Byleth

My Kettle Byleth Over

Byleth - The Demon Of Incest
aka Il demone dell'incesto
Italy 1972 Directed by Leopoldo Savona
Severin Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Yeah... there will have to be spoilers here as there’s not much else to talk about.

I picked up Byleth - The Demon Of Incest at the London Film & Comic Con five years ago because I liked the cover and I like the company putting it out. Leopoldo Savona is probably best remembered for a fistful of Italian Westerns he made rather than this, relatively obscure movie from late in his very short directing career. I hesitate to call it a horror film because... well let’s look at that provocative title... 

It’s true the main protagonist, Lionello (played by Mark Damon) has, in his past, been cavorting regularly with his sister Barbara (played by Claudia Gravy) in a way which takes things far beyond the realm of brotherly love. However, the plot is just about a string of women who are murdered with a three pronged dagger, which looks more like a garden implement that anything else and the film is more concerned with both these murders and Lionello’s failing mental health than any acts of incest. It’s all just talked about and by the time Lionello is reunited with Barbara in his big estate, she has gotten married and is no longer available so... yeah, no incest on show here other than the odd token kiss and declaration of passion. Which is fine... I didn’t really want to see any anyway... but it’s a bit of a misleading title in that respect. And, also in the respect, that it mentions a demon called Byleth... and this is where we get the big spoilers folks so stay away if you really don’t want to know.

There are no real twists on the plot other than my brief outline above. However I’m pretty sure most people will twig this right after the opening sequence where a local prostitute is murdered by the three pronged instrument thing (let’s just make a name up and call it ‘the mark of Byleth’ shall we?)... an atmospheric moment which is totally shattered by the intrusion of the rather nice opening titles showing old, torture filled and demonic etchings while an upbeat score plays at odds with the subject of the movie... but it’s actually Lionello committing the murders himself. He thinks it’s Byleth the demon, who he even conjures up at one point with a spell, after he can’t perform adequately in his sexual duties with a nice red headed servant girl, to kill her. But, yeah, he’s the only one who ever hears the demon and even in the scene where Barbara’s new husband see the demon himself, he realises it’s just Lionello riding around in different make-up. 

So, yeah... no actual demon in it either... bit of a rubbish title if you ask me.

Okay... so there are a few nice moments in this such as a sequence near the end where Mark can see himself projected as Byleth in the mirrors of the house racing towards him but, honestly, even with a few gratuitous sex scenes thrown in for good measure in its very short running time, the film comes off as a little lame and about as impotent as Lionello’s ability to maintain his enthusiasm for any ladies who are not his sibling. 

I’d like to say the cinematography was at least as striking as the Roger Corman or Mario Bava films this movie seems to be desperately trying to imitate but, yeah, there was nothing that made me sit up and take note at any time and it just seemed a bit pedestrian, to be honest. I mention those two people because Damon starred in one of each director’s important ones... namely The Fall Of The House Of Usher and Black Sabbath... and the film seems to be as dated in its time as it does now. It seems to be trying to harken back to those very early 1960s exercises in sustained gothic atmosphere with a little sex thrown in to attempt to make it more modern but... failing at it, it seems to me. 

The lack of any interesting twist outside the obvious conclusions that... Lionello is not a well person... gives the movie a real anticlimactic feel and even the end moments, when Lionello is stabbed by his alter ego, don’t throw up any supernaturally charged questions because it’s probably just taking place in his head and he’s just dying from the gunshot wounds inflicted on him by his sister’s husband. 

Saying all this, I kinda enjoyed it as an example of someone trying to do a Corman or Bava gothic way past its sell by date and there was an attractive entourage of naked young ladies to catch the eye. Saying that, though, my only real take home on that count was that, in olde worlde gothic era times, it looks like young ladies didn’t bother shaving thier armpits. So, yeah, I guess I learned something there... or at least had it reenforced that this was probably not something which happened in days gone byleth. 

Byleth - The Demon Of Incest is an okay film but I wouldn’t recommend it to most people. Asides from what looks like some water damage in certain scenes, the quality is pretty good for its age. Unusually for Severin, there are absolutely no extras on this thing at all... you just have a choice between the original Italian audio or a German audio track plus English subtitles. Oh... and a wonderful cover of a naked, red headed lady in peril which is easy on the eye. But, yeah, I’m not sure this would appeal to too many people out there. 

Strange Houses

Best Laid Plans

Strange Houses
by Uketsu
Pushkin Vertigo
ISBN 9781805335375

A very short review of a book I discovered when I was in a shop attached to the courtyard of Somerset House in London a little while ago (while taking in their slumbering courtyard sculpture), on the way to the August FrightFest. Uketsu is, apparently, a somewhat anonymous YouTuber in Japan who always appears masked and with a voice changer. He (or she) has also swept the reading market by storm and has recently become Japan’s best selling novelist. Two of his/her novels have so far been translated into English, including this one... Strange Houses... and a third is on its way.

This one caught my eye because of the spot varnished paperback cover of a house floor plan in shocking pink, blue and black... with a meat cleaver and a severed hand also plonked onto the design. And, when I opened it, I discovered that 90% of the spreads also included versions of a few floor plans of houses and that “The Chilling Japanese Mystery Sensation” was based on speculation by the characters (who are said to be the author and his acquaintances... but who I assume are completely fictional, despite the afterword of the book designed to make me think otherwise) and that you have to solve the mystery of the oddness of the floor plans in order to try and figure out what's really been going on with the occupants.

Which the characters, kind of do. So plans are shown to the reader and then details of various bits with highlighted areas are speculated on, as to issues like why there is a hidden crawlspace kind of passage here and where that might lead if overlapped with another level of the house... and so on and so forth. 

This is mostly told in terms of a series of conversations, like a screenplay or stage script might be written, in that, aside from various descriptions and scene settings, the characters are all named on the left with a colon and then their speech is written. to the right So, yeah, just like a script. Consequently, this makes for... well certainly a quicker read and, somehow in this case, a somewhat more immersive one too... especially once you see that a lot of the speculation about what the characters think the oddness of the plans mean is quite convincing. 

Once a second set of plans and a third main character is bought into the mix, the tale becomes not just a look at what is going on in these particular houses (one of which has been burned to the ground at some point) but also leads to who is involved in what is obviously a linked series of killings, leading to something rather more ritualistic and sinister, I would say. 

This one held my interest throughout the majority of the tale although, I have to say, I was having trouble remembering the various character names once the cast of the tale, so to speak, is opened up into new areas, involving a whole family history. And the ending... does the author land it or not? I couldn’t make up my mind but s/he certainly made a go of it by including an afterword section by one of the characters, giving the reader a slightly different perspective on things than the author (as a character) did. 

Put it this way, as I conclude here... Strange Houses was read by me over the space of just a couple of hours (if that) and, whether I thought the conclusion was a good pay off to the building mystery or not, I was certainly kept entertained for that time and I may seek out his other translated volume, Strange Pictures, at some point. Worth a look if you want something presented in a slightly different fashion for a small diversion. 

