H R Giger - The Oeuvre Before Alien 1961 - 1976

Giger Counter

H R Giger - The Oeuvre 
Before Alien 1961 - 1976
Scheidegger & Spiess
ISBN 9783039421367

Just a quick shout out to a really lovely (and inspirational, to boot) book which a very special friend sent from her home town of Chur, in Switzerland. The subject of the book is my favourite artist and it’s called H. R. Giger - The Oeuvre Before Alien 1961 - 1976, being a reprinting of what was originally a catalogue to accompany a 2007 exhibition, H R Giger, Das Schaffen vor Alien 1961 - 1976 at the Bünder Kunstmuseum in the small town where he grew up, which also happens to be Chur, although my understanding is he later moved to Zurich. 

The book has a lot of interesting early works, including a fair few I’d not seen before so, that was a nice thing. It also includes a foreword by Beat Stutzer and a separate essay by him called Between Stool and Bench: Aspects of Giger’s Reception. This looks at the relevance of Giger’s output appearing alongside artists contemporary to this early period of his work. A conclusion to this section seems to be that, like many artists, he’s said to be drawing from all the fears in the face of the cold war, the threat by nuclear destruction and the risk that human labour would be undermined by robots.

This section is then followed by a prologue featuring the work of older artists which are supposed to have been an influence on Dali, such as Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare and Max Klinger’s Isle Of The Dead. 

After this there are four more essays by a variety of writers, with each section split by a relevant selection of Giger’s work, relating to the upcoming sequence of writing. 

So Liberation Through Horror: Giger and the Fantastic in Art by Carlos Arenas, starts off as it means to go on by printing a quote from H. P. Lovecraft. It looks at what is considered fantasy art, talks about how he drew inspiration as a child from the works of both Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe (don’t we all?) and also lifts the lid a little on how Giger is also discussed in realms far beyond the usual scope of the visual arts... such as philosophy, social sciences, politics and discussions around the manifestation of the cyborg. 

Then we have The Beauty and Surrealism of H R Giger by Fritz Billeter, in which I found out that the pistol used in those sinister, baby bulleted birth machine paintings is actually a P38 Walther (turns out Giger was an avid collector of fire arms). Then we have another piece by Beat Stutzer called On Tachism, Bathtubs and Garbage Crushers; or, Observations and Remarks on Giger’s Pictorial Strategies which, aside from some of the influences made clearer, I have to confess was couched in language which was a little harder for me to understand on its own level, perhaps. Although, as always, that minor hurdle didn’t stop me from reading it. 

The book finishes with Portrait Of An Immortal Love: The Painting Li II by Kathleen Bühler, which is worth the price of the book alone (you know, if I’d actually bought it myself, thanks again Katrin) which talks about his history with his long term girlfriend of the time, aspiring actress Li Tobler. The paintings he used her in, which depict her decapitated head hooked up to his signature biomechanical shenanigans, were completed not long before she killed herself with a revolver and Bühler reflects on his relationship to her through his repeated use of her image and inspiration in his art, both then and later. It’s also noted he went on to marry someone who looked very much like Tobler too, before making a point of looking at the relationship between female death and beauty in art and... I think there’s some further reading opportunities I need to have a look out for in regard to this last subject. 

Overall, then, a pretty fantastic book and, even this jaded old book burrower was inspired once more by the works inside and, in most (but not all) cases, inspired by the more truthful ringing batches of analysis served up in this quite splendid tome. So, yeah, if you are a fan of the legendary Giger and his work then, H R Giger - The Oeuvre Before Alien 1961 - 1976, is definitely one to grab hold of. 

Good Night Oscar

Blue Swayed Views

Good Night Oscar
Directed by Lisa Peterson 
Barbican Theatre Matinee Performance
2.30pm Thursday 28th August

Um... I don’t get to the theatre much, these days and, if you check out my index and go down to the theatre productions I’ve reviewed, you’ll see how impoverished my section for stage performances is. For one thing, they really are way too expensive and increasingly more, especially nowadays, an ‘upper class’ entertainment. Secondly, the majority of the stuff now playing in London (and I suspect the same goes for Broadway) is either a musical, a jukebox musical or something based on a film or TV series (often turned into a musical version). So it would be true, I think, to say originality on the London stage has, very much, been compromised in the 21st Century. 

However, I somehow got wind of a very limited run play at the Barbican called Good Night Oscar and, thankfully, I glanced at the description to see what it was. And as soon as I read that I knew I was going to have to reach deep into my pockets to try and procure a ticket for this one. 

Now, it’s got a very well known actor in it apparently (to everyone except me, I guess, never heard of him before this but I now have a heck of a lot of respect for him), called Sean Hayes and, basically, he is playing Oscar Levant. I mean... wow... Oscar Levant, a definite hero of sorts, to me, for a number of decades although, truth be told, I don’t know a great deal about him... just always thought he was a cool dude from the bits I’ve seen or heard from him. In fact, as I took stock, I only knew Oscar Levant for about four things and, I’ll quickly list those because, only two of them really come up in the play itself.

Okay, I knew him first for playing Gene Kelley’s piano playing friend in An American In Paris, in which he has that memorable solo scene where he is conducting himself playing all the instruments in the orchestra... among other things. And it is, of course, fitting that Levant would be appearing in a musical based on the music of George Gershwin because, yeah, he was very close to Gershwin while the composer still lived and, of all the piano players Gershwin knew of performing his works, Oscar Levant was the one he liked best and (as you discover in this play) used to get him work when he would, himself, turn people down. 

Secondly, I knew him from playing the friend and one half of a husband and wife song writing team (presumably loosely based on Comden and Green) of Fred Astaire’s character in the metatextual musical movie The Band Wagon. In which he’s also brilliant. 

Thirdly, I have an old and much treasured CD on the shelf which has various Gershwin compositions played by Levant, including the all important Rhapsody In Blue. Depending on which day you catch me it would be debatable as to whether I prefer Levant’s version or the piano duet version by the Labeque Sisters but, either way, it’s not a disc I’d ever want to lose from my selection. 

And lastly, I remember reading Harpo Marx’ autobiography Harpo Speaks, many decades ago. In it I learned of the fateful night Oscar Levant turned up on his door step and wanted to stay the night. Harpo acquiesced and Levant then stayed there for around 13 months, complaining, eating him out of house and home and running up the phone bill. So, yeah, Levant was an interesting character, for sure. 

What I didn’t know, and what this wonderful play uncovers in no uncertain terms, is that he also struggled big time with mental health issues over the years. The play is about a remarkable guest appearance on The Tonight Show from around about 1958 and tells the story of his third of the show, mostly behind the scenes but also the riveting on stage interview too. So it’s set over a few hours and, it transpires, unbeknownst to both the NBC studio head and also the show’s host (played brilliantly by Ben Rappaport), that Levant’s wife (played so well by Rosalie Craig) had recently had Levant committed to a mental hospital where he was receiving electric shock treatments, three months prior. However, she lied to the doctors and got a four hour pass so that Oscar could see one of his daughters graduate... but it was really so Oscar (escorted by his reluctant accompanying orderly) could appear on the show.

And it’s just brilliant. The play sings along with loads of the Oscar Levant wit on display but, so much more. Now I’ll be the first to say (and did) that Sean Hayes doesn’t really look all that much like Levant but, the way the make-up is fixed does give him a passing resemblance here and, although he’s not as heavy as Levant (at least as I remember him from the early to mid-1950s), his performance is positively riveting and he really conveys the spirit of the man. More than that even because, he plays him as the completely neurotic, mental health sufferer that he’s turned into by this point. I mean, his body never stops moving (it’s almost like he has Parkinson’s disease in a way) and we see the various fits and hallucinations as he suffers them. It’s absolutely gobsmacking and, well, let me tell you I was already impressed with the guy playing him but, when, towards the end of the show, the actor plays pretty much the entirety of Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue as a solo piano piece (which Levant presumably did on the show too), it just blew me away. 

