A Quiet Place - Day One

Frodo, Bag In!

A Quiet Place - Day One
Directed by Michael Sarnoski
USA 2024
Paramount
UK cinema cut.

Warning: This one has all the those quiet spoilers.

Yeah, okay. This is surprisingly good.

I say surprisingly because A Quiet Place - Day One doesn’t include any of the main characters from the first two films and neither does John Krasinski, who played the father/husband in the original, write and direct here (although he does share a production credit). There is one character common with the second movie but... yeah, I’ll get to the problem that causes in a minute.

So this one is a prequel, starting in the same hours as the opening flashback on the second movie (reviewed by me here). And running over the course of a couple of days (so, trade description act people... it's not just Day One!). 

Lupita Nyong'o plays Samira, a young poet who is dying from some kind of disease, who has to wear pain patches to keep herself comfortable. She has a cat named Frodo, which she jokingly refers to as a ‘service cat’ (and who spends the entire film either running around by itself, on Samira’s lead or sometimes, in her ‘I Love NY’ bag). When the hospice Samira is staying at pays a visit to a New York theatre, as the show is finishing, the sound sensitive, blind aliens set up in the first film land and destroy New York City.

A new survivor acquaintance of Lupita, Eric, played by Joseph Quinn wants to get off to the docks somehow (all the bridges have been bombed to contain the creatures, who you’ll remember from the second installment, can’t swim) where evacuations are taking place. Samira just wants to get pizza and so Eric accompanies her. Also in the movie is the same character who was played by Djimon Hounsou towards the end of the second movie.

Now there are mostly positive things to be said about this movie and, as I’d heard, it’s a pretty intense piece which doesn’t let the original (reviewed here) or the sequel down in any way. And, if anything, there’s even less plot and character development in this one than the other two parts. In fact, this one is truly a full-on example of the survival horror/sci-fi genre at its purest, in that it’s mostly just about following the characters as they try to stay alive. It’s also excruciatingly suspenseful and, even in the last half an hour or so, manages to get fairly moving as the film plays out.

There are, however, a couple of problems with it and I’ll get into those in just a second but, congratulations for a film which deliberately (one assumes) sets up a cliché but then manages to never play the obvious card that comes with it. And that’s the cat. In the first movie you had the fear that the newborn baby wouldn’t stay silent. In this one, the air of suspense is built around Frodo the cat. I was, and I’m sure this is the case for all audiences, expecting the cat to let out a ‘yowl’ at least once, to inadvertently notify the giant bug aliens where the humans are. And to the credit of the writers here... it never hits that expected point. I mean, sure, the cat often goes off by itself and gets people into trouble when they are pursuing him but, they never once play the seemingly inevitable miaow moment with the feline companion. Which is refreshing.

That leaves two problems of very early telegraphing which, alas, can’t be overlooked. One is the problem of having Djimon Hounsou in this... which is even given away in the trailer and therefore gives you some idea of how the film will end. Since his character can’t be killed because he’s alive in the second movie (for most of his screen time in that film), you kinda know this film is going to end up with him and whoever is with him surviving to be able to find the island retreat he has set up in the second one. And, yup, sure enough...

The other problem is the character of Samira. By her own  admission she’s not getting any better and is expecting to die at some point soon. So this would trigger most audiences into realising she’s going to deliberately sacrifice herself to save someone else by the end of the film. Because why have that character survive if she’s toast anyway? And, yeah, sure enough...

But, is has to be said, these two big spoilers that are implied to the audience very early on don’t really hurt the film any. And, as I indicated at the start of this review, A Quiet Place - Day One is a pretty good movie with some nicely put together set pieces that worked pretty well with this audience member (even though the audience on a Saturday at my local cinema for this one was limited to just four people... so I don’t know what happened there). So if fairly well put together survival horror with a science fiction bent is your thing, then this one is definitely up your street. 

The Exorcism

Moloch Or Velocet

The Exorcism
Directed by Joshua John Miller
USA 2024ish
Miramax
UK cinema cut.

Well now, I made the mistake of listening to a review of The Exorcism a little while after I bought the ticket and immediately regretted the purchase... because people are just trashing this thing. Not for any particularly good reason it turns out. I found the first three quarters of this movie to be pretty good. I think this hinges on something a friend once said to me. She said, whether a film has a bad or good ending is what tricks the audience into whether they think they’ve seen a good or bad film. Now, I certainly don’t subscribe to that theory for myself but I can see how, certainly in this case, this may well be true for a lot of people.

I’ll get to the ending soon enough but this film has a troubled history. Most of it was shot around five years ago... is my understanding. I think someone then deemed it unreleasable and just put it into storage... never to see the light of day. But then a funny thing happened... remember the Russell Crowe exorcism film from last year, The Pope’s Exorcist (reviewed by me here). Well it was a big hit and deservedly so (would like a sequel at some point please). So this movie was kind of ‘finished up’ and then earmarked for streaming but, I dunno, I’m guessing after Covid and the writers and actors striking, the studios are in short supply of stuff to put in cinemas so... yeah... here we are.

The film has a lot of interest if you are a fan of the original movie adaptation of The Exorcist. For starters, Friedkin’s movie starred Jason Miller as the young priest of the movie... and this film is both written and directed by his son, Joshua John Miller. So he would know something about the filming of The Exorcist which is handy because, well, this film stars Russell Crowe playing an actor (um... Tony Miller) who is brought out of a failed career ending in tragedy and drinking rehab, to star in the same role as Jason Miller, in a remake of The Exorcist. Although The Exorcist is not actually name checked, certain things like the title of the film within a film, The Georgetown Story and even more blatant pointers assure that 99% of the audience watching this will realise the characters are remaking The Exorcist. And even the director character is pretty badly behaved... maybe not so badly behaved as Friedkin allegedly was but, yeah, he’s not nice to his lead actor.

So the film is about Crowe coming onto the movie after the previous actor, seen dying from a demonic presence on the set in a pre-credits scene, has to be replaced. His estranged daughter, played by Ryan Simpkins, is also at hand, suspended from school and she, in an attempt by both of them at reconciliation, becomes his PA for the shoot, while staying in his apartment.

And I have to say, that’s all pretty interesting stuff and, yeah, I’d say about the first three quarters of the movie are pretty well put together... with a pop star who gets ‘together’ with the daughter played by Chloe Bailer, odd appearances from Sam Worthington and David Hyde Pierce as the ‘priest consultant’ who finally has to try and exorcise Crowe as he gets taken over by the demon Moloch, over the course of the shoot.

Alas, the last twenty minutes is awful. I have no idea how Crowe’s character is still alive after he appears to kill himself jumping out a window and the bait and switch nature of the final, rushed exorcism, where the original plot is parodied so Crowe can perform the exorcism on the priest instead, is just totally ridiculous. As is the bizarre epilogue of a happyish ending... it just all feels wrong after a certain point.

Still, The Exorcism isn’t as bad as some critics are making out and, yeah, it’s not great either. But it is interesting and sometimes that’s enough.

The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman Vol 1

Victorian Justice League

The League Of
Extraordinary Gentleman Vol 1
by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
America’s Best Comics
ISBN  9781563898587

Okay... so very behind the times but I’m finally catching up with the first collected edition of Volume 1 of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and, this is the story the film was purported to be based on... I’ll get to that in a minute, in no uncertain terms.