Daughter of Shanghai/King Of Chinatown

Anna-B

Daughter of Shanghai
aka Daughter Of The Orient
Directed by Robert Florey
USA 1937
Paramount Pictures
 
plus

King Of Chinatown
Directed by Nick Grinde
USA 1939
Paramount Pictures
Both screened in 35mm at NFT2 
on Saturday 20th September 2025

Warning: Some spoilers.

I’d booked three separate screenings of the Anna May Wong - The Art Of Reinvention* season at the NFT this year because I wanted to see her in more films and, honestly, three was all I could really afford, both in coin and time. And I was expecting this second visit, featuring a double bill of B movies from the late 1930s, to be a good chance to see Anna in a couple of talkies I’d not seen before, expecting her to really knock my socks off with her acting (which, to be fair, she did) and expecting not much else from them. 

What I got was so much more...

I mean, wow, these were both roughly an hour in length but they’ve got to be two of the most entertaining B movies I’ve seen in quite a while. These were rip roaringly paced aplenty and gave me an Anna May Wong I’d never seen, quite, like this before. 

For starters, she’s not talking in any stupid pidgin or broken English here... she’s fully playing a Chinese-American, born and bred in the US, just as she was in real life (the Daughter Of Shanghai title references her stage name when she goes undercover as an ‘exotic dancer’). So she just talks naturally and has a pretty amazing presence here... but in a slightly different way. Less mysterious but certainly still goddess-like. 

Also, she’s very much playing a woman of her own agency in both pictures and not some minor character or somebody doomed to die in the final act. Indeed, in Daughter Of Shanghai her part was greatly changed, tailored for her and made more important once she’d signed on the dotted line for Paramount. 

The casts in these are terrific too, for B movies. In both films, Wong’s romantic interest is played by Korean-American actor Philip Ahn, who does a really good job in both his roles... one as a police investigator and the other as a lawyer. In King Of Chinatown we have Akim Tamaroff playing a soon to be reformed, bad but getting good guy, heading up a protection racket. The real villains of both films, doubling up in tandem, are played by J. Carrol Naish and a very young Anthony Quinn. And that’s not all... in King Of Chinatown, Anna May’s father is played by Sidney Toler, just a year after he took over from the great Warner Oland as Charlie Chan. 

And, the real discovery for me... the chief henchman, a nasty piece of work... in Daughter Of Shanghai, with a moustache no less, was the great Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe. Yep, Flash Gordon himself in the same year he played Buck Rogers (which featured Ahn’s brother as the diplomat for the Saturnians, reviewed here) and was about to shoot his third and final Flash Gordon serial, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). I’d not seen him play a villain before so this was a bit of a revelation. He was obviously trying to not let himself get typecast in certain roles, I suspect... but he does it really well. 

Daughter of Shanghai, tells a story which could easily be ripped from today’s headlines in the UK because it deals with human traffickers bringing cheap labour from overseas and forcing people to take them on in employment for bed and board (while getting rich off the fee to get them safely into the US). We see how ruthless they are at the start because, on the plane crossing over to America, when a government aircraft starts following them, they pull a lever and, in the back of the plane, the floor opens and drops the hopeful people to their death. 

Anna May plays the daughter of a prosperous store in Chinatown but, her father is killed when he starts to investigate the people who are threatening him to take in illegal immigrants and... well, the villains think Anna May’s character Lan Ying Lin is dead also, but she outsmarts them and gets away without them even realising it (she manages to pull this trick off twice, when left for dead in this movie). Then, rather then wait for Ahn to find out who is behind the smuggling ring, she goes undercover and abroad, finding out for herself before being rescued by Ahn and then returning to America to find the real ring leader. At which point the film turns into shooting and fist fights which would not look out of place in the best of the Republic serials. It’s... as I said... rip roaring stuff.

In King Of Chinatown, Wong plays successful surgeon Dr. Mary Ling, who saves the life and, looks after, Akim Tamaroff’s character... partially because she thinks her dad might have been responsible for the shooting in the first place and partially because she wants the money he’s paying her privately to look after him to fund her hospital when she goes to China. And it’s another brilliant story with double crosses, a fixed boxing match and, surprisingly, a whole lot of heart coming from Tamaroff’s mob boss, who is inspired by the good doctor to change his ways and turn over a new leaf. So... of course he gets killed before the end... the reach of the Hays Code strikes again. No crime unpunished... and all that.

Both films were presented in 35mm prints on loan and, honestly, I was absolutely in love with these two movies as I watched them. These both deserve decent, UK Blu Ray releases, for sure. 

My one big disappointment of the day was what the BFI did at the start of the screening... which made my blood boil. On a notice outside the door they’d put up a so called ‘trigger warning’. It read, "DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI + KING OF CHINATOWN. King Of Chinatown contains racist attitudes, language and images including yellowface." This last, I suspect, referring to Sydney Toler’s make-up**. Honestly, these warnings really get under my skin. Are the woke brigade so unbelievably stupid that they can’t watch a movie in the context of its time. How crazy is this? I mean, if I was an ace surgeon and I went to that screening, would I be shocked that Anna May Wong was pretending to be a surgeon and maybe getting some stuff wrong? No. So why are people getting so sensitive when an actor is able to effectively pretend to be from another race. This stuff is crazy and these censors of public attitudes should be stopped. 

So, yeah, that put a slight krimp in my evening. But, honestly, Daughter Of Shanghai and King Of Chinatown were such good movies that my spirits soon lifted and I enjoyed the heck out of them (and I already want to see them again). So if you get the opportunity to check these ones out, do so is the advice I would give. 

*Alas, it was not to be. Real life stuff has caught up to me in the most unpleasant manner and I am now unable to attend that last screening, which was to be the day this blog post is published. To say I'm gutted would be an understatement.

**Also, I should probably point out here that Toler’s make-up, aphorisms and broken English further push the idea in the movie that the father is originally from China and is used to contrast Wong’s ‘born in America’ attitude towards the world... so yeah, not only effective but it serves a purpose.

My 2800th Blog Post

The Bane Of The Box Set

That’s 2800 blog posts. 

If you’re still with me here then, thanks for being one of my readers.

And if you’ve been here long enough you’ll know my 100 marker blog posts and anniversarys posts tend to be articles (or sometimes designs or sketches etc) rather than an actual review. So I thought I’d say a little bit about the problems caused by the times we movie watchers are living in... the Golden Age of Physical Media (despite what some of the big companies may be telling you... but the boutique labels know, we’ve never had it so good). 

However, the abundance of beautifully restored and transferred special editions on the Blu Ray market over the last six or seven years also has its down side, in terms of the touchy problem of storage.

Now I’m not in any way a collector of movies but I do like to pick up the odd film or eight of the UK releases, when I go into London every now and again, to augment the wealth of films I have to import from places like the US and Australia. And it gets somewhat problematic in terms of actual floorspace in your dwelling as to where you can actually walk and not worry about accidentally knocking over piles of the many thousands of Blu Rays (and the occasional DVD) on your ‘to watch’ stash. 

And I know I’m not alone in this. I’ve seen photos of people’s kitchens on Twitter, even, where they’ve had to resort to emptying the kitchen cupboards of food and utensils in order to be able to fit all the Blu Rays into their homes (I don’t have access to kitchen cupboards for this sort of thing so, I’m definitely not that bad... right?).

