The Body Stealers

Eats Chutes and Leaves

The Body Stealers
Directed by Gerry Levy
Tigon 1969
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so this makes two badly made Tigon production films I’ve seen in one weekend but, in the case of this particular dud, unlike The Blood Beast Terror (reviewed here), The Body Stealers is at least a very interesting one… because all the parts seem so mismatched.

The story sees a few batches of military skydivers on test jumps, hurling themselves from their planes but... with only their chutes landing on the ground (some of which are mysteriously stolen later in the story). General Armstrong, played by George Sanders gets his right hand man, played by Neil Connery (brother of Sean), to get some kind of army specialist out of retirement (for no apparent reason) to investigate just what is going on.

Enter said specialist, ‘beyond womanising’ Bob Megan, played by rugged Patrick Allen. He is aided and abetted by two doctors played by Hilary Heath and Maurice Evans (that’s Dr. Zaius to you, apes fans!) but… what has the strange girl on the nearby beach, Lorna, played by the ravishing Pamela Conway, got to do with everything. As she and Bob get over friendly and naked on the beach, the audience has to ask themselves, is she a space maiden who has something to do with the missing jumpers? Well yeah, probably.

And the tone of this one is all over the place. The opening credits where jumpers are being abducted is scored by Reg Tilsley with some romping title music which is totally inappropriate to the visuals and, I have to say, the music continues in this fashion throughout the film. Some of the minor dramatic moments are underscored… or really overscored… with piercing stingers so strident that I think even John Barry himself would have been given pause to rethink before jotting them down. There’s even a moment in the score which sounds exactly like the opening of Holst’s Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity, at one point.

And then there’s the two nude scenes with the truly stunning Pamela Conway. They feel completely out of place, especially the extended sex scene on the beach where the awkward actors have crashing waves superimposed over them. This and the music looks like it’s trying desperately to capture a teenage market by tacking stuff onto a film which has none of the trappings of the youth culture in its make up, aside from these elements.

And not only does it have no real appeal for that segment of the market, it clearly has no budget either. The aliens are just humanoids and, well, their spaceship is cloaked so you can’t see it. Except in one sequence where it features in two shots and… well I don’t know how Tigon got their hands on the model but it’s clearly the Dalek starship from the earlier Amicus/Aaru production Daleks Invasion Of Earth 2150AD (reviewed here). I mean, really, how did this happen?

So what more can I say about The Body Stealers? Is it a good movie? No, it’s terrible. As was the case of The Blood Beast Terror, I feel Hammer or Amicus would have made a much better movie out of this one. Could I recommend it to anyone… well no, not in all conscience. But, I did enjoy 88 Films Blu Ray transfer of the film from a lovely print and I’ll certainly be watching this one again if time and mortality permit.

The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy

Don’t Panic

The Hitch Hikers Guide
To The Galaxy
UK 1981
Airdate: Jan 5th to Feb 9th - Six Episodes
Blu Ray Zone 2

“Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
The Book

This is the story of a book. 

The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy to be precise. 

And I first heard the original radio show in the late seventies when it was broadcast... followed by an equally brilliant second series a year or so later. And, up to a time, there wasn’t any format of this which I didn’t love. Because, frankly, all but one of the adaptations of it skew close to the spirit of the writing and are obviously rendered with love. The only fly in the ointment being the 2005, big screen movie version which, somehow (and I thought the writing had made it future proof) was well cast but turned out to be an absolute abomination, capturing exactly none of the essence of the original tales and basically wasting the one shot it had at a cinema audience. It was just terrible. 

No, the radio show’s true legacy of really great Hitch Hikers products you can explore, including this TV series, was many. For example, I saw a wonderful and very loud version of it done on stage at what was then the Rainbow Theatre at Finsbury Park in the late 1970s. It was awesome. As was the slightly recast vinyl records put out by the BBC, hot on the heels of the radio show. And, of course, there were Douglas Adams original novels, starting out as an expansion on his radio scripts before taking us all on totally new adventures. Heck, I even had a can of everything, which was a rare promotional item given to book stores to tie in with the third novel, Life, The Universe And Everything.

Now, I was definitely sceptical about the validity of a TV show when it aired on the BBC in 1981, because I soon realised that, while most of the cast were ported over from the radio show and were able to say their lines with the exact same tone and delivery as that show and the record set, one very important main cast member was completely different. 