Good Night Oscar is poignant, witty, funny, very dark and also takes a critical look ahead to the future in some of the irony of the topics included into the mix (including taking aim at the television format itself). And all the actors are absolutely amazing in this too. This one would make an absolutely brilliant movie, I would say, not that it would probably get green lit in this day and age but, hey, one can hope. But if you are a fan of the either the actor or, perhaps more importantly, the great man he plays here... all I can say is, try and get yourself down to the Barbican to see this before it finishes on the 21st September. I’m so glad I spent the money to see this one.  

The Return Of Godzilla

SOS Barbican 
Kaiju Attack

The Return Of Godzilla
aka Gojira
aka Godzilla 85 (US recut)
Directed by Kôji Hashimoto 
Japan 2024
Toho
Screened at Barbican Outdoor Cinema 
Saturday 23rd August 2025

Last year, during the middle of the August Bank Holiday FrightFest, I left them all to it one night and slipped out to see Godzilla VS Hedora (aka Godzilla VS The Smog Monster) as part of Barbican’s outdoor cinema event. I loved it (of course, it’s probably my favourite Godzilla movie) but I didn’t review the evening because I’d already reviewed the Criterion edition of the film here.

And I had such a good time with it that, this year, I did exactly the same thing. Slipping away from FrightFest after a screening of Self Help (reviewed here) I made my way to the Barbican for a screening of the 1984 movie, billed as The Return Of Godzilla (among many titles) and sat sipping my cider, waiting for the film to start on the big, inflatable screen as the stars came out... and just soaked up the atmosphere. 

Now there were two interesting things I noticed as things started up properly. First, there was a recorded introduction by a man currently writing another new tome about The Big G and he made the point... and I didn’t realise this myself... that this was the actual UK premiere of the original Japanese version of the film. Now, I’m sure I saw an uncut Japanese version televised over here but, I may be wrong. Apparently all the home release versions are the butchered US cuts (with the return of Raymond Burr, reprising his role from the butchered US recut of the original 1954 movie) so, yeah. That makes more sense in hindsight because, although it can only be thirty years since I last watched this... I honestly didn’t remember any of it, apart from some of the music (I’ll get to that soon). 

The other thing I discovered, when the film began to roll, was that the western distributors of this print were Janus Films... which is actually Criterion, for all intents and purposes. So I’m really hoping this is a test screening for a full on Blu Ray box set from that company giving us a complete second wave at some point soon (especially since I have some gaps in that second wave... I haven’t seen them all like I have the first and third waves). So, yeah, fingers crossed. It was a packed screening, so that’s promising.

The film is a fairly standard, for all intents and purposes, retelling of the 1954 original but by way of a direct sequel to that film. And this is where it loses me a little because the producers decided to ignore all of the original sequels and make this one a direct follow up with the same Godzilla (Gojira). Except... wait a minute... in the original film the first Godzilla is definitely wiped out by the Oxygen Destroyer and turned into a skeleton, if memory serves. The following movies, starting with Godzilla Raids Again (aka Gigantis The Fire Monster, which is reviewed here) started with a second creature christened Godzilla... and it was that version of the creature which carried on into all the other sequels up to that point. But if that’s the case, with the creature being ‘reawoken’ here... how, if its a direct sequel to the first movie, could that possibly be? It’s just a broken down old skeleton or, I think probably less than that even (it might have dissolved completely, again, if memory serves?). So, yeah, the premise of this movie makes absolutely no sense, I’m afraid to say. 

The film was offered to original Godzilla veteran Ishirô Honda but he declined after remembering how the character had been lionised and dumbed down in the decades following the first film. Instead of helming this, he elected to help his friend Akira Kurosawa film Ran instead, although he did suggest the director for this project, who was one of his assistant directors working on the original series of Godzilla films. 

 Similarly, composer Akira Ifukube also turned the project down and so this is the only film in this second Hesiei Era (even though it was still technically made in the Showa Era, go figure) in which versions of Ifukube’s scores are not heard. Instead, composer Reijirô Koroku provides a score which, I’ll be honest, is a bit hit and miss for me. I could do without the occasional decline into cheesy pop synths but, again, some of the score is very good. Although the music, when scenes of the Super X weapon coming out to the rescue like something out of Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds, seems very English. In fact, it sounds pretty much like one of the famous marches Ron Goodwin would write for a World War II movie in the UK so, yeah, it feels like a throwback in those scenes too, even for a movie released in 1984. 

Another interesting point though... in Tokyo in 1954, skyscrapers were a lot shorter than they are nowadays and so the original 50ft sized Godzilla would certainly be dwarfed by his surroundings now. So this time they made the creature 80ft tall, in order that he could once again tower above the urban environment. This was probably a smart movie on the part of the movie’s producers, I would say.

And that’s me done with The Return Of Godzilla, I think. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I remembered liking it 30 years ago but the atmosphere and the audience response to it at the Barbican more than made up for any problems with the movie... those being a lot of dull, board meeting scenes which go on for way too long (much like the ones in the very boring Shin Godzilla, reviewed here) and not nearly enough of the Godzilla action you want to see. So, not my favourite of the Hesei era by a long shot but, still, an interesting watch to say the least. I hope Barbican do another outdoor Godzilla movie next year too. 

Where Is Juan Moctezuma?

Juan For The 
History Books

Where Is Juan Moctezuma?
Directed by Alaric S. Rocha 
USA 2025
Blue Bassoon Pictures
Screened at FrightFest Sunday 24th August 2025

Well now, this is the film I was most looking forward to as my final FrightFest of this year’s August edition of the festival. Where Is Juan Moctezuma? is written by, directed by and stars Alaric S. Rocha (as himself). This one throws up some interesting questions too. At the start of the screening, Alan Jones asked people what they thought this was and, I think people mostly assumed it would be a ‘mockumentary’ as opposed to an actual documentary. And then the director came on and, after vocally knocking CGI effects in favour of practical (that’s always going to win him some points with a crowd of movie goers) he went on to explain his intentions that people, because of things like CGI, didn’t really believe half the things they were watching on screen were real anymore and that he wanted to make something which would blur the lines between what is fact and what is fiction.

Now, to be fair, this is pretty much what a mockumentary does anyway but, for this audience member, it also brings into play, especially with subject matter like this, a thing I have lately rechristened as The Tarantino Effect. Which I’ll get to in just a little while.

The mockumentary is about a long disappeared Mexican director who made films due to his obsession with a specific actress and how, after losing said actress when she married the Lucahdore known as The Scorpion, he tried to woo her back with specific kinds of roles in his films before, after a tragedy (of sorts), he disappeared from history altogether... taking with him his final, just finished film, which was to be his big American breakthrough for producer Roger Corman. 

And it’s a mostly fun film... some of the jokes and references work really well and caused me to let slip the odd chuckle or two. Which is good because the film started even later than the rescheduled, advertised time and, for the first five minutes, until the director rushed out of the auditorium to correct the mistake (he was sitting in front of me in the next row down), it was projected in the wrong aspect ratio, causing all the subtitles and character identifiers to be invisible, fallen off the bottom of the screen... so I was in a pretty bad mood for a while there, more concerned with what time the film would end so I could have a shot at catching the last train home. 

I would say that the film was perhaps a trifle long but, again, this is not an unusual thing with this particular sub-genre and I feel this director, as much as any of them, might possibly be accused of carrying on some of the jokes a little too long, truth be told. But it was a fine ride through the darker underbelly of classic mexploitation films (including some footage sourced from other, more famous non-Mexican films). However, don’t get me started on the way some of this footage was integrated into the film or the way, for example, the Saul Bass designed Vertigo poster was stolen and turned green for the poster of one of the fictitious films within the movie. Yes, I realise this was as much a comment on how a real low budget film maker in Mexico might have manipulated the material themselves but... yeah, that one in particular didn’t sit well with me. 

But this brings me to the whole problem with, not just this mockumentary but, the whole sub-genre in particular. So... The Tarantino Effect... to make a shorter explanation of it this time around... is when you have youngsters or less educated adults assuming that, for example, due to the ending of Inglourious Basterds, Hitler was truly machine gunned to death in an exploding cinema, which ended the Second World War. Or, again for example, due to the ending of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Sharon Tate was not murdered by one of Charles Manson’s followers and instead had a long and fruitful acting career. Is it irresponsible to let certain audience members roam around with this impression (I work in a college and, believe me people, this is what the kiddies take away as gospel history)?

