A Christmas Ghost Story

Somerset Morn

A Christmas Ghost Story
by Kim Newman
Titan Books
ISBN 9781835410691

A short snip of a shout out of a review to the great Kim Newman’s latest, relatively short novel, A Christmas Ghost Story. Heralded on the front cover as “A chilling tale of dark days and long nights”, the story introduces us to Rust (formerly Russell), a teenage-ish boy and his mother Angie, a somewhat successful crime fiction writer. They live at Six Elms in a part of Somerset easily cut off from the rest of civilisation when bad, winter snow hits... which it does throughout the course of the novel, which takes place from the 1st to the 25th of December.

The basic plot is that they, or rather Rust, receives threatening and ultimately supernatural post, one a day for 24 days and, as they carry on over the length of the month, things get decidedly eerie. Is it all related to Angie’s imagined but seemingly fictional broadcast of an edition of Christmas Ghost Stories from the old BBC ones of the 1970s and 1980s, which were often adaptations of the works of M. R. James (amongst others)? Or is something even more sinister taking root in the household (and believe me, that first day advent calendar chocolate is a bitch)? Either way, it makes a good subject for Rust’s paraphenomenon podcast for sure.

The book is playful with shrewd insight and ideas, which is kind of what you expect from a writer with the talent of Kim Newman but, I always forget just how naturally he weaves his words and how his phrases and observations zing off the page. There’s some beautiful stuff in here, such as the idea of the mother using her computer spell check and the young boy’s response that a computer is just a box and it’s a subroutine of software she’s running. And I practically cheered (and quickly highlighted to my friends over whatsapp) when he says, in a scene flashing back to the mother’s earlier years... “Dad and Angie would have already been through the double issues of the Radio and TV Times with highlighter pens, flagging conflicts of interest.” He then goes on to absolutely nail, in the following paragraph, the difference between the golden age of 1970s Christmas TV and the current poor showing these days, when there’s rarely ever anything good on and the chaff hugely outnumbers the wheat, so to speak.

And throwaway lines such as “Supernatural curse delivery isn’t what it was before Brexit.” certainly liven up the prose and helps to build two central protagonists who are completely likeable in every way. People you care about and who the reader wishes to see no harm come to. Subsequently the wit and attitude of the prose blazes away into high gear and, to risk summoning the obvious clichés, makes the book absolutely binge worthy, like a really good TV show.

My only slight criticism is the supernaturally abstract nature of the book’s ultimate denouement. It felt a little less edgier than the rest of the novel but not entirely inappropriate and, to be fair, the good ship Newman did even surprise me with the direction the last part of the book took... which is something so rare that I always respect it in a writer when they are able to take me unawares.

People of my old age will also get something out of the many pop culture references (and even the made up parodies of such things) that litter the pages. References to stuff like Quatermass And The Pit, The Thing, Doctor Who and even The Shining are also all present and correct alongside the company of those old BBC Ghost Stories I mentioned earlier. So there’s a lot crammed into the book’s relatively punchy 150 plus pages, for sure.

So, a quick but also pacey read makes Kim Newman’s A Christmas Ghost Story, bulging at the seams with style and entertaining truths, something of a fulfilling read for the Christmas season, to be sure. This one makes a nice companion to the yuletide meanderings and rituals many of us go through each year and you could do a lot worse than to mark it up on your Christmas list, as far as I’m concerned.

Red One

 

The Long
List Goodnight

Red One
USA/Canada 2024
Directed by Jake Kasdan
MGM

I actually wanted to see Red One when it came out at the cinema but, alas, it was released in November over here in the UK and I really try not to watch Christmas films out of season (aka, out of December!) so I waited a few weeks. Weeks in which my perception of the film was changed by word of mouth... both from audiences who had seen it on Twitter and, yeah, it took an equally bad pasting from the critics too. So it would be true to say that, by the time I got to see this movie for myself (aka, in December!), my expectations for the movie had plummeted way below zero.

But I did see it and, what can I say? Once again I am reminded why the opinions of both fellow audience members and a bunch of professional critics should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt. Frankly, I loved Red One. It was everything I was expecting from a big budget Christmas movie plus, had the unexpected bonus of being cannily well thought through and a lot more clever than I think people realise.

So at the start of the film we are introduced to Jack O'Malley played by Chris Evans (I suspect taking on this role to further shed his squeaky clean Captain America image). He’s a somewhat criminal hacker known as The Wolf who is wanted by organisations like the FBI all over the world (in order to try and recruit him) and who, in his opening heist, shows that he would sink so low as to steal candy from a baby. At some point he is anonymously hired by someone to find the co-ordinates of an undisclosed location. Which he does, not realising he gives the villain of the film, played by Kiernan Shipka, the information required so her team can abduct Santa Claus, played by the always brilliant J. K. Simmons, for her own, world threatening and evil ends.

Meanwhile, Santa’s number one bodyguard Cal Drift, played by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, part of E.L.F (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification) needs to get Santa back for his annual Christmas run in two days time. So, working with Zoe, who runs a kind of ‘mythical creatures police’ organisation, played by Lucy Liu, he recruits the cynical, world weary Jack to help him find where Santa has been taken.

Tolerating their differences before the expected male bonding, they follow the leads and punch their way through various adversaries to give a crowd pleasing conclusion to the film, aided by E.L.Fs technology such as a device which shrinks and grows toys and people to be used as equipment for the mission (such as toys like Hot Wheels cars for transport, Raving Bonkers robots... which I think were known as Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots in the USA... and so on). So yeah, you get some Ant-Man style shenanigans in the action sequences too but, apart from getting a nice joke around Jack, who upon seeing how the toys are enlarged and made practical immediately asks a shop owner if he has a Wonder Woman action figure... there actually is a really vital logic as to why Santa and E.L.F would actually have this specific technology in their arsenal in the first place (but I’m trying to do this without spoilers so, just keep a look out in the last sequence of the film to find just how this comes in handy if you are Santa).

And, as I said above, I loved it. It’s got its heart in the right place, has some great action scenes (like fighting giant sized killer snowman on a tropical beach), shoe horns in some nice moments with Krampus and, yeah, in my opinion has some good chemistry going between the leads. Added to this it’s got a great, dynamic score by the great Henry Jackman which keeps things going but, alas, is not issued on a CD at time of writing.

So yeah, sorry if it deflects any credibility on my part but, I had a really good time with Red One and I hope it gets a Blu Ray release at some point soon so I can show it to my folks next Christmas. An entertaining movie, I reckon.

The Christmas Murder Game

Murder Mansion

The Christmas Murder Game
by Alexandra Benedict
Bonnier books
ISBN: 9781838775384

The Christmas Murder Game is the first of what I shall, at present, call a trilogy of unconnected Christmas murder mysteries by writer Alexandra Benedict. I read the second and third ones, Murder On The Christmas Express (reviewed here) and The Christmas Jigsaw Murders (reviewed here) last year, not knowing that she’d actually written a trio of books three years running, starting with this one. Alas, there’s no new Christmas mystery by her this year but I live in hope that another one will be forthcoming at some point.

This one starts as the others, with a brief set of rules telling the reader how to play various games hidden within the text of the book. This one has two hidden games in it (plus an acknowledgements word search at the end)... the first being various anagrams of the gifts of the twelve days of Christmas hidden within the text of the relevant chapter and a second game being the titles of 12 of Benedict’s favourite mansion/manor house/family get together style mysteries hidden in the prose.

This book tells the story of main protagonist Lily, who returns after some years estranged from her adopted family to Endgame Manor in Yorkshire, taking the trip up from London near the start of the book. Her mother, who she found dead as a child in the big maze on the grounds of the house was the catalyst for her Aunt Liliana adopting her and taking her away from the manor at a young age. However, now Liliana is dead and her written voice from beyond the grave beckons Lily back to take part in the last of her annual Christmas games against other members of the family... the prize primarily being inheriting the house and grounds but, in the letter sent to Lily, the main stake is to uncover the equally cryptic hidden clues to find that her mum didn’t slash her own wrists as had been reported... but that she was, in fact, murdered.