My first observation, which gave me a chuckle, is that the publishers of the book are called America’s Finest Comics which... well, I think it says it all when you realise that the story is written by the great Alan Moore, the famous English author and drawn by the great, again English, comic book illustrator Kevin O’Neill. Both of these talents are one of a kind geniuses hailing from the UK.

Indeed Moore is, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest writer in comics of all time... nobody else even comes close (except for Neil Gaiman, perhaps... but not that close). Many films have been made of his properties and he’s tried to distance himself from the movie ‘adaptations’ as much as possible, going so far as to have his name removed from the credits of various big budget versions. His greatest work though is, curiously, untouched by Hollywoodland... namely The Ballad Of Halo Jones for 2000AD, which I still count as the single greatest piece of literature ever written, comic book or otherwise.

Kevin O’ Neill I also discovered from those early issues of 2000AD back in the day, drawing such strips as Nemesis The Warlock, among many others. His style is certainly unique and, well he passed away in 2022 and is very much missed.

Now then, I always quite liked the movie version of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen but, golly, having now read the original story on which it’s said to be based, I have to say I’m very unhappy about the way the movie turned out. It’s nothing like. It doesn’t have the breadth of the original tale in any way, shape or form. It’s like the writers of the film just threw a few related characters together (some of them and certainly not all the same ones or even with the same personalities) and did their own thing.

Take Allan Quatermain, for example. Depicted as an old man as Sean Connery was when he played him for sure but, the movie version didn’t have him spending all his time fighting off his addiction to drugs and so on. Some of the characters are also similar but, not quite the same. For instance, the Mr. Hyde version of Dr. Jeykll is an abomination, using quite shocking swear words and basically ‘hulking out’ whenever an unstoppable and violent force is needed (like a wookie, good at tearing people’s arms off). Then there’s Mina Murray... it won’t take you long to realise that, before her divorce, she was Mina Harker from Bram Stoker’s Dracula... and since she was bitten she has, as far as this first volume is concerned, hypnotic persuasion. The Invisible Man is a bit of a villain but working with the group too... though not worrying about brutally killing innocent bystanders to help himself to things. And Captain Nemo, of course, who the film kind of got right, actually.... to an extent.

But it’s the depth of the other appearances too, in this world of 1898, as the group work together to wrest stolen Cavorite... yes that’s right, as invented by Dr. Cavor in H. G. Well’s The First Men In The Moon to aid space travel... from the fiendish Dr. Fu Manchu in the Limehouse region of London, where he builds a big war airship harnessing the Cavorite to bomb London. However, when ‘the league’ do finally get it back for the British Secret Service, they find out they were not working for whom they thought and were, in fact, working for Professor Moriarty, for his own fiendish schemes (there’s a lovely set of panels detailing how he survived the altercation with Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls).

So the league are, once again, on their way to retrieve the Cavorite and foil Moriarty’s plans... not realising that Moriarty was put in place as the Napoleon of Crime by the British Government itself, for reasons which might actually make some sense, if you’re as cynical as I am.

And on the way they meet a wealth of characters from popular literature of the time that had me lapping up this story and it’s lovely artwork with much joy. For instance, Edgar Allan Poe’s original detective character C. Auguste Dupin meets the league and puts them on the trail to recruit the Jekyll and Hyde character, who he thinks is a return of the monkey killer from The Murders In The Rue Morgue. They even, at some point, have to stay the night in a boarding school run by a certain Miss Rosa Coote from visceral Victorian BDSM tale Miss Coote’s Confessions, from the underground magazine The Pearl (among others... which started me on a course to sympathy with that particular lifestyle at a fairly young age... well, if the grown ups would leave notorious and bloody Victorian pornography around then, what do you expect?).

There’s even an appearance by the gang of the Artful Dodger at some point, who seems to be running the gang of pickpockets after the death of Bill Sikes in Dicken’s Oliver Twist.

But enough... I don’t want to spoil everything other than to say I thoroughly enjoyed the first volume of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and I’m looking forward to reading the next one in the series, which I believe will make good on those shooting flares heading towards Earth from the planet Mars, which are mentioned in this one. What are the chances, eh?

Doctor Who - Empire Of Death

Sutekh And
The Banshees

Doctor Who -
Empire Of Death
Airdate: 22nd June 2024
BBC 1

Warning: More spoilers.

Well that was... okay. Better than the set up episode and not a real clunker like a fair few in this season of Doctor Who have been. Empire of Death is the second of a two part season finale, carrying directly on from last week’s The Legend Of Ruby Sunday (reviewed here). It has a lot to do but the exposition is fairly light handed and it does have time to go off and explore other story ideas as it sets about mostly resolving questions and threads brought up in the current series. There’s also a big problem right from the outset here but I’ll get into it that in a moment.

Okay, so this episode sees The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and former Sixth/Seventh Doctor companion Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford) on the run from Sutekh and his gift of death. They are on their own in the universe now because almost everything is now dead worlds and dead suns (Earth and all life on it is destroyed very early on in the episode... and therein lies the problem) but they find someone who has a bit of metal they need to get their ‘get out of jail free’ gadget back, so they can regain the upper hand and set to putting things right.

Which they do... and then we finally find out who Ruby’s mum is... who turns out to be nobody of any importance (which, in Marvel comics terms, would be the equivalent of what Steve Dikto wanted to do with the reveal on the Green Goblin, as opposed to what Stan Lee actually did, causing the rift between them). Which is a bit of a let down in some ways but, I like the idea that this simple matter of identity, which is the only reason Sutekh has allowed these three fugitives from death to live, has become important because of the way certain life forms value things and people... and so that’s what they become. Which is a nice idea and, yeah, almost certainly true.

So most of the mysteries are tied up and The Doctor and Ruby Sunday part company (although I suspect she may be back to guest star in the odd UNIT episode or two at some part in the next series). If Disney don’t decide to just write off the already completed next series as a tax loss, that is. However we still have the mystery of next door neighbour Mrs. Flood and the way Anita Dobson is scripted and plays the character makes me think that I was on the right track thinking she’s an important villain from some point in the Doctor Who universe... especially when she breaks the fourth wall again at the end of the episode to tell the audience that The Doctor’s story ends in terror.

And I thought the episode played pretty well and the memory TARDIS from the, not so good I’d have to say, Tales From The TARDIS streaming show is given a practical use, of sorts, in this episode (although everybody kind of recognised the background of a memory TARDIS through the open doors in a shot in the early trailers for the series so... no real surprise there).

The big problem for me with the episode was that, most of the regular characters, UNIT or otherwise, die near the start of the episode (as does all life on Earth) so, you kind of know there’s going to be a huge ‘reset button’ of a resolution to the story, to get everybody back to life again, at some point. So The Doctor trapping Sutekh in the time vortex to bring death to death (which, by the way, would mean everybody in the universe should now be immortal... so that would be a huge problem in itself) seems a bit of a cop out ending, to be honest. Still, it got the story back to where it needed to be and although this new incarnation of The Doctor kept crying again (as he has in every bloody episode this season, I think)... it was an okay end of season finale and I totally didn’t mind it.

