The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1

On A Sting And A Prairie

The Complete Adventures 
of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1
By Les Savage Jr.
Altus Press
ISBN: 9781453645376

Her kiss was flame, Her gun was doom!

In his foreword to the Altus Press compendium of tales, The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1, modern pulp writer Will Murray (who I best know for his modern takes on Doc Savage and The Shadow) talks about the writer of these tales, Les Savage Jr... which is handy because I knew nothing about him or his Señorita Scorpion yarns before now. He was apparently born in 1922 and died young at around 36 years of age but, though young, I can tell you he certainly has all the skills of a good pulp wordsmith. Perhaps he’s not quite as eloquent as Lester Dent’s Kenneth Robeson alter ego but, certainly head and shoulders above Walter Gibson’s Maxwell Grant, in my opinion. 

These first four yarns were published in the Spring, Summer and Winter 1944 issues of Action Stories and the Spring issue of the same magazine of the following year. They were apparently quite popular and, according to the intro, might well have even been an influence on various Hollywood contrivances such as the serial Zorro’s Black Whip (reviewed by me here).

Señorita Scorpion is the secret identity of Elgera Douglas, a woman whose family was trapped for generations in a secret area by a mountain and who, now the family has found a way out of the valley in which they were once trapped, operates out of this secret location... where no person alive who does not know her could find the secret entrance to. Yeah... actually, this really is Republic Pictures serial material, for sure. 

Enter Chisos Owens, the cool hunk of a man who is the only one who, by the end of the first tale after tracking her down, working initially for a man who did him wrong... can win her heart. Adventures ensue. Most of them involving the titular lady’s secret ranch and threat to its ownership from various parties. More regular characters get added to the roster, including a sheriff who is caught in a triangle with Owens for her affections. 

And it’s pretty good stuff. The lead in to the tales often seems to be approached by some other character (sometimes Chisos Owens and sometimes someone else like a villain) and while the lady is a formidable adversary, she’s not above being rescued in damsel in distress mode at various points in the narrative... although she does a fair amount of rescuing of people herself, to tell the truth.

The tales are quite addictive and also very descriptive of landscapes and situations. Being Western tales, some fight is often started at the drop of a hat and there are many metaphorical hats plummeting to the ground in these tales. One thing Savage Jr seems to have a neat gift for is the prose of the various gunfights and especially the fist fights that pepper his tales at regular intervals. Heck, one fistfight in the third story here, between the two characters vying for the affections of Douglas (before they all become friends, naturally), seems to go on for several pages with no let up. They are often quite violent too... one man gets a pick axe through his face in one story, for example... but don’t really dwell too much on the gory aftermath (the same chap comes back a little later with a bandage on his face with no real description of his wounds). 

Another specialty of the writer seems to be in making me reach for a dictionary every five minutes. Because the narrative deals with a lot of Western terms and iconography related to Texas and Mexico that I have just not come across before. So Vaqueros, Viejos and Wickiups were briefly on my radar, as were various native American plants and other terms for things which I’d never come across previously, mainly because I don’t think I’ve read any ‘wild west’ fiction before. 

Plus, I’d assumed the writer had made a mistake when an imposter posing as the reincarnated Montezuma, who is mind controlling various ‘good guys’ with peyote to help raise an army to wipe out the white man in America... fires four shots at an enemy with his derringer. However, there were indeed some four barrelled derringers around at the time. Something which I must have just plain forgot, since Sabata uses one in a number of his films. 

There is a slight continuity error, it seems to me, going through the stories, which are all set a little time after the previous adventure. The four tales are called Señorita Scorpion, The Brand Of Senorita Scorpion, Secret of Santiago and The Curse of Montezuma but, at the end of the third tale, after finding a hidden, secret gold mine with large bars of gold stored there, Elgera Douglas and her friends are rich. Why then, when her ranch is destroyed at the start of the fourth tale, does this leave her bankrupt... it kinda makes no sense, to tell the truth but, yeah, I liked these stories so much I’ll let that one slide. 

And I think that about does me with The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1, certainly enough to know that I’ll be buying both the second volume at some point soon plus another collection of stories from modern writers continuing her tales. If you are into the fast paced, rip roaring pulp fiction of the 1940s then you will probably have as much of a blast with this one as I did. This one may well be worth rounding up for your book case. 

In The Line Of Duty III

Duty And The Beast

In The Line Of Duty III 
aka Huang jia shi jie zhi III: 
Ci xiong da dao
Hong Kong 1988 Directed by Arthur Wong & Brandy Yuen
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Wow... I relly liked  In The Line Of Duty III. If you’ve read my previous reviews of Yes, Madam (reviewed here) and Royal Warriors (reviewed here) you’ll know that these two are considered in their countries to be the first two installments of this franchise (but with different numbers to each depending on which territory you are watching)... and that none of these films has any linking narrative or characters whatsoever, as far as I can tell. So, yeah, it’s kinda complicated and I can’t make head or tail of it.

However, despite this one not having either Michelle Yeoh or Cynthia Rothrock in it, I thought this was the best of those particular three, at any rate. This one top lines Cynthia Khan (like the next in the series... where she plays a different character again, it would seem), in only her fourth movie, as a former police trainee. The opening sequence sees her as a uniformed, new copper on the streets who takes control of a dangerous situation with her sexy kung fu skills. Which allows her to be talent spotted by the head of the special section of the Hong Kong police and she’s recruited to help out her reluctant uncle (who heads that division, badly) to fight crime. Following on from her opening action scene, the credits roll (with an even more insane name for the movie, listing it as part three of an entirely different franchise I can’t even find existing anywhere) which kinda gets into early James Bond territory featuring a bunch of gals posing in stylised lighting. 

The posing ladies are then revealed to be part of a show at the opening of middleman villain Yamamoto’s jewellery show in Japan. Where two truly mercenary and dangerous thieves (working in cahoots with Yamamoto before he double crosses them), who are pretty much assassins, rob the show dry. They then kill a Japanese detective’s apprentice and, when he learns they are going to Hong Kong (to fence the jewels to buy arms for their precious Red Army), the detective, played by Hiroshi Fujioka, goes to Hong Kong and, kind of, teams up with Cynthia Khan’s character Rachel, as the two get into fights, chases, bullet battles, explosions and more kung fu mayhem than you can shake a big wooden stick at.

And it’s great. At some point I kinda twigged the film must have been the work of two directors but, when I found that I was right, it made less sense because both directors are Hong Kong directors. But the Japanese scenes involving just the Japanese thieves or the detective seem to have a much different stylistic sensibility than the other sequences. For instance, there’s actually a sex scene in this one between the two thieves and it really looks great in terms of lighting and choreography... but it feels like a different movie. Strangely, though, the two sensibilities seem to sit together adequately and the fight sequences are also well handled... especially with Cynthia Khan, who comes out pretty well in this. 