So, I found the mix of mexploitation history mixed in with the fiction here... well personally fairly easy to navigate because I know a little, at least, of the history of the genre but, honestly, I worry where the line is drawn for some people who don’t know which parts of the history are reality and which bits are the fiction woven in. I mean, the mexploitation genre is bizarre and somewhat larger than life enough already anyway so, it must be really hard for some people to tell the difference... and assign fiction and fact to the wrong elements. This film deals with fictional director Juan Moctezuma II but, it probably doesn’t help that there was also a real Juan Moctezuma working in the Mexican industry and making these kinds of films there at this time. 

And my other point would be... I was surprised how many important Mexican B-movie directors were also left out of things. I don’t remember hearing René Cardona’s name once, for instance (although I think his picture might have flashed past at one or two points). So I would beg to differ with Alan Jones comments that this film is a crash course through the Mexploitation genre... I really don’t think it is, for those who don't know it. 

All in all though, there was some really nice stuff in Where Is Juan Moctezuma? This included talking heads from various film historians, the likes of Brian Yuzna and, one of my favourite directors, Isaac Ezban, who I really appreciate seeing here. I’m not sure if I would recommend this movie to many of my friends but, fans of mexploitation and, especially, Mexican wrestling, should find much to enjoy in this one. 

Bone Lake

No Bone Unturned

Bone Lake
Directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan
USA 2025
Door Number 3 Films
Screened at FrightFest Sunday 24th August 2025

Bone Lake upped the expectations right from the outset, as my fifth film of this year’s FrightFest, with it being introduced as a sexy, bloody thriller and also being preceded by a recorded introduction by the director, Mercedes Bryce Morgan, pretty much saying the same thing and pushing the sexually charged violence vibe in a way which really increased expectations of the movie we were all about to watch. And, said film did, indeed, at least reach half of those pay offs, for sure. I found something a little off in terms of those assumptions about the content of the movie as opposed to what’s actually there but, it didn’t stop me really enjoying this one and... yeah.. I’ll get to that other stuff in a minute.

Okay, the plot is simple. A struggling writer, Diego, played by Marco Pigossi and his girlfriend and bread winner Sage, played by Maddie Hasson, book a beautiful mansion in a remote area called Bone Lake, named after something that happened there many years ago... for a sexy vacation (as the Americans put it, us Brits just call it a holiday). However, it’s not very long before another couple, Will (played by Alex Roe) and Cin (played by Andra Nechita), also show up as they’ve apparently also been allowed to book that property for the weekend. So the two couples decide to share and get to know each other and... yeah, all the red flags are there from the start and, okay, I’ll admit it’s a little clichéd in its set up, I’m sure I’ve seen that story done before many times, for sure.

There are secret rooms, attempted seductions and psychological game playing all on the table and, of course, once deceptions are uncovered, lots of blood and violence (for the last 20 minutes or so). The audience, who cheered and whooped at the end, had a good time with it... make no mistake, this one’s a real crowd pleaser... and so did I. It wasn’t my favourite of this year’s FrightFest films but it was well put together by a director who obviously knows what she is doing, it looked nice and there were some genuinely intense and suspenseful scenes throughout. 

That being said, I was very disappointed by the sex angle here, especially for a film which even needle drops a song chanting ‘sex and violence’ at one point. The movie opened very strongly indeed with a naked couple played by Eliane Reis and Clayton Spencer running through the forest and being hunted by someone with a bow and arrow (or possibly a crossbow). This included the much touted genital mutilation (as an arrow penetrates through both testicles of the naked guy) and plenty of gratuitous nudity. So much so that, even after that set up is revealed as something else entirely, I was confident we were going to be in for a sexual, bloody odyssey of bizarre deviance. Alas, that wasn’t quite the case.

Now, maybe it’s my disappointed ‘male gaze’ talking here but, after this I found the sexual content of the movie to be a huge let down. In short, there’s no other real nudity in the film (from any of the four main actors) other than implied or partially obscured nudity and, I wouldn’t have minded that at all except the film seems to be crying out for it with that specific kind of intention as the goal. Especially after that wonderful opening set up, which reminded me of The Most Dangerous Game channeled through Jess Franco’s Countess Perverse remake of the same material. 

So, yeah, on the sexual front I was a little disappointed. Especially after two ‘locked rooms’ are broken into in order to reveal a somewhat tame sex playroom (it’s not quite cool enough to be called a sex dungeon) and a room with a Ouija board set up in it. It just sets up expectations that some of this equipment will get used in the course of the film and.. it just doesn’t (neither the sex toys or the Ouija board... I’m not sure why that was there at all, to be honest). 

The film’s twists are mainly telegraphed but, honestly, chasteness aside, Bone Lake is a quite enjoyable and intense feature and the four lead actors do an absolutely great job here. The chemistry between all of them is absolutely amazing and this could have gone on for another hour and I wouldn’t have gotten bored of it at all (and maybe that would have given me time to get over the lack of sexuality on display). So, yeah, as a kind of modern American giallo, Bone Lake gives a good account of itself and I hope this one gets a proper cinema release here in the UK. Time will tell, I guess. 

Tomb Watcher

Tomb… It May Concern

Tomb Watcher
Directed by Vathanyu Ingkawiwat
Thailand  2025
Kantana Motion Pictures
Screened at FrightFest Sunday 24th August 2025

Okay, so Tomb Watcher was quite intriguing and a nice opener to my last three movies at this year’s August FrightFest. The producer came on at the start to explain to the audience that, in her country, this was a big soap opera a number of decades ago, which was when her grandmother wrote the story it was based on. She now, just turned 92, gave her granddaughter her blessing to adapt it into a big screen horror movie version… I would suspect giving the supernatural elements more emphasis.

This one is about an artist (Thanavate Siriwattanagul) who lets his very rich, young wife (played by Woranuch BhiromBhakdii) die… pretty much of a broken heart… so that he can continue living with his young mistress (Arachaporn Pokinpakorn) off his dead wife’s fortune. So far so good and this almost sounds like an early Italian giallo in its plot set up.

However, there’s a problem when the wife’s will says he would indeed inherit her fortune… as long as he watches over her in her glass coffined tomb for 100 days in their out of the way dream home in the country. Also, his lover has to stay as well and… when she finally falls in as to what’s really happening and why she’s suddenly been given this dream home, well… it would be true to say she’s not entirely happy.

Especially when the vengeful spirit of the dead wife living with them is constantly doing her harm and slowly driving her mad. Everything mounts to a climax which… I dunno… worked visually, as does the rest of the movie (it looks quite stunning throughout) but which, for me, didn’t quite make sense in its entirety. And, yeah, I know I’m not supposed to be trying to use logic to negotiate the folk horror elements specific to that country here but… let’s just say I was somewhat puzzled by the end sequence, which comes, unexpectedly, after a short screen card credit for the director.

Okay, now I was possibly not in the best frame of mind when I saw this one because I’d been out to an outdoor screening of the 1984 Godzilla movie the night before and not gotten home until just before midnight, with an earlyish start to the next day. So I confess to the fact that certain parts of the film, such as when the lover is trying to escape the property in her big car, left me in a slightly soporific state, to be honest.

That being said, it’s well acted, has a nice use of constantly interjecting flashbacks built into the structure (which I apologise for not always realising until I was halfway through those scenes and which I suspect may well have been executed in a more linear fashion in the original soap opera version of the tale) and has a nice, slow burn atmosphere with occasional jump scare inserts throughout.

All that being said, I think this must be one of the first Thai horror films I’ve seen in a while where nobody’s head jumped off their shoulders and started flying around to chase people. But, hey, I wasn’t necessarily expecting that either so, that's okay.

Ultimately, I hold a lot of affection for Tomb Watcher and I would actually pick up a Blu ray version if… and I would expect it’s a big if… it ever gets any UK distribution in that format. So hopefully, fingers crossed, it will have a UK life after FrightFest and I especially wish this one well.