Not much more to say about Empire Of Death. Murray Gold’s score was great, it was nice seeing Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen in footage from The Pyramids Of Mars on the viewer as part of the story and I’m still looking forward to seeing this year’s Christmas special, I’m pleased to say. Unfortunately, I’m not expecting the producers to learn anything much from the reception of the show in the next season because, well, they’ve already shot it before the first series aired, I believe.

Here’s my ranking of the episodes in this year’s series, from worst to best, if anybody wants to know (because that’s what people seem to be doing these days, it seems... personal rankings) now that I’ve had time to reevaluate them (click on the titles for the corresponding review)...

8. Rogue
7. Space Babies
6. The Devil’s Chord
5. The Legend Of Ruby Sunday
4. Empire Of Death
3. Boom
2. 73 Yards
1. Dot And Bubble

Quatermass

The Stone Ranger

Quatermass
aka Quatermass IV
aka The Quatermass Conclusion
Airdate: 24 October - 14 November 1979
Directed by Piers Haggard,
Network Region B Blu Ray
Four Episodes

Warning: The big spoiler is here.

“Huffity, puffity, Ringstone Round,
If you lose your hat it will never be found,
So pull your britches right up to your chin,
And fasten your cloak with a bright new pin,
And when you are ready, then we can begin,
Huffity, puffity, puff, puff!
Huffity, puffity, puff!”
Ringstone Round Nursery Rhyme from Quatermass


It had been 21 years since the last Quatermass serial, Quatermass And The Pit (reviewed by me here) had aired and 12 years since the last Quatermass movie, Quatermass And The Pit (reviewed by me here) had played at the cinema. So longer than all my life when, as an 11 year old, Quatermass was first shown on TV. Of course, I was a great admirer of the Quatermass movies from constant showings on television... the first and third ones always terrified me as a kid and I’m glad to say that this fourth adventure equally scared and haunted me.

Penned once again by the great Nigel Kneale, he’d tried to get ‘Quatermass IV’ produced by the BBC many years before but it fizzled out and I believe he didn’t work for them for a while after that (returning only after a few more decades for a Quatermass radio serial and another TV adaptation of the first Quatermass story). So this amazing writer defected to ITV, it seems to me... taking Quatermass with him. I don’t believe it was an accident that the producer of this show was the great Verity Lambert either.... another visionary of a sort.

This one takes place in what was then the UKs ‘near future’... and so this one is the serial that dates itself the most. A bleak Britain similar to the post-apocalyptic shambles of the Mad Max and other films... where roving gangs attack you on the street while the government breaks down and hides. It is in this environment that an ageing Quatermass, played by the acting legend who was John Mills, comes to London to take part in a TV broadcast, if he can make it to the studio before getting mugged by a roving gang. Fortunately, another guest going to the show, Joe Kapp, played by Simon MacCorkindale, rescues him but, during the broadcast about a new space project, the project is destroyed, sideswiped by an energy beam... by something which Quatermass and the others will have to find a way to defeat as soon as possible.

Has this got something to do with the pseudo-hippy (but definitely not peaceful) cult of youths called planet people? Quatermass is trying to find his granddaughter, who has run off to join them. But they go around following ley lines, chanting, smashing up scientific equipment and, as now starts to happen... and the sideswipe on the space station is a symptom of this... the youths get ‘taken’ at different times at various stone circles around the world. And also places which used to have stone circles at any rate (like Wembley Stadium... which is still standing in this fictional version of the near future). And when I say taken, they are mostly destroyed and not, as the planet people believe, taken to a new planet. Something is harvesting the youth of the human race, spilling the remains into the atmosphere (turning the sky green by episode four), extracting what it needs and then returning, every few thousand years. Quatermass believes the alien intelligence (this is just a machine) left markers on the earth to shoot the ‘collection beams’ to and ancient humans marked them as ‘bad places’ by building stone circles.

Okay, that’s a very stripped down summary but that’s the basic set up and it’s actually, despite having a lot of scenes of people just talking and exploring ideas, absolutely fascinating and, frankly, terrifying. Kneale is, as you would expect, not afraid to kill off regular characters and innocent bystanders (even Joe Kapp’s wife and two young kids get destroyed by the beam) and the whole thing moves along at a pace. John Mills is brilliant playing Quatermass and, watching the performance and the way it’s written now (on something like my fifth viewing after the original broadcast, the repeat broadcast, the VHS tape, the DVD and now the already extinct Blu Ray* from the equally extinct Network video company), I realise that he does, indeed, show that undercurrent of remorseless, ruthless zeal that was captured in some of the earlier portrayals of the character. Yes, he’s a kindly old man but he’s not above ‘using’ the lone survivor of one of the culls for study purposes and he takes each death in his stride... he is first and foremost the scientist who will stop at nothing to understand and, in this case, try to set a trap that, unfortunately for fans of the Quatermass stories, needs to be sprung from inside the trap itself.

It’s a remarkable serial, certainly not the best of the serials but neither is it the worst (and they’re all pretty darn good anyway). I remember the subtle, camera glimpses which didn’t dwell (possibly so the props wouldn’t lose their effect under scrutiny) of the half melted bodies of those that got caught in the alien beam and got ‘left behind’ (aka not totally destroyed). And there’s the flashy set piece where the surviving, half demented girl levitates from her hospital bed before promptly exploding. It’s all good stuff and, like Quatermass And The Pit, which mixed science fiction with old local legends, a definite entry into the folk horror genre... one of the best, I would say.

It also has a very eerie score which never saw the light of day on a commercial release, mores the pity, by Nic Rowley and Mark Wilkinson... a simple synthesiser score but one that really gets under the skin with its strange, haunting qualities. Also, if you want to see pop star Toyah as a planet person, machine gunned down by her own leader, then this is the show for you.

And of course there’s that great ending, the beam comes to the simulated bait of millions of youths (Quatermass and his team of geriatric scientists have come up with a synthesised signature of youth) and Quatermass is reunited with his granddaughter for a few seconds, but has a heart attack... so she helps him thump the button which explodes a nuclear bomb as the beam starts its work, taking them both with it. Not killing whatever alien intelligence has been harvesting the planet of the youth of society (who are drawn to the long buried marker points) but giving it a warning sting... the best he could hope for. So, yeah, that’s the end of Professor Bernard Quatermass, sacrificing himself for humanity (some might say it’s a play for redemption) in a nuclear bomb blast.

But not the end of the character completely...  a radio show bridging the first three serials and this one (starring Andrew Kier, from the movie version o the third serial) was later produced and also there was a live reboot of The Quatermass Experiment (Quatermass is the only TV incarnation of the character which wasn’t broadcast live, as it happens).

And that’s me done. I didn’t watch the cut down and added to international movie release version of this, this time around... The Quatermass Conclusion... but the bridging scenes shot at the same time do give that version a different flavour and, it’s worth watching at least once (but three and a bit hours of serial will always win out over an hour and a half truncation with this viewer, for sure).  Quatermass is a truly great serial and it’s just a shame Kneale didn’t write any further TV adventures of this character in his lifetime. But I’ll always, regularly revisit the ones we got because, well they’re just brilliant and their influence echoes down through the history of science fiction and horror to this day.

*Don’t worry, there’s a new Blu Ray edition of this from another company (with identical content, I think) coming out two weeks after the publication of this post.