So one of the things I’ve been doing for about 20 plus years now is to buy plastic or cardboard storage boxes of a similar size to shoe boxes, along with a bunch of sleeved up lever arch files plus CD sleeves and, once I’ve watched a movie, the disc goes into the plastic sleeve which is then put with the other few hundred in that particular box, while the sleeve artwork and any other ephemera (such as the booklet, postcard, poster, top seal label... on US films... and, if it was attached to the shrink wrap, a front sticker with typography relating to the film used on said sticker also goes onto the binder sleeve to join the many others in that particular lever arch file (although these often get so full and bulgy that the mechanism breaks and I have to buy some more).Then the virgin plastic case goes into the recycling bin... thus saving lots of space... just not enough space to leave much room for footfall in my sexy movie lair. 

I have a day job so, since I don’t get to watch nearly as many films these days (I maybe get through two to four a week on average... instead of the twelve to fifteen I was getting through when I had more time and didn’t write this blog), I’m probably ‘emergency purchasing’ (aka limited editions before they go out of print for good) more than I am getting to watch and file on a monthly basis, sad to say.

But, it’s a good idea in principal. 

A good idea scuppered by the rise of the box set, it has to be said.

Now, I get it, the increased frequency of the sheer amount of boutique label Blu Ray boxes on the market since the pandemic (not too sure on why the correlation but I have some suspicions) is primarily because the labels have realised that people who wouldn’t buy a title or two they have the rights to, would pay extra for a themed boxed edition which also contains movies they would normally purchase. And much as the cynic in me says this is a sly move on the part of said labels, I know from podcasts with some of the people behind the labels that it cuts both ways. There’s also a huge benefit which is a) they are giving people the opportunity to see something which they might not have had the opportunity to see and that they themselves love and belive in (genuinely, I believe people at labels like Severin and Vinegar Syndrome think like this). And b) it means films that would not have been saved from the ravages of vinegar syndrome (the condition, not the label), are lovingly restored from prints and negatives that have been tracked down (sometimes over a number of years) and scanned in and saved for the ages by these labels. So, one downer and two more nobler factors for sure. 

Well maybe two downers, actually. 

The thing is, Mr. or Mrs. Blu Ray watcher and shoebox filer needs to be watching his/her single edition films as quickly as he/she can. So what this means is, if a box set is started, you know it’s going to take a number of weeks to get through (and sometimes a lot longer with those big, thorough products like All The Haunts Be Ours Volumes 1 & 2, The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle, Shawscope Volumes 1 - 3 and The incredibly Strange Films Of Ray Dennis Steckler, for example). Which means, although you really want to watch some of these movies, you tend to not start any boxed editions because you know you won’t be filing anything away for a while. Which is annoying but, sometimes needs must, as they say.

So there you have it... box sets are great (and I’m talking about physical media here... not those stupid streaming box sets housed in a virtual box which isn’t really there... that’s a term that needs to be taken out of circulation in the digital realm, for sure) but, as much as everyone loves them (don’t we all), they are also a burden when they pile up unwatched... especially when you know the packaging doesn’t allow you to file them away. 

Oh well, the downside of owning the odd movie, I guess. And if you have been reading this blog for a while... you’ll know the odder the better, right?

Anyway, that’s me done ranting on my 2800th blog post. Regular review service will resume on Saturday. All the best to you.

The Guest

Guest To Kill

The Guest 
BBC Four Episodes
September 2025

Warning: Mild spoilers.

The Guest is a four episode mini series put out by the BBC and, truth be told, it’s not the kind of show I would usually watch. However, my parents had it on in the background while I was doing something for half an hour and I made a note of it and came back to it a few days later to start it off from scratch on the BBC iPlayer. Because I found myself drawn to it, not so much by the story as I was by the acting of the two female leads, who were really giving some subtle and interesting nuances to their characters. 

These were Gabrielle Creevy as the down on her luck, poverty stricken Ria, who is not making enough money out of being a cleaner to keep herself and her boyfriend in food and, her new benefactor, the rich and powerful Fran, played by the great Eve Myles (who I best remember from Doctor Who spin off Torchwood).

Fran throws large amounts of cash in Ria’s direction and has her come to work in her… well it’s a bit of a mansion house with a neighbouring guest house. Her husband is away most of the time, seeing to his part of their company business overseas and, Fran takes to Ria and, cautiously, Ria also is somewhat seduced by Fran’s lifestyle. But there’s always a catch and as she starts to explore the fate of the previous cleaner, the contents of the ‘forbidden, locked room’ and starts paying attention to what business Fran’s public facing job is fronting (especially when she’s promoted to being her PA), things take on a sinister turn.

Not least of which is when Ria accidentally murders, in self defence, a suitor who at first seems to be just someone she met on a dating app but, it’s not too long when, despite her investigations and text messages from his phone after he’s very much deceased, she realises he also has a link to whatever’s going on at the house that Fran and her husband Simon built.

The story did not, I have to say, go where I wanted it to go… I was expecting more of a very classic horror element to creep into this by the third episode (I thought they were just being really clever about things, okay?) but it’s more than made up for in the chemistry between Fran and Ria. These are not two dimensional characters and they both carry hidden secrets. Creevy plays it very understated but less is definitely more and you can see her working things out behind her eyes as she progresses further down the rabbit hole. And as for Eve Myles performance as Fran… it’s probably the best I’ve seen her. You can see how her character has let herself become something of a monster over the years but there are also some heart rending scenes where you realise just how she’s gravitated to this and Miles take on the role is so pinpoint on the more, turn on a dime, slightly unstable parts of her personality that... well, like I said, best performance I’ve seen her do. Both actresses rely on the physicality of their expressions and the way they express and change their attitude from minute to minute... well, it’s just a pleasure to watch. 

And I think that’s me done with this one, actually. Like I said, The Guest is not my normal go to for TV entertainment but serendipity shone and I stumbled on a really interesting piece of work here. I think the story could have been a little more complex or, perhaps, a little more explored as there are some very short hand emotional beats on some of the supporting characters (perhaps another episode would have been beneficial) but, yeah, this one has some breathtaking acting performances and I will certainly try to put this one onto people’s radar, I think. 

The Mummy Returns

Karnak... 
And How To Get It

The Mummy Returns
USA 2001
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Universal UK Blu Ray

Warning: Some major spoilers.

The Mummy Returns was my most looked forward to movie going experience of 2001, I suspect. The Mummy, reviewed here, was probably the best, big budget, old school adventure movie since the first of the Indiana Jones movies and a whole bunch of us had tickets to see the sequel in a big West End cinema in London’s Leicester Square on its first weekend. I had a very strange experience with this the very first time I saw it though... my friends all loved it but I was really disappointed in it that first screening. I don’t know why but I suspect this is the first of a few films where there was so much stuff thrown at the screen that maybe my mind got distracted and couldn’t process it all on the first run. Fortunately, because my parents had loved the first one and wanted to see this one, I had promised to take them to see it as soon as it opened in my local cinema the following week. I’m grateful that I did because, bizarrely, I absolutely loved it the second time around and, looking at it now, it certainly does still hold up well. 