That being said, even some of those fight scenes seem to be a bit of a mixed blend at times. One moment she’s fighting with a bad guy in a corridor in an apartment building and she kicks him into another room. That room is big, spacious, with no furniture and is all lit in red... I mean, totally not something you would expect or have in real life but it makes a nice backdrop for hand to hand combat, for sure. 

The film is very serious and it does get kinda bleak in terms of both heroes and relatives getting killed off to fuel the ‘this time it’s personal’ aspect of the confrontations... and it’s certainly none the worse for it. That being said, there are also some additional scenes which seem to be in here purely to add comic interludes, which feature another police woman played by ‘comedy queen’ Sandra Kwan Yue Ng from the The Inspector Wears Skirts franchise. Again, another tonal shift to accommodate and, again, nothing which throws the movie too off balance in any way either. 

So, yeah,  In The Line Of Duty III  was a very positive slice of Hong Kong action cinema for me and I’m glad Eureka have brought this one out in a lovely Blu Ray transfer. One of the best of these movies I’ve seen so far.

A Glitch In The Matrix

Life’s A Glitch

A Glitch In The Matrix
USA 2021
Directed by Rodney Ascher
Valparaiso Pictures

A Glitch In The Matrix is a documentary film by Rodney Ascher, the guy who made the popular documentary Room 237 (which I reviewed here). It seeks to explore the question, from a number of talking heads of people who tend towards believing this idea, that we are living in a simulated reality and don’t know anything of the real world at all. The title of the film comes from the popular movie The Matrix, where some people seem to imply that this is the first time they have come across this concept (although I suspect most people try and answer these existential questions in their early, pre-teen years, as did most of you reading this I would think). 

The talking head ‘eye witnesses’, so to speak, are mostly hidden behind nicely animated avatars and in at least one case this is to hide the identity of the person speaking because I’m sure the director realises that once a certain, revealing scene plays out sometime in the last third of the documentary, which has quite a dramatic impact, the audiences ability to consider the various theories about the nature of our personal realities would be a lot harder to stomach.

The documentary also uses, to punctuate the various chapters which attempt to position corroborating evidence of manifestations of the idea that we are not living in anything other than some kind of computer simulation, black and white footage of the great science fiction writer Philip K. Dick addressing a room full of people in France back in 1977. I think it’s pretty much the first time he had come out about his experiences with the ‘pink light’ which was communicating various theories about his own existence (take that as you will) but, of course, Dick’s fiction had always dealt with the idea that we are all living in a fake reality and you’ll find that idea running through most of his books and stories, to a certain extent. So, yeah, Ascher has correctly identified him as a legitimate poster boy for the idea that we are living in an artificial world controlled by someone else. 

And of course, most religions, including Christianity, set up the idea that we are living in a universe controlled by an overseer who has the ability to bring great change to that world... so the concept may be an easier one for many people to take on and swallow because of the number of religious institutions on the planet utilising similar, in all but name, ideas. 

The documentary starts off with one of the key (and ultimately problematic) people relating an idea he’d heard in school but which I think is very interesting and relevant to a lot of things. His teacher said to him that man’s perception of how the human body and brain works is always perceived as the same as the greatest technological achievements of mankind at the time. So when the big thing was the aqueducts, man thought of various fluids controlling the body. When electricity came out, we locked onto the idea of nerve impulses to the brain being sent electronically. Now we have computers, the human brain is perceived as a computer. So, we’re basically adjusting our vision of ourselves to the technological advancements we make... which is kind of interesting. 

And then, the director carries on interviewing various people, with the help of animated scenarios and montages, in order to run with the idea that we’re all just part of someone else’s simulation. So we have Elon Musk, for example, who’s obviously very much into this line of thinking and who says that the likelihood that we aren’t in a simulation is billions to one. And of course, since it’s impossible to prove we aren’t in a simulation... you have to start to take notice a little. There’s also the way we suddenly snap from one reality to another... when we wake up from a dream... which is also slung here as evidence and The Mandela Effect, illustrated by thousands of people misremembering the death of Nelson Mandela (and various other popular collective pieces of misinformation... google it), is also brought into play here as one of a few ways, like the feeling of deja vu, that you can start maybe detecting the titular glitch in the matrix, so to speak. 

And then something transpires in the recollected narrative of what happens when one of the guests took what he thought was the only path to finding out if he was living in a simulation or not. And then it becomes very clear just why the director decided to go the ‘avatar route’ and also that the location from which this person is talking may not be what it seems... and then it becomes a bit of a struggle to buy into the concept a little, after a huge tragedy takes place and, lets be honest, doesn’t prove one way or the other to that particular person as to whether he is living in the matrix, so to speak. 

And that’s probably my biggest disappointment with A Glitch In The Matrix, a documentary which never fails to hold the interest but which ultimately doesn’t go anywhere. The fact that nobody can prove or disprove any of the factors of ‘simulation hypothesis’ to any extent. Which is possibly because the safeties are all on regarding the human brain so we are never aware enough to be able to adequately explore these possibilities. This was a fascinating ride and it was certainly nice seeing Philip K. Dick talking about his own experiences (as detailed in what was publishable of his Exegesis) and I found it interesting that the idea of real life NPCs came up given that Free Guy (reviewed here) was released the same year as this. Ultimately, though, the film doesn’t really spell anything out and it’s obviously a silly expectation to assume it might hit on something. I enjoyed it for what it is but I’m not sure I could sit through it again, to be honest. I got something out of it but it’s not for everybody... although the idea would obviously provoke discussion. A well executed but ultimately trivial film, I would say. 

The Beatles And India

Must Be Sitarday

The Beatles And India
Directed by Ajoy Bose & Peter Compton
UK 2021
Silva Screen

The Beatles And India is a relatively recent documentary which puts a microscope over the period where the fab four had an influential encounter with Indian culture between mid 1966 and mid 1968, in various ways. The film opens in an interesting manner, with a pre-credits scene utilising footage from World War II to depict Liverpool during the blitz. One of many talking heads on the picture remark that a particular house around that time always had Indian music on and it was because George’s mum would play it when she was carrying him to term, as she liked it and found it had a calming effect on her. 

After the opening credits, we switch to more stories detailing George’s continued passion for the music of India and his attempts to learn it and use it as an influence on the songs he brought to The Beatles’ albums. It’s here that you get the impression that, in terms of new recordings for this specific movie, you’re not going to get any truly famous talking heads but, you know, sometimes that actually makes for a more interesting and unbiased account of a subject matter... much in the way that an ‘unofficial’ biography of a person with interviews focused at the periphery of that person’s life can sometimes bring a clearer picture than that of an officially sanctioned piece. So, yeah, I have no problems with the fact that we are told a story by the son of a man who brought a replacement sitar string, in an emergency, to a recording session of Norwegian Wood. It’s the little stories like this which mean the most, sometimes, in a world where, frankly, all of the big stories about the famous pop group have been told a gazillion times over. 