And it’s just as good as the other two Christmas themed books I mentioned above... in fact, I think this one might just be my favourite of the bunch. Naturally for these kinds of books, the story focusses a lot on the various family characters, their history with the main protagonist and the secrets about various people, including Lily, as the plot goes on. And, also like a lot of these kinds of books, sometimes you can’t see those twists coming and... yeah... other times you do. But I certainly didn’t see an early complication for the central character coming before it’s revealed a few chapters into the novel, so I was pleased and pleasantly surprised by that.

And the writer is very skilled, not just with the puzzles, anagrams and the general enigma of the main plot but, also with the beautiful, sometimes poetic way she expresses things. For instance, in a brief childhood flashback when a character has the complex house of cards he was building knocked down by his sister, Benedict describes “His tears falling like spades down his cheeks.” And another phrase which impressed me with its vivid evocation of sense memory from earlier in the book was, “Lily yanks her bobble hat down over her ears. She’d forgotten how the Yorkshire wind wants to get to know you…”

And I’m doubly pleased to say that I learned something too from this book. I’d never come across the term before but now I know that prosopagnosia is the term for the neurological disorder known as face blindness. Anytime I learn something like this from a novel, I’m always pleased.

However, other than that, I’ve not got much else to add by way of observations on The Christmas Murder Game. The main reveal of a certain antagonist didn’t exactly blind side me, to be honest but, the old giallo ploy of leaving so many suspects on the loose did at least slow me down a little. I very much enjoyed this one and would recommend it as a December read if you are into mystery novels, for sure.

Silent Night (2023)

Silent Hunter

Silent Night
USA/Mexico 2023
Directed by John Woo
A Better Tomorrow Films

Warning: Slight spoilers

Not to be confused with the absolutely brilliant movie Silent Night from 2021 (which I reviewed here), John Woo’s identically titled action movie was something I wanted to see last year but, well, it only got a release via the internet in the UK on 23rd December (by which time I’m too busy) and, frankly, I don’t watch Christmas films out of season. I did, however, manage to snag a signed copy of Marco Beltrami’s brilliant score to the movie when it was released early this year and, what can I say, now that it’s actually December I’ll actually be able to play it too (I don’t listen to Christmas music out of season either, folks).

So this one stars Joel Kinnaman as Brian and the brilliant Catalina Sandino Moreno (from the TV show From) as his wife. The credits roll as we see Brian running in slow motion, his Christmas jumper soaked in blood. As the credits end he catches up with a couple of cars who are shooting it out in a gang battle. When he catches up to them... all I can say is, this is the first Christmas movie I’ve seen where, within five minutes, two people have their heads skewered with forklift truck prongs and the main protagonist has his throat shot out at close range.

A month later, when Brian gets out of hospital, you begin to realise that, apart from diegetic sound from sources such as TV or radio plus a few whispered words here and there, the majority of this film exists with absolutely no dialogue whatsoever... which is just as well considering that the hero no longer has a voice box.

It turns out that the son of Brian and his wife was shot dead from a stray bullet in that gangland battle at the start of the picture and, after he spends a month or so trying to drink his pain away and his wife leaves him, he starts training for revenge... physically, with firearms, with a car, with knives etc, so that he can, as he scrawls on the calendar for December 24th of the current year he’s in (2022 it turns out)... Kill Them All.

That’s the plot, It’s simple and there’s a lot of tension and build up before the first, brutal, hand to hand combat scene used as a prelude to an ultra long series of action scenes culminating in the last 25 minutes referencing Bruce Lee’s Game Of Death, in a way, as Brian (and, to a small extent, a policeman played by someone called Kid Cudi) fights his way up to the top of a building block to get to the final villain’s lair.

And it’s nicely shot, has some interesting framing and some nice, slow camera moves and, ultimately, is a pretty solid film. For instance, there’s a lovely moment where the juxtaposition of two shots forming a transition are really poetic... as a falling tear from his wife’s cheek turns ito the ejected shell from a gun range.

Also, I think there’s a big nod to the cinema of Sergio Leone in this... namely the way he references memories with some of the main protagonists in his films. In this case, his dead son’s music box chimes are used to show him both thinking back to his life before the shooting and also as a reminder/focus of his, as the saying goes, roaring rampage of revenge. It very much reminded me of the use of the watch chimes in For A Few Dollars More, for instance. And come to think of it, the silent hero taking silencing damage to the throat could be seen as being influenced by both Charles Bronson’s character in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West and Jean-Louis Trintignant’s title character in Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence so... yeah, pretty sure John Woo must be a fan of Italian westerns, for sure.

And, yeah, Beltrami’s score was pretty outstanding in places and certainly supports the movie well (although I found the end credits music a little underwhelming). I’m definitely looking forward to giving this CD a spin or two over the next fortnight, for sure.

And that more or less wraps up this fairly short review of Silent Night so I’ll just add that I could have done without the Hallmark movie moment in the villains lair towards the end of the story (you’ll know it when you see it) and that Brian is, fortunately, not depicted as a complete superman in this... he gets hurt and sometimes only luck saves him from death. And Joel Kinnaman certainly looks like he can do this stuff and does a very convincing job of portraying this guy (perhaps a little less convincing when he puts on a smiling face in the flashbacks but, yeah, these moments are luckily kept to a minimum). Silent Night is definitely one to watch from Woo and maybe I’ll start revisiting his back catalogue at some point and looking at some of his classics on Blu Ray (such as The Killer, Hard Boiled and Paycheck... but not Face Off, that was awful). So, yeah, maybe give this one a go.

Christmas And Other Horrors

Frightful Seasoning

Christmas And
Other Horrors
Edited by Ellen Datlow
Titan Books
ISBN: 9781803363264

Warning: Very slight seasonal spoilers.

It was mid-January earlier this year when I received from a couple of friends, this anthology of tales entitled Christmas And Other Horrors - A Winter Solstice Anthology, to celebrate the occasion of my birthday. Showing a canny understanding of my nature, it was given to me with the caveat of “I know you won’t read this until December...” and, of course, they were absolutely right that I wouldn’t but I was very pleased with the book because that would be one less tome to try and source for my December reading (in order to get it up onto the blog). So this is the first of this year’s three Christmas books which will be reviewed, albeit somewhat shortly I suspect, over the next week or so.

Now, it has to be said that while I always look for either horror themed or murder mystery themed books to complement my December reading, I have grown weary of the yuletide horror collections over the years as, they mostly seem to disappoint. So I was pleasantly surprised that this book, which collects all new stories from the end of last year, is actually pretty good. Of the 18 stories bound within its covers, there are very few duds in here. And there are at least two which are actually outstanding. Many of them start well and sustain an entertaining read but, a fair few also kind of taper off towards the end, it has to be said. So while I had a good time with the book as a whole (a very good time, it should be said) there are a few stories where, it felt to me, the writer was holding back on something which could have been a more satisfying ending.

The anthology starts off strongly with The Importance Of A Tidy Home by Christopher Golden. This involves the observations of a man fallen on bad times and homeless in the streets of Salzburg. Here he becomes first hand acquainted with the local myth of the Schnabelperchten, who silently enter the houses of people at night to ensure the house is tidy to welcome in the coming New Year. If not, the creatures will gorily eviscerate the sleeping dwellers with their shears and other sharp implements.

Now this tradition of the Schnabelperchten was previously unknown to me but it has to be said that many of the tales in this tome are utilising various myths and traditions bound to the time of the Winter Solstice and, as such, the majority of this volume (if not all) would mostly fall into the realm of folk horror, which is a sub-genre of horror which has become ‘on trend’ again just lately, of course. Each story is presented with a graphic hanging above the title of a silhouette of a different (and sometimes demonic or bestial) Christmas tree ornament, which is a nice touch.

The book continues with tales of the narrators or protagonists either failing victim (sometimes fatally) to the ‘horror’ of the subject matter or, on occasion, actually turning out to be the horror themselves (such as the Welsh story concerned with Mari Lwyd - the grey mare - in  His Castle by Alma Katsu).