It’s not as good as the first movie but it does have a lot going for it and, above all, it leaned more into what the first film did for a lot of its running time... temper down the horror aspects and stick more with the action and humour. Not always the best tactic, granted but, yeah, it works really well here. 

All the big guns from the previous film are back for the second helpings too and, they certainly haven’t steered clear of certain characters taking on a new depth in terms of growth and some blatant tweaks. We’ve got Brendan Fraser back as Rick O’ Connor, Rachel Weisz back as Evelyn (now Rick’s wife), John Hannah back as Evelyn’s brother Jonathan, Oded Fehr back as Ardeth Bay, Patricia Velasquez as Anck-Su-Namun and Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep. 

Some of the characters are expanded thusly... Rick O’ Connel discovers the tattoo on his arm from the orphanage as a kid is a sign that he’s an honourary member of the Medjai (Ardeth Bay’s crowd), Evelyn is actually a rebirth of Princess Nefertiri (the living family line of the daughter of the king killed by Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun at the start of the previous movie) and Patricia Velasquez is the living embodiment of Anck-Su-Namun in the 20th century... and who chooses to host Anck-Su-Namun’s soul in her body.

There are also three very important new characters... Freddie Boath plays Alex (the son of the O’ Connell’s), Shaun Parkes plays Izzy (an old ‘friend’ of Rick) and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson makes his non-wrestling debut as The Scorpion King who, although he’s one of the film’s villains, was liked so much by the crowds here that he spun off into the first film of what became a Scorpion King franchise. 

Okay... not going over the plot here because a) I don’t particularly want to spoil it anymore than I’m going to in a minute and b) I’m sure most people would have seen this one by now. But, of note in this one are the following...

There are a couple of great fights between Rachel Weisz and Patricia Velasquez, taking place in ancient Egypt in one instance and also the current setting of the film, 1933 (around a decade after the events in the first movie) and, considering they are both wearing masks for the majority of the first fight and the dynamic moves and flips the ladies perform, well, you’d think they had a really good couple of stunt doubles. Not so, though. It turns out that both these actresses trained for these fights for 5 months and no stunt performers were involved. So, yeah... those fights are actually quite something in terms of the actresses in question. There’s also a nice replay of the ancient murder scene from the start of The Mummy but seen from Nefertiri’s point of view, watching from afar, which explains why the king’s guards were able to arrive at the scene of the crime almost immediately. 

Alex accidentally knocks down all the support columns in a temple near the start, in the exact same configuration as Evelyn did with the library book shelves in the first movie. Later, when he’s trying to resurrect Evelyn back from the dead using The Book Of The Dead from the first film, he stumbles reading the exact same symbol/character that Jonathan did in the first film... down to using his arms to mimic the flight of a bird, just as John Hannah did. I don’t know who had the idea but, apparently, the 10 year old Freddie Boath who plays Alex cited The Mummy as his favourite film and had seen it at least 30 times. So he quickly became something of an on set advisor for the cast and crew between his scenes and, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was his idea to make the wing flap mannerism when he gets stuck at that same word. Just conjecture though and, either way, it’s a really nice touch. 

Oh wait... did I say Evelyn’s resurrection scene? Nobody ever sees this one coming (including me) but, around half an hour from the end, once Alex has been rescued from kidnappers and also from having the life sucked out of him by the bracelet of Anubis, Evelyn is killed. Run through by Anck-Su-Namun in a perfectly timed scene which really takes you by surprise. And, to the director’s credit, this doesn’t play as a throw away moment. She has a proper ‘last words’ death scene and Rick enters a temple after Imhotep (and the reincarnated Scorpion King), in full vengeance mode. Director Sommers even does a nice series of shots using different takes in different lighting environments all crosscut together of Rick walking down a tunnel to emphasis his ferocity... which is a really nice touch. So the audience really feels the loss of Evelyn but then, wonderfully, her son manages to resurrect her (and Nefertiri co-sharing her body) and she returns to kick ass and help out in the final battle between good and evil. This is all sold really well and, once again, my hats off to the writer/director. 

Anck-Su-Namun also has her own resurrection scene earlier in the movie and I suspect it’s more than just coincidence that it plays out near a body of water... which I suspect is a veiled reference to scenes which were shot but, alas, excised before release - and never re-found - of a scene between Boris Karloff and Zita Johann in the 1932 production of The Mummy (reviewed here). 

Unfortunately, due to various reasons (depending on who you believe), Jerry Goldsmith didn’t return to score this one... instead we have Alan Silvestri doing his own thing with the music and, although I wonder how good a Goldsmith soundtrack might have been for this film, Silvestri does a really good job at bringing some big themes and exciting action music into this one. 

And I think that’s me about done on The Mummy’s Return. Definitely not a jump on movie, you’d have to see the first one if you want to get the most from it but, still, a great action adventure tale with a lot of humour and, once again, the writer/director makes the audience feel like they’re in on the joke with all the genre clichés and tropes... rather than being treated as idiots. I have a lot of time for this director... and these movies... and they’re just the ticket if you want big, periodical action mixed into your viewing experience. A pretty great sequel, it has to be said. 

The Long Walk

No Golden Wonders

The Long Walk
Directed by Francis Lawrence
USA 2025
Lionsgate
UK cinema release print

Warning: I originally intended to write this review without spoilers but, so many thick headed websites have completely failed to catch on to anything but the lowest common denominator, surface interpretation of the ending that I’m going to have to address it here in a special spoiler section at the end... so don’t read past that if you don’t want to know. Watch the movie first and then, maybe, come back to me. 

I first read The Long Walk in a collection of four novels called The Bachman Books back in 1985. I would have been 17 years old and I remember thinking to myself that, now that Richard Bachman had just been outed as being a pen name of Stephen King, then somebody’s bound to make this one into a movie soon, right? It was a nice little story and I knew it would surely lend itself to a decent, cinematic interpretation.

Well, it looks like I had to wait 40 years for that to happen but it’s finally here. And I was already going to see this but, about a month ago, I was fortunate enough to be sitting in a screening of a movie at FrightFest (I forget which one), when they did a sneak preview of the first reel of this movie. Basically the first 22 minutes or so... up to and including the first ‘kill’ of the movie. Bad for the movie this preview played with because, it blew the other movie out of the water. So I was definitely up for seeing this as soon as it hit my local cinema.

And, yes, the wait was worth it because director Francis Lawrence has brought one of the year’s best movies to the screen. It deviates very slightly from what I can remember of the novel but, it makes a beautiful companion piece and the ending, which people seem to be almost deliberately misinterpreting on professional websites, is absolutely brilliant. I mean, come on guys... sometimes a film isn’t about what’s immediately on the surface. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Okay, so the basic premise of The Long Walk is this. In a dystopian future, young male adults all sign up for The Long Walk once a year and, by lottery, 50 people are selected. It’s a public demonstration of giving a devastated population a regard for a good work ethic and to give people a chance of hope, if they happen to survive. They then have to walk for as long as they can, not letting their speed drop below three miles an hour over a number of days. If they drop the speed they are given a ten second warning, then two more whereby, if they still can’t carry on at that speed (due to thier foot being broken or some other issue, plus of course exhaustion), they are shot in the head. When there is only one survivor left, the walk stops and they are given a huge, life changing cash prize and are granted one wish. 