We then go to quite a favourable look at how George became friends with Ravi Shankar and the enthusiasm and trust that George placed in the man while studying how to play the sitar with him. We then get to the time when The Beatles and their respective wives and girlfriends signed up to learn transcendental meditation from the Maharishi Maresh and went to India to study, which also acted as a way of coping, it’s implied, with the suicide of Brian Epstein that same month. 

Along the way, various stories are told, all with a blend of historical interviews with various people involved at the time... including John, Paul, George and Ringo, of course... and various bits of footage from the time. And also, like I said, lots of modern footage of both how the place looks now (it’s abandoned, run down, neglected and dilapidated... but they still run popular tours there as a historical Beatles site) and with people who were there for certain things. So how a specific shot of the four studying their meditation was gained, is told by both the journalist and the photographer who managed to get inside the compound. 

We also get some interesting stories as to how the group separately split from the Maharishi due to a combination of enthusiastic business opportunities on the side of the guru and a kind of misunderstanding of a deliberate sabotage of the relationship involving a rumoured sexual liaison which, it’s suggested here, was engineered by a confidante of one of The Beatles, who wanted this period in their career to end. 

Some of the themes touched upon is the misunderstood conception that the drug scene and the transcendental meditation scene were somehow both two sides of the same coin and how that was a completely false notion (honestly, I’m not sure why anyone would have assumed that... I’ve been listening to their music for over three decades of my life and I’ve never made that connection). There’s a nice quote from Shankar where he explains he doesn’t like his audience to be high on drugs... he’d rather get them high with his music, rather than rely on illegal chemical reactions. 

Also, there are some observations from an ex-KGB agent who was sent in under cover to try and find out what was going on... apparently a few governments got nervous at the thought of this popular group spending a period exploring a way of life alien to themselves for a good couple of months. So that was another good indicator of the perpetual blight of government paranoia right there. 

Of course, what you don’t hear at all in the documentary... and this is a downside... is any music from The Beatles. That would have been far too expensive to licence. Instead we have a fairly pleasant indian sounding score by Benji Merrison which is currently being sold as part of a double CD with another disc of covers of Beatles songs ‘inspired’ by the film. None of these songs, I think, are actually heard in the film but the last ten minutes or so are interviews with younger musicians who have been influenced by the group. I think this is Silva Screen’s sneaky way of justifying being able to sell more units of the soundtrack album with covers of their songs, to be honest but, hey, I’ll definitely be picking one of these up myself at some point soon, I think.

All in all, while not exactly the most brilliant documentary film I’ve seen on the lads, The Beatles And India is a fairly interesting and mostly harmless one so, if you are interested in the group beyond their music, you should probably add this one to your list. I’ll leave you with a quote now from one of the musicians from near the end of the documentary, who is saying how fresh their music still sounds and how influential it still is... “The world would have been, like, so sh*t without them.”

Crime Scene - The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel

On The Lam

Crime Scene - 
The Vanishing At 
The Cecil Hotel
Directed by Joe Berlinger
TV Series Four Episodes 2021

Warning: This one has a few spoilers.

Crime Scene - The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel is a four episode TV show which seeks to give answers to the mysterious disappearance (and subsequent discovery) in February of 2013, of 22 year old student Elisa Lam... who became an early Internet viral sensation when the final known footage of her acting very strangely in an elevator from a security camera, was released by the police to the general public a number of days after her disappearance. This done in an effort to try and secure ideas from people because they knew only two things from what they saw on those cameras... one is that she never left the hotel and two, an exhaustive search of the hotel did not lead to her discovery. 

The documentary deals with many talking heads pertinent to the case including homicide detectives working the case, a journalist, the manager and an employee of the hotel, a couple who were staying at the hotel (who unwittingly helped turn up a clue as to the discovery of the body)... and a few amateur web sleuths, out of many of the ‘online home detectives’ who tried to piece together just what happened at the time. The film also uses an actress reconstruction of somebody playing Elisa Lam as she writes and narrates her blog from her home in Vancouver, before the period when she went travelling. 

And, when you look at the four minutes of footage of Elisa Lam acting fairly strangely... and not like she is alone on the floor on which the elevator is opened at... you can understand why the whole world was talking about the case. But part of what helped draw people into things was the long standing reputation of the Cecil Hotel itself. 

The Cecil Hotel opened its doors in 1924 but the great depression was just around the corner and so it went from being somewhere fairly grand to stay in to... an 800 room location at the heart of what is now known as Skid Row. A big chunk of Los Angeles filled to the brim with homeless people... a very bad area which has the highest crime rate in the US. Police are overwhelmed just working the daily cases which are thrown up in the area. And it didn’t take the Cecil Hotel very long to share in that reputation. It’s a hotel which looks great in the lobby but, well, let’s just say the actual rooms are a world apart from the elegant entrance. 

It’s a building linked with crime, murder, prostitution, drugs, suicides and pretty much everything you can think of. One of the ex-tenants described it as a completely lawless place and that, you wouldn’t want to be venturing up far beyond the fourth floor ever, as you could find yourself in serious trouble (that last elevator footage of Elisa is, as was figured out by the various internet sleuths, parked on the 14th floor).  Indeed, the manager who was running the building for the last ten years of its use goes on record as saying that the daily occurrences certainly lived up to that reputation and that, in her time, she had to deal with around 80 deaths in the hotel. So that’s an average of eight a year. 

No wonder, then, that the hotel has garnered such a reputation, to the extent that people also believe it’s haunted by various ghosts etc. Examples of just how the hotels reputation grew is the information that the serial killers Richard Ramirez (the infamous Night Stalker) and Jack Unterweger also stayed there while doing some of their killing... the neighbouring Skid Row providing an ample supply of fresh bodies for the slaughter, so to speak. Indeed, it’s mentioned that Ramirez used to re-enter the hotel lobby stripped down to his underwear and covered in blood after a killing and then just walk back up to his room without being stopped or questioned by staff or residents at the time... so, yeah, not somewhere which is a safe place to stay, for sure. It’s also, for you fans of The Black Dahlia case, one of the last places that Elizabeth Short was seen alive in 1947, drinking in the Cecil Hotel bar... so, yeah, I guess people who follow all the true crime stuff know of the reputation of the Cecil for sure. 

The focus of the show is completely on the investigation of Elisa Lam though... and it’s staged in four parts with various red herrings and theories divulged along the way to help make what could have been a one hour documentary continue to build for four fifty minute episodes. Which is quite riveting but, I think I would have been more enamoured of that format if the conclusion to Elisa’s story towards the end of the fourth episode was a little more sensational... or rather, at the very least, an end conclusion that doesn’t contradict the first two words of the title of the show because, if you go with the story put out by the police... there actually is no crime in this instance. 