One very interesting piece by Stephen Graham Jones called Our Recent Unpleasantness is very surreal with its tale of a woman who can take her own head off at will (no, it’s not an Indonesian story, surprisingly) and it weaves an atmosphere all its own, although I found the ending somewhat inconclusive or, if not inconclusive then perhaps less interesting than the journey it takes ot get there.

I think my two favourites in the tome also happen to be two of the longest tales in this collection, which are as follow...

Gravé Of Small Birds by Kaaron Warren tells of a notorious, semi-celebrity cook who behaved almost psychotically when she lost on a British cooking programme. She is invited to provide meals for the twelve days of the solstice on the strange island of Brennan. The atmosphere is very similar to that found in the TV show The Third Day (reviewed by me here) and the writer manages to get the sympathies of her audience regarding the central character, even though her responses to certain events (such as murdering someone out of annoyance) are, at the very least, quite questionable.

My other favourite is the last story in the tome, After Words by John Langan, which centres on a tale told by the male in a couple during and after three bouts of sexual intercourse one night. A tale of a long gone former girlfriend and his initial erotic encounters with her. Now, I have to say, I was only about a quarter of the way in when I realised both exactly how this one would end and how the writer would have to shift the narrative (which I also saw for what it was when certain episodes of sudden amnesia are brought up). Nevertheless, it was well done and, like the previous tale I mentioned, manages to put flesh and bones to the handful of characters in the story.

And I’ll leave it just there, I think. If you are in the mood for some seasonal reading with a spooky, folk horror edge then Christmas And Other Horrors is definitely one of the better of the collections I have read in this vein. Certainly I’m very pleased with this unexpected present and would recommend it to friends and readers alike. Good stuff.

Silent Bite

 





Nosferheistu

Silent Bite
Canada 2024
Directed by Taylor Martin
Blue Eyes Media

Okay, this one isn’t great but it’s certainly not too shabby compared to some Christmas horror movies I’ve seen over the years. Silent Bite is a ‘heist aftermath gone wrong’ movie with four bank robbers dressed in seasonal disguises, holing up in a motel (the Jolly Roger Inn) while they wait for their fifth gang member, who is decoying cops away from the scene of the bank robbery depicted at the start of the film, to double back and come get them with the getaway vehicle later.

Well, I say depicted... the film shows its low budget early on as the heist in question actually plays out as a series of motion graphics while the opening credits roll. Which is fine because they look pretty good and you get the idea easily enough. Then the four check in and wait for their friend but, unknown to them, the motel also has a family of female vampires calling the place home, who see the guys as a Christmas present.

Now there’s good and there’s bad on this one. Some of the acting is pretty good and two of the four especially, the leader codenamed Father Christmas played by Simon Phillips and ‘the rowdy one’ codenamed Snowman, played nicely over the top by Michael Swatton - do have a certain British charm and good chemistry to their characters. They kind of save the film in a way and it helps, for them and the rest of the cast, that a lot of the dialogue is quite humorous and smartly written. At least, for the male contingent in the film... the vampire gals are a different story with the credibility of the writing for their characters and the performances of them, well, just about scraping by.

That being said, although some of the dialogue is really nicely done, the story itself is not very original and it doesn’t really do much to rise above its initial premise. There are certainly questions about the use and misuse of vampire lore which one could maybe delve into if one were being picky (of the ‘why did that happen for one person but not that person’ variety) and the film does kinda drag in the last third because of it.

And some of the kills are off camera and don’t really work in a satisfying way... again, I suspect some of these scenes were a casualty of a comparatively low budget and I’m guessing certain things got axed during the shoot (I hope... or the writing really is a lot worse than I realised).

Then there’s the music. The opening animation also has a strong, electric guitar dominant version of Jingle Bells to set the mood which is helpful because, without some of the window dressing employed throughout, such as this music, then the film really didn’t need to be something set at Christmas... it’s not integral to the plot and could have taken place anytime. But Darren Morze’s score throughout the film is not as unsubtle as the opening titles might lead you to expect and it does a good job of supporting the action and keeping things buoyant.

All in all, I don’t have much more to say about Silent Bite. I thought the film was, for the most part, competently made and certainly entertaining enough. I suspect it could have been a much better film if the production company had thrown more money (and also time) at it but I don’t know what the pitch was like. If you like seasonal horror movies however, it fills it’s hour and a half running time nicely and most fans of this sub-genre shouldn’t feel too short changed by it. Definitely worth a look if you have nothing better to do.

Love And Monsters

Chasing Aimee

Love And Monsters
USA/Canada/Australia 200
Directed by Michael Matthews
Paramount Pictures

Love And Monsters is a really cute little film which flirts with the sci-fi/horror genres but manages to retain a lot of humour and heart to still fall within the boundaries of romantic comedy at the same time. The film is set in Earth’s near future and tells the tale of Joel, played by Dylan O'Brien, who writes letters to his once girlfriend Aimee (played by Jessica Henwick) which never get posted but which we hear by way of his narrative voice over to apprise the audience of what they need to know in any given scene.

The reason why the letters never get posted is because, like many survivors in this post-apocalyptic time frame, he lives with just a handful of humans, hiding in an underground bunker. The film starts off with a brilliant, animated sequence filling us in on what’s happened, which is... in the near future, an asteroid named Agatha was due to collide with the Earth and kill us all. So the military sent a load of missiles to intercept it and, job well done, the asteroid was obliterated. However, the many chemicals from all those rockets fell back to Earth and started mutating all the cold blooded creatures... insects, fish. crabs etc... until they quickly became huge and started eating the humans on the planet. It took just a year for almost everyone to die and be left with various scattered outposts, like the underground bunker Joel hides in, as mankind’s last survivors. A place where they’ve now been for seven years. Although, he can still sometimes get radio contact with Aimee’s bunker on occasion.

Then, one day after a bunker breach in which another of his companions is eaten, the very scared and useless at survival Joel decides to go on a seven day trip across the surface so he can be reunited with Amiee. And that’s the main plot and I won’t spoil what happens for you but he does acquire a dog and make two other human friends, played by Michael Rooker and Ariana Greenblatt, who teach him survival techniques against the various monsters, along the way.

And the film is a total delight as we follow the antics of Joel and his new four legged companion Boy across the forest looking regions of the Earth (I’m guessing going through decimated cities would have been too big for the budget) and the various things he does to survive. And, like any quest, the end result isn’t necessarily what he was expecting to find but there are further adventures to be had when he finally reaches his destination, for sure.

The film is not especially interesting in the way the shots are designed, for the most part but, it’s very competently put together and never fails to be anything other than intense, suspenseful, charming and captivating throughout. O'Brien seems pretty good in the lead role and brings a certain warmth to proceedings. It even has a very moving sequence where he finds the last working ‘MAV1S’ robot, which he knows about but has never interacted with in person (he has a dead shell of one back in his bunker) and he shares her last 50 minutes of time with her before the power runs out on her... after which he buries her.

This one also had a nice score by Marco Beltrami and Marcus Trumpp, which really helps move the film along and which is even on CD (that’s one for this year’s Christmas list I think). It’s also edited very well and, despite some really quite scary and drawn out monster encounters, it actually takes a decision to stay away from the gore and is definitely in the ‘family adventure’ category, it seems to me. There are also some nice learning curves in the growth of the characters as we watch Joel go from scared witless to a responsible but daring survivor and possibly leader. There’s a beautiful moment when he’s face to face with a giant killer crab that’s about to eat him which really hammers home the point that the lead protagonist has evolved into someone more accepting and wise as his personal journey has educated him to a large degree.

And that’s all I’ve got to say, really, about Love And Monsters other than it’s an easy film to recommend and that it has a cool, joyful dog character to make sure the poor humans don’t get led too astray (played by two dogs in real life). This is a charming movie with a lot of heart and definitely worth seeking out if you can get an opportunity. Loved it.

Invasion Season 2

 

This Portal Coil

Invasion
Season 2
10 episodes October 2023
USA Apple

Warning: Some spoilerage.

I really wasn’t sure if I could get back to Invasion for a second series. I’d loved the first season, which was partly responsible for winning me back to modern TV during the pandemic but, by the end of the last episode (you can find my review of that first year here) I felt the ending was kind of a cop out. The aliens had been seemingly defeated only to leave one of the stars, Casper (played by Billy Barrat) in a coma and a sudden surprise mothership floating in the Earth’s atmosphere. That all seemed like an afterthought to me... a kind of tack on ending to keep the story going for a second season.