The film follows the walkers (not the crisps) as they talk and discuss and just walk for almost two hours of movie, periodically getting shot dead and going through all kinds of harsh weather without once being allowed to rest. 

There are two male leads in this. Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour) plays Raymond Garraty, contestant number 47 and the always brilliant David Jonsson plays Peter McVries, contestant number 23, with the film focussing on their growing friendship and revealing background on their characters as the walk progresses. Egged on by the human representation of the villainy of the piece, The Major, played chillingly by the great Mark Hamill.

And it’s brilliant and, maybe not quite brutal as many critics have called it but certainly a little gruelling (and occasionally gory, such as a scene involving some tank tracks from the vehicles which constantly follow the walkers, carrying the military who are going to pop out and shoot them dead when the time comes). The whole thing is very suspenseful and I can’t help but think that Alfred Hitchcock would even have appreciated this one, to an extent. 

All this and a really great score by composer Jeremiah Fraites which helps build the tension nicely, using almost minimalist ostinatos interspersed with beautiful, poignant melodies at key points... so of course there’s no proper CD release of this at time of writing. And then there’s the ending...

Okay, this is spoilers now, don’t read past here until you’ve seen the movie...

The final two left in the walk by the end of the tale are Garraty and McVries, who have built a solid friendship and are moved by each other’s stories of why they want to win the money and the wish for and what they would do with said wish once they get it. Garraty wants to ask for one of the carbines the military are carrying as his wish, so he can shoot The Major dead there and then because of something which has happened to him in his past. So McVries deliberately stops so Garraty can win but, Garraty goes back for him and gets him moving again, with the two of them both on their final warning (next stop is instant death)... and once Garraty gets McVries interested in carrying on, he lets him get ahead and just stops so that McVries can win... without him at first realising what has happened. So he makes Garraty’s wish come true, gets the carbine and kills The Major for him. Then, with the crowd of spectators and all the military just suddenly vanished for no apparent reason, he just carries on walking into the sunset (so to speak). And people have been reporting this as some kind of demonstration that Garraty is the one actually left standing. 

Because that’s what they see without thinking about why they are seeing the ending done in this poetic, almost dream like manner, I guess. 

Um... nope. 

I don’t think McVries survived at all. It’s made pretty clear that if he kills the major, he’ll be shot dead by the military looking on in front of the huge crowd of walk supporters gathered to see the finish. And then they just all are suddenly not there? No, I think it’s obvious by this point that McVries is already dead and this is what happened in his dead mind’s view of events. I think that he either didn’t get successfully saved by Garraty when he tried to sacrifice himself or... maybe he did but as soon as he killed The Major he was shot dead too. He may not realise it yet but, either way, he’s dead. It’s the only explanation for the way the last shot of the movie plays out, I reckon.

Does this make The Long Walk this year’s Saint Maud (reviewed here) in terms of ending interpretations... well, yeah, maybe. I don’t know why people aren’t picking up on this stuff because, to me it’s obvious but, either way, there are no happy endings here. The film is a relentless machine of suspense and so earns my respect and admiration, with that dream state ending just being the cherry on top of the cake, as far as I’m concerned. 

And if that isn’t a recommendation for The Long Walk then I don’t know what is. This one is absolutely phenomenal and I hope it does huge at the box office (although my local Cineworld stupidly showed it in the smallest screen they had... that’s just silly). Definitely catch this one with a cinema full of people... you will, eventually, hear more than just a pin drop. 

Wild Cards - House Rules

Loveday To Be Here

Wild Cards - House Rules 
Edited by George R. R. Martin
Assisted by Melinda M. Snodgrass
Harper Voyager
ISBN 9780008283612

House Rules is, by my count, the 33rd novel in the Wild Cards series of books I’ve been reading since the 1980s. This one was published and purchased by me last year and so, apologies for not getting to this review sooner but my book pile was a little more unmanageable than usual this year. 

This one opens, as did at least one of the other recent ones (if memory serves) with a three page summation of the main points of the Wild Cards world and, if you’re not familiar with the story of the Wild Cards virus from the planet Takis, then a very bare bones summation may be... a horrible alien virus swept the Earth in the 1940s and you and your future generations either die when the Wild Card gene pops up in your natural life cycle, or you are a nat (normal person, unaffected), a mutated Joker, a super-powered being (an Ace) or something in between those last two (a Deuce). But you wouldn’t want to start on the books this late in the series anyway so, go back because, the Earth has its own alternate evolution from the 1940s onward as a result and the various writers who create these ‘mosaic novels’ have created an entire history of this world leading to the present day.

And this one takes place on an island off the coast of Cornwall called Keun, protected by a disappearing causeway when the tide is high. Here a very rich and mysterious ace called Jago Branok has rebuilt a famous manor called Loveday House. And every month or so he invites different guests he’s researched for a weekend party in the house. But you don’t want to go out on the grounds at night and you certainly don’t want ot be wandering the corridors of this vast house alone without one of the servants to guide you... you may find yourself a little lost.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, that the Wild Cards books found themselves digging into the concept of a multiverse and the unique thing about Loveday House, which is a really dangerous place to the curious and unescorted, is that it is a hub for different worlds which share the same point in time and multidimensional space as this version of Loveday. And, of course, because this is a Wild Cards book, it doesn’t once revert to having multiple heroes and villains from multiple dimensions meet each other in battle (other than one special ‘spectre’, I’ll leave it at that)... instead, the idea is explored by a group of different stories, each taking place at a different party at Loveday... all woven together by the bookends and linking narratives told from the viewpoint of Mr. Gary Bushorn, in story excerpts by Stephen Leigh. Leigh also writes the story of the first party which Gary attends, called Promises Redux. Gary then, after some shenanigans, stays on at the house to be the dance master for Jago and is, of course, the constant story arc observer that weaves through the rest of the stories.

In this story we also meet the butler, who looks like, sounds like and is called Hitchcock... rescued from a parallel world where, presumably, Hitchcock was not a director. To quote Caroline Spector’s later story, “‘Good evening,’ he said, drawing out evening...”, which is exactly how I do my Alfred Hitchcock impression in real life. 

Now there aren’t that many appearances by known aces but there are a few which will delight readers of the previous novels... so Dr. Bradley Finn, the centaur joker, is one of the guests in the first story. Topper and Ink also appear in one of the stories here too and... oh, wait, I’ll get to Herne The Hunter in a minute.

The second story, Lady Sri Extricates Herself, Emerging Not Entirely Unscathed by Mary Anne Mohanra, features an ace I’m pretty sure we’ve met before and is another wonderful story set in the house, where things get kind of out of hand (and things getting out of hand usually means at least one person meets their death at the house, in this particular tome). This one’s a really delightful story about embracing love in unexpected places, too.

Next up is Caroline Spector’s Bah, Humbug, Murder... a Christmas tale which is also a sort of drawing room murder mystery, which is always a favourite around that season. This one also includes Constance, the Ace powered dress designer who we first met in a story where she killed one of the Kray twins in the Wild Cards version of the UK in the 1960s. So, she’s quite old now at the time of this story but she’s certainly no less fun and, of course, solves the murder like an Ace version of Miss Marple. 