Towards the end of episode two, maybe a week after she goes missing and after various residents have been complaining that the water they’ve been bathing in, drinking and washing their teeth with has gone a horrible muddy brown, Elisa Lam’s body is found floating naked, face up and in a state of decomposition in one of the four water tanks on the roof of the Cecil Hotel. 

Then the series shifts gears pursuing all the conspiracy theories that this discovery brought up in relation to the case, including the terrible impact on the life of a Death Metal performer, who had nothing to do with it but was hounded as the killer by a section of the internet crowd and, well, some really bizarre coincidences. For example, it’s pointed out at one point just how closely Elisa’s story parallels the plot of the Japanese horror film Dark Water (and its subsequent American remake I would guess... watch the original Japanese movie though, it’s a classic), down to the red jacket worn by both Elisa and the little girl who is killed in the apartment block in the film by being thrown in the water tank on the roof. 

My favourite of the truly bizarre coincidences, which frankly would certainly look suspicious to anybody so you can see why some of the stranger theories started to spring up, is the fact that there was an epidemic of tuberculosis in the Skid Row area a couple of days after Elisa Lam’s body was found and everyone in the hotel had to be tested to see whether they had TB. The name of the particular test needed to determine that is... wait for it... a Lam Elisa ((Lipoarabinomannan Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) test. Just wow! There are some other strange types of synergy going on with the case too but, yeah, I’m not going to spoil all that stuff for you.

I’m also not going to spoil the details of the conclusion of Elisa’s tragic end. It’s certainly a good working theory which I can see being a strong possibility. Especially in light of one of the mistakes made by the police, when certain facts about the discovery of the body are accidentally reported wrongly... which unlocks a big layer of the mystery. So there you go... the series has its conclusion and I’m pretty sure the director feels that he’s presenting the final, irrevocable facts of the case... and I’m pretty sure he could certainly be right. However, one thing which did come off from me is that, with all the questions being raised while the complete rabbit hole of evidence (or lack thereof) is being followed... there are still a couple of things I would question in the reconstructed narrative.

One is... I’m not the biggest fan of the concept of ‘paradoxical undressing’* but can see that it’s obviously a thing. Now, I’m not a strong swimmer so I find the idea that someone can simultaneously undress themselves while treading water to save their life somewhat of a questionable possibility... but it’s certainly not impossible, I’m sure. However, I would like to know more about why it was assumed that there was definitely nobody else up on that roof. Yes, it was accessible without setting off alarms if you were persistent but, when the police went to check the first time it’s mentioned that there was a profusion of various bottles and cigarette butts etc on the roof. Which means, surely, that people were going up there with some regularity. So how do we know nobody else was, at the very least, witness to what went on that day rather than the theory which the police are resting their case on (which I don’t blame them for, it’s a fairly credible theory, to be fair)? 

I guess I’ll never know for sure but what I do know is that, despite the mildly anti-climactic ending, Crime Scene - The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel is, at the very least, an intriguing and gripping documentary mini series and, if you are into things like true crime then you may find this one a good watch. It certainly got under my skin, for sure. 

*Something which also comes up in the Dyatlov Pass mystery... see my review of a book about this here.

The Empire Strips Back

Booby Fett’s 
Sith and Tail

The Empire Strips Back - 
A Burlesque Parody
Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London
Sunday 13th July Matinee Show

It was on a Sunday afternoon when my Twin Ion Engines and I rocketed to the Riverside studios in Hammersmith to see the much talked about Star Wars themed burlesque show, The Empire Strips Back. It wasn’t a Solo mission, about eight of us went in the end. I had a bad feeling about this but, I’d have to say, nobody came away from this experience disappointed as the whole cast and crew were definitely strong with the Force. 

Indeed, the first act started off very strongly and it didn’t really go down hill from there. It began, after the familiar title crawl, with a Hoth scene and an absolutely brilliantly constructed Tauntaun carrying it’s concealed but curvy rider onto the stage. I was almost as impressed with the strong back underneath the sexy young lady that was able to do this through the suit as I was with the level of detail on the costume itself. After the rider dismounted and treated us all to a wonderful striptease style set piece (which included a few steps here and there from her Tauntaun companion), she finally removed her last top layer but, as she did so, she daintily slit open the Tauntaun’s belly and covered her modesty with its entrails before the lights went down. It brought the house down and things just went up from there. 

In the next set, a young and very female version of Luke Skywalker performed a strip routine as she washed down her faithfully reconstructed landspeeder on Tatooine. The twin suns aren’t the only things that come as a twosome on that particular planet, it would seem and, the stage got pretty wet by this point. We were thinking of her first movie destiny though, all of us trying to see if there would be an appearance of her thermal exhaust port at some point.  I know I tried but... apparently there is no try.

In between the acts we had an absolutely brilliant guy called Trevor, dressed in Lando Calrissian’s cape and outfit (and glasses) who was absolutely hilarious and got the audience energy up ten fold as he asked raunchy Star Wars questions of them, ad libbing his responses as he went. Not that we really needed it as the quality of the sexy dancing, not to mention the beautiful detail on the props and sets, was all extremely high but, you know, somebody has to distract the audience during the costume and set changes. 

Another great act, of many (too many to detail here in this review) was when we saw Princess Leia, through the magic of a revolving panel, revive Han Solo (who did a hand solo) from carbonite as the two, later joined by Greedo (or possibly some other Rodian), performed a risque dance to Smooth Criminal (pretty much the only Michael Jackson song I ever thought worth buying, back in the day). And the show continued on like this until the closing act of the first half, where Slave Leia, chained at the neck, did a wonderful set in Jabba the Hutt’s palace and, let me tell you, Jabba The Hutt was not far removed from the version used in the original, proper cut of Return Of The Jedi... except the original didn't also rap. It was great entertainment as she milked all the salacious crumbs in the audience. It would be true to say that everyone had their light sabres extended in anticipation of the next part of the show.

Now, that second act, which was only 40 mins in contrast to the first hour, was maybe not so big on the sets but it definitely had its moments. A weird one with a naked, old man Emperor, with his dangling testicles swinging back and forth the stage on a mini Death Star was, for this audience member, maybe a bit too much but, it was certainly different. 

However, the wonderful solo Jedi performance and the set piece where Darth Vader and her stormtrooper girls dance along to The Imperial March (among others… Gimme Some Lovin’) more than made up for that. It would be true to say these gals, unlike the stormtroopers in the movies, certainly didn’t stray wild of their targets… they just strayed wild. There were many more acts but I particularly liked the two, lesbian Twi’lek dancing to one of my favourite Portishead songs, Roads, during this second half. 

The lady C3PO dancer was good too… especially when the Jawa’s arrived to remove all her cladding. It turns out she was the droid the audience were all looking for.  I just wish they’d had that oil bath on hand… they missed a trick there.