Self Help

You Sane Cult

Self Help
Directed by Erik Bloomquist 
USA 2025
Mainframe Pictures
Screened at FrightFest Saturday 23rd August 2025

Okay, so it had to happen sooner or later. My first FrightFest clunker was the third film I saw at this year’s festival, which was called Self Help.

Now it has to be said, I use clunker very loosely because it’s a film which is, to be fair, relatively engaging for a lot of its running time, has some nice shock moments and, of course, has some great performances in it, to be able to put that all over. Not least of which is the acting job done by Amy Bender as Olivia, who we see years after her accidentally murdering somebody in a clown mask when she was a little girl (which will come up again later in the plot).

Now grown up, Olivia is encouraged by her new friend Sophie, played by Madison Lintz, to accept her estranged mother’s invitation to meet her at a self actualisation programme for the week. She takes Sophie with her but when she gets there she discovers her mother, played by Amy Hargreaves, has married the self help guru running the programme, a man called Curtis Clark, played by Jake Weber.

However, it’s not long before things start to seem more than just a little off and, shortly after, Olivia finds herself accidentally partaking of some pretty dynamic self actualisation therapy herself.

Now, I don’t want to give anything away but, big shout out to Blaque Fowler as the old guy who has the most suspenseful and disturbing scene of this particular film. Like I said, the performances here were fine and this moment was, for me, the highlight of the film. The problem with that, of course, is that when you see something that is truly horrifying and it’s half way through the picture, everything else which comes after it seems kind of a let down and... I think this did affect how my mind received the rest of the movie, to be honest. I think that if that specific scene was withheld until much later in the running time, then the slow burn may have done the movie some favours, in a way. 

For me though, this one mostly held my attention but just didn’t catch my interest in the way the previous two festival films I reviewed in this year’s FrightFest did (and I didn’t even understand what the heck was going on in that second movie). Despite me not quite figuring out all the twist reveals before they happened in Self Help… which honestly is usually enough to sell me on anything… I did find it all rather run-of-the-mill, somewhat and, yeah, it just lacked the spark of oomph I was looking for, I guess.

That being said, I did love the old Max Fleisher cartoon parody over the end credits and, my interest was piqued a lot of the time. So, yeah, not really much to say about Self Help, truth be told but, it could have been a lot worse too, so, sorry for the short review and… yeah. Exit, pursued by a sense of ennui.

Transcending Dimensions

Regaining Conch-ousness

Transcending Dimensions
Directed by Toshiaki Toyoda
Japan 2025
Toyoda Films
Screened at FrightFest Friday 22nd August 2025

Okay, so what’s this one about then?

No, really, what the heck is this one all about? Because it became clear to me not long after I started watching my second of this year’s FrightFest films, Transcending Dimensions, that pretty much the entire audience had absolutely no idea what was going on. And some people I was talking to afterwards made it similarly clear that, honestly guv, no one has a scooby!

However, I’ve always said that the art of the cinema doesn’t really have anything to do with story or plot, it being a collaborative art that doesn’t need to take in such literal concerns as a tale told from point A to point B and, in the case of this film, that’s good because, I honestly don’t think there’s a story to be found in it. It was, however, an absolutely amazing experience of a movie.  

It’s been described as sharing some ideas with Kubrick’s 2001 - A Space Odyssey but I think people are just responding to the style of certain shots, as the camera journeys through various outer and inner space star fields when, after half an hour or so, the opening titles start. It’s not like the Kubrick film in most ways but I would certainly buy it if somebody said the last 20 minutes or so of that movie had influenced the general modus operandi here. 

It would be pretty useless of me to try and approach this review, then, by trying to cage the word count inside some kind of cohesive structure but, since the movie does hang together, I can at least try and describe some of the elements... or at least some of my favourite moments. 

So the nature of reality for any of the characters... such as Rosuke played by Yôsuke Kubozuka, who you may think is held in the thrall of the teachings of a mad guru/antagonist of the movie (who collects people’s little fingers)... is not, it turns out, actually important, until you maybe realise that everything you see may (or may not be) in his head. And there’s the killer Shinno, played by Ryûhei Matsuda, who seeks to kill said guru for a dead woman who is probably a spirit of Rosuke’s dead sister, although that doesn’t stop her from killing herself again in front of Shinno by laying down on some train tracks. 

And then there’s the conch shells that tend to transport people from one state of mind to another. And when I say state of mind... it’s synonymous with appearing in a different place here too... such as ending up in outer space inside what looks like a corridor constructed from a kaleidoscope. Or by a beautiful waterfall. Or somewhere equally inscrutable. 

Oh... and finger spells shooting cosmic force from the hands. Should probably mention those too.

All I can say about this one, for sure, is that it looks and sounds fantastic. Lots of long held shots which give a sense of beauty and dynamism, such as Shinno walking towards camera as a man with a mission for a good minute or two. In fact, certain aspeccts of this movie reminded me a little of some of the work of Seijun Suzuki. Added to this we have the sound design of the movie, which is very powerful (and which the Dolby speakers in the auditorium rendered in quite an incredible way). 

I also wanted to give a big heads up to the very powerful score but, when I looked into this, I found that there was no composer for the movie and that the film had been needle dropped. So I looked up what the main piece of music was and it’s a track called Inner Babylon, by a group called Sons Of Kemet. So, yeah, I will definitely be looking that one up on CD because, it was just amazing (and rather heavy on the ears but amazing, nonetheless). 

One thing I will be slightly critical of is the constant philosophising from the main characters. Not because I’m against it but... well... put it this way. I was surprised to find that the director/writer of the movie is 56 years old and the reason this amazed me is because the various esoteric passages in the movie seemed, well, pretentious at best but, mostly, just very naive or childish. So there’s that.

But, make no mistake, Transcending Dimensions is one of those movies that cinema is absolutely made for (and see this one on a big screen with good sound if you get the opportunity). I absolutely loved this and wasn’t expecting to see a movie like this hitting hard at FrightFest, for sure. A nice surprise and something which I hope will get a proper release in this country sometime soon. 

The Home

For Eye With The 
Syringe On Top

The Home
Directed by James DeMonaco
USA 2025
MIramax
Screened at FrightFest Thursday 21st August

Well now, it has to be said that the only reason I bought a ticket to The Home, the opening movie of this year’s August edition of FrightFest, is because I wanted to get an early look in at the FabPress stall before everybody else had picked it clean. Imagine my surprise then, to go into this movie relatively blind and to find that it’s one of the better films I’ve seen at FrightFest over the years.

The Home starts off by introducing us to orphan Max, played after a few flashbacks by Pete Davidson. However, after his slightly older brother is pronounced dead from suicide, his young life kind of goes off the rails and he acts out a lot, using his incredible skills as an artist, for example, to cover a property in graffiti art. However, rather than do jail time, his foster dad gets him community service as a new maintenance man in an old people’s home called Green Meadows.

It’s here he gets to know residents like Lou, played by John Glover and the brilliant Mary Beth Peil as Norma, who befriends Max. However, we also get the typical ‘don’t go in the basement’ style horror set up when he’s told quite clearly by his new employers that, for whatever reason, he doesn’t set foot on the locked, fourth floor. It’s out of bounds to everyone except those who know how to give the residents upstairs that ‘special medical care’ they require.

Okay, so an okay set up and it’s a nicely put together film, with the actors all between them doing a really good job at making you care for them. It looks good and, although it maybe has one too many dream sequences, it really works at transmitting that there’s something more important at stake than what the audience might be expecting the pay off to be. 

Now, I’ll go right ahead and say that I’ve once again proved myself to be accent blind with this movie. All the way through I thought it was a British movie, made with a British cast and crew and set in the UK. Nope... it’s a US film with an American cast, all set in the US. So, I’m definitely unreliable for being able to figure out that kind of thing. I think its because most countries have such a bombardment of American media into their lifestyle that it makes their accents seem normal compared to everything else. 