After this we have Two Lovedays by Peter Newman, where the owner and builder of the original house, at least one of her multiversal versions, sets ace against ace (including a few you may also remember from the British set cycle of Wild Cards novels) and nearly succeeds in her power play. 

The fifth tale is called The Nautilus Pattern by Kevin Andrew Murphy which tells its story from the viewpoint of the owner of the local antique shop and his wife, an ex-porn star especially remembered for appearing with Jokers in Joker-porn movies in her youth. This one does indeed include Herne The Hunter and said wife who was his ex, has believed him dead all these years since the battle of The Rox, which involved Bloat, who readers of the earlier books will certainly remember.* 

The sixth and final tale before the concluding bookends is Raw Deal by Peader Ó Guilín. This is probably the nastiest of the stories but it’s no less entertaining and, well, the cost of this one certainly threatens to rock the status quo of Loveday House and Lord Jago Branok’s parties. This one also mentions an alternate reality Hitchcock film called The Fish (as opposed to The Birds) and, I for one, would like to know what establishment Jetman is referring to when he says that some unnamed place is “the best comic shop in London” because, frankly, very few comic shops in my country’s capital manage to stock a decent supply of back issues these days. 

And what can I say, really, other than that which I say whenever I read a new Wild Cards novel... it’s an absolute joy to read. There are actually no dud stories here again and, yeah, no matter if the writer is new to me or a seasoned favourite, it always captures my imagination and leads me back into the world of the Wild Card characters in the most addictive way possible. I had an absolutely wonderful time with this one again but, asides from my usual warning about House Rules not being a jump on point (you should always read these novels from the very start, I would say), then fans of the Wild Cards novels as a whole should really give this one a go. It’s brilliant and I, once again, never wanted it to end.

*Although this is one of those Wild Card books which doesn’t have a Croyd Crenson sighting, this time around... as far as I could tell, anyway.

The Toll Of The Sea

Sleepless In Sea Toll

The Toll Of The Sea
USA 1922
Directed by Chester M Franklin
Screened at NFT2 on Sunday 7th September 2025

“NOTE: The last sequence of THE TOLL OF THE SEA has not survived. In order to complete the film, new footage of the Pacific Ocean was shot in October 1985 with an authentic two-colour Technicolor camera. Titles for the closing sequence have been recreated from Frances Marion's original scenario.”

The Toll Of The Sea was considered lost for a long time before most of the original negative was rediscovered in the 1960s. Which would explain why the two strip technicolour presentation with live piano accompaniment, which I saw as part of the BFIs Anna May Wong - The Art Of Reinvention season at the NFT, included the disclaimer above. 

The film was introduced by Anna Wong, Anna May Wong’s niece (yeah, I’m not sure how that works since the great star was born in 1905), who gave the audience a quick crash course and said this was considered her breakout movie (although they were also showing Song that same afternoon and, if the tube strike hadn’t been looming within the next couple of hours, I would probably have tried to snag a ticket for that too). And, I guess that’s probably right... because Miss Wong was spotted by Douglas Fairbanks Jr when he was watching this movie at the cinema and he decided to cast her in a role in his lavish production of The Thief Of Bagdad (yeah, that’s how that version of the movie spells it folks... don’t moan at me, please). 

Miss Wong, the niece, also mentioned two American pieces of ephemera of the last couple of decades as proof that her legend and importance as an Asian actress (even though she was born in Los Angeles and never actually went to China for a few decades, wrongfooting the press in her early career with her ‘American as apple pie’ persona) has lived on (which it certainly has)... in the form of Mattel’s special Anna May Wong Barbie (which I coincidentally had on order from eBay from a few nights before) and the American quarters bearing her likeness (which... ditto!). 

And then they screened the film, which was a Chinese based spin on Madama Butterfly (this was also at least the third motion picture to be called The Toll Of The Sea but the other two didn’t make use of the same source material). Here, Anna May Wong plays Lotus Flower, who falls in love with American Allen Carver, played by Kenneth Harlan, who reminded me a lot of a young Colin Clive, truth be told. 

Now, the two strip technicolour on the 35mm print they were showing this on looked pretty good to me and not quite as rough around the edges as I remembered from other films using the process restored on DVD and Blu Ray. So that was fine. What surprised me a little is, even though the film runs for barely longer than 50 minutes, there really are not that many locations and, despite being in the days of pre-sound, the camera wasn’t moving a heck of a lot either. But it was good enough and had other things going for it.

Primarily the tragic figure of Lotus Blossom, who is played absolutely beautifully by Anna May Wong here. Now, it would be easy (and so true) to say she steals the show from everybody else in this film. I mean, she is the only person you are looking at when you have the choice... but it would also be true to say that she carries a lot of the movie almost solo because, I think on only two, maybe three occasions, does the camera ever leave her to switch to a scenario where she is not present. And even then, in at least one of those, the edit is continually cross cutting between what’s going on in one place and Anna May Wong performing solo, with her character waiting to find out what is going on in another. 

So, yeah, after witnessing her brilliance in both Piccadilly (reviewed here https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2010/03/piccadilly.html in only my second post on this blog) and Shanghai Express (review coming soon, probably next year, it's written but I want to finish a box off before publishing the reviews) I finally got to see a film, however brief, where this leading lady dominated the picture and, she certainly does that with her emotive spates of intense misery interpolated with the innocent naivete of her character. If some wily company would get it into their head to put this thing out on Blu Ray (preferably as part of an Anna May Wong box set), then I’ll definitely be lining up for that one (I'm looking in your direction, Eureka Masters Of Cinema and the BFI labels). 

So I think that’s me pretty much done on The Toll Of The Sea but, its not a presentation I shall forget in a hurry. I’ll be seeing a few more of this lady’s films at the NFT later in the month and so I will report back here when that’s done. 

The Conjuring - Last Rites

Warren Piece

The Conjuring - Last Rites
Directed by Michael Chaves
Canada/USA 2025
Atomic Monster
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Slight plot spoilers.

The Conjuring - Last Rites is the fourth and, allegedly (don’t believe it for a minute unless the box office really tanks), final of the main, pure stream of the Conjuringverse (or Warrenverse would perhaps be more apt?) movies which, by my count, makes it the seventh of the ten films in the franchise to date to feature Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga  as real life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Now, I heard a really allergic review to this movie by one of my favourite reviewers which damned this film for being about something that has since been debunked (again, allegedly) and for going to way too supernatural places that are unlikely to have happened in real life. 

All I will say about that is that, since The Conjuring 2 - The Enfield Case (as it was known over here in the UK and reviewed by me here) it’s pretty obvious the films... which originally included input from The Warrens themselves, in the very early stages and were designed to be scary dramatisations, if memory serves... are extremely enhanced, to say the least, renderings of what may or may not have happened. And I personally don’t really care... these were designed to be supernatural entertainments, first and foremost so, not bothered, it’s not a problem for me.

Maybe that’s why I responded so positively to this one. 