But, here we are and I returned and I found that, wow, there was actually enough material left in the original story set up to keep me watching for the next ten episodes.

This one has exactly the same MO as the first one with four different groups of characters. We have... 1. The kids who go after the sleeping Casper when he is taken to France... including India Brown as Jamila and the villain turned ‘good all along’ Paddy Holland as Monty (in a performance that really shows that this lad should go far if he sticks with the acting bug). 2. Golshifteh Farahani as Aneesha Malik, still on the run with the magical alien shard, protecting her children and running into a bunch of characters in a group called ‘The Movement’, headed up by Enver Gjokaj as Clark (who you may remember from Agent Carter, reviewed here and his further exploration of his character there in the last series of Agents Of SHIELD... reviewed here). 3. Mitsuki, played by Shioli Kutsuna, who lost her girlfriend to the aliens in the first episode and who is now called in to help the government further penetrate their mysteries, including an amazing new character called Maya, played by the equally watchable Naian González Norvind. 4. And finally, we have ex-Navy Seal Trevante, played by Shamier Anderson, who links up with new character Rose, played by Nedra Marie Taylor... tying the story right back in to the first episode of series one and Sam Neill’s character. He gets a mention and a head shot here and there is potential for him to actually return to the show in the future, if whatever reason that kept him from only being in the opening episode is somehow resolved.

And, yeah, it’s good stuff. The story is spun along, the acting is wonderful, the music is great, the action sequences are riveting and there’s even a new version of the aliens - nicknamed hunter/killers - who are impervious to fire, unlike the aliens in the first series. It’s compelling stuff and had me hooked again right from the start.

However, I can’t help but think that the show is being kept spinning instead of coming to a natural conclusion. In the last episode, Trevante manages to cross over through a portal opened by Mitsuki and joins the mind image of Caspar to bring the battle to the aliens and then, well, I guess we wait until season three, however far away that is. I’m going to forget all the story again while I wait for the company behind all this to get its act together, I suspect.

So a great series with pretty good special effects too but, it seems to me like it’s being strung out for the sake of being longer... which seems to be the way of all modern American TV these days (I hope the new ‘Disneyfied’ series of Doctor Who doesn’t go down a similar route... is it too much to ask?). So, honestly, getting a bit tired of the cliffhanger nature of series finales and the ‘will they/won’t they’ carry on with another season... which seems to be less than fifty/fifty these days. I’m thinking that not starting to watch anything until the show is finished for good might be the best way to deal with modern TV at the present. There’s no certainty you’re ever going to get a finished story. But, yeah, I like the show a lot and I’ll be there for their next one, assuming they get that far ahead with it before the plug is pulled (and before some of the child actors grow up to be too old to play their characters within the context of the story). Invasion is good show and I hope it manages to keep itself going.

THEM!

Upping The Ante!

THEM!
USA 1954
Directed by Gordon Douglas
Warner Brothers
HMV Exclusive Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some ant sized spoilers.

THEM! is easily one of the very best of the 1950s Atomic Monster paranoia films ever to be made. It takes its ridiculous premise and, like the majority of the ‘monsters mutated by atomic age radiation’ films of the time, treats its subject absolutely seriously. But, this one just seems to go the extra mile with everything and, if anything, this film is more like watching a police procedural movie than anything else, just with the ‘embiggened’ monsters thrown in as the ‘whatdunnit’ element.

The film starts off very strongly with a lone girl of 5 or 6 (played by nine year old Sandy Descher) walking traumatised through the mojave desert with her broken, plastic doll. Two cops find her, among them one of the film’s main protagonists, Sergeant Ben Peterson, played by James Whitmore, who I always tend to think of as ‘the poor man’s Spencer Tracy’, somewhat, in looks at least. He and his partner pick up the ‘mute from shock’ girl and drive her in their car as they investigate a holiday trailer a stretch down the road, which eventually turns out to be the trailer the girl was using with her now deceased parents. They find nothing but carnage (no bodies) on the site and... drumroll... no money is gone but someone has raided the sugar cubes! Now what could possibly be interested in stealing the sugar, I hear you gasp.

When a mysterious, Doc Savage-like trilling is heard in the air, the traumatised girl sits bolt upright in the ambulance they have just loaded here onto, then settles down again when the sound goes, without anyone other than the audience realising she even moved. Then, the two cops leave the girl with the medics and more police who come to check out the scene, while they go to investigate a store in another part of the desert, in case the owner knows something about this mysterious case. Alas, the store is in the same bashed about state with the wall torn off. They find the owner, his rifle snapped in two, his body crushed and lifeless, thrown into the cellar of the shop. And, yeah you guessed it, a whole load of ransacked sugar. Ben leaves his partner behind to guard the crime scene but, after he does so, his partner hears the sound and goes out to check on it... we hear his gun shots and screams as he dies at the hands of... something big. And yes, fans of the Wilhelm Scream sound sample will identify it in a number of places in this movie.

Okay, when the body of the cop is found he, just like the owner, has died from, among other things, being injected with a large dose of formic acid. Hmm... sugar, formic acid... what can it be? It’s got Ben foxed, along with his new friend, FBI agent Robert Graham (played by The Thing itself, James Arness). They call in a scientist who thinks he may have a lead... so we have Dr. Howard Medford, played by Edmund Gwenn (who many remember as Kris Kringle from Miracle On 334th Street but who I found utterly captivating in a film he made for Hitchcock just a year after this one, The Trouble With Harry) and his equally scientific daughter Patricia, played by Joan Weldon, who is the female/barely hinted at love interest in the movie.

And it takes these two to reveal that the culprit in this ‘whatdunnit’ is, of course, giant sized ants that have been mutated by atomic bomb testing over the last nine years. This is further underpinned when, they are forced to reveal this far fetched theory after Patricia is menaced by a marauding ant and they have to shoot out its antenna to help kill it. But the ant problem is not a small one, if you’ll pardon the observation. If something isn’t done to stop the growth of the colony, it will be less than a year before man is no longer the dominant species on the Earth. Our intrepid heroes manage to find the nest, destroy it and poison the ants inside but many of them, the queen and some flying newborns, have already flown the coop for fresh pastures. And where this movie could easily have gone into the standard sci fi/monster melodrama by this point, it actually stays a police procedural, as the police and FBI, working far more co-operatively than I’ve seen them working together in most movies, start following leads and witnesses for sightings such as ant shaped flying saucers and big ‘sugar heists’. Eventually the film takes us to the nest of ants hiding in the storm drains under Los Angeles...so for a second time, the various factions including the military, arm themselves with flame throwers and seek the ants in their nest.

And it’s just a great movie. Originally it was to be shot in colour and 3D but a nervous studio changed that to 2D and black and white just days before filming commenced. That being said, the opening title letters of THEM! are coloured up red against the black and white background. But I suspect the black and white photography also helps disguise the worst aspects of the giant, animatronic ants and, as you’ll see in some of the deleted effects shots included on this Blu Ray, things were cut out when the ants were just standing there looking too clunky. And, yes, there are some silly bits, like when the police and FBI are using bazookas to heat up the top of the nest and these little cartooned on beams of light suddenly appear coming from the ends of the weapon. But it’s mostly pretty cool and, the flame throwers are certainly real. If you’re wondering how the actors such as Whitmore and Arness are so trained up on using these safely, well, apparently they were combat veterans who were used to using them during the second world war.

The film has a gutsy moment near the end also, when Sergeant Ben sacrifices his own life to giant ant mandibles rescuing two kids... so that’s not a nice thing to do to the audience but it’s very effective, because Arness is trapped on his own with the ants in the next scene and you’re wondering if the director will kill him off at this moment too.