Philip K Dick - A Comics Biography

In PKD Territory

Philip K Dick -
A Comics Biography
by Laurent Queyssi & Mauro Marchesi
Nbm graphic novels
Isbn 9781681121918

I’ve read a couple of biographies about my favourite writer over the years (although I’ve not revisited his novels for quite a few decades now... I need to let them back into my life). This one kind of wormed its way into my field of vision as I was perusing the graphic novels and trade paperbacks at Foyles earlier this year and I thought, wow, a comic book version of his life... I’m in.

I was late when I came to Philip K. Dick. It wasn’t ‘til the release of Blade Runner at cinemas in 1982 that I read the original novel of that one, straight after the movie, at the age of 14. Over the next year I acquired and read, almost exclusively from second hand bookshops, maybe 40 or more of his novels and also his collected short stories. Sometimes his concepts were challenging... certainly to a teenager... such as, in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, the concept of Mercerism and the empathy boxes... but the ideas and moods in his books are amazing so he’s always remained my favourite over the years.

This comic book version of his life, Philip K Dick - A Comics Biography, is obviously not going to be as detailed or hang together as much as a formally written biography but it does bring together a fairly nice impression, from first and second hand anecdotal evidence, of the man. I mention my own introduction to his writing because of how this graphic novel begins, with Phil travelling to California in December 1981, to visit Ridley Scott who, after some strong misgivings from Dick (left out, the book is necessarily very subjective of how it paints its pictures, so to speak), screens a show reel of assorted parts of the film Blade Runner, around 20 minutes, for him. Two panels in this book show the Off World blimp and the scene where Deckard is running across the rooftop near the end of the movie. Whether these were actually included in that show reel is anybody’s guess but I think this is all Dick got to see of the film which would bring him, posthumously, a whole new surge of interest.

We then jump to Jan 17th 1982, when Phil collapses and is taken to hospital... it’s from this point that the book looks back at the author’s life, segueing from year to year with little and sometimes important moments that build up a picture of the man (for better and worse), every now and again returning to the hospital bed as Phil replays his life before his second, fatal stroke in that same hospital a short time after.

And it’s really nice, starting with the death of his twin sister when they were still babes in arms and showing him put into an incubator to try and save his life, his high school in Berkeley, his job at a record store, his recognition by peers when walking around a sci-fi con when he was just starting out with getting short stories published in magazines by the likes of Anthony Boucher and, later, Harlan Ellison, how he met and broke up with his five wives... and so on.

The art is simple and stunning at the same time and the writer and artist occasionally imbue the images with the same kind of blend of reality and otherwordliness (or perhaps ersatz intrusions might be the best way of describing some of these), such as when he’s reaching into his medicine cabinet to grab some more pills to fuel his writing binge (he wrote and published five novels in one year at one point) but then spraying them with a handy bottle of UBIKTM before he takes them.

And of course, we also have the problematic moments such as the “I was molested as a child” possibility, the visit from the FBI, the break in and burglary of his house and, ultimately, the pink light VALIS experience and his subsequent exegesis. The problematic issues are rendered without any judgement, also showing how he saved his sons life as a toddler due to one of his ‘visions’, accurately predicting a defect he could have no way of knowing and getting the child to a doctor in time. Alongside things such as his struggle to have his ‘serious’ non-sci-fi work published, which bothered him a lot. Frankly, I read those novels when they were finally published posthumously and I loved them as much, if not more, than his speculative fiction. I think he was definitely ahead of his time with his ‘real life’ novels too.

It’s, somewhat of a ramshackle and sad life when you see it represented in these kinds of short and wonderfully illustrated bursts that show the highlights (and lowlights) of a life which was rooted in the mundane but lived out in a realm that, perhaps, only he could see. Whether his long experiences with his visions were a real, mystical phenomenon or just another series of drug flashbacks over the years is anybodys guess and, again, not judged by the steady tone of this comic.

And I think that’s all I really want to say about Philip K Dick - A Comics Biography other than it’s absolutely excellent and even if, like me, you already know a lot of the writer’s personal story, it’s a unique and enriching way of giving the reader a quick overview and I’d recommend this one to anybody who loves Dick’s work. Really glad I picked this one up.

Doctor Who - The Legend Of Ruby Sunday

 

Triad-itional Celebration

Doctor Who -
The Legend Of Ruby Sunday
Airdate: 15th June 2024
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers aplenty.

Okay... well I have to say I am not feeling much love for this first instalment of the two part season finale of the new series of Doctor Who. I certainly didn’t hate it and it was put together well but... I dunno, I feel kind of underwhelmed, to be honest.

So the brief plot set up is that The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) visit UNIT HQ to try and figure out two things... firstly, who is the mysterious woman they keep seeing cropping up in their adventures (as played by actress Susan Twist, every week as a different character) and, also, the answer to the question... “Who is Ruby Sunday’s mum who left her on the church steps on Christmas Eve 2004?

Well, the woman is Susan Triad, about to give the world her new technology (and who has dreams about the things her characters would have seen in each episode)... not knowing she’s the victim of this week’s returning villain. Yeah, so Russel T. Davies said they wouldn’t be bringing any old villains back this series and so, what did he do? He brought an old villain back. Meanwhile, looking through a time window to recreate the night that Ruby was left on the doorstep of the church, they bring more death and the villain manifests itself in our time.

Okay... so I’ve seen many theories on what could be happening over the last month on the internet and, subsequently... as far as we are in the story by the end of this episode... they’ve all been speculated successfully so that, yeah, there are no real story surprises in this episode at all (but, not to worry, some more suprises may be coming next week, one hopes). Debut character Harriet’s second name being Arbinger, for example. So, H. Arbinger or Harbinger. People were pretty sure that would be the case and so it goes (to quote someone who once found themselves unstuck in time... I’m pitching to you, Kurt Vonnegut fans).

So we all knew that Susan Twist’s character this week, Susan Triad or S Triad, was an anagram of TARDIS (where the manifestation of an ancient God was hiding). And, yes, many people had already figured out the ‘Sue Tech’ idea as meaning it could well be an appearance of the God Sutekh from the 1975 Tom Baker era story The Pyramids Of Mars. And it is, it would seem. I think that’s what most disappointed me about the episode and, if there was any surprise for me, then it was that they’d bothered brining this enemy back in this form. I mean, really?

Two reasons for that disappointment. One, the great thing about The Pyramids Of Mars storyline was not Sutekh but his large, robot mummy henchmen, who were iconic monsters of the era (despite only appearing in that story). So I’d much rather have the cool mummies back than Sutekh, to be honest. Secondly, I guess I am a little curious as to why they decided to bring back a monster who is not going to be familiar to any modern era audiences, unless they’ve gone back to look at the classic stories. I mean... yeah, it’s  only really going to mean something to fans of old. Nothing against that personally but... maybe not the smartest move considering you’re trying to hook new viewers into the show for the Disney fatherland.

And, yeah, it was an unsatisfying cliffhanger, to be honest. I’m not really buying into it. But there are still some surprises yet, I suspect. Firstly, since they keep invoking The Doctor’s granddaughter Susan all through the episode, I’m not completely ruling out that she’ll put in an appearance at some point in next week’s episode. Maybe by way of an epilogue, The Doctor could revisit her where he left her in Earth’s far future, after the Dalek Invasion Of Earth (although how The Five Doctors fits into that, I can’t really remember).