Okay… target’s coming up. Almost there… The Empire Strips Back came to an end with a Star Warsy modified version of Rapper’s Delight, with the entire cast (including Trevor) and even a look in from Admiral Ackbar and Yoda, performing at the final knockings. The whole show was nothing short of brilliant with amazing sets, beautifully choreographed routines that would make a Bantha howl, brilliant light shows and, well, I’d really have to remark that none of the girls’ torpedoes just impacted on the surface here. I’d definitely come again, if the choice were mine and I hope this crew drift back into London sometime soon in the next few years. Booby Fett and all. 

Universal Horrors

Shock Theatre

Universal Horrors - 
The Studio’s Classic 
Films 1931-1946
Second Edition
By Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas and John Brunas
McFarland Books
ISBN: 9781476672953

Universal Horrors - The Studio’s Classic Films 1931-1946 is the first of, to date, three books co-written by Tom Weaver covering the horror fantasy output of Universal Pictures... the other two being The  Creature Chronicles - Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy (reviewed by me here) and Universal Terrors 1951-55 (reviewed by me here). 

And once again, a book written by Tom Weaver took me ages to get through (what with my very limited weekly reading time)... not because it’s in any way dull (it’s exactly the stuff I love to read about) but because it’s a doorstep of a tome with a deceptively dense amount of enlightening text packed between its nearly 600 pages. This one does, mostly, what it says on the tin but, with some dubious justification from the authors to enable them to also include some of the studio’s mystery output too. For instance, of the fourteen Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies based on Sherlock Holmes (the first two put out by 20th Century Fox, of course), the twelve Universal movies are also covered extensively in this book. I’m not complaining too much though... I love those films and you will find reviews of all of them in the index of this blog. 

The book tells you a load of information about the main films covered here (of which there are many) so there’s lots here that even the most jaded Universal monster kid may not know. For instance, I know now that Gloria Stuart did not get on well with Claude Rains on the set of The Invisible Man reviewed here). I know now of Henry Hull’s intervention on his make-up in my favourite werewolf movie (Werewolf Of London, reviewed here) to make him look more human so that, as in the script, his on-screen wife would recognise it’s him. 

And then there’s the time that Boris Karloff put his foot down with a director on Black Friday so that Anne Gwynne could get some decent close up shots. And I was also surprised to hear that Abbott and Costello were working the burlesque circuit for years and that their respective wives were strippers. And upset when I learned that Lon Chaney Jr’s dog was run over on the shoot of Cobra Woman. And smiled at the tales of Chaney Jr’s hidden vodka hip flask with a straw beneath his bandages on the Mummy movies... as well as his obsession over buying and preserving huge amounts of canned food, in case something ever happened.

Now there are some personal caveats here for me as I was reading. I like both the English and Spanish versions of the 1931 Dracula (both reviewed here) so I was a little disappointed to find that the writer does not seem to like this film much at all. And, with an extensive ‘also ran’ index including capsule reviews for such notable entries as the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials (those four reviews found in my index also), I was not happy that that, though it was a 1949 film and therefor outside the field of this book somewhat, one of my favourite Universal monster rallys, Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (reviewed here) was not mentioned more than it was. Especially since it was Lugosi’s second and final time playing Dracula and Glenn Strange’s third time as the Frankenstein monster. 

That being said though, Universal Horrors - The Studio’s Classic Films 1931-1946 is another very thorough and well researched tome that illuminates the classic movies and also gives new leads to some of the less available ones... which some people, especially in the UK, may not have had the opportunity to see. Although the Eureka Masters Of Cinema label have been doing a great service to Universal Horror fans in recent years with the likes of their Blu Ray Boris Karloff collections and their complete Inner Sanctum boxed set. So, yeah, if you are into these classic monster movies then this is certainly a ‘must purchase’ I would say... so I wait with baited breath for a fourth book in this loosely held together series of fascinating and indispensable tomes. Great stuff. 

Superman

Kal To Arms

Superman
Directed by James Gunn
USA/Canada/Australia/New Zealand 2025
Warner Brothers
UK cinema release print.

Okay... I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting much from the new iteration of The Man of Steel at my local movie house. Firstly, I think DC have given up too quickly on their DCU, just when it was getting good enough to compete on an equal footing with Marvel’s MCU. Also, it means no more Gal Gadot/Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman films... which is pretty disasterous. 

As it happens, though, this new reboot under the name of Superman surprised me by actually being quite an entertaining, if somewhat muddled film. Now I’m going to list the bad things first because, they matter to me. One thing being what I just said about jettisoning the previous DCU (even though there is a cameo in this by one of them which... honestly... makes no sense whatsoever). 

Another thing... you DO NOT give me a curly headed Superman. Get out of here. 

Yet another thing... what a lot of modern iterations of the character seem to somehow forget or screw up, just as they do here... Superman has a kiss curl in the shape of an S. Don’t mess with the kiss curl, it’s iconic. 

And that’s most of the bad things. I’ll get on to the good stuff as I go. 

Okay, so... David Corenswet plays Kal El aka Superman aka Clark Kent in a film which completely dispenses with the origins of the character and fills the audience in on that stuff in brief snatches of text at the start of the movie. Good call. There is the back story of his Kryptonian parents which comes back to haunt him as an important plot point but, in this one he starts off already living with his girlfriend Lois Lane (played in this iteration by Rachel Brosnahan), works at the Daily Planet with her and Jimmy Olsen (played by Skyler Gisondo) and, occasionally helps out The Justice Gang... headed up by the Guy Gardner version of Green Lantern (played by Nathan Fillion), along with the second version of Mr. Terrific and ‘a version’ of Hawkgirl. But, due to the machinations of Lex Luthor, played by Nicholas Hoult, Superman is questioned for his political motivations (after he stops a full scale invasion of one country by another... ripped from today’s headlines, folks) and locked up in a pocket universe created by Lex in which he is tortured and people are killed. And then it’s shenanigans as he fights for truth, justice and, in some political ways, the American way... to make matters right and to stop a temporal rift from pulling the Earth and surrounding universe apart. 

And it’s kind of throwing a whole load of plot elements in to the story and seeing how they land but, yeah, they’ve kind of made it work. 

And it’s nothing if not a postmodern movie. 

Now the homages to the 1970s Superman The Movie are obvious... from the opening and closing credits to the use of certain segments (repeated too often, without natural progression) of John Williams original 1978 theme. Also from the 1970s version of the mythos is the visual representation of the Fortress of Solitude, looking almost exactly as it did in that movie (which is totally not how it looked in the comics people... the comic book one looked like the one in the original Doc Savage pulps, which is where they stole the idea from) and we have characters like Eve Teschmacher and Otis Berg. 

However, for older Superman readers like myself, I found it leant more heavily into the Superman comics of the 1950s and early 1960s. You know, the days when every silly concept was worked through a number of the DC titles and the grittier 1930s/40s versions of the characters were somewhat jettisoned. So we have elements like the robot guardians in the Fortress of Solitude, Metamorpho and, most importantly... because he has a big role in the movie... we have the super-dog Krypto. Who, it has to be said, looks nothing like Krypto did in the comics as, instead, it’s based on James Gunn’s own dog. But Krypto does kind of steal every scene he’s in and, yeah, he’s thankfully in a lot of them. Causing lots of well observed doggy style chaos as he goes.

And that’s me done with Superman. Overall, I thought it was very entertaining and I think they definitely got the writing of the title character... who is a very difficult character to get right, for sure... pretty much in the ball park he’s supposed to be in. So, yeah, I didn’t hate this one, as I’d expected to and, I think this one deserves some good box office if it manages it (there were only about five other people in the screening I went to). Heads up... two end credits scenes in this one... one half way through and one right at the final knockings. Neither have much to say but, maybe they’ve not got the next DCU2 films planned out yet.  

OSS117 Is Unleashed

Muffed Diving

OSS117 Is Unleashed
aka OSS 117 se déchaîne
France/Italy 1963
Directed by André Hunebelle
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Some spoilers.

The OSS117 novels comprise a vast array of stories about the French/American espionage agent, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath with the titular code number. Starting in 1949, the first 88 novels were written by Jean Bruce who died in a car accident in 1963 (the same year OSS117 Is Unleashed was released). Then his widow Josette took over and wrote another 143 before she apparently retired in 1985. And then, keeping the family business going, I guess, her daughter Martine with her husband François... wrote another 23 novels before the series was finally finished in 1992 (to date). And I can’t tell you what any of these 254 spy yarns are like because, it seems to me, they’ve never been translated into English? At least, not that I’ve found. If anyone wants to point me in the right direction for English translations I’d like to give them a go. 

OSS117 Is Unleashed is actually the second of the OSS117 films. The first big screen adaptation from the successful series of novels was in 1958. However, this is the first of the five films presented in Kino Lorber’s OSS117 - Five Film Collection, which gathers the adaptations from a very specific stance... look at the timing. The first big screen Bond film Dr. No (reviewed here) had just been a pretty big international hit and must have prompted the producers to start their own rival series... the first two of which, starting with this one, starred American actor Kerwin Mathews (who I’m sure readers will remember from such films as The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, which I reviewed here and The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver, review coming soon). These ones are directed by André Hunebelle, who would soon go on to direct the three 1960s Fantômas revival films (which I reviewed here, here and here) but, he hasn’t really quite caught that larger than life, tongue in cheek vibe with the series here... at least not yet (he directed a few of these... I’ll let you know). 

And, if this is the case that the cinematic revival of the character was one of many films jumping on the new Bond band wagon (such as Matt Helm and Derek Flint, reviews all coming soon), then I have to say this opening shot of a film, the only one of these five in black and white, doesn’t give the Bond franchise much in the way of competition. 

It’s a fine little spy film, for sure, starting off with an American agent who muffs his diving job looking for the location of a grotto harbouring a new atomic submarine spotting device, by getting shot dead in the water. Special agent OSS117 is sent to Bonifacio in France, to find out what happened to the agent, getting involved with the freelance diver who was helping the agent and his dubious girlfriend, who has been secretly acting against him to target the agent, blackmailed into the plot by the bad guys who are controlling the device. So, of course, when Hubert gets there, shenanigans ensue and the world is, fairly anticlimactically it must be said, saved from the atomic submarine spotting device (even the secret base blowing up at the end is the size of a small car explosion in an American film... I hope they upped the budget for these as they went on).

Kerwin Mathews is surprisingly at home in the role, pouring on the charm, sexism and action man heroics in equal parts. He actually looks like he could do some of the stuff asked of him, getting away with it fairly well on the close up shots... much more so than his stuntman in some of the fist fights who, quite honestly, looks nothing like him. There are some nice lines in the movie at certain moments too. For example, when Hubert steals a non-consensual snog from the car hire girl at the airport (who returns as a running gag later in the movie), she softens and compliments him on having a gift for the French tongue. 

The film kinda misses the feel of the first Bond outing by a long chalk, though. The dynamic editing and hard hitting score stings are notably absent and, while Michel Magne’s score is pretty good and makes for a nice stand alone listen on CD, it’s noticeably inappropriate in some sections of the movie. Technically it’s no match for the Bond films... although I hope that improves as the series goes on. The opening song is great, presented as credits animate across various shots of foaming white boat wake but, yeah, it’s not exactly a power ballad but then again, Dr. No didn’t have one of those either. And though there is one sequence where a friendly agent makes contact with Hubert by using a sequence of code phrases, there’s none of the excessive caution about staking out his surroundings that Bond was so meticulous about in his early cinemtic outings. 

However, OSS117 Is Unleashed is very nice and I’m kinda looking forward to the next ones, to see how much they up the ante with, I presume, various gadgetry and harder hitting (and more frequent) action scenes but... this one is probably going to disappoint anyone going in expecting a screen incarnation who can give us what the British and Americans were doing at the time. And I’ve seen much more interesting eurospy movies too (something I hope to be getting to see more of at some point soon). I can’t speak for the other movies in this set (yet) but it makes for a nice historical watch and I’m keen to see where they go with the series after this one. I’ll keep you informed right here, of course. 

Jurassic World Rebirth

Deux Ex Machina Park

Jurassic World Rebirth
Directed by Gareth Edwards
USA/UK/Malta/India/Taiwan 2025
Universal

Just like the last few movies in the Jurassic Park/World franchise, the marketing of this latest, seventh installment, Jurassic World Rebirth, is trying to convince me that the world needs yet another Jurassic Park sequel and, like the last three movies in the franchise, it failed to do that. Of the last three films, only the final installment where the old characters from the first movie reunite to take part in the adventure, had any real entertainment value in it and, frankly, it felt like the last hurrah of a franchise dying out much quicker than the dinosaurs it lionised. So it would be true to say my expectations going to see this at my local Cineworld in Enfield (soon to be turned into flats, it would seem... not sure what I do for new releases on this blog at that point), were pretty low.

So it came as a pleasant surprise to me that, although this new installment has its flaws, it’s actually a pretty good movie and I liked it a heck of a lot more than the previous three films, for sure. And, perhaps even more surprisingly, its one big asset, way more than the tired old CGI effects and a really badly designed, genetically mutated dinosaur, is the script and the way the actors use some good dialogue to build the characters up. Finally it feels that the writing is actually good on this thing... much more than it was on many of the sequels. 