However, it’s got nothing to do with my deaf ear to human dialects which rendered the conclusion of this movie something I totally didn’t see coming. And regular readers to my blog will know how hard it is for a film to actually surprise me so, it’s no small thing when I say that the final twist or solution to the film is masterfully misdirected and not telegraphed at all, because I’ll tell you now... the surprise really works on this one. 

Also, though... and I think it’s no surprise given the poster to the movie... it’s also something that people who are squeamish about eyeball injury should steer clear of. There are a couple of gory set pieces throughout the movie which punctuate the slow creepiness of the central protagonist’s journey towards a final solution but, in the last twenty minutes or so, as a certain sequence plays out, this film turns into an absolute blood bath. And that’s after you see syringes plunging into different peoples eyeballs a number of times... yeah, the camera doesn’t flinch on this one and I’m assuming CGI must have been involved (I hope) as the effects do look kind of practical. 

And I don’t think I’m going to say much more about The Home other than I was delighted with the pay off and I honestly didn’t see it all coming. This was a strong opening film for FrightFest to start this year’s proceedings with and I absolutely loved it. Looking for a Blu Ray release as soon as possible now. I hope this one gets cinema distribution over here too... it was great. 

The World Of Shaft

Up To Here!

The World Of Shaft 
By Steve Aldous
Foreword by David F. Walker
McFarland Books, ISBN 9780786499236

Subtitled, on the edition I read, A Complete Guide To The Novels, Comic Strip, Films And Television Series, Steve Aldous’ book The World Of Shaft is an almost but not quite complete overview of the Shaft phenomenom, which of course was started by writer Ernest Tidyman in the late 1960s/early 1970s (indeed, that original first novel was sold to the studio before it was published and was released at more or less the same time as the original movie). I say almost complete because this was written just before modern comic book imprint Dynamite had released their comics and new Shaft novel and, this was also a few years before the advent of the fifth (and probably final) of the Shaft cinema movies, which reunited Richard Roundtree and Samuel L. Jackson for a second time. Which is a shame because of a point the author makes in this book but I’ll get to that in a minute. 

Okay, the book is written by someone with an obvious love and respect for the character and the writer behind him. Indeed, the research which has gone into this, which includes going through a load of the late Tidyman’s boxes full of notes and letters, is nothing if not thorough. And, after a potted history of Tidyman’s career which is very illuminating, I’d say the emphasis is possibly more on the books themselves but he does bring a deep knowledge of this when looking at the rest of the media involved in Shaft. 

And it’s a cool breeze to read and, since there’s not much written critically. at least all gathered in one substantial place as it is here, it’s an absolutely essential tome to own in regards to the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks. For instance, I didn’t know that of the seven Shaft books that Tidyman wrote... due to his being busy with other projects... the last four were partially ghost written by two other writers he was employing with the man himself coming in to flesh out and rewrite for the final draft. I liked those books as an early teen but never got around to acquiring the three gaps I had in the run. Silly me… I may have been picking them up for 30p a piece in second hand book shops in the 1980s but, when I looked into filling in my holes while reading this, I was shocked to find that they’ve been long out of print and mostly attract three figure sums on the likes of eBay. Apparently, the only place where the books are still in print is in Germany, where they still love the character but, you know, I don’t speak the language. 

After covering the books (Shaft, Shaft Among The Jews, Shaft’s Big Score, Shaft Has A Ball, Goodbye Mr. Shaft, Shaft’s Carnival Of Killers and The Last Shaft), their collective creators and the various character traits of regular characters in the books, not to mention a load about the proposed Shaft newspaper strip which never came to fruition (with some rare samples of the artwork)... there’s also a big section on the movies and TV movies/series. This includes a breakdown of each episode/film of the series and, of course, gets to the first revival film with Samuel L. Jackson. One of the author’s sticking points is that Jackson’s Shaft couldn’t possibly be the nephew of the original Shaft because he had no surviving kin in the books (and didn’t survive the last book himself, for that matter). So this makes it a shame that there’s no coverage of the last movie because, as you may or may not know, they retconned this in that story and it turned out that, actually, he’s Shaft’s son after all. Of course, given their similar ages, Roundtree would have had to have fathered Jackson when he was four but, yeah, that’s another story. 

But yeah, this is an informative read and it would be true to say I had a ball with The World Of Shaft. What it really needs now, though, is a second, revised edition to take into account the Dynamite stuff and the 2019 movie… can you dig it?

True Detective Series Two

Sleuth or Dare

True Detective Series Two
8 episodes June - August 2015
USA HBO

Okay... so the second series of True Detective takes a bunch of new characters and locations and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t actually relate to the first series in any way. This one is set in Vinci, California and deals with three police detectives (initially, their status changes somewhat throughout the course of the story) and one career criminal who is trying to leave his illegal empire building behind him and retire to a lucrative, legitimate business.

So the three detectives of the tale are Detective Ray Velcoro played by Colin Farrell, Detective Ani Bezzerides played by Rachel McAdams, Officer Paul Woodrugh played by Taylor Kitsch and all three of these are from different territories, teamed up initially to solve the murder of the right hand man of the career criminal... a victim who has been tortured to death and his eyes burned out with acid. 

The fourth protagonist of the tale is the criminal himself, Frank Semyon played by Vince Vaughn... who wants to find out who is attacking him through the death of his employee and just what is going on and, of course, will it impede him in his chance to become a legitimate business man. 

Now, I was not as on board with this one at first... mainly because I liked the first series so much and particularly the two characters played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. But... and this is no bad thing... this second show is definitely not trying to reproduce the same atmosphere used there and, as I slowly got into the characters and how the various pieces of the jigsaw come together, I enjoyed this one almost as much. 

There are a couple of basic similarities to the first one though. Such as the story taking place over different time zones. However, in the first series it was a good decade or two between settings and this one takes place for two weeks over the first part of the case and then just a couple of months down the line, after the aftermath of the carnage of the shoot out which ends the investigation. Unlike the first one, though, it doesn’t ping pong between the two times and is presented in a more linear fashion.

Secondly, the initial investigations in the first two seasons ends the careers of the main protagonists... and this one, with the catalyst for that happening at the end of episode four in a most spectacular action sequence, sees them coming together again to work the case and dive deeper into it a little later. 

So, yeah, this one has a very different atmosphere from the first season and, I think if I were to compare it to something... and this was perhaps on the mind of the writer simply by osmosis... it would be the novels of ace crime writer James Ellroy, especially his LA Quartet of novels. I mean, the characters in this are all either bad and compromised in some way or have a huge chip on their shoulders. Or both. It’s like the world of Ellroy’s LA, where nobody is really good, especially the cops, is playing out in a slightly more toned down version here. It’s not as in-your-face violently gory as Ellroy, quite a lot of the brutality is implied here... but I can’t help but think Ellroy’s writing must have has at least some influence on the DNA of season two of this show. 

The acting is terrific. I’ve never been a fan of Colin Farrell in the past but he does an excellent job here of giving his character many facets which gives the audience an insight into his motivations and choices. McAdams is equally good in this and, as the only one who isn’t bent and on the take initially, she has a steely determination which puts other characters on edge. Taylor Kitsch is incredible in this. It took me a while to figure out that this fairly ‘contained to the point of instability’, confused character once played a very confident John Carter of Mars (reviewed here). He looks totally different here and, if I hadn’t read the cast list, I would have never known it was him. 

And as for Vincent Vaughn, well. Such an understated performance where he mostly uses his eyes and forehead to give an air of intimidation but, also a certain thoughtfulness. He’s a man who wears his history on his sleeve almost and, even though you see him do brutal things (like using pliers to extract the gold teeth of someone who won’t do what they’re told), you end up totally sympathising with him somehow and, yeah, rooting for him by the end of the show, for sure. In much the same way you sympathise with Robert DeNiro’s character in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America, even though you know he’s done brutal things in his past. Vaughn, who I’ve seen do both comedy and human monster really well, in the same film no less in Freaky (reviewed here), really manages to ring the sympathy out of this while being totally shark-like in his role of head hoodlum (something which Jimmy Cagney could also channel well in some of his gangster pictures, if memory serves). It was such a good choice to cast him here and he pretty much steals any scene he’s in, in my opinion. 