Secondly... Mrs. Flood’s return, as played by Anita Dobson. Now, okay, she could just be a manifestation of Sutekh (I hope not, that’s boring) and she’s certainly presenting as a villain. But... she’s not immediately aggressive with it and so, maybe she’s another old returning villain (such as The Rani) waiting to pitch in and help The Doctor against a common enemy. Who knows? Well, not me I can assure you but all the audiences who went to the 12.01 cinematic showing of the final two episodes this morning will already know the answer to that one. As for the likes of me (who is not near a cinema playing it), I’ll have to wait until next Saturday, alas.

I’ve not got that much else to say other than that, I think... other than well done to returning companion Mel in the form of Bonnie Langford. She did some good work here. Way too much hugging going on again in this episdoe though. The Legend Of Ruby Sunday is an excellent title for an episode but, yeah, I was seriously underwhelmed on this one, it has to be said. Keeping my fingers crossed for next week’s concluding episode, Empire Of Death. We’ll see how that goes, I guess.

The Watched

The Night Shift

The Watched
aka The Watchers
Directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan
Ireland/USA 2024
Blinding Edge Pictures
UK Theatrical Print

I  had high hopes when I was watching the trailer for The Watched, about a week before it was released into the wild, that this would be a pretty good horror picture. A few minutes before the film played, I found out that it has had a name change from its US title, The Watchers. Now I don’t know why this is so. It seems strange to me to change a title to directly shift it from highlighting the protagonists over the antagonists but, hey ho! It’s usually a sign of a picture not performing well on its initial release in another country. Then when I started watching it, my hopes for it plummeted for a bit when I saw the name M. Night Shyamalan on the production side... and, indeed, it’s the feature film directorial debut of his daughter Ishana.

However, I have to say that, while I felt there were some flaws with the movie, as it progressed, I was really quite taken by this one and will probably pick it up on Blu Ray for the Halloween period this year (assuming it gets a release in time). It starts off on the usual cold open where something dreadful happens, to give the viewer the idea of the stakes... and then we follow Dakota Fanning’s character Mina, picking up on her daily life and then to where her troubles start, as she loses power while driving through a huge forest area of Ireland, on the way to deliver a bird. Pretty soon, as darkness begins to fall, she realises that the forest is populated... not just with her ‘illusions’ of childhood trauma but with some pretty savage, aggressive creatures.

Just in time, she finds a building housing three other people who let her inside to be part of the audience for... The Watchers. They stand in front of a two way mirror which comprises one wall of the large room and the creatures, who they never see, come out to watch them every night. The other three are Olwen Fouére, Oliver Finnegan and Georgina Campbell (who was so good in Lovely, Dark and Deep at FrightFest last year... my review of that one is here).

And it’s actually a tight little movie with various levels which open up in the last half an hour or so. When the things in the woods are affronted by what Mina does at one point (there are rules), it becomes a game of survival to keep the things out each night (since it’s impossible to get out of the forest before nightfall, it’s too far), when they come out to watch and, possibly, hunt.

I like the way the film is shot with some nice dwelling on the idea of mirrors, reflections and doubling up on things in the visuals... elements which echo the nature of the creatures themselves. The creatures aren’t new and are standard parts of folklore (and have possibly been done to death over the last decade or so in cinema) but they’re well designed and when you finally see them, the suspense of the situation works quite well, ably enhanced by Abel Korzeniowski’s wonderful score (which sadly doesn’t seem to have been issued on CD, alas).

Now, there’s a bit of a downer and it’s probably stemming from the source novel by A.M. Shine (which this film has definitely made me want to read). And it's that the so called ‘big twist’ near the end is something which is telegraphed from fairly early on and which you wonder if the main protagonists are going to figure out before the reveal comes. And in many ways, this seems to be a theme for the Shyamalan family because Ishana’s dad also seems to fail to surprise with his plot twists (but like I said, this is probably because the novel also does this).

But I actually didn’t get annoyed about this because, once you are given the knowledge to work out what’s going on, it’s presented in a way that opens the film out for more ideas and, when some audience members might think the film is done, it actually goes on for three more ‘coda’ sequences which... well the first sequence brings the reveal (which you would have gotten by now anyway). The second sequence confirms it and expands on it and, yeah, I would have been annoyed but at the end of this there’s a nice pay off with the way the protagonist and antagonist, if that’s what they are, handle the situation. And there’s a further third scene which I could possibly have done without, which again echoes the theme of duality within the movie (and reminds us of the way Mina lives her life).

So, yeah, all in all I have a lot of time for The Watched and I think, judging from this one movie, that Ishana Night Shyamalan is at least as good a director as her dad... if not better (and I think she’ll prove to be better, if they let her do some more). A nice bit of folklore and a denouement which doesn’t, quite (asides from the obvious twist), end up where you think it might. Lovely little film and I hope to see more from this director in due course.

Quatermass 2

An Overshot
In The Dark

Quatermass 2
aka Enemy From Space
UK 1957
Directed by Val Guest
Hammer/Shout Factory Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers covering you and burning your skin.

Quatermass 2 was the second of the British company Hammer’s adaptations of the great Nigel Kneale’s first three Quatermass serials for the BBC. It’s widely said that the film was the first movie to use the Arabic numeral to denote its sequel status, something I’ve long been suspicious of but I’m happy to regurgitate that information in the hopes that someone will properly confirm or deny (it used to be denoted as the first film to use a number denoting its sequel - period - but, some time ago, when I pointed out to people that films such as Kurosawa’s second Sanshiro Sugata also used a numeral... well... I noticed the Wikipedia article on this version has at some point changed the distinction to be the first to use the Arabic numeral 2... still not sure of the truth of that though).

Hammer originally wanted to make their, pretty entertaining, movie X - The Unknown the first Quatermass sequel but Kneale, who had nothing to do with that story, refused to license his characters to them and so they had to change the character names before they went into production on it (you can read my review of that one here). After his disappointment at the cuts and treatment of his first Quatermass serial as adapted by Hammer (he would never autograph anything to do with the first movie), Kneale was able to negotiate being properly involved with working on the script for this second one. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of cuts and lots of story points very condensed... including key characters removed. Having said that, two characters, one of the Professor’s sidekicks and, also, Inspector Lomax were carried over from the first film. Goodness knows why because the two actors for those roles were replaced... which is a shame because I would have liked to see the redoubtable Jack Warner back as Lomax.

Brian Donlevy returns as Professor Quatermass on this one, something else Kneale hated about the productions but, he does an adequate, if gruff, job in the role (still the only actor to play the character twice on film... Andrew Kier would play the role only once on film but would also return, decades later, to play him again on the radio).

This one is probably my least favourite of the Quatermass stories but, that doesn’t stop it from being an exceptionally good serial and a reasonably great movie too. In this one, Quatermass stumbles on someone near a village called Winnerden Flats, having taken ill after coming into contact with a falling meteor, what the locals at work on a top secret ‘government project’ call an ‘overshot’. Quatermass sees something alive jump from one of these and disable his colleague before said colleague is abducted and Quatermss ‘aggressively evicted’ from the place by a kind of zombie police force from the plant. Also, the plant is an exact replica of the working model that Quatermass has been using to plan the worlds first moon colony. It’s not long before he, Lomax (played in this one quite adequately by John Longden, who does bear a passing resemblance to Warner, I guess) and ace newshound Jimmy Hall (played by the famous Hancock and Carry On comedian Sidney James) team up to try and stop this threat, which involves toxic aliens infiltrating the government and building habitable atmospheres for themselves on Earth, where they can gradually take over the human population.