The film starts off in 1966 when Lorraine is pregnant with their child Judy and The Warrens go to try and help a young woman being plagued by a demon in a mirror. It goes wrong and the unborn baby is affected and stillborn... for about a minute... before being brought back to life by the power of prayer and, of course, she grows up to be the child we are familiar with, at different ages, in the previous films in the franchise. We then jump 20 years to the main timeline of the film, where Ed is still suffering from the dodgy heart condition that plagued him during The Conjuring - The Devil Made Me Do It (reviewed here) and so the couple, while still giving lectures, have retired from helping people with their ‘special set of skills’. However, after the mirror from the opening of the movie turns up in another state and the demon within starts terrorising another family, it’s not too long before, due to their daughter finding herself pulled to the house where the evil now dwells, The Warrens are back on the case. 

Okay, so this is the usual melange of clichéd formula including camera misdirection, almost subconscious levels of sound design, lurking dread and jump scares but, as I’ve mentioned before in regards to these films, the people involved in these really know how to do these things well and it works in spades in this one. This is touted as a last hurrah for the main characters and, although I said I’m not ruling out another one, the ending of this movie very much goes out of its way to bring some closure to the lives of Ed and Lorraine Warren, so if they do decide not to do another one, this has an appropriate ending as a jumping off point, at least. 

And, like I said, I really loved this one. I didn’t find the criticisms I’ve heard against the film hold up in any way and I was generally impressed with it. The only two movies in this whole franchise I’d not really got on with are the previous movie, The Devil Made Me Do It and the first of the three Annabelle spin offs. This one, I’m glad to say, is certainly a lot better than those two at any rate and so I was pretty happy throughout the screening. And I don’t want to say too much else about The Conjuring - Last Rites because I dont want to spoil anything so, other than to say it had some nice cameos at the end and an excellent score by Benjamin Wallfisch (which, of course, hasn’t had a proper CD release at time of writing, so I guess I won’t be able to listen to the score away from the movie again), I'll leave it there. So... yeah... I thought this one was a pretty decent demonic entity movie and I’ll definitely be in line for the Blu Ray when it gets a release.

Perry Mason Series 2 (2023)

This Never Happened 
To The Other Della

Perry Mason
Season 2 - 8 episodes
March - April 2023
HBO 
Chinese Blu Ray 

Warning: Some spoilers

So the second and, regrettably, final series of the latest incarnation of the Perry Mason TV show, very loosely based on the novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, sees the return of Matthew Rhys as Perry, his now partner Della Street, played once more by Juliet Rylance and the excellent Chris Chalk as his investigator (and ex-cop from the first series), Paul Drake. 

And it’s all pretty great... perhaps even better than the first season. 

This one involves the murder of the son of the boss of a corrupt, crooked oil man and two young men who are accused of his shooting. Sworn off criminal cases since the outcome of the first season, Perry and the gang go right back into it, defending the two gentlemen but, as we soon find out, through the course of the investigation, the two may not be as innocent as they at first seem. 

And like the first one, the show does some great work looking like a somewhat authentic 1930s milieu. I spotted a drawing of a certain big ape in the background of one of the shots (one of the two accused is a good artist and is accepted into art school... although he only hears about this after he is being held with his brother in a jail cell) dated it for me as being set in 1933 and, yeah, it’s confirmed later when Perry takes his young son to see King Kong (reviewed here) at the cinema. 

It all feels right to the period and, I’d have to say the art direction on this show is absolutely awesome. And, of course, the language and colour of the streets is perhaps more reflective of the times than, say, a movie of the time made contemporary to that period would be allowed to be (much like the use of language, slang and attitudes found in a James Ellroy novel set in, say, the 1940s or 1950s). 

The cast are all terrific and, although Perry’s former ‘friend with benefits’ Lupe, played by Veronica Falcón, returns for the first episode, she’s moved out of the narrative fairly quickly in order to build a new romantic interest for Perry in the shape of his son’s teacher, played by the always watchable Katherine Waterston. Another new actor to this, but only for the first couple of episodes and, used something as a plot device, is Sean Astin as a greedy and expanding store owner. 

Shea Wigham returns as Perry’s former investigator Pete Strickland but, now working for Hamlton Berger (a returning Justin Kirk), he has to balance his friendship with Perry with the fact that he is working against him in the case that Perry is working on and, yeah, the two do come into some pretty heavy conflict which has big repercussions for Perry as he finishes this second season. 

Also on board this time is the great Hope Davis but, her character is used in an interesting way and, though she doesn’t exactly have a huge spotlight in the series, she does have a lasting presence on the proceedings. Della Street also has a new flame in this, with Jen Tullock playing a character who, while not named as such, is based on real life Hollywood screenwriter Anita Loos. And the two of them are pretty good together in the show, it has to be said.

Okay, it looks like this is one of my shorter reviews but, this show really had some bite to it and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Gritty in all the right places and with some really great cliffhangers. The conclusion of the trial is not about the sudden piece of shock evidence which gets everyone off and, though there is some big evidence given, it’s mostly resolved behind closed doors and, well, there are repercussions for Perry due to something which is found hidden in his office when the opposing legal team have broken into it... lets just put it that way. I would love to see where a third season of Perry Mason would go but, alas, this one doesn’t seem to have been renewed, for whatever reason. A pity. Despite rumours to the contrary, we are not yet living in a time of television of great quality so, when a show does come along which does absolutely everything right, you’d like it to keep going.

Kraven The Hunter

Join Kraven’s 
Hew Ground

Kraven The Hunter
UK/Iceland/Canada/USA 2024
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Columbia UK Blu Ray

Warning: This one has all the spoilers.

I think the suits in Hollywood are having trouble scratching their heads and wondering why their movie version of Kraven The Hunter failed. Well, pandemic aside, I saw pretty much every Marvel movie at the cinema whether I wanted to or not because I knew I’d really need to get a review of it up on my blog... and even I didn’t manage to catch this movie at the cinema. And the answer to why it failed at the box office is three fold and simple... and I say this because, now I’ve finally caught up to it (authenticity to the characters aside) it’s actually a pretty good movie. 

Okay, this movie failed because: Firstly it was following on from two other Columbia branded Marvel movies in the same year, the not well received Madame Web (reviewed here) and the okay but worst in the series Venom - The Last Dance (reviewed here)... which didn’t do it much favours, they should have maybe left an eight month gap between films. Secondly, the trailers for this thing looked terrible and, I’m pretty sure people my age, who remember the character from the 1960s and 70s, were a little baffled as to how a major villain from The Amazing Spider-Man comic was a) in a movie without Spider-Man and b) being portrayed as some kind of anti-hero rather than the bad guy he always was... and perhaps the comic character changed in the 90s or after but, yeah, this is not the Kraven I know (the Kraven I knew best was from the time when he joined The Sinister Six and also from the model kit I had as a kid, of Spider-Man perched on a wooden bannister, webbing a fallen Kraven on the floor). 

And even then, I would still have been up for catching this thing at the cinema and, I certainly planned to... but it was released mid-December 2024 and, I’m sorry, studio bosses need to realise that in the lead up to Christmas, when people are still buying and wrapping presents, not to mention writing and sending cards... and in the downtime just after when people are seeing friends and family... nope, people are not going to be interested in trying to plan their life around the stupidly inappropriate times these things are being shown at in the cinema. So, yeah, I believe that’s why this film failed and made such a loss for the company. 