And, yeah, that’s me done. The ending is not remotely similar to that of the first season, in the way things get resolved (or might possibly get some kind of closure after the end of the last episode) and the downward spiral it takes is not much less than the audience may be expecting by the last few episodes. So, yeah, it’s hard to compare it to the first series since they are both very different animals but I certainly thought True Detective Series Two was very good television and is worth a watch if you are into stories with a gritty undertone to them. 

The Mummy (1999)

In My Humble 
Opinion... Tep!

The Mummy (1999)
USA 1999
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Universal UK Blu Ray

I remember when this version of The Mummy first came out in cinemas. I was worried about it because I love the Universal monster movies of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and I was concerned that Stephen Sommers, who was said to be making more of an action adventure film, would be doing the concept a disservice. Then I went to the cinema and saw the finished product for myself and, wow, I absolutely adored this right from the start. I remember The Matrix was released in the UK about a week later and I remember hating that one and thinking, why didn’t I just go see The Mummy again rather than pay out for that. I did see this film a few more times at the cinema though and, even though it has several mistakes (which the director gleefully points out in his informative old US DVD commentary... I’m assuming this is the same one ported over for this Blu Ray) it’s still an absolute masterpiece.

So, the film is a strange tonal hybrid in that, yes, there are certain scenes, mostly in the first half, where Sommers is definitely playing with the film in terms of the horror genre and, although there are a few great fight sequences in the first hour, he really does push the creepiness of the concept a lot more than, I think, people realise once they get caught up in the next hour. So, for example, the sequences where The Mummy is first brought back to life and runs around in the tomb as panicked archeologists and treasure hunters try to escape him are the film very much going into good old fashioned horror mode. There’s even a creepy prelude culminating in a jump scare in an early scene which takes place in a library and sets up one of the characters.  

But there’s more to this as the film is injected with a good dose of old 1930s-50s adventure movie serial components, pushing the Indiana Jones aspects of the film and ratcheting up the action and nostalgia stakes that come with that territory. And it’s done with a huge dose of humour which, yeah, could have gone terribly wrong for the movie but, because the script on this one is so good and, because the various actors are so brilliant in this, Sommers manages to pull it off with ease and, in doing so, he created a lasting classic which still endures and holds up now. 

As for those actors.. we have Brendan Fraser who is, frankly, brilliant in the role of adventurer Rick O Connell, playing him with a lot of humour and confidence. We have Rachel Weisz as librarian Evie, who is a kind of feminist version of a 1920s heroine and gives as good as she gets and, indeed, even has a penchant for inflicting eye injuries on her foes (in at least two scenes). We also have John Hannah playing her kid brother Jonathan, who is used as comic relief and is a nice contrast to Fraser’s leading man, the two playing off one another nicely. 

Arnold Vosloo as title character Imhotep is absurdly good in this role and almost a likeable and sympathetic character, if he wasn’t so determined to kill everybody in horrible ways. Kevin J. O'Connor as the weaselly Beni (who had the best line in Sommer’s earlier movie Deep Rising and steals many of the greatest scenes here) is probably the absolute greatest thing about this movie, playing a character so disloyal he ends up helping Imhotep in order to both stay alive and make off with a load of treasure but who, to paraphrase the words of lead character Rick O Connel, gets what’s coming to him. 

Lastly, there’s Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay and the gorgeous Patricia Velasquez as Princess Anck Su Namun. Both of these characters and their respective actors would get much bigger roles in the first direct sequel, The Mummy Returns. 

As for the direction, editing, cinematography etc... this is also a technical masterpiece... despite the mistakes which have either been edited around or, in some cut sequences, actually created by the editing with shots that either don’t quite match or defy logic if you happen to latch onto them (again, Sommer’s commentary is really worth listening to, if it’s the same one that he did for the initial DVD release). 

For instance, when everyone is running around and trying to escape the mummy’s tomb when he is first revived, one of the characters loses his glasses. What happens next is that when the camera is a point of view from that character or from just behind the character looking away from him, he blurs the focus to imply a POV shot. But here’s the thing, the camera then pans around to this character and the shot changes into sharp focus... within that same uninterrupted shot (and he does this a couple of times in this sequence). So, yeah, that’s the first time I’ve caught a director literally implying a change of POV within the same shot... brilliant stuff. 

He also uses the camera and editing to give us some nice transitions. Such as a moment where Evie and Jonathan are looking at the map. We then cut to a close up of the map before cutting away to Jonathan and Evie and a third character talking about the map in a different location. It’s not a new way of doing things but it’s a nice bit of visual shorthand and it works very well. 

As do some of the visual wipes used in the film. For instance, when Fraser jumps diagonally down into a chamber entrance in the ground, into a tomb in the city of Hamunaptra, a visual wipe follows him diagonally down, revealing him and Weisz already in the tomb. Nice stuff. 

Another thing the director does which really helps lift the film where others trying to capture the same magic have failed, is that he lets the audience in on the joke. For instance, the sudden appearance of wind and atmosphere going nuts when anyone says anything dark and filled with foreboding is certainly a genre cliché and here Sommers does it at least three times. But, here’s the rub, he does it so unsubtly and so self consciously, that the audience realises right off the bat that he’s doing it tongue in cheek. It’s like he’s winking at the audience and saying, it’s okay to not take this seriously... we certainly aren’t. And to spell that out even further, there’s even a scene where it happens yet again and Brendan Fraser says... “That happens a lot around here!” It’s a nice touch and makes all the difference to the way the film is received... the audience are invited to laugh along at the absurdities and genre clichés right along with the actors on screen, elevating the experience accordingly. 

Another great thing about this movie... Jerry Goldsmith. I was at one of many of his concerts I attended over the years and, in at least one of them, he played a suite of music from The Mummy. He told the audience he was really struggling with it and didn’t think much of the movie until he at last found a way to have fun with it. When the sequel came up, he turned it down citing scheduling conflicts and, while Alan Silvestri provides a great score for the sequel, it means the franchise suffers from the same lack of musical continuity that modern Marvel and DC movies have... which is a shame. Even so, Goldsmith’s score for The Mummy is outstanding and, for my money, in the top twenty scores of his long career. The camel race is especially beautiful, as is the heavy percussion which comes in right at the end and the shot transitions to everybody setting up camp in Hamunaptra. It’s easily one of the greatest scores he did around this time and the modern, expanded version of the CD with the entire score on it means I no longer have to leave the old US DVD on the languages menu if I want to hear it in total... as the full score playing from start to end was an easter egg on that disc if you stay in that menu. 

Oh, and about the old DVD... for the British readers here. The Mummy was uncut at our cinemas but had some cuts made for the UK home viewing versions at the time. For instance, the extended hanging scene from near the start of the movie, which in real life caused Brendan Fraser to pass out, was heavily truncated on the UK home video releases. Which is why I would only touch the American release of this movie back in the day. I’m pleased to report that the UK Blu Ray (which is now in a single clasp case with the two direct sequels), has had those cuts waived, so it can be watched properly again in this country now. 

And that’s me about done on this one. Rewatching it now was a real trip and the film holds up very well. I’m looking forward to revisiting the sequels very soon... well, the first sequel at any rate. I’m hoping that the third movie will maybe have grown on me over time. I’ll report back here on those soon.

OSS117 - Mission For A Killer

Hell To Peyote

OSS117 - Mission For A Killer
aka Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117
France/Italy 1965
Directed by André Hunebelle
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

OSS117 - Mission For A Killer is the third of the films presented in Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray set OSS117 Five Film Collection. This time around, the main lead has been recast... we no longer have Kerwin Matthews in the role of Hubert Bonnisseur de la Bath aka OSS117, Instead we have Frederick Stafford who, it has to be said, is even more of a block of wood in the role than Matthews was. He does, to be fair, look much more capable of doing all the fights and is quite confident in the role but, well, when I say that Matthews displayed much more emotion and personality in the role, you can see what we’re up against here. I’m not sure I’m blaming the actor here though... I’ll get to that in a minute. 