Rounding out the main cast are such stalwarts as Bryan Forbes, William Franklyn and, of course, the late, great Michael Ripper. Ripper would also have a bigger role in the original serial version of Quatermass And The Pit (reviewed here) the following year (he was also in X - The Unknown, of course).

And it’s good stuff and, while not as creepy as the first one, still packs a strong punch such as, when one of the government men Quatermass talks to in order to get them inside the plant is covered and burned in the toxic sludge that comprises the alien beings from a tank, his black and smouldering body making its way slowly from the top of one of the domes via a staircase, to die at Quatermass’ feet. Another hard hitting moment is when Britain’s beloved comedian Sid James is machine gunned to death at a bar by some of the human hosted alien zombies... I talk about this moment in my article, The Seven Deadly Great Violent Comedian Death Scenes (right here).

Quatermass 2 is a great movie though, despite being my least favourite (which just goes to show how incredible the others are). It’s a shame that the whole, long sequence where one of the professor’s colleagues takes a rocket into space to fight the aliens on their own craft was jettisoned in this version. Instead, it’s been replaced by William Franklyn dying in a hail of machine gun fire but just managing to launch a rocket aimed at the aliens to explode on impact. Overall though, there’s really nothing bad about the film and it’s a pretty solid sci-fi horror movie (just like all the other Quatermass productions). Perhaps it’s the one most overlooked but that doesn’t make it any less potent and fans of Kneale and his best known character should definitely enjoy both the original serial and this condensed movie version, for sure.

Doctor Who - Rogue

Reversing
the Bipolarity

Doctor Who - Rogue
Airdate: 8th June 2024
BBC 1

Well now... I’d been primed by friends and family, who saw it before me, that the latest episode of Doctor Who, Rogue,  was a truly a terrible and uncomfortable watch. Yeah, it went places with The Doctor which I am unhappy with (although clearly not as unhappy and many other very long term Doctor Who fans I know, who I think may finally have reached their last straw with the series as to carrying on watching it)... but the mental health issue clearly on show in the episode is what it is. I have friends of a similar disposition in real life so I’m perhaps more tolerant and accepting of it than most. That’s probably as much as I’m saying about that particular ‘romantic’ aspect of the episode but, contrary to literally everyone I personaly know who has seen this one, so far... the over wokeness of the story does not make this the most terrible episode of the new series... it’s still not as bad as The Church On Ruby Road, Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord, for sure. Although nowhere near as good as the last three episodes either.

So this is the ‘Bridgerton’ episode, a show I’ve not seen and have no interest in. And, indeed, the show is referenced by name a good few times, as this one is set at a social party in 1813, where shape-shifting bird people are preparing to cosplay the human race to death. But, honestly, it’s truly not as bad an installment as people are making it out to be. I’ll come back to that in a little while though.

Asides from the almost unwatchable romance between The Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa and new character Rogue, played by Jonathan Groff, there are some interesting moments where, for example, we get to see The Doctor’s previous incarnations as holographic projections at one point... so that was a nice touch. Millie Gibson was brilliant, as usual, as Ruby Sunday... she has good chemistry with the show’s lead. Alas, I can’t help but think something bad is going to happen to her character in the next week or two and, I suspect, she may even become a villain in future seasons of the show (that could be interesting). That’s just me speculating, mind you... I guess we’ll find out sometime soon, is my guess.

Indira Varma, who’s no stranger to the Whoniverse (as a traitorous Torchwood member, if memory serves) is kinda wasted here as the leader of the owl people, I thought. But I wish her well and am looking forward to seeing her in more Hollywood movies at some point... she seems to be one of those actresses who turns up in everything.

Okay, I’m trying to find some nice things to say about the episode to counter the negativity I know a number of people I know are feeling about this one so... here’s two.

One is... I loved this week’s Susan Twist sighting... she’s just a portrait painting hanging on the wall in the mansion house. That was a nice touch.

And then there’s Murray Gold’s score, which was one of his better ones and had some good action/running music for The Doctor, slightly reminiscent of similarly functional themes for David Tennant and Matt Smith’s Doctors (he certainly puts the fun in functional).

Okay... so not too much more to say but, coming back to that big, pink elephant in the room... I am kinda unhappy about the way things are going with the show in terms of certain elements and, it seems I’m not alone in that because, from what I can tell, the ratings for the show, in general, are even more of a disaster than they were in the Jodie Whittaker seasons. I was talking to my friend Andrew in the BFI bar about this yesterday and between us we came to the conclusion that, if things go on like this with the ratings and the show runner possibly not ‘reading the room’ as it were, this time around, then it’s possible Disney may well pull the funding after the next series (which is already ‘in the can’, as far as I know). Would the BBC want to go back to the show with a very reduced budget or would that spell the end of everyone’s favourite timelord for a bit? I don’t know but I can’t help but think that the good Doctor may find him/herself having a long rest if things don’t improve.

But, as far as Rogue goes (and the character who the episode is named after... please don’t bring him back in future installments, people!) then it’s not the weakest episode of this series so far but... yeah... it’s not great.

Giallo Meltdown 2

Three Cats On
Crystal Velvet

Giallo Meltdown 2
By Richard Glen Schmidt
ISBN 9798853807204

“Serena just exposed her Grandis and I am hoping that Fabio will flash his Testis at us.”
Richard Glen Schmidt, Giallo Meltdown 2

This is a review of a book filled with a bitter-sweet sadness and melancholy towards the end of the experience but, also filled with descriptions of nudity, murder, carnage, cats (Spasmo, Gorgon and Cheese), band practice, garden work, fine dining and cigar breaks. I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to which of those things are referring to the films themselves and which are referring to the writer’s, not to mention his wife LeEtta’s, personal experiences of sitting down to long weekends of binge watching genre entertainment in various formats and states of quality.

Yup... following on from the wildly entertaining tomes Giallo Meltdown - A Moviethon Diary (reviewed here), Cinema Somnambulist (reviewed here) and Doomed Moviethon (reviewed here), Richard Glen Schmidt once again treats his target audience of deranged genre explorers to another ramble through his personal gialloscape with Giallo Meltdown 2.

Now, I have to warn you that it may take a little while to get into the very first book of his you pick up (as I’m sure I probably flagged in other reviews) because Schmidt’s style of writing is much more a stream of consciousness approach to the review process rather than something more academic (so I guess that makes him comparable to Joyce and Kerouac, right?). But it’s worth persevering because, frankly, these books (including this very tome) are absolutely entertaining as hell... and I totally love them. I honestly can’t imagine not picking up a new Schmidt tome to snigger and wonder through... which is where the sadness of this review also kicks in... I’ll get to that later.

Okay, so what we have is another series of the kind of moviethons (aka binge watch movie sessions) which also inform and entertain on his website, www.doomedmoviethon.com. So yeah, there are some glorious ‘go to’ reviews bound up in session chapters with titles such as Let’s Go To Asia, Bruh (A Giallo For A Gweilo) and The Blood In Spain Falls Mainly From The Vein. Personally I’d like to add some caveats at this point. I don’t usually have criticisms of Richard’s work because, once you realise that a lot of what he says is not to be taken at face value (aka it’s a straight lie, take a pinch of salt) and that he’s joking pretty much 80% of the time (in the absolute best way), then it’s easy to read these books in a very relaxed manner and not get bent out of shape. But...