On the story front... well they’ve backtracked on the bolder global situation where those last three films took us (one of the only saving graces of the last trilogy was the direction it was heading in and the world building it took to get us there). But in this film, while we humans, as a species, are still co-habitating the Earth, it turns out that these new dinosaurs (for reasons completely a mystery to me, since their days millions of years ago), are unable to survive for very long on the majority of the planet and have made their home around the equator instead, in the places they can still exist and thrive. Places which are now legally off limits to the rest of the world. And in this world, a team of scientists and mercenaries are going in to one of these areas to obtain blood samples from three of the biggest species of dinosaurs in order to... create medicine which will cure heart disease in humans and make sure we all live longer. 

Which seems ridiculous as a plot device to me because, if anything, the world is already way over populated to be able to sustain our own species effectively but, sure, lets make sure nobody dies of heart disease. Whatever. So we have a team going in and, also rescuing a small family unit who have gotten into trouble on their way in so... when they all get split up on a big Dinosaur Island later, the shenanigans are many and the human equation is tugging hard at the peripherals of the story too. 

On the acting front we have a mercenary played Scarlett Johansson, one of the best actors of her generation, really killing it in the character development stakes, by making her protagonist upbeat in the face of many personal bad experiences. Her fellow mercenary, played by Mahershala Ali, does pretty much the same and these two are very good at making you believe in these people as characters. And a whole host of cast actually, including Rupert Friend, Jonathan Bailey and their fellow performers are all pretty great in this.

And talking of Jonathan Bailey, when he first touches a live dinosaur on the island this lot eventually find themselves stranded on, that clarinet solo on the score is actually being played by him. The film’s composer Alexandre Desplat let him sit in on a few of the cues. And talking of that score... it’s got the obvious John Williams reference points and there are a few scenes where it needs those melodies... although they don’t always make intellectual sense in terms of leitmotif placement. That being said, it’s got a nice mix in the movie and it’s probably the best of the movie scores in the franchise not scored by Williams. And because of that mix, I was able to concentrate on it during the film a little better.

Okay so, well acted, great dialogue writing and a nice score. On the downside...

Yeah, there’s almost no peril here. The constant deus ex machina style escapes from certain death for everyone kinda wears thin very early on in the film and doesn’t really let up. The dinosaurs are... not much of a spectacle here and there are a handful of nail biting moments but, yeah, the suspense is not what it could be, I thought. And the reveal of the human villain of the piece is... something you will have figured out in the first five minutes... so no real surprises there either.  Also, the film seems much more kid friendly and, despite the odd severed limb, I think the horror elements could have been ramped up to better serve the story on this one, for sure.

Another problem is there are way too many shout outs to the very first movie in this. Some of them fairly subtle but... most of them really jammed into your face. 

So, not too much else to say on Jurassic World Rebirth other than... what Rebirth? Is this supposed to be an optimistic reference to the hoped for box office takings for the companies involved? Because I saw no rebirthing or even just birthing in this movie. It’s almost like they  threw a bunch of non sequitur titles into a hat and picked the first one that came out. However, like I said, some decent character writing in this one and I much preferred it to the last three. Worth going out to see on a big screen, maybe. 

Devil's Gate

Fallen Angel

Devil's Gate
Canada 2017
Directed by Clay Staub
Ace Entertainment FIlms

Warning: Some spoilers regarding the story set up over the first half an hour.

Devil’s Gate is a nice little entry into the horror genre and is the directorial debut of Clay Staub (who has been AD on a number of high profile Hollywood films, especially for Zack Snyder). This one is, like another film I saw a little while ago, one of those stories (and titles) which deliberately sets up expectations of where the plot is going... and then taking you somewhere slightly different. This movie hits one of my scare spots in terms of where it’s going so I was always going to have a fairly good time with this one.

The story involves main protagonist FBI Agent Daria Francis, played by Amanda Schull, who has been sent to the county of Devil’s Gate in order to help out with a case of two missing persons, the wife and son of a farmer in a remote farmhouse in the midst of the desert land (13 miles away from everywhere else). We’ve already seen, in the opening sequence, what grisly fate happens to someone who trespasses on this farmer’s land if they’re silly enough to ignore his ‘No Trespassing’ signs so audience tensions are set up fairly early. 

When Daria gets there, after a brief interview with the local, red neck sheriff (played in a nice cameo at the start and end of the movie by actor/director Jonathan Frakes of Star Trek The Next Generation fame), she hooks up with a young deputy called Colt (played by Shawn Ashmore) to question local people. She starts with the sister of the missing woman and it’s obvious that the main suspect here is the husband, Jackson Pritchard (played by Milo Ventimiglia), who didn’t even report them missing (it was the sister who did that). So, against the wishes of the sherif, Daria has Colt drive her to the Pritchard property to take the investigation forward. Pritchard is a profoundly religious man whose family have been living on the ranch for generations and the locals all know he wouldn’t do anything to his family.

When they get there, they find the property laden with traps and the wife’s car still in the garage. However, the power has gone from their phones and vehicle etc. After she arrests and cuffs Pritchard for suspected homicide, she investigates the house and finds... something in the basement, locked in a cage. Is it some kind of rural breeding science project that the husband has been working on? Yeah... nope.

So that’s when we get the big revelation that, according to Pritchard, the farm house has been watched over by ‘angels’ for over a century and that, when the angels took his wife and son a few nights ago, he realised they were ‘fallen angels’ or ‘demons’ and so he captured one of them to hold as ransom in his basement. At this point, it becomes clear that we’re not really dealing with a religious horror movie at all... but a sci-fi horror and, yeah, when the wife is returned, as played by Bridget Regan (who played 1940s Black Widow Dottie Underwood in Agent Carter, reviewed here) it basically becomes a siege movie as the four of them try to survive the attack of the ‘demons’ who are trying to get one of their number back. 

And it’s really not a bad slice of modestly budgeted horror with, frankly, some amazingly well done special effects (which seem to me to be a well realised blend of practical and CGI) and a lot of tension between the human characters. It’s incredibly well shot too... nothing too flashy in terms of the compositions but still very nice to look at. The opening shot, for instance, of a lone care driving through the desert towards camera with an absolutely gorgeous, cloud filled sky, indicates the sense of eye candy you will get throughout the film. There’s also an amazingly gruesome kill at one point and the special effects for this shot do not let it down... it’s something you might expect to see in a 1980s era Romero zombie movie but, yeah, it looks quite spectacular if you are into that kind of thing.

The actors are all fine too, with a special shout out to Amanda Schull, who plays the character with a ‘failure is not an option and I don’t have to be a nice person about it’ kind of chip on her shoulder, which the actor just runs with and then deliberately softens down as she realises that her assumptions about the situation are pretty much wrong at every level. She tries to instill calm in characters as Ventimiglia portray’s Pritchard as the angry, revenge seeking human. 

Now, if there aren’t enough twists for you in the main set up, there is another little twist coming later on in the movie. Now, I kind of saw it coming but I totally didn’t... which is a hard one to explain without giving it away but let’s just say, I saw a twist coming with one of the characters but it was a deliberate misdirection and two other characters were the ‘recipients’ of that specific reveal. And I’ll say no more about that.

The film ends fairly satisfyingly but, immediately after what was obviously supposed to be the closing shot of Schull riding a police car off out of camera the way the first car of the movie came into shot, there’s a curious epilogue involving two of the other characters. This, I would imagine, was originally intended to be on the film as a post credits scene but then I suspect the producers lost confidence in anyone knowing they would need to stick around for one. There’s a sequence at the end which certainly confirms that there’s more than enough for a bigger budgeted sequel at some point but, I dunno, I don’t think this film is on many people’s radar so I suspect that won’t happen. Which is a shame because, I have to say, Devil’s Gate is a pretty good movie and I’d certainly recommend it to lovers of horror and sci-fi, especially those who enjoy the siege scenario where a small location is threatened by a bunch of monsters. A nice surprise of a movie... it’s not perfect but it’s pretty close.

Tornado

Scottish Katana

Tornado
Directed by John Maclean
UK 2025
Tea House Pictures

Warning: Some spoilerage in this one folks.

Well let’s jump right in here then.

The British Isles, 1790... presumably somewhere in Scotland, which is where Tornado was shot. Tim Roth plays bad guy Sugarman, who has a small bunch of hoodlums with him.. and they have just stolen a lot of gold from a local church. He seems to be well known and unchallenged in the various small communities dotted around the area local to the forest, where the film’s title character is running from him... so I would assume he also collects protection money from those nearby. Also, he has a very casual and no nonsense way about dealing out death, which is presumably something else the locals know. 

Indeed, the film starts off with the film’s central protagonist Tornado, played by Kôki, running from him and his gang, while also being kept an eye on by a young boy. It’s during this opening when we see Sugarman casually and quickly slit the throat of one of his own men as he passes on by him, which is obviously done to create a certain shorthand tension within the audience as to his character but, as it later turns out through way of a back story flashback, also makes a bit more sense later on. Because Tornado has stolen the gold from the young boy, who originally stole it from Sugarman’s thieves. And now the two are being hounded by them in a narrative which, probably lasts for only 24 hours at most, including the contents of that back story. Tornado’s father (played by Takehiro Hira) is killed while he was trying to protect her and now she is trying to get distance and shelter from Sugarman, before she then goes on to avenge her father’s death. 

And that’s all I want to say about the specific story set up but, I will say that this film, the first Scottish samurai film that I personally know of, had me before even the first visual image of the story came on screen. And this is because the film starts off with an on screen, typographic quotation of an extract from a poem by Arseny Tarkovsky. Now, Arseny’s son, who was outlived by his father by three years, is my second favourite movie director Andrei Tarkovsky, so I figured that if the movie has anything like the beauty and poetry of the younger Tarkovsky’s works, well then I was in for a treat.

And I really was, it turns out. 

The film is lensed by cinematographer Robbie Ryan and, I have to say the whole thing looks absolutely stunning. Beautiful colours and locations shot in such a way that the frames just pop out. In the opening shots of Tornado trying to find a way to somewhere where she can hide, the films uses a lot of things seen between the camera and the principle actors, such as branches and tree trunks etc, which really gives the shots some depth. And all shot on 35mm film rather than just digitally, which is a treat in itself and would go some way to explaining why the thing looks so darn good. 

The colours, too, as I mentioned earlier, are terrific. One wonderful sequence, for example, where Tornado’s small caravan has been set ablaze by Roth’s crew, has the inners of it burning a wonderful yellow/orange while the forest canopy and dark blue night sky envelope it. Just spectacular artistry. 

There’s some beautiful foreshadowing going on too. Such as the travelling puppet show put on by Tornado and her father, depicting a samurai fight with some proper gore and splatter coming out of the marionettes themselves... as limbs and a head are sliced off. This, of course, foreshadows the fight scenes between the avenging Tornado and her antagonists towards the end of the picture, when things have taken a turn. 

And as if to doff the cap to samurai director extraordinaire Akira Kurosawa, this director acknowledges Kurosawa’s own influences of the American westerns of John Ford on his samurai films by having a very lethal bad guy dressed in, pretty much, the kind of outfit you would find in a specific style of Western. During scenes such as these the violence, which has been relatively held back and kept in check until now, catches up to the kind of visceral carnage foreshadowed in the puppet show earlier on in the film. 

One beautiful piece of action choreography, for example, features Tornado duelling with the cowboy dude while another bad guy on the floor is trying to painstakingly reload his flintlock pistol... all the while the fight is in progress. As soon as Tornado sees he has finally reloaded his weapon, she twists around and slices off his arm, which lands on the ground still gripping the pistol... then, as the muscles of the severed arm tighten, the flintlock discharges its load into the other guy she was fighting... really nice stuff.  

Another interesting sequence, where Sugarman’s gang have invaded a mansion house where Tornado is hiding, has one of the gang sitting down to play the piano and this is an interesting incident of the non-diegetic music doubling up as diegetic soundtrack for the film. This is just before the actual soundtrack of the film is properly introduced which, again, is absolutely stunning work, this time by Jed Kurzel who is a composer I’ve not been all that fond of in the past but, yeah, this one is absolutely beautiful. And I think, if I’m not much mistaken (but, you know, I might be) that the score also makes good use of my second favourite instrument the cimbalom so... yeah. A shame this score hasn’t been released on CD, for sure. It would be getting quite a few spins in my player right now. 

And added to all this, along with some wonderful editing, is some amazing acting. Even from supporting actors such as the always magnificent Joanne Whalley. But Time Roth is especially good in this, paring down on the words and using his facial expressions and attitude to really bring a sense of gravitas to the situation. This is especially well capped off in the final... let’s call it a ‘showdown’... between Sugarman and Tornado, which was funnily enough, almost exactly what I’d imagined it would be but, the way the scene plays out is absolutely wonderful and so, I can’t begrudge the lack of surprise in terms of the final denouement, so to speak. 

The film also continues in the spirit of Kurosawa (and Tarantino in a scene in Kill Bill Part One, which I imagine must be inspired by Yojimbo), when Tornado lets one of the gang off the hook and allows him to leave with his life (a tactic she also tries a little earlier in the film, with a much bloodier outcome). 

And that’s me done on what is, honestly, one of the best movies I’ve seen all year. Tornado is an absolute masterpiece as far as I’m concerned and I will be lining up for the Blu Ray the first week it gets released (fingers crossed it gets one because I’m having to buy an awful lot of unauthorised Blu Rays from other countries these days, to compensate for the inability of the studios to realise that physical media is actually the best way for their consumers to catch this stuff). I need to see this one again soon, I think.