Eagle eyed viewers may spot a young, pre-Spock Leonard Nimoy as one of the army men in one scene, if that’s of any interest to you. Also, when Walt Disney was looking at this film with a mind to cast James Arness as Davey Crocket, he saw Fess Parker in a scene and chose him instead. The film was directed, of course, by none other than Gordon Douglas who did some great films in his career, such as Rio Conchos (reviewed here), In Like Flint (review coming next year) and Frank Sinatra’s Tony Rome films. Also, he helmed the first of the two sequels to In The Heat Of The Night, namely They Call Me Mister Tibbs! So, I have to wonder, between that film and THEM!, is he the director who has made the most movies with an exclamation mark in the title. Surely not but, if you know, then please hit me up in the comments section below.

One last thing which I never hear mentioned but, well, I think it’s kind of an important observation. A traumatised little girl with a broken doll who has had a traumatic incident with some kind of exo-skeleton creature where the film’s main protagonist eventually has to track the threat back to their nest, armed with a flame thrower. Sound familiar? I’m pretty sure, given his interests, that James Cameron must have loved this film and absorbed it, either subconsciously or otherwise, when he was writing his big hit sequel movie ALIENS... yeah, think about traumatised Newt in that film with her broken, plastic doll and Sigourney Weaver with her flame thrower. I’m pretty sure THEM! must have been in the back of his mind at the very least.

So there you have it... THEM! is a great movie with a cast of really good actors making the ridiculous premise seem just about feasible (or at least giving it the required gravitas to keep the audience interested throughout the running time) and all aided by Bronislau Kaper’s fugue-tastic score (which is available on a very faithful re-recording on the first of the Monstrous Movie Music compilation CDs, which you can buy here). This film is still a load of fun and, to quote my dad who was watching this with me... “I don’t remember this film being so complex!” So there you have it folks... not just another atomic age monster movie (not that there’s anything wrong with that, they’re great) but easily one of the best and most iconic. Iconic enough that both the ants themselves and their eerie warbling sound effect would feature in at least one referential movie cameo, over the years (I’m thinking of the brilliant Looney Tunes Back In Action but there have probably been some others, for sure). 

Devil Girl From Mars

Martian Manhunter

Devil Girl From Mars
UK 1954 Directed by David MacDonald
British Lion/Studio Canal Blu Ray Zone B

Devil Girl From Mars is a movie I’ve been meaning to get around to seeing for some time. It’s all set in more or less one location, that being an inn on the Scottish Moors. Just to underscore the location, we have John Laurie cast as one of the owners, many years before he went on to household fame as Frazer in Dad’s Army. Now, the single location makes more sense when you see, on the opening credits (underscored with music by British composer Edwin Astley) that the film is based on a stage play by John C. Mather and James Eastwood, the latter of the two writing the screenplay.

The film takes time to build up its characters after a huge spaceship, thought at first to be a meteorite, comes crashing to Earth. So we have a young model fleeing from a doomed relationship, played by Hazel Court, the land lady played by Sophie Stewart, the barmaid played by Adrienne Corri, the land lady’s sister’s son and a throwaway geezah who gets disintegrated fairly early on into the proceedings. Through the miracle of a radio tuned to a station giving exposition, we know that a Professor has travelled to the area to study the fallen meteorite, played by Joseph Tomelty with an accompanying reporter played by Hugh McDermott. And furthermore, we know from the radio in their car, that an escaped murderer... though he didn’t really do it on purpose and he’s also the lover of the barmaid, played by Peter Reynolds... has escaped from the local prison.

And, of course, all converge at the inn for the night, only to find themselves locked in a small area of land by invisible walls, as a flying saucer lands and out pops... Nyah played by Patricia Laffan, a Martian woman wearing a slightly ahead of its time PVC fetish suit (the actress wasn’t allowed to eat or drink on set in order to get the thing on and off). She is accompanied by her killer robot, who looks mighty impressive on the posters. Said robot bears no resemblance to the actual costume at all and it’s a bit clunky and quaint but, certainly tall and imposing.

Nyah is a cold blooded woman, being from Mars and one of the women who have, after years of bloodshed, won the Martian War Of The Sexes. So, with her mighty powers, she is here to collect male breeding stock to help her top up her race again. In fact, she’s a little off course due to the thickness of the Earth’s atmosphere, so she plans on getting to London soon, in order to freeze everyone with her ‘everybody stands still with glazed expressions on their eyes’ powers so she can take her pick. So it’s up to these, pretty powerless humans to try and come up with some kind of plan to thwart her efforts.

And it’s all very quaint and British and, I feel, has been held up to ridicule for a long time but... yeah, I dunno, I actually found the film not only charming but quite watchable. There’s a good bunch of actors who really know how to bring the characters to life (if you’re going to be stuck in a pub with a bunch of nice people, these would be the ones) and the sets and miniatures are well lit and shot. I mean, right from the outset you can tell the pub and its immediate surroundings are a huge interior studio set but, even so, it’s a pretty good one, it has to be said. And there are some quite clever lines in the film too such as, when being scolded by his wife for drinking, John Laurie remarks with words to the effect that he’s being patriotic by drinking the scotch. His wife’s withering retort is, “You should see him when he has a patriotic head in the morning.”, which I thought was pretty good.

Now, to be fair, there are a lot of things people could latch on to in order to criticise this as a bad movie... the smoking glasses after a guy has been disintegrated, the cumbersome robot and the uptight demeanour of the Martian lady... but I found it to be mostly good and, not exactly gripping but it’s a pleasure to see actors of this quality taking the subject as seriously as they can and, it turns out, I have a lot of love for this film. Even if the ending seems somewhat... well... a bit rubbish and unsatisfying. But, yeah, I’ve said it and you can judge me for it (I know my dad will, who found the whole thing absolutely ludicrous) but I really liked Devil Girl From Mars and think it would make a good part of an all nighter marathon of British sci-fi/horror films from the period. Good stuff, as far as I’m concerned.

Universal Terrors 1951-1955

Terror Forming

Universal Terrors 1951-1955
By Tom Weaver with David Schecter,
Robert J. Kiss and Steve Kronenberg
McFarland Books
ISBN 9780786436149

A quick shout out to a great book which is actually so dense in content and information that, with my lack of amount of free time these days, it took me a fair amount of time to read and absorb. Subtitled Eight Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Films, Tom Weaver’s Universal Terrors 1951 - 1955 is an exhaustive tome written by the same team (with one addition) behind The Creature Chronicles (reviewed by me here).

This one is pretty much a ‘making of’ style book about the production (plus pre and post) and making of eight specific movies, most of which I knew fairly well. These include three which I wouldn’t necessarily myself had counted as being typical of the films Universal were churning out to their horror fan base in the 50s... those being The Strange Door, The Black Castle and Cult Of The Cobra. The other five are all ones which I would instantly associate with that decade’s predilection for atomic aged monsters... either rediscovered, mutated or out of this world... namely It Came From Outer Space, Creature From The Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, Revenge Of The Creature and Tarantula.

The lion’s share of the volume is written by Weaver with his usual doses of humourous writing and the occasional judgemental eye at the behaviour and credibility of cast and crew, many of whom he has interviewed in his many years over his career as a film historian specialising in such B-movie gems... for instance, you can tell how he feels about director Jack Arnold and the stories he’d spun throughout his life (and perhaps he’s right to make that judgement call). Other writers also have their own specialist sections within the chapters, with the layout of the book being an introduction (including a great, hand drawn map of the Universal International front lot at the time) followed by eight big chapters with sub sections by Weaver, followed by the great David Schecter (who I have a lot of respect for in his coverage of the music, considering how many of those film scores he’s rerecorded and raised from the dead on his CD label Monstorus Movie Music), Robert J. Kiss and Steve Kronenberg.

Each chapter is split into sections being Full Credit Information, then Weaver’s big chunks following Production History, which includes sub sections on Synopsis, Cast Biographies, Production and Marginalia (with some wonderful doses of interesting trivia)... before going onto the other writers’ sections exploring The Release (including Critics Corner which quotes various quotes from reviews from the films’ initial releases), The Music Score (very detailed breakdowns including many notes on who wrote what and which bits were tracked in from other identified movies) and a final Analysis section.

And, yeah, it’s pretty thorough. If you want a blow by blow account of which actor or stuntman ‘so and so’ were doing on 3pm on a given day on the shoot, if that was of any interest... you are going to find it all in here. It gets very interesting when the notes from the day’s shooting doesn’t correspond to how people later remembered things from that day.

Among many nuggets which I learned for the first time (except from the two chapters on Creature From The Black Lagoon and Revenge Of The Creature, which are cut down versions of the chapters in the book on the trilogy of movies covered in the aforementioned The Creature Chronicles) are such gems as the fact that long standing Robin Hood actor Richard Greene was actually the grandson of motion picture pioneer William Friese-Greene. Or that Charles Drake (no, not Charlie) was sometimes a drunken mess and once assaulted an actress outside her home for publicity. And I also didn’t know that Jeff Morrow went on to become the face of Suntory Whisky in Japan for a while (just like director Akira Kurosawa was and, fictionally, Bill Murray’s character was in Lost In Translation... from what I remember). There’s also some criticism thrown into the mix on the extent of Ray Bradbury’s involvement on the screenplay for It Came From Out Of Space.

And, like I said, a short review and that’s all I’m going to say about Universal Terrors 1951 - 1955 other than to say that, if you were a ‘monster kid’ as many Americans are fond of labelling a certain kind of horror movie enthusiast (as I guess I was, to the extent that you could be in the UK) then you are probably going to love this book and should maybe try and grab a copy. It’s a long read with many facts and figures (and previously rarely seen photos from the productions) plus it’s entertainingly written and certainly an enlightening experience, for sure. Definitely worth the price of admission.

Shaolin Mantis

The Man
From A Mantis

Shaolin Mantis
aka Tang lang
Hong Kong 1978
Directed by Chia-Liang Liu
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some mantis-like spoilers in this one.

Wow. This is an extremely entertaining Shaw Brothers martial arts movie, for sure (and for Shaw, I guess). The film stars screen legend David Chiang as Wei Fung, who becomes the Shaolin Mantis of the title. More on that later but, a quick summation of the style of the film is as follows...

A lame fight with freeze frame credits is followed by a scene where Wei Fung has to demonstrate and prove his kung fu skills to his emperor by defeating two of the emperor’s champions, the second being a cameo guest appearance by Chia-Hui Liu, who is perhaps best known to many westerners as Gordon Liu, from his appearance as two different characters in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies. After he proves his mettle, Fung is sent out to spy on the clan of a region where the emperor suspects there is rebellion brewing and gain proof of such, with time deadlines devoted to punishments meted out on his family if he fails to return from his mission (ultimately ending as death for all as the final incentive).

So off Weng goes and he meets a good looking, young, insolent brat of a woman named Tien Chi-Chi, played by Cecilia Wong. She is in the process of throwing out her 18th personal tutor in, probably, as many months and, somehow, she takes a shine to Wei Fung and gives him a job as her new teacher. Luckily for him, this takes him into the household where the rebellion just happens to be brewing. When the elder uncle finds out he is a spy, he is going to kill the new teacher but, unbeknownst to Wei, the daughter tells him they are to be married and promises that he’ll stay in the compound. And so they do marry, with Wei none the wiser about what has happened. But soon he needs to go back to ensure his parents are safe and his situation is clarified for him in no uncertain terms. So he and his wife decide to break out but, first they must fight five fights with skilled kung fu experts, including the girl’s mother and auntie, to be able to leave. With tragic circumstances but, Wei escapes with his life (he’s the only one at this point... as his wife, the mother and aunt, all die either in these sequences or as a result of what happens).

Now then, while stumbling in the wilderness at his lowest point, a praying mantis attaches itself to Wei’s hand and won’t let go. He eventually gets it off him but then observes the mantis, along with assorted mantis friends... and realises the skill of the mantis staying attached to his hand comes from the insect’s martial arts mindset. An extended training montage plays out where he observes and emulates the moves and stance of the mantis, as he perfects a new mantis style of kung fu, giving himself maniacal mantised-up martial arts powers in order to beat the styles of the various guardians of his dead wife’s clan with something more formidable. And so he returns to fight his away back into the compound, bringing his mantis mayhem with him.

Eventually he returns to free his family from prison but, there’s a nasty twist at the end as to where his true allegiances lay... which I have to say I saw coming from the first five minutes of the film, to be honest (he’s way too reluctant a hero and obviously doesn’t want to go on the mission in the first place). It’s one of those endings where pretty much anyone you were rooting for dies and the only winner in this is the established emperor.

But the film packs a punch. I’m pretty sure the fighting on the credits and the opening two fight scenes where the hero has to prove his worth are only there because the next half an hour are pretty much just long, drawn out character development stuff... until the last hour of the film is pretty much one fight scene after another. So, if I were to sum the movie up it’s as follows...

Credits fights... two ‘prove your skills’ fights... long, slow but still entertaining scenes where characters and their relationships are built, followed by... fight, bigger fight, slightly bigger fight, even bigger fight and then biggest fight ending in tragedy and escape... followed by a silly but enthralling mantis kung fu training session... followed by a fight, a bigger fight, an even bigger fight and then, just for good measure, a really big fight. Followed by the ending which, almost but not quite... involves a fight.

But, honestly, I found the whole thing thoroughly riveting. I mean, this spectacular fight choreography looks more like a ballet so, I don’t know, maybe it’s the testosterone infused equivalent of dance but, whatever, it’s great to watch and, all in all, I had a great time with Shaolin Mantis. The swords and other weapons looked, maybe a little too shiny (like lacquered plastic accessories you’d get on early 1970s Playmobil figures) but David Chiang is as brilliant as always, as are the majority of the cast and I’m really pleased I blind bought this one last year (after the company posted a video of one of the fights on twitter). It’s good stuff and, well, I  have another fifty or so Shaw Brothers martial arts films still to watch and waiting in the wings so, I’ll get to those sometime soon, I guess.

The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires

Ege Of Darkness

The Legend Of The
Seven Golden Vampires
UK/Hong Kong 1974
Directed by Roy Ward Baker and
Chang Cheh (uncredited action sequences)
Hammer/Shaw Brothers/Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone A

The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires was the very last of Hammer’s Dracula cycle, made in collaboration with the famous Shaw Brothers and, despite attempts made to regain Christopher Lee as Dracula one last time, he declined after reading the script. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with this one for reasons I’ll get into in a minute but, I have to say on this rewatch, polished up for a lovely stateside Blu Ray release from Shout Factory, the film looks better than any previous versions I’ve owned and, I also had a lot more fun with it. I’m wondering now if the last version I saw was maybe the cut down US release version, The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula, because some of the sequences are in a much different order than I remember them from my last viewing and it all makes a bit more sense this time around.

One person who does return, in a lovely portrayal of the original Van Helsing, is Peter Cushing in one of the roles that made him a household name, looking very dapper throughout most of the shoot in a reddish brown jacket which looks very much like the ones he wore the decade before in the two Dr. Who movies (reviewed here and here). Alas, he’s my main problem with the movie also... or rather, the inclusion of his character is... I’ll get to the elephant in the room in a little while, I promise.

He’s joined in this by Robin Stewart as his son (who seems to spend the entire movie looking like a clone of Ralph Bates for this one) and the lovely Julie Ege as his female benefactor (for the cost of coming along on a specific mission with Van Helsing). Plus a whole bunch of Shaw Brothers actors including the legends (in my opinion) that are David Chiang and Szu Shih and, I have to say, they’re all pretty good. The film starts off with Dracula (played by John Forbes-Robertson, in absolutely no way similarly to Lee) who quickly steals the body of a Chinese guy, goes to China and lives there for 100 years with his fierce Seven Golden Vampires plus their undead, zombie slaves. Then Van Helsing and crew go to protect the village which Dracula holds in a grip of terror in a romp of a tale which is a heady mix of kung fu action with typically entertaining Hammer vampire nonsense kind of grafted onto it (or vice versa, if you like).

That being said, I think the chorography on the fight scenes on this one are nowhere near as interesting as the regular Shaw Brothers movies I’ve seen from these actors and, I think that out of all of them, it’s Szu Shih who seems the best of the bunch, showing off her dynamic fighting skills much more in keeping with what you would expect if it was purely a Shaw Brothers production.