So we had the great Peter Jones as the voice of the book itself. The unrelated Simon Jones as Earth man Arthur Dent, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, Sandra Dickinson as Trillian, Stephen Moore as Marvin The Paranoid Android and even the great Richard Vernon as planet designer Slartibartfast. Heck, even the late, great Douglas Adams himself turned up in cameos in a few of the episodes. But, in the important role of Ford Prefect, Arthur’s friend who he soon discovers to be, not from Guilford after all but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse... the radio show and record set’s Geoffrey McGivern was recast and played by David Dixon. And, yes, it took me a little longer to get used to the slightly softer approach to Ford by this new actor but, he more than made up for it in body language and sheer enthusiasm, I believe. 

For those who are somehow still unfamiliar with the story, it follows the adventures of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin after Arthur and Trillian’s home planet of Earth is unexpectedly demolished by a Vogon Constructor Fleet, to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Cue many far fetched and totally hilarious adventures around the galaxy involving such elements as the starship Heart Of Gold (with its Infinite Improbability Drive), dolphins, mice, giant super computers, a restaurant at the end of the universe, prehistoric man with a bunch of telephone sanitisers, a bowl of petunias and a very surprised sperm whale. 

And it was great as a radio show (the first two series made when the writer was still alive, at any rate) and it was pretty good as a TV show too. The electronic book is brought alive simultaneously as Peter Jones voice with, complex ‘computer animations’ giving us auxiliary facts and figures to what was being said. Well... I say computer animations... back in 1981 these certainly looked like high tech computer rendering but, just like Disney’s Tron, they were of course just hand rendered animations made to look like what the general public thought computer aided graphics probably should look like, I would imagine. It doesn’t detract from the visuals in any way, though and, the drawings and typography add to the fun, for sure. 

And I wanted to flag that the TV version of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, which is now to be found in a wonderful Blu Ray, three disc set (two whole discs of extras which I don’t have time to watch right now) because it was a great experience then and it’s a great experience now. And I would certainly recommend to my readers, if you are unfamiliar with Adam’s greatest literary creation, that you hunt it down in, preferably, its radio form first  (I’m assuming the CDs are still available nowadays) as it’s one of the all time greats. Just don’t... you know... watch the movie version. That was obviously put together by suits who just didn’t know where their towels* were. 

*Seek out the books, radio show or TV show for an explanation of that reference. Delve deeper! Enjoy the fjords!

The Dead Pool

Harry’s Game

The Dead Pool
Directed by Buddy Van Horn
USA 1988
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoilers. 

I first saw the movie The Dead Pool on its original cinema release in the UK in 1989, slightly behind the US theatrical release. I really liked the Dirty Harry films by this point but... I really hated this one... at the time. I thought the robot car bomb chase was stupid (while now, when we’re living in an age of killer drones... well, it just seems quaint) and I thought the background of the horror movie production setting was too theatrical and colourful... which admittedly it is but, I’m way more forgiving now, it would seem.

Revisiting the movie, well I actually really enjoyed it this time around and, although it’s still my least favourite of Clint Eastwood’s Inspector Dirty Harry Callahan movies, I think it’s not actually letting the spirit of the other movies down... it’s just how it seemed to me at the time of its release.

Following on from the most boring opening title credits of any of the movies in the franchise, we get a story where Callahan is actually being lionised by the press for what is seen as a heroic deed. Running with it, the San Fransisco Police Department, who are unused to having Callahan being received in a positive light, want Harry to cooperate with the press, this time in the form of lovely lady journalist Samantha Walker, played here by the great Patricia Clarkson. She has good chemistry with Eastwood in this and, I think this may be the first time I saw her in anything. 

However, she picked a bad time to be associating with Harry Callahan because various killers of a jailed mob boss are after his blood and, on top of that, the latest case revolving around a horror film production, with a truly unlikeable incarnation of Liam Neeson as the young, luvvie director, involves a dead pool with Harry’s name on it.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a dead pool, lots of places have them (or at least had them back in the day). You would basically bet on which celebrity would be the first to die and, after a number of years, if your one came up next, you would win the pool of cash for the bet. In this one, a killer close to the production of the film is mowing his way through the list in order to frame the director and it’s Callahan’s job to find him. 

Once again we have a fast paced story with a number of action scenes and also some great police procedural stuff thrown into the mix... and Harry ‘gets the gal’ too, by the end of the movie (I was betting that both her and Harry’s new partner, played by Evan C. Kim, wouldn’t make it to the closing credits alive). It’s also got a less bold but still nicely put together score by the franchise’s regular composer Lalo Schifrin, with a few nice call backs to a couple of his themes from the first movