). Other live action Marvel and DC movies of 2023 such as <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/03/shazam-fury-of-gods.html" target="_blank">Shazam - Fury Of The Gods</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/03/shazam-fury-of-gods.html" target="_blank">here</a>), <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/02/ant-man-and-wasp-quantumania.html" target="_blank">Ant Man And The Wasp - Quantumania</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/02/ant-man-and-wasp-quantumania.html" target="_blank">here</a>), <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-flash.html" target="_blank">The Flash</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-flash.html" target="_blank">here</a>), <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-marvels.html" target="_blank">The Marvels</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-marvels.html" target="_blank">here</a>), <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/09/blue-beetle.html" target="_blank"><b>Blue Beetle</b></a> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/09/blue-beetle.html" target="_blank">here</a>) and <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/01/aquaman-and-lost-kingdom.html" target="_blank">Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom </a></b>(reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2024/01/aquaman-and-lost-kingdom.html" target="_blank">here</a>)... were all big failures from what I can make out. <br /><br />But hold on a minute... I say big failures but I’m talking about money because, as far as I’m concerned, we got some of the most interesting superhero movies of the lot last year. I mean, okay, <b>The Flash</b> and <b>Quantumania </b>were pretty dire but, all of those other ones I mentioned, actually had a lot going for them (very surprisingly, in the case of <b>Blue Beetle</b>) but, it doesn’t matter because most of them got a hard, critical mauling (not from me) and did terrible business (again, relative to the greedy expectations of the companies bankrolling them, at least). <br /><br />So I’m guessing the lesson learned by these two giant corporations is... time for a soft reboot (or in DC’s case, a hard reboot, it would seem) to try and get things back on track. After all, quality movies do not make for quality box office and, in the case of the 2023 slate of superhero movies... that certainly was true. So cinematically, 2024 is going to feel very strange and desolate. I’m guessing there will be a lot more bigger budget horror movies stepping up to fill that superhero void and I’m guessing that these will also start to receive mixed to negative reviews before long (horror movies definitely seem to have a cyclic nature in terms of their box office success from decade to decade... usually when the world governments are having some kind of crisis, which means their box office foothold has been particularly strong for a while now). <br /><br />Are we, then, finally reaching the end of an era for the superhero genre? The fatigue that keeps getting predicted? Well, I hope not but then again, in the period between the 1930s to the mid 1960s, I bet people thought westerns and musicals would be popular forever. So who can say just how things will roll but, beware, things like physical media releases could be in jeopardy too if these superhero movies continue to fail and studio heads (as they often do) see this as a sign of certain revenue streams failing because of the quality of the product (as opposed to what is just a lack of interest in that product). Time will tell, I guess.<br /><br />In the meantime, that marked<b><i> my 2500th blog post</i></b> so, whether you’ve read all of them or just this one, thanks so much for taking the time to peruse. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-66584930690985871512024-01-28T07:44:00.000+00:002024-01-28T07:44:27.928+00:00How To Lie With Maps<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidbO-TAXIYJXgaqHRCRh5Tet4KuQAaatJW7wMAz8lOwN5gD2y5zkRhNy09k1PhwUCqSBMpCLyqRKzbQO1bIhl_egEBDguERkDIPW8BequKPPM8FDA3dnHKWOYqRU3QL-7JhMAzwbwDg4Y0-QPs2rB4jh5PLGHQwYu8ytXa6omqfkaOXtRYsqC9ksKTNKFK/s1329/howtoliewithmapsmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="1329" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidbO-TAXIYJXgaqHRCRh5Tet4KuQAaatJW7wMAz8lOwN5gD2y5zkRhNy09k1PhwUCqSBMpCLyqRKzbQO1bIhl_egEBDguERkDIPW8BequKPPM8FDA3dnHKWOYqRU3QL-7JhMAzwbwDg4Y0-QPs2rB4jh5PLGHQwYu8ytXa6omqfkaOXtRYsqC9ksKTNKFK/w400-h178/howtoliewithmapsmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Co-ordinating Deceit</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">How To Lie With Maps <br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;">3rd Edition</span><br />by Mark Monmonier<br />The University Of Chicago Press <br />ISBN: 9780226435923</span></i></b></span><br /><br />Just a quick shout out of a review to a pretty interesting and cool book I got given for Christmas by a very special friend. This is apparently the third edition of Mark Monmonier’s book <b>How To Lie With Maps </b>and it starts off with an introduction by the author as to why a revised edition is actually needed... which of course takes into account such things as digital/interactive maps and then, just for a little while, falls into what I like to call ‘the academic trap’, by setting out what the book intends to do. Personally, I could do without this element of telling before you show but, <i>hey ho,</i> academics!<br /><br />It is, however, an excellent book and it certainly does what it says on the tin... or in this case what it shows on the front cover, which features a wonderful illustration of a map showing a big area coloured up to represent the silhouette of Pinocchio. Which is a nice touch. <br /><br />The book is a handy summary of the ways in which people not only lie regularly with maps, such as exaggerating what is in an area or using scale to showcase what is required by the cartographer’s client... but also looks at the ways in which maps deceive when that isn’t necessarily the intention of the map maker. And it even makes a very good point from early on that the very nature of a map means it is absolutely imperative to lie to effectively, or even adequately, communicate what is being depicted... and I suspect it’s damn near impossible not to. So, for example, a church icon would not, in real life, be a huge and massive building that big... it’s exaggerated for the map to clearly show its presence. <br /><br />And there are certainly a whole host of falsehoods thrown up, some of which I’d certainly never considered. For instance, just the idea of a flat map representing an area of a spherical world means there is going to be some shonkiness with the representation unless you can find a way around that. And even the nature of the lenses used when taking ariel photographs means some hefty distortion is certainly going to occur when you finally see it as a flat image. <br /><br />And all kinds of devious deceit is deliberately thrown up in terms of things like army propaganda (and how to mislead an enemy with your maps). An interesting set of maps of a certain section of Russia from different decades in each specific atlas shows places that shift location, for example. It also looks at the ways map makers get their source materials and how various cartographers may try to copy that. I’ve always known about things called ‘trap streets’, for example... the practice of putting in a place that doesn’t exist so if a rival map seller uses your copyrighted map as their source, you can easily call them on it. I didn’t know the correct name of them though and I also didn’t realise, due to legal precedents, that this practice had stopped sometime in the 1990s (Yay, I can start nicking maps again!). And the book is well written in a fairly entertaining manner too, such as on this very subject where the author states <i><span style="color: #38761d;">“The euphemism for this type of compilation was ‘editing the competition’ but the legal term is copyright infringement...”</span></i>, which I thought was very good. <br /><br />What I didn’t expect to find was a specific printing phenomenon which I’ve known about and tried to compensate and steer clear of for years, being as I’m a graphic designer by trade, can also lead to accidental occurrences of deceit. Bearing in mind grey scales can be used as a tool to give a hierarchy of information on a map (as well as colour versions too, of course), then it does make sense that something which I’ve always called ‘dot gain’ in printing (and something which the author calls spread), where a colour or shade comes out darker than required because of the actual act of ink pressing against paper, means you have to be extra careful about trying to control that element when you are printing a map. Not to mention choosing tones and colours that are able to retain that hierarchical meaning when they are photocopied and given to someone. <br /><br />And I think I’ll stop here but, I have to say that I found <b>How To Lie With Maps</b> to be an absolutely fascinating read and it certainly gave me something new to think about. It will be of especial interest to those who make their trade in the arts of course (because making a map is certainly an art form in itself) but I think it’s a fascinating read whether you are familiar with the kinds of decisions and specifics required to build a map or not. Definitely worth a look, this one. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-83281635428985382402024-01-23T17:43:00.003+00:002024-01-23T17:44:07.884+00:00Mr. Vampire II<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFgokiR2DNMfPe46bh2_wvTxWpJnGAuM4JaQ5hELEa62x3dugQgjBmVEQwiVIrPi0HtkPOv2J8ZDkV1_A1pYHpFk0OOik7CFdyKsLgeDgj3kmfZjcs0J_iTucENbGhwog-W1ycxqgWRaVOjJC60bdFvnnW_YIlqKdbj4qgCQpD6K7RdWJOy6EmyfpE4es3/s1329/mrvampireIImontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="893" data-original-width="1329" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFgokiR2DNMfPe46bh2_wvTxWpJnGAuM4JaQ5hELEa62x3dugQgjBmVEQwiVIrPi0HtkPOv2J8ZDkV1_A1pYHpFk0OOik7CFdyKsLgeDgj3kmfZjcs0J_iTucENbGhwog-W1ycxqgWRaVOjJC60bdFvnnW_YIlqKdbj4qgCQpD6K7RdWJOy6EmyfpE4es3/s320/mrvampireIImontage.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Top Of The Hops</span></span></b></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mr. Vampire II<br /></span></span><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: small;">aka</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></i></b></span><span style="color: red;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Geung see ga zuk</span></b></span></i></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span style="color: red;"><br />Directed by Ricky Lau<br />Hong Kong 1986<br />Golden Harvest/Eureka<br />Blu Ray Zone B</span></i></b></span><br /><br /><br />Well then, those hopping vampires from <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/02/mr-vampire.html" target="_blank">Mr. Vampire</a></b> (reviewed by me <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/02/mr-vampire.html" target="_blank">here</a>) are back for what is, it has to be said, a far more enjoyable sequel. Also back for the imaginatively titled <b>Mr. Vampire II</b> is director Ricky Lau, along with some of the original cast playing different roles... such as Ching-Ying Lam, presumably playing an ancestor of the Van Helsing-like character he played in the first one and Moon Lee, again playing a different role. This is because the events in this one take place in contemporary times to when this sequel was made, hundreds of years after the setting of the first one. <br /><br />The action starts when a bunch of amateur archeologists, played for extremely broad comedy (as are most of the roles in this slapstick packed movie, to be fair), dig up three vampire corpses with the magical scrolls that keep them out of action still sealed to their foreheads. They are obviously a family of vampires - mother, father and son - although the grave robbers obviously have no idea what they are and think they are just incredibly well preserved, ancient relics. Of course, when two of the team take the vampire kid to show an interested buyer, his scroll gets off and he escapes into the night, to make friends and have adventures with two of the local children. Meanwhile, the one left guarding the two other vampires also manages to accidentally remove their scrolls and more chaos ensures. When Lam’s character gets wind of what’s going on, more chaos ensues as the three different story strands come together, the majority of the film being entirely an excuse for comical stunt work as the various factions try to eradicate the vampires.<br /><br />And... okay, after being more familiar with what to expect since watching the first film, around about the same time last year, thanks again to Eureka Master Of Cinema, I was a lot more happier switching my brain off for this one... not that there’s even much plot to speak of, much less than the first film even. This one is the first film in Eureka’s recently released slipcase edition <b>Hopping Mad - The Mr. Vampire Sequels,</b> which collects the four direct sequels to the first movie, although not any of the spin offs or remakes (which I’m hoping they’re saving for another set, maybe next year?). <br /><br />It’s fairly fun and it pretty much just more of the same from the first film, relocated to a contemporary setting and, perhaps wisely, without the complicated ‘ghost girl’ sub plot of the original. There’s nothing too clever about the shot design but the choreography of the comedy fight sequences is great and, I have to say, this particular 2K scan from what must have been a quite good source looks, well, possibly the best I’ve seen a Chinese movie looking on Blu Ray, for sure. It’s crystal clear and the colours don’t quite seem as blown out and wishy washy as I was expecting them to be. <br /><br />Everyone does a fine job here and, although the comedy is a bit too obvious for me, it played fine and I was fairly entertained. There’s even a metatextual joke involving producer Sammo Hung in the movie which, I would probably have found funnier if I had seen some of the films he stars in but at least I, you know, ‘got it’. The music could have maybe been a little less lighter and ‘obviously comic’ but that’s just me, I’m sure nobody else is going to complain about that element. </p><p> And that’s me done with <b>Mr. Vampire II, </b>I think. A short review, perhaps, but it was a lot more fun than I had any right to expect from it and it’s probably a good thing too... there are three more sequels in this set to sit through. I’ll be sure and let you know how that goes, right here. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260387431722105524.post-81540298924933132512024-01-22T17:47:00.001+00:002024-01-22T20:47:33.082+00:00Whispers Underground<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFmYYlhU0KKlU8_1_oS4wk8NyRQK9fYRRuNx7mXBA3NciPrL7C5InoW8pmBWkFUvTJsOkd65fzQbsDPOdFxmCx8Ar8PQNs854WfF3aQTMOEjgnxgE4JS5pv5XJ1k7PcFrcPpyWaH6gszMKlmvd27egtfSeB-9stBh5BrsJ4PCB7-_aXqq0rqjL1-YkqbRc/s1329/whispersundergroundmontage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="1329" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFmYYlhU0KKlU8_1_oS4wk8NyRQK9fYRRuNx7mXBA3NciPrL7C5InoW8pmBWkFUvTJsOkd65fzQbsDPOdFxmCx8Ar8PQNs854WfF3aQTMOEjgnxgE4JS5pv5XJ1k7PcFrcPpyWaH6gszMKlmvd27egtfSeB-9stBh5BrsJ4PCB7-_aXqq0rqjL1-YkqbRc/w400-h178/whispersundergroundmontage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Sub Stack</span></span><br /><br /><i><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Whispers Underground</span><br />by Ben Aaronovitch<br />Gollancz<br />ISBN: 9780575097667</span></i></b></span><br /><br /><b>Whispers Underground,</b> by Ben Aaronivitch, is the third of this writer’s <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2022/09/rivers-of-london.html" target="_blank">Rivers Of London </a></b>series and, I have to say, I really do like this set of novels (and thankfully, there are a fair few of them still to explore, since I caught up with these late in the game and, as far as I can tell, he’s still writing them). A quick summation for those who are not familiar with the series... these novels deal with the exploits of a British copper called Peter Grant with various other supporting characters and are kinda like Harry Potter for adults... if Harry Potter worked in a small, barely tolerated magical division of the British police. <br /><br />The first novel (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2022/09/rivers-of-london.html" target="_blank">here</a>) found Peter and his unfortunate partner Lesley, stumbling into this section of the force due to various things which happen to him and he is taken under the wing of a centuries old (the age is doubtful and not revealed as yet in the books I’ve read) teacher called Nightingale. I say that Lesley is unfortunate because, during that first adventure, her face fell off and no amount of plastic surgery, to date, has been able to fix this (at least by the third book). However, in the second novel, <b><a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/02/moon-over-soho.html" target="_blank">Moon Over Soho</a></b> (reviewed <a href="https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2023/02/moon-over-soho.html" target="_blank">here</a>), she demonstrates a similar gift for magic as Peter by the end of that one and so is back in this one as a full fledged apprentice, staying at The Folly with Peter, Nightingale and sinister housekeeper Molly.<br /><br />This one is more of the same but it also, again, has a slightly different flavour to it, starting off with the murder, on a tube train track, of the son of an American ambassador and leading to somewhere I really wasn’t expecting... but which is a great ‘take’ on the title of the novel by the time you get there. While the previous one had more of an emphasis on action than the first, this one dials some off that back again but it’s never less than entertaining. The ambassador’s son was stabbed to death with the shard of a broken pot and, because Peter is becoming sensitive to the remnants of magic, he realises that magic had been used to fashion the particular pot that is identified as the murder weapon. So things go from there as he joins the homicide squad but also separately investigates the magical stuff while the investigation is ongoing. <br /><br />He’s hampered and helped in this by a wealth of new characters, some of whom I’m guessing may return in later books, like a female FBI agent who inevitably learns of the existence of magic, in no uncertain terms, while she’s tagging along and following Peter and Lesley in their investigations. And there are some really nice sequences to this, set underground in both the tube system in London and the sewer system... and even deeper than that when Peter is left for dead in a collapsed tunnel made by an ‘earthbender’ who can burrow through solid ground at speed. <br /><br />The time is a lot more compressed than I thought it would be in relation to the previous stories. It’s clear that while this is the third novel, the events of the first book only took place about a year before. The book is structured over the space of one week on the approach to Christmas day, with section headings taking on the name of the day and chapter headings created from the areas of London in which Peter finds himself at any given time (the book is told completely from first person narrative stance by the main protagonist). Also, although the main plot is nothing to do with the previous novel, which left things dangling in the air in terms of the villain of the piece for that one, there are certainly lingering encounters at two points with that particular menace... the writer dangling these scenes because he obviously doesn’t want the reader to forget that villain, who is obviously going to be a kind of ‘arch nemesis’ for Peter, Lesley and Nightingale at some future date. <br /><br />And, as the others in the series, there’s a fair few bits of pop culture reference thrown into the mix. For example, the elvish language as created by J. R. R. Tolkien turns up on one of the pots... and being as it’s not the ‘real elvish’ language of the world of these books, it’s only Peter who recognises it enough to get it translated. There’s also a nice reference to the British horror movie <b>Death Line, </b>which is also set in the London Underground system and which I still, amazingly, haven’t got around to watching. And I was also pleased, bearing in mind when this book was written (before the Chibnal era) that Peter and his family all gather and watch the <b>Doctor Who</b> Christmas Special each year. <br /><br />And I think I’ve revealed as much of <b>Whispers Underground</b> as I want to other than to say that, in the last chapter, there's a nice hook when one of Peter’s new ‘colleagues’ tells him about a ‘talking fox’ she has been communicating with. So I’m guessing that’s a nice little set up for something coming in a later novel, for sure. I absolutely loved <b>Whispers Underground </b>and will definitely continue on to the next one at some point soon... hopefully this year if time permits. <br /></p>NUTS4R2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08450069327397561514noreply@blogger.com0