It mostly looks nice with some beautiful frame compositions and an almost Bava sense of lighting in some places, where actors and sets are lit two tone from a range of colour palettes such as blues, greens, reds and mauve washes of colour, which really pop and bring interest to the shots. That being said, for some reason the external location shots seem to be quite muddy and dull to look at on this one, in contrast to the sequences which are studio bound. You can certainly see the difference between the clarity of the visuals on this beautiful Shout Factory transfer, for sure. There are also some brief sequences of topless women and bodice ripping galore (although, sadly, not in the case of the constantly bosomy and brilliant Julie Ege) and some nice special effects when each of the seven golden vampires reverts back to the dust from which they came. Although, a badly fake rubber bat flying behind a vertical rock while a vampire jumps out from the other side of the same rock is not the most convincing transformation sequence, it has to be said.

And, yeah, it’s a nice enough final film in the series but, it has the awful problems of continuity in terms of both the Van Helsing and Dracula characters in the film, which not only contradict the film fitting into the previous Hammer Dracula movies... it also contradicts itself in this story too. To explain...

We know from Dracula AD 1972 (reviewed here) that the original Van Helsing, who this character does seem to be, according to some dialogue referring back to his past encounters with Dracula, perished in the year 1872. The prologue to that film sees Dracula and Van Helsing killing each other but with Dracula being revived from powdered blood spilled then, 100 years later (where Peter Cushing plays the great grandson of the character he played in this prologue). However, in The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires, Dracula has already taken the form of the Chinese guy 1804 and has gone to China for 100 years, until he meets up with the original Van Helsing in this film in the year 1904. So not only does this transformation take place long before he could have remet Van Helsing, it also predates the previous Dracula films... a complete impossibility if this film is to be believed. And, hello, if Van Helsing dies in 1872, then how come he’s running around and still getting into trouble in 1904? Especially when he clearly states that he’s met Dracula and fought him before... erm... except hasn’t Dracula been hiding as a Chinese guy for 100 years? How did they meet again?

So yeah, no matter which way you look at it, the film is a total nonsense. The script could have easily been fixed to change dates and historical durations of events in this film but, well, it looks like nobody could be bothered with keeping any sense of continuity within these films. And it just doesn’t work. So, if continuity is your thing (and why wouldn’t it be?) then maybe this final entry in the Hammer Dracula saga isn’t for you.

That being said, though, I did enjoy this presentation of The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires far more than I expected to and, yeah, it’s a hard film not to have a good time with. Like I said, it’s a boy’s own kind of romp, a bit like the Hammer version of She but with added kung fu goodness. A nice thing is the addition of a score by James Bernard but, somehow, his famous Hammer Dracula theme seems somewhat flat when you don’t have Christopher Lee accompanying it on screen. Still, it is what it is and I got a lot more out of it this time. Definitely worth a watch if you are a lover of what Hammer were doing during this period and, certainly a very odd blend of two studios presenting a kind of subdued mixture of what they both did best.

Outland

Io Pic

Outland
USA 1981 Directed by Peter Hyams
HMV/Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Full plot spoilers.

It’s been a while since I last saw Outland but I do try and watch it at least once on every home video format I eventually own it on... now it’s the turn of Blu Ray and, it has to be said, the film really hasn’t lost much of its power.

I first saw it at the cinema on the year of its release. I was 13 years old but the film was an AA rating, which was nobody under the age of 14... so I either lied about my age by a year or just wasn’t challenged on the door (I forget which).

The film is set on Io, the third largest moon of the five surrounding Jupiter, on a titanium mining colony run by Con-Am. Sean Connery plays the new marshal of the colony, Marshal O’Niel. He’s only been there a couple of weeks but his wife has had enough of being sent from one grubby outpost to the next and so she takes their son and goes to the nearest space station, waiting for a flight back to Earth (their son has never seen the planet he reads about in books). However, O’Neil can’t join them for now because there’s something bad happening at the mining colony and he’s onto something which is killing people. People are doing things like uncoupling their space suits while out on the surface (we watch in graphic detail as their blood boils and their heads explode as the air and organs inside fight to get out... at least, I’m guessing that’s the scientific idea behind those kinds of deaths... maybe they just look cool), travelling down to the outside in the lifts without any suit at all and just generally going mad.

Teaming up with Dr. Lazarus, played by the incomparable Frances Sternhagen, he discovers that these psychotic episodes went up hugely after the arrival of the branch director. So he starts digging and soon uncovers a bunch of people supplying drugs to increase manpower within the mining community, which also eventually makes their customers psychotic... and it all points back to the company, or at least the branch manager, played by Peter Boyle. However, after O’Neil finds and destroys a shipment of drugs, hit men are sent to kill him, arriving on the next shuttle. And, of course, nobody really wants to help him defend himself from these killers.

Okay, so when I was a kid there were two pieces of conventional wisdom about this film which I took with a grain of salt but do still acknowledge that there is something to them. Firstly that this is a remake of High Noon (reviewed here). Well, of course the last 25 minutes, where O’Neil’s potential allies abandon him to his fate and he has to take on the killers alone (more or less), is absolutely an homage to High Noon but, the film is not a complete remake because High Noon was all about that right from the start of the movie. The first two thirds of Outland, however, are a strong police procedural thriller, which happens to take place on a moon of Jupiter. It’s definitely got its own vibe going and it does what it does very successfully.

The other bit of conventional wisdom at the time of its release... and I remember reading this phrase at the time in Film Review, the ABC cinema chain’s monthly magazine that they sold in the kiosk... was that it’s a ‘poor man’s Alien’. Nope. Neither film has much in common other than the one huge influence of Alien (on pretty much everything at the time) of the lived-in, aged up sets with a kind of built in obsolescence. So yeah, it’s certainly gone down that route but, no, it’s a ‘poor man’s’ nothing.

What it is, is a top notch thriller with brilliant performances by both Connery and Sternhagen (who have remarkable chemistry together... how come these two weren’t teamed up in another film?) backed up by a, perhaps slightly simple but certainly solid story and what were, for the time, state-of-the-art special effects... which generally have, for the most part, aged well and don’t look too clunky on the Blu Ray format. What ages the film most is the nature of the computer graphics on the screens but, like a lot of speculative movie fiction, if the film makers had guessed how advanced things have gotten by today, then the films would have lacked credibility for the audiences of the time, for sure. I especially like the interactive, screen golf game that Peter Boyle’s character plays in his apartment.

And, added to this, it’s all supported by a really great score by the fabulous Jerry Goldsmith. He was in his phase where he was experimenting with very subtle electronic augmentation to the orchestra and it’s a truly wonderful score, mixing the dense atmospheric cues of the depressing environment the miners work in with some wonderful action cues which never let the toes stop tapping (I still listen to it on my bus journey home some evenings).

So that’s me on Outland. One of the great science fiction movies of the early 1980s and some of the best of cinema of that era, for sure. Definitely worth checking out if you’ve never seen it and especially if you like police procedural thrillers. 

Yes, Madam!

Mad Men VS Madams

Yes, Madam!
aka Police Assassins
aka In The Line Of Duty 2
Directed by Corey Yuen
Hong Kong 1985
D & B Films  Co. Ltd/Eureka
Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, this gets really confusing... this is the first in a series of films that came to be known as the ‘In The Line Of Duty’ series but didn’t get that moniker until the filming of another movie, which also became known as In The Line Of Duty 2, in addition to its real name. But then this ‘first’ film known as Yes, Madam! was marketed internationally as, um, In The Line Of Duty 2 and... yeah, it gets even more complicated than that with the various titles and switched sequences... I have no idea which one I’m supposed to watch next. What do they think this is... a Caroll Baker giallo?

Anyway, Michelle Yeoh had only done two movies prior to this one and this was her first starring role. Meanwhile, the producers wanted to create a new male action hero to co-star in the movie to be ‘the new Bruce Lee’. Various people from a kung fu school in the USA were sent over to audition and some of the ladies went along too. When Corey Yuen and the producers saw what Cynthia Rothrock was able to do, they changed their ideas and rewrote the role for her... this was her first film and she is the first caucasian actress to headline Hong Kong movies.