Which is a shame because, as I said, it’s not a bad movie.

The film starts off  really strongly with Kraven (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) infiltrating a maximum security prison in order to kill the leader of a drugs/weapons cartel. After escaping we flash back to his childhood, with his brother and his dad (played by Russell Crowe) where we get his origin... which is contentious. In the comics he was just a relatively strong guy who was an expert hunter (which is why J. Jonah Jameson originally hired him to hunt Spider-Man) but, in this version of the story he’s given a potion to heal his wounds while simultaneously having the blood of a lion enter his system... all of which brings him back to life and gives him superhuman powers (oh, right, Marvel science then). Again, maybe this origin was retrofitted into the comics at some point but, if it was, I’m unaware of it. 

And then he becomes a kind of assassin who goes around taking out all the bad guys and, annually, checking in on his brother whom he deserted when they were kids. And then, as a result of him killing the guy at the start of the film, the global gangs are in a power struggle which also includes Kraven’s gang boss dad and results in his brother getting kidnapped.

And... it’s mostly pretty good. I’m saying that again because I’m going to talk about the bad stuff now and I don’t really want it to overshadow the positive stuff.

The thing is, there’s a woman who is Kraven’s pilot and we only see her from behind near the start of the movie and then, later, she’s referenced as she gives his leading lady, Calypso (played by Ariana DeBose) a lift to the jungle to meet up with him. So she’s obviously being kept in the shadows so she can be revealed as somebody important from the Marvel universe later in the movie... but that doesn’t happen. She just vanishes from the movie with no more mention of her (and we never get to see her face properly). So... I know this film had a somewhat troubled production and had to have some reshoots so, I’m wondering now if this big reveal was maybe cut to save for a later, never to be made sequel?

Secondly, the main villain here is The Rhino... another Spider-Man villain in a movie where the web head is nowhere to be seen. Okay, in the comics this was just a big guy in a Rhino onesy and, that would have suited me fine. Here, he’s just someone who can transform himself into a were-rhino when he taps into certain drugs. It all looks pretty awful guys. 

Thirdly... and I saw this coming a mile off because his talent for voice mimicry is highlighted throughout the movie.... Kraven’s brother becomes a third Spider-Man villain, The Chameleon, at the end of the film. And he does it by, in a completely dumbfounding and unexplained fashion, transforming into different people when required. I mean, literally morphing into them at will. What nonsense! In the comics he was a guy with a metal head who would slip realistic, latex masks over his noggin and mimic their voices to become them. Which sounds bad, I know but, heck, Tom Cruise and co have been doing that in nearly every Mission Impossible movie made so, yeah, they could have gotten away with it here too. And also, because it’s obviously planned for a potential sequel (again, this looks like it will never happen) then it’s just treated as a throwaway scene too... it doesn’t really work, in all honesty. 

And that’s me pretty much done with Kraven The Hunter. An actually pretty good film, despite those negatives and, I have to say I had a pretty good time with most of it. If you are a fan of action movies with a fair amount of violence and a little bit of goriness, then it’s worth giving a go. But I don’t think the franchise is going anywhere after this one, alas. 

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday

Hulot Goes There

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
aka Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot
France 1953
Directed by Jacques Tati
Studio Canal UK Blu Ray

For over five decades now, my dad has been moaning at me to watch both Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle, the first direct sequel (or so I’m told). They absolutely cracked him up when he was a kid and for many years to come. Well, this year I finally bit the bullet by getting him, for his birthday, a Blu Ray box set of, apparently, all of Jacques Tati’s films and this one, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, aka Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, is the first one we were watching together. 

And I have to say, I’m almost grudgingly impressed by it. 

Not at first... although it starts off humorously enough, with a bunch of holiday goers waiting at the platform of a station. Then the tannoy spouting typically incomprehensible caterwaulings gets the fifty or so people to dash under the platform via stairs and arrive on the opposite platform, only for the tannoy to wail once again and for them to all dash back... and so on. 

We have all the holiday people arriving at the ‘typical’ coastal town of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer and checking into a hotel... and then director Tati, playing Mr. Hulot, turns up and things start going wrong for all and sundry. And although the film is packed full of humourous and, I have to say, extremely clever visual and audio gags (and I mean packed, there’s a heck of a lot going on in this movie) it took me a while to fall into step with it.

That is until the patient and persistent magic of the film slowly started to grow on me and I did find myself laughing at many points. And although Tati is absolutely brilliant with all his mannerisms and mishaps in this, my real window into this world was one of the other of the many... I guess in some ways eccentric... characters that populate the film. For instance, there’s the man who follows his wife around all movie but who never fails to see the full picture as he observes everything happening around him and seeing just what trouble Hulot is causing (and in some cases, not causing and is not really responsible for). 

But the character who did it for me the most is Martine, played by Nathalie Pascaud. She was a friend of Tati’s and had no other acting roles after other than a brief (I’m assuming a small part) turn in a movie ten years later. She didn’t actually pursue a career as an actress but, she should have, she’s absolutely fabulous in this. And, like the wandering guy mentioned in the paragraph above, she observes quite a lot of the shenanigans going on and takes a lot of joy from the chaos happening in Hulot’s wake, even befriending him towards the end of the film and dancing with him in the barely attended costume ball. I really wanted her to have a more romantic entanglement with the character but she’s delightful putting a kind of epilogue on the film, as she tries to suppress a laugh about her times at the sea side when somebody shows her a snapshot of Hulot. She was my window into the main character... to the point where I already want to watch the movie again, as I will now see it in a different light. Maybe I’ll watch the 1978 amended version (recut by and with new inserts by, Tati himself), which is also included on the disc.

And, of course, the film is all about random acts of comedy, nicely observed and captured by the director. A film full of collected moments, rather than a story, for sure. So I might mention the kid’s head popping up through the steering wheel of the bus, the time Tati dries himself off with a towel (not realising he’s standing against a post and the towel is going nowhere near him), the card game where a guy on a revolving chair gets turned around and back without realising, wrecking two games at once and leading to much verbal castigation... and a wonderful and surreally nonsensical sequence on a tennis court which has had me going over the dynamics of the ‘Hulot serve’ whenever I think on it... which seems to be a lot in the last couple of days. 

There are also little touches of visual poetry here and there too... such as, after the regular assembling of all the guests at the hotel for meals, shots of the deserted beach and the debris left by the holiday makers.

Looking at it now, I can see how there might be a through line in both French and international cinema from the popular figurehead of French comedy Tati, to his influence on directors like, I’m sure, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. And I would be not surprised in the least to find the strong influence of Tati’s Hulot in the genetic DNA of Peter Sellar’s version of Inspector Jacques Clouseau, who even shares a first name with the director, possibly in homage to him.

And that’s me done on Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, I think. Certain fan bases might want to note that, as far as I can tell, the English dub where the great Christopher Lee did all the voices, is not included in this Studio Canal presentation. But hey, the proper French version is great and if you want to see an inventive slice of classic comedy, this one is a good one to go with.