... in this particular tome he’s included a lot of things that I wouldn’t personally class as gialli... and what’s more, he knows some of his choices will wind people up and so he defends those choices admirably (not successfully but... admirably ;-)). So while I’m completely on board for a cinematic giallo not having to be originating in Italy (which reminds me, there’s a really gialloish Asian movie I have to recommend to this guy... if only I could remember the damned title) I’m less inclined to treat genres such a krimi (there’s a whole chapter dedicated to those and, franky, if you dedicate a whole chapter to something then surely that’s enough to acknowledge it’s something else other than something found in another chapter... if you see what I mean) or straight up supernatural horror films would fall into the same category. But, as Richard says... write your own book! He says that he was going to include Argento’s Suspiria in this one specifically to annoy certain readers (like myself, I guess) but couldn’t face watching it again at that time for whatever reason.

So allow me just a quick detour and then back to the review. To me, the modern movie buying landscape overuses the term giallo deliberately. Take the fine film The Perfume Of The Lady In Black, for example. It’s a movie featuring a supernatural ghost and a bunch of cannibals (okay, one of those terms may be a bit of a spoiler which you’ll hopefully forget about if you’ve not seen that classic before). It’s not a giallo but it’s been labelled as such on DVDs and Blu Rays over the last 15 or so years. I can just see a cynical marketing guy working at one of the companies (all of the companies) saying, slap a ‘giallo’ label on the front somewhere, it’ll sell more. I’m also a little dismayed at the term ‘cult cinema’ but... that’s a whole other can of worms.

But I digress... back to this truly delightful tome again. If you want to smile your way through a book, then Richard Glen Schmidt’s often nonsensical, more often endearing ramblings are an instant recipe for turning those mouth muscles up on themselves. And even the humour can often be laced with a keen observation or three. So I would say there are at least three types of humour on display in these mental meanderings. There’s straight up humour such as “This movie is some sloppy, ramshackle bullslap but I’m enjoying the sensation of my melted brain leaking out of my eyes.” or “We made it an all-round indulgence by getting some Starbucks as well. The poor company is so broke, so we are happy to help.”

Then there’s the incisive, satirical criticism of things which pull a rock off the ground to reveal a certain amount of truth... now I’m English but I don’t eat Indian food. Even so, I found his acerbic comment about our country to reveal more than a kernel of truth when, in the chapter marking the occasion of sitting down and watching UK gialli, entitled Ello Guvna! You’re Right Fit... For A Casket he writes “Like a proper British couple, LeEtta and I order an Indian takeaway from our Taj Indian Cuisine.” Yup... funny but true, for most Brits I would say.

And then there’s the other style of humour he uses which really makes for a sometimes enlightening but also quite clever read when it comes to his stuff. And these are aimed at people who really know the subject matter that he’s talking about... I imagine that some of these seemingly throwaway comments would seem a bit abstract if you don’t know some of the films and players in question. For instance, when watching British thriller Twisted Nerve he makes the comment, “Gee, this soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann sure does sound familiar.” And, you know he knows exactly why it would sound familiar to a younger generation of Tarantino fans but, he doesn’t elaborate (thankfully, because that’s part of his charm). Similarly, when talking about Dario Argento’s excellent giallo The Stendhal Syndrome, he introduces Asia Argento’s character as “Police detective and known fish kisser, Anna Manni...”. Again, if you haven’t seen the fantastic opening scene of the film in question you might be at a loss as to how to take this stuff.

Because of the international flavour enabled by mixing it up with the countries of origin in this volume, it means you’ll get people like Jess Franco, Paul Naschy, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis making ‘guest appearances’ in the book. There’s also a Norman J. Warren Joke that I totally failed to ‘get’, I’m afraid to say. I guess I’ve not seen enough of his movies.

Included as kinda bonus pieces in random places (so maybe a better analogy given the subject matter would be Easter Eggs) are two sections, one which reprints some of his hand written notes from when he’s watching the movies (which doubles up on the fact that this man has a proper writing process, as far as I’m concerned) and also a nice section of giallo inspired comic strips by his wife LeEtta. She always illustrates the wonderful covers of these books - front and back (there are nice drawings of Spasmo, Gorgon and Cheese on the back cover of this one) but it’s also nice to see some of her other stuff highlighted. There’s an especially gorgeous splash page by her of A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin included here. You can see more of her work and even purchase some of it at her website here... https://www.theleemsmachine.com

And now for the sad stuff. There are portents all the way through the book and, by the end of the last chapter, the truth is revealed. This was his last moviethon. By my reckoning the guy must be almost ten years younger than me but, for some insane reason, he no longer wants to binge watch fifteen or so movies a weekend. I can sympathise though, if I wasn’t writing this blog I know I’d be getting through at least ten films a week (that’s another story though and I have no desire to stop writing anytime soon). It’s sad because, honestly, I truly look forward to the years when a new Richard Glen Schmidt hits the shelves. I love my time spent between the covers of his epic ramblings. There is a little hope because, he mentions he won’t give up writing about film (yay), just won’t be binging them in this fashion in future (nay). So, I continue to hold out hope that another tome will be coming out at some point.

Either way, Giallo Meltdown 2 is an absolutely funny and laugh out loud read (or would be if I ever LOL’d) and I can’t recommend it enough... once you’ve acclimatised yourself to this man’s writing style and allowed your mind and body to just go with it. Also, you don’t need to read his four books, to date, in any order, either. You could start on this one and then go back to the others if you like... if you wanted to be all George Lucas about your approach to it. So yeah, big recommendation from me and, please, bring on the next book as soon as possible. Schmidt is no James Bond but Sean Connery himself surely taught us all to never say never.

And check out his blog at https://www.doomedmoviethon.com, for sure.

The Three Musketeers

The Dancing Cavalier

The Three Musketeers
USA 1948 Directed by George Sidney
MGM Spain Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Spoilers for all and all for spoilers.

I’ve been revisiting some of the Musketeer films of late and this 1948 Hollywood version of The Three Musketeers is something I’ve been wanting to get back to for a long time. It’s not available in either the UK or US on Blu Ray it seems, so I just got the inexpensive but no less wonderful looking Spanish version, which is multiregion and has both the English language version and English subtitles, should you want them. However, it appears I’ve misremembered this film and done it something of an injustice in my appraisal of it over the years. I was in my teens the last time I saw this version and remembered it somehow as being an adaptation which strayed far from the Alexandre Dumas source, Hollywood Happy Ending and all! As it turns out, now I’ve caught up with it again, nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s actually quite dark towards the end and really is probably the closest movie version I’ve seen to the source.

Clocking in with a two hours and five minutes running time, which was quite a long film for this period of American cinema, it doesn’t just do the first part of the novel, aka The Queen’s Jewels, as pretty much all future US versions did... nope, it goes the whole hog and does everything, more or less. Which is to be applauded (I didn’t remember the film being this long either). So while I remembered Constance and Milady both surviving so the heroes could live happily ever after... it was a false memory... they both die as they do in the novel and then the film goes on even a little more, with a final swordfight brawl in a tavern before the musketeers are brought before the king and Richelieu to answer for the consequences of their actions.