Luckily, he has a really excellent female lead in Mylène Demongeot, playing a random lady who gets accidentally mixed up in the mechanics of a threat to the world, probably because she strikes up a friendship with Hubert as much as anything else. Said threat to the world starts off as a promising proposition, explained in a truly unmemorable and dull pre-credits sequence which, rather than starting off with an action piece as the Bond films would, is just lots of talking about important figures being assassinated by brainwashed, drugged up, suicide bombers. Hubert’s mission is to take over from another guy in Brazil (who obviously gets killed almost as soon as OSS117 gets there) and find out who is making and using these brainwashing drugs etc. I say etc because, it would seem implicit that they would also want to find out who’s actually programming these living bombs and stopping them in their tracks but, yeah, I don’t think that aspect of the mission is ever actually made clear.

From there on it’s the usual shenanigans where Hubert will get into a fight with a bunch of bad guys, romance a lady, step and repeat for a while before flying to a different part of Brazil to rescue some Indians who have been ‘making’ peyote, which apparently turns you into an easily suggestible robot (hmmm... I’m really not sure that’s what peyote and its mescalin ingredient does, to be honest). 

And it’s a fairly dull and plodding film it has to be said. Some of the fist fights do their best to break up the monotony, which is not in any way helped along by Michel Magne’s ponderous lounge score. I have to wonder how these were supposed to compete with the Bond films, which were already up to Thunderball when this was released without, apparently, the filmmakers managing to pick up on anything which made those films so good. This film is a big yawn compared to what EON were churning out at the same time. I also have to wonder how this was the 11th most popular film in France in the year it was released. 

I wish I could say that the film had some unseen twists or unusual things to recommend it. I suppose a fists against flame thrower fight in a hotel room is quite interesting in its own way and, later, when Hubert drives his car through a sheet of flame, the sight of the tyres on all four wheels of his car spinning orange flames is eye catching. But, over all, this film is as similarly snooze inducing as its predecessors.

I blame André Hunebelle... I thought his 1960s Fantômas movies made around the same time (and reviewed on this blog elsewhere, check out the movie section of the index) were somewhat okay but ultimately lacked a lot of the punch they might have had (although I think their screenplays were a little better) but these OSS117 movies are a somewhat duller affair than those. At least the Fantômas films had some novelty moments in them but, these OSS117 movies don’t even seem to have inherited Bond’s mania for sophisticated spy gadgetry... which is overplayed somewhat in the Bond series over time, to be fair but, yeah, they really could have done with something to lift these movies. 

So it would be true to say that OSS117 - Mission For A Killer is no better or worse than the previous two movies in the series. It’s not a film I would recommend, even to lovers of spy movies and, yeah, I won’t be watching this one again in a hurry. Still, there are two more films left in this set and the fourth, while produced by Hunebelle, is not actually directed by him so, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Frederick Stafford’s return engagement in the OSS117 role will be a better movie than this one. I should find out fairly swiftly. 

Nobody 2

Does It Better

Nobody 2
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto
USA 2025
Universal
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Extremely minor spoiler you will see coming anyway.

After the surprise hit of Nobody (reviewed here) it’s no surprise that the ensemble team from the first film... Connie Nielson, Christopher Lloyd, RZA, Colin Salmon and, of course, Bob Odenkirk as lead protagonist Hutch... are back for a second installment in Nobody 2. And, before I go into this... let me assure fans of the first movie that, yes, this one’s also lots of fun and I can’t see the producers not green lighting a third film in the franchise as soon as possible. 

That being said, this one feels a little ‘by the numbers’ in terms of the formula of the first film, for sure. After continuing to work as an ultra sleek hit man, to try and pay off the debt from all the Russian mafia money he burned up in the first movie, Hutch and his family decide to take a vacation and end up in a water park where he and his wife first spent some really good times with the kids. However, it’s not long before arriving that Hutch’s son gets them all in trouble with the local mob boss, who is also dancing on a string to the ruthless Russian mobster, played by Sharon Stone. 

Before long, it’s black comedy and ultra violence all the way in much the same way as the first film in the series did it so well. And that’s possibly one of the problems. The film does its best ot hit all the right moments which audiences loved so much from the first film... but it maybe loses just a little in the process. 

So the cold opening starts off once again with Hutch and a new pet animal held prisoner by the FBI in an interrogation. Then we flash back to how he got there for the rest of the film, starting with the Monday to Sunday montage where, to his credit, he no longer misses putting out the trash for the weekly pick up, this time around. Then, when things get going into full on action, we have the big money burning moment (albeit accidentally this time), a tourist boat fight instead of a bus fight and, also, another sequence where Hutch and his extended family rig a series of traps for the big showdown... this time in the water park. 

The big thing that’s missing is that, in this one, the audience is already in on the joke that this middle aged dude is actually a reluctant killing machine and so, we don’t really have too much of the really powerful drama of the first to pull you back in again. And, since we know he’s very dangerous, there doesn’t quite seem to be the same stakes involved in the story to really hammer that home. 

But, you know, it’s got other things going for it. So while some of the dramatic situations and the various scenes seem quite a bit more contrived, we have a nice moment where an enemy becomes an ally for the big showdown at the end of the movie. Plus, you know, we get to see RZA use a katana against a heavy in a sword fight near the end of the movie. 

And that’s me just about done with Nobody 2 and, yeah, sorry for the short review but I really don’t have many complaints (other than I’ve no idea when those end title snapshots were supposed to have taken place because, not much of a spoiler, the water park is just a hole in the ground by the end of the movie). Fans of the first one should like this one quite a bit and I’m sure I’ll be sitting down for another installment in a few years. Nobody does it better but, Nobody 2 is not a bad follow up, as sequels go. 

The Worlds of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson

No Strings Attached

The Worlds of Gerry 
and Sylvia Anderson
The Story Behind international Rescue 
by Ian Fryer
Foreword by Shane Rimmer
Fonthill Media
ISBN 9681781555040

Ian Fryer’s book, The Worlds Of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, subtitled The Story Behind International Rescue, is perhaps a little off the mark in terms of its title... as the book not only contains the origins of their most popular franchise Thunderbirds (and all but one of the puppets on the cover of the book reflect that show) but gives equal amounts of space for all the other Gerry Anderson created series’ of that era. So it charts his career starting in 1945 when he joined the Colonial Film Unit making British propaganda, then went to Gainsborough to be an editor, then became a freelance sound editor and so on until he was running his own studio for what was, obviously, the brith of supermarionation and, later, his live action productions. 

So this book covers, with a chapter apiece, The Adventures Of Twizzle, Torchy The Battery Boy, Four Feather Falls, Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Thunderbirds Are Go & Thunderbird 6, Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons, Joe 90, Doppelganger, The Secret Service, UFO, The Protectors, the unaired supermarionation pilot show The Investigator and up to both years of Space 1999, which is when the partnership between the Anderson’s ended in divorce. Throughout the book there are also chapters pushed in between some of these to give a taste of the scene in the UK at the time, or to provide a little more information on important players… such as Lew Grade, Derek Meddings, the state of British Sci-Fi in the 1960s and the collapse of the UK film industry. 

This in addition to providing mini biographies within the main text about important cast and crew including, of course, composer extraordinaire Barry Gray. Due to the scope of the title, the book doesn’t really stray beyond Space 1999 when it gets there but it does have another mini chapter at the end of the book at least acknowledging and providing minor details of his later shows such as Terrahawks, Dick Spanner and Space Precinct. 

Now, although there is a fair bit of information given to some things… I perhaps found it a little less detailed than I would like but, being a novice to the Anderson universe… although I watched most of these as a kid and had some of the toys such as the Dinky Thunderbird 2 and the Joe 90 car (wish I still had that one)... I did pick up on a lot of things I didn’t know. Such as Stanley Kubrick offering Gerry’s studio the chance to do all the effects for his 2001 - A Space Odyssey. Gerry was too busy to be able to take on the job but Kubrick then poached two off his key personnel who did the job for him. Which I thought was an interesting story. 