The plot deals with Yeoh’s Inspector Ng trying to stop bad guys from finding some small time crooks who accidentally become embroiled with some microfilm (remember the days of microfilms in movies being a big deal?). To help her, because it all started when a high ranking police inspector from Scotland Yard is murdered for the microfilm... another ‘English’ police inspector is sent to give Ng a hand... which is Rothrock as Inspector Carrie Morris. After that it’s all comedy and bits and pieces of action (much less action than was shot due to running time constraints) as Yeoh and Rothrock’s characters try and keep tabs on three small time criminals - named Aspirin, Panadol and Strepsil - before they get themselves killed and the microfilm is destroyed.

The humour, like a lot of these Hong Kong films, is more than a little broad but the stunts and action sequences, most of which were performed by the actors themselves such as Yeoh and Rothrock (who got a lot of bruises for their seven month shoot... Rothrock got a torn inner ear for good measure, too), is pretty good and inventive. This was the first time Rothrock used her signature move ‘the scorpion kick’ in a movie... the choreographer asked her if she wanted to throw anything of herself into the mix and she showed him that move and he definitely wanted it in the film. I’m actually surprised by these two actresses having this as their first big roles because, I have to say, they both seem pretty confident in this and make it all look easy.

Despite not quite having as much action as I was expecting, the film still seems to hurtle along at a blistering pace... the comedy might be a bit too unsubtle at times but you certainly won’t get bored with this one. There are a couple of nice highlights too, such as, at the end of her first big action sequence in the film, Michelle Yeoh gets a Dirty Harry moment where she tells the villain she is pointing her shotgun at that she doesn’t know if there are any shells left in the gun and that he would maybe like to try his luck. Another nice moment in terms of editing is when Cynthia Rock saves the life of Panadol (played by famous director Hark Tsui) by shooting a rope from around his neck when he’s hanging off of a wall... the rope breaks and he lands in a chair at the police station, courtesy of a nicely placed edit and shot match. Good stuff.

One thing which felt a little off to me was the moment when a hitman digs his silencer into an apple and puts the apple in the mouth of his victim to stop him from calling out. When he shoots the guy point blank through the mouth, there seems to be absolutely no exit wound on the guys head, even when the camera shows the dead guy later. Just felt a bit odd... hardly any blood for such a close up piece of violence.

The other thing that felt way off was that, at the end of the day, the bad guy gets killed but only while he’s going quietly with the police, by one of the comic relief thieves. In fact, the two heroines and their accomplices are all under arrest for trespassing on the villain’s property and, if not for the murder, he would have gone scott free. The film then just stops and you assume all the good guys and gals go to prison for their actions... a really unusual ending for sure.

But, nevertheless, I found Yes, Madam! to be a pretty entertaining movie and Yeoh and Rothrock make a really good team here (I believe they also became fast friends in real life... Rothrock didn’t know the language when she came over to Hong Kong but Yeoh knew some English and they used to go out to dinner every night, is my understanding). It’s a shame the two didn’t do more of these films together, for sure.

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula

Rites Said Dead

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula
UK 1973
Directed by Alan Gibson
Hammer/Warner Archive Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers for the inevitable outcome here.

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula is one of the more closely related of the Dracula follow ups. Although it’s set a few years after the events of the previous film, Dracula AD 1972 (which I reviewed here), it was actually released only one year after. It does have four running characters from that previous excursion in the contemporary adventures of Hammer’s flagship vampire, although only three actors returned to those roles.

The two obvious returners are Christopher Lee playing Dracula and Peter Cushing once again playing the modern descendent of the Van Helsing clan, Lorrimer. We also have Michael Coles returning as police Inspector Murray from the previous Dracula adventure, this time working in conjunction with a special government agency represented mostly by characters played by William Franklin and Richard Vernon. It should be noted that Coles is, apparently, the only person in Hammer film history other than Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to play the same character in more than one Dracula movie.

Rounding out the more important cast members are Freddie Jones as a Nobel prize winning chemist and, to fill the boots of Stephanie Beacham, who was not available to reprise the role of Van Helsing’s granddaughter Jessica, we have Joanna Lumley who, it has to be said, doesn’t have an awful lot to do in this and plays the role, it seems to me, completely differently from her predecessor... but then again, that’s because the character seems differently written as, although it takes place in more or less the same times, there’s no sense of a swinging London vibe to this movie at all (even though it’s set there). I should probably also mention Pauline Peart’s brief role as a wordless vampire girl, one of a few chained in a basement, since she does cut a striking figure and she still goes to Film Fairs to sign photos from this film.

The film opens strongly with lots of location footage of London with a really annoying and distracting silhouette of Dracula superimposed over the whole credits sequence, slightly off centre at the bottom of the screen. However, John Cavacas’ excellent, funky 1970s score more than makes up for this annoying blemish on an otherwise interesting credits sequence.

This movie always seems to be better in my memories but, every time I sit down to watch it over the years, it always seems a little bland too. Dracula doesn’t even enter the picture until about half an hour into the thing. And when he does, there’s no real discussion as to how he was revived after his death at the end of the previous movie, this time around. However, there’s some distracting nudity, some occult practices and also cults like the Hellfire Club referenced to ensure the audience know that they’re in black mass kind of territory... and also mention that vampires also have a weakness in the grip of a Hawthorn bush, which they use here to help usher in Dracula’s latest death at the end of the tale.

The plot of this one involves Dracula’s attempt to kill off humanity with a new instant and more deadly version of a black plague. When it’s pointed out to him that the destruction of mankind would mean he’d leave himself without an adequate food supply he changes the subject but, the film very gently touches on the idea that Dracula may also be wanting to bring about his own downfall by this point.

So, yeah, it’s another contemporary adventure romp with a biker gang of hoodlums controlled by Dracula’s new corporation, to lend action scenes to the picture, all of them wearing sheepskin waistcoats just like the one I used to wear myself when I was two or three years old. There’s lots of shooting, chasing and punching... not to mention some quite nice frame designs where various uprights and horizontals are used to highlight different parts of the action. But for all this, somehow, the film seems curiously bland in places and, I think I’ve finally put my finger on why some of the film feels like this, finally...

I noticed, this time around, that in all the various shots of characters going about their business in London, there are never any people on the streets. Like everything had been locked off for filming but the production was too cheap to have extras. It’s a little off putting, to tell the truth. Like London has suddenly been emptied out in the aftermath of some great catastrophe. Oh... although there’s a shot inside Freddie Jones’ house where, you might notice a person extra, as one of the crew seems to be ducking behind a half open doorway at the rear of one shot, although there’s clearly meant to be nobody there apart from Freddie at this point.

In addition to the Hawthorn bush oddity and a number of in-the-moment, do it yourself crosses and stakes used throughout the movie, we have a nice scene where Peter Cushing’s character melts down a silver cross and casts it as a silver bullet (which he manages to miss Dracula with later) and a nice moment of running water demise, when Inspector Murray turns some sprinklers on the chained vampire gals in the basement, having learnt that this can be deadly to a vampire from the previous movie, invoking death by running water. That being said, it’s one of a few scenes where the action seems ever so slightly slowed down and a bit strange... this particular scene even more so because the director has chosen to switch to a posterised colour version of the shot to show the undead ladies writhing around on the floor. I’m not sure why this colour technique was used in just this one scene in the movie but, the cynic inside me suspects that something went wrong with the action of the shot which was only discovered later and they posterised the footage to disguise it. That’s my best guess on that one, anyway.

So that’s me finished with The Satanic Rites Of Dracula for a bit. The film is a little insipid in places and it’s certainly not as strong as the previous outing, Dracula AD 1972 but, it’s still quite entertaining and I appreciate the attempt to give the film a stronger link to the previous story through the characters and their learned knowledge from that film. And the John Cavacas score rocks and is worth picking up on CD if you don’t have it as it’s one of the few Hammer scores which has been released on CD still at this point. This was the last time that Christopher Lee played Dracula for Hammer but, not the last time Peter Cushing would play one of the Van Helsing clan... which would create continuity problems galore, as I’ll point out when I go on to watch that Hammer/Shaw Brothers collaboration as my next, final Hammer Dracula film review.