The film is an absolutely star stuffed vehicle too. Here’s a breakdown of the most significant cast... we have song and dance man Gene Kelly playing D’Artagnan, Van Heflin as Athos, Gig Young as Porthos and Robert Coote as Aramis. Above Kelly’s name for top billing for the film we have Lana Turner as Lady de Winter (aka Milady... or My Lady as everyone in this one keeps saying).Then there’s the always wonderful June Allyson as Constance, handmaiden to the Queen of France, as played by the young Angela Lansbury (who also wanted to play Milady but was denied that opportunity). Her husband, King Louis XIII is played by Frank Morgan (The Wizard Of Oz himself), Keenan Wynn is Planchet and lastly, but by no means least, we have the formidable Vincent Price playing Richelieu.

And as both an exciting swashbuckler and fairly faithful adaptation (for once), it’s a humdinger of a movie. I really enjoyed this version and the set piece duels are pretty amazing (the big battles are mostly left untouched and represented by montages but I suspect this film already had a large budget). The music score by Herbert Stothart...  and, ahem, Tchaikovsky... is very much Mickey Mousing it throughout, as you would expect from a large budget, MGM film of the time (even though this is not a musical)... even using comical sounds produced by the orchestra to comment on D’Artagnan’s first, bizarre looking horse, representing the whinnies of his steed. As for that Tchaikovsky... it’s the same love theme used for Flash and Dale in the first Flash Gordon serial from Universal (reviewed by me here). The colours on this thing are also very striking, using the bright hues that MGM used to favour in the 40s and 50s.

Some notes on some of the casting... well Gene Kelly is using, to be polite, some very broad acting skills, perhaps more suited to those musicals but, it’s entertaining and, boy, is he athletic in this. His dancing skills really come to the fore when he’s swashing his buckle in those sword fighting scenes and the stunts, many of which might have been performed by him (by the looks of it), are amazing. Also, his sword fighting seems to be much more confident and very fast compared to the other musketeers. He maybe looks a little older than D’Artagnan should be at this age but, the trade off is he certainly looks like he could do all that fighting himself.

Van Heflin is a bit of a revelation to me in this. Not only a very entertaining turn in the lighter parts, he perfectly conveys the authority of Athos but, also, in those dark recollections of his about his former life with the one who I will not name for fear of spoiling it for ‘musketeer virgins’, he really manages to capture a man’s struggle with darkness really well.

As for Lana Turner, well she didn’t want to be in the film and was suspended by the studio for a while for initially refusing. June Allyson also didn’t really want to be in this but I guess she put up less resistance. Either way, both acquit themselves admirably here.

The film is also a little more violent than I was expecting (other than all those bloodless, under-the-far-arm stabbings of course). For instance, although we do not see Milady stab Constance the mortal blow, we see her hand covered in her victim’s blood later... not a common sight for a movie of that time, I’m sure. Also, although it’s again bloodless, when D’Artagnan kills one of the Cardinal’s men (although not referred to as such, all traces of the catholic church having been expunged in this version in order to offend no one), he impales him on a set of antlers on the tavern wall near the end... almost like a horror movie denouement.

And that’s me pretty much done on one of the most entertaining, rewarding and surprisingly more faithful than I remembered adaptations of The Three Musketeers, except to offer up one last little fact about the film. While I was watching Gene Kelly do his thing, I remarked to my mum and dad that he’s practicing for The Duelling Cavalier... which is the film within a film which he stars in for Singin’ In The Rain. The film which was then ‘fixed’ in the plot of that movie to become The Dancing Cavalier. Well, I was closer to the truth than I knew because, it turns out that some of the footage from this movie was indeed interpolated into The Duelling Cavalier footage in Singing’ In The Rain. So next time I watch that absolute classic, I’ll keep a look out and see if I can spot it. Meanwhile, if you like your musketeer movies, definitely give this one a go.

Doctor Who - Dot And Bubble

TwitFace

Doctor Who -
Dot And Bubble
Airdate: 1st June 2024
BBC 1

Warning: Minor spoilers within.

Wow. A three in a row run of good episodes. Dot And Bubble is another above average episode of Doctor Who and my biggest question after seeing this current hat trick of pretty great shows is... what the heck were the BBC/Disney thinking by opening this season with two of the worst episodes possible? Why start off with the obvious duds?

So this one is about a society of rich kids who inhabit a planet where the one town, Finetime, is where they live and talk to each other on social media all day, including the ‘two long hours’ a day where they have to ‘work’. Their rich families pay for them to be there and many of them are incapable of even being able to walk around without the great holographic bubble of social media generated around their head, projected by the dot (aka, a flying drone) which generates the bubble. Which is a problem if, like the main and totally unsympathetic protagonist Lindy Pepper-Bean (played by Callie Cooke), all your friends are being eaten, alphabetically, by huge ‘digesting monsters’ and the only help you have are these two strangers who have infiltrated the social network, called The Doctor (played by Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (played by Millie Gibson).

Yeah, it’s tough trying to navigate streets by yourself with no arrows and instructions to show you how to move your feet. You will bump into lamp posts or you could, like many of Lindy’s friends, walk right into the giant stomach opening of various monsters walking... well, crawling... in the streets.

Now, this is proper science fiction, with a heavy dose of satire against both the generation of youth who spend all their time on various variants of social media (yeah, I’m probably guilty of that to an extent too... follow me on Twitter!) plus, basically, the dumb rich kids who are born into a privileged position in society. We’ve all met them... what’s in their wallet on any given day is way higher than their IQ. And I’ve got to hand it to Russell T. Davies, this episode was worthy and, quite in the style of, the late, great Philip K. Dick. In many ways.

And through it all, even though the episode is a pretty self contained story (and an excellent stab at ‘real’ sci-fi, for sure), they still manage to add another notch on the most blatant, so far, part of the underlying arc of the season. Namely, yep... another Susan Twist sighting. This time she’s playing the (dead but she doesn’t know it yet) mother of Lindy... but here’s the thing. Both The Doctor and Ruby react to her presence in this. The Doctor flags her as being the face and voice of the ambulances from the episode Boom (reviewed by me here) and Ruby also remembers her from somewhere else. And the hint there is, she maybe remembers her from last week’s alternate timeline and so, just like the timeline reset changed with Ruby having been to Wales three times instead of two, as originally stated at the opening of 73 Yards (reviewed here), it implies that we’re not completely done with the events of that last story yet. I hope that means we’re finally going to get some closure on just what the old lady version of Ruby was saying to terrify all those people... it’s a bit of an important and glaring omission (just as the previous David Tennant incarnation of the character not regenerating into Jodie Whittaker’s old costume hasn’t been credibly explained in the ‘in universe’ world... and it needs to be).

And, yeah, it was pretty great. The vapid and clueless losers who made up the entire (under 27) society of Finetime might just as well have had ‘conservative party’ stamped onto their foreheads. I think the current season of Doctor Who is certainly getting back on track and I think Dot And Bubble adds to the season considerably. That being said, next week’s so-called ‘Bridgerton’ episode is worrying me a bit. It’s the kind of programme I would naturally steer clear of so I hope the episode has something other than parody going for it. I guess I’ll find out in due time.