It also explained to me why Four Feather Falls came about because, obviously (and I remember this from when I was a kid), the American western TV shows dominated all the networks at that time. I found out another fact that Stingray was not only the first Supermarionation show to be shot in colour, it was indeed the first British TV show ever shot in colour, which surprised me somewhat. 

As far as Thunderbirds and the crew at International Rescue goes… The rescue idea was born from real life events of the trapped miners in Lengede-Broustedt mine in Lower Saxony in West Germany in 1963, while the Tracy family itself was ripped straight from the family structure of the Ponderosa on the popular TV western show Bonanza. Indeed, the Jeff Tracy puppet was itself based on Lorne Greene, it turns out. 

In addition to all this, each chapter brings an insight into why each show was created and also why each show was cancelled... most of them after just one season, despite their huge ratings hits and popularity with kids and family alike (I guess Dinky toys were happy enough to keep bringing out new die cast models every year, they were making huge profits from them and, rightly so).

My one complaint on this, other than suspecting there’s not quite enough info for someone who is more familiar with the properties than I (I will be watching and reviewing a few of these shows over the next couple of years… at least that’s the plan)… the book is a little sloppily written. For example, here’s part of a sentence… “Probably too large and unwieldy at first for audiences to strongly identify strongly with any particular character…” And that kind of word repetition is not an isolated case, there are a fair few examples going throughout the book. However, it is a well researched tome and I did come away both entertained by Mr. Fryers writing and also quite informed, to an extent… at least enough for me to try and seek out chunkier volumes on the individual TV shows in question (which is a hard task at the moment, it turns out). So ultimately, I’d have to say that I really enjoyed The Worlds of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and got a lot out of it. So maybe, if you’re not too familiar with the subject matter, you might want to take a look at some point. Spectrum Is Green!

The Inspector Wears Skirts 2

Skirting The Issue

The Inspector Wears Skirts 2
aka Shen yong fei hu ba wang hua
Hong Kong 1989
Directed by Wellson Chin
Golden Harvest 
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Oops. Okay, I predict this one is going to be a pretty short review because, I really don’t have a lot to say about The Inspector Wears Skirts 2 other than, it’s not even a pale shadow of the previous film.

Once again, the film is a kind of Hong Kong equivalent to the US Police Academy films and a fair few of the cast (sadly not Cynthia Rothrock) are ported over... included Sibelle Hu as Madame Wu, the instructor of the all female SKIRTS team, Sandra Kwan Yue Ng as comic relief Amy and, as the leader of the male cadets, Stanley Sui-Fan Fung as Inspector Kan. This one also includes Melvin Wong, who I’ve seen playing a villain a few times in these 80s Hong Kong action flicks, as Mr. Lo, the visiting inspector and rival to Inspector Kan for Madame Wu’s affections. 

Okay, so this time up, four new girls join the team and are made to feel unwelcome by the other SKIRTS, as the usual pranks and infighting goes on. This includes a mess hall fight, a birthday bash dance (similar to a scene in the first film), a way too long assault course montage where pretty much every character in the film is watched as they repeatedly perform the same course and... in a last ditch effort for, literally the last ten minutes of the movie, a real life mission which reunites everybody for the common good.

And it’s all pretty dire and terrible, it has to be said. The comedy is way too broad, crude and unfunny (as seems to be the way of a lot of these 1980s Hong Kong flicks) and there’s a heck of a lot less action than in the first movie. Some of the lead actors and actresses, including the ones I just mentioned, are all very good but it’s clear they just have a terrible script to work around. It’s like the writers and producers looked at all the elements of the superior first movie which didn’t quite work... and then replicated those kinds of scenes at the expense of any good material being left in the mix. 

About all I can say which is really positive about this one, asides from the acting and the occasional stunt (although it’s clear Stanley Sui-Fan Fung is not doing his own fighting... ridiculously clear) is that it contains that ridiculously infectious ear worm of a main theme from the first film, courtesy of composer Noel Quinlan. Which is honestly the only part of The Inspector Wears Skirts 2 that I’m likely to remember in a couple of days, in all honesty. So, yeah, if the first one did nothing for you... maybe give this one a steer. I’m going to press on and watch the next two at some point either way so... I’ll let you know. 

The Crimson Pirate

Acrobatic Plunder

The Crimson Pirate
USA/UK1952 
Directed by Robert Siodmak
Warner Brothers 
Spanish Blu Ray Zone B

Burt Lancaster as buccaneer Captain Vallo swings from one mast of his ship to the other, yells instructions to his crew and then immediately breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience, telling them that in the following piratical adventure, they should believe only what they see. Then, he turns and the film is run backwards as he reverse swings back to the original mast... turning to the audience once again he corrects that to... “No. Believe only half of what you see!” Roll credits and some thunderously good music as the greatest pirate film ever made gets underway. 

Yeah, it’s been a long time since I last revisited The Crimson Pirate (which I’ve seen multiple times over the years) and, every time I watch it, I like it even more. I wanted to watch an upgraded Blu Ray print and, like a few films I’ve had to source recently, I had to get a Spanish copy of the film, since they seem to be the only ones to give it a Blu Ray transfer... and what a transfer it is. Even my dad remarked that the colour and clarity of the film was the best he’s ever seen it (and he’s seen it even more times than me). 

The film tells of Burt Lancaster, teamed up with Ojo (pronounced Oho... as in Yo Ho Ho), played by Nick Cravat, his lifelong friend and fellow circus acrobat turned actor. Lancaster kept him on the payroll for life and they starred in nine films together, with him as his personal trainer. And what that means is, all the acrobatic stunts you see the two doing here in the fight and chase scenes... and they do quite a bit... are done by them (and you can certainly see it to... even in the long shots). 

Joining the cast is the female love interest of Eva Bartok as the daughter of a rebel leader that Captain Vallo and his crew aid in the adventure. You may remember her as... SPOILER ALERT... one of the two killers revealed towards the end of Mario Bava’s classic giallo Blood And Black Lace (reviewed here). We also have Thorin Thatcher in the cast as troublesome crew mate Humble Bellows... you may remember him as the evil wizard in The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (reviewed here). And there’s even another early role for Christopher Lee as a minor villain... although he gets a line or two in this one. He has gone on record that the film was supposed to be a serious affair but when director Siodmak jumped on board, he immediately turned it into the action comedy romp it’s now known as.

Last but, by no means least, is the great James Hayter as Prof. Elihu Prudence, who helps the story no end by inventing and reinventing various devices which help the brave crew in their endeavours. Now, I’ve said to many people that the film The Scorpion King always reminded me a little of The Crimson Pirate and that’s because, along with the sense of fun, you have various gadgets invented by the characters to add a new dimension to the action and... it’s a plot element even more so in this film. 

So the first sign of unusual scientific intervention is when, after Lancaster, Cravat and Hayter are chained to a boat and cast adrift at sea to await certain death by starvation, Hayter’s character capsizes the boat which sinks to the bottom of the sea, catching a pocket of air in the hull, enabling them to breathe while they walk along the bottom of the sea to land. This foreshadows a moment right near the when Hayter, in drag (it’s a plot point, don’t ask), pops out of a submarine he’s invented. 

In addition to this we have the invention of explosives, a hot air balloon, a hand revolving gatling gun made out of a circle full of muskets*, cannons on armoured carts and a mounted flame thrower. All to overthrow the government and strike a blow for freedom (oh, yeah, not much actual pirating goes on in this movie, due to the plot in which the buccaneers become embroiled). 

The acting and personalities are all brilliant, performing the lines of a very sharp and witty screenplay with lots of action and stunts. Not to mention William Alwyn’s absolutely wonderful action score... the stuff where Vallo and Ojo cause trouble with the ‘King’s men’ is especially good. 

And I’ve not much more to say about this one, I think. The Crimson Pirate is said to have inspired the original Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disney in the 1950s and, asides from that, this is easily the swashbucklingest pirate movie ever made. I’ve always loved this one and always shall. If you’ve never seen it... what are you waiting for?

*For the grand-daddy of anachronisms in the film though, especially since it was obviously unintentional, check out the luxury cruiser the Queen Elizabeth in the background of one of the shots from on board a galleon. I think they moved in closer to take a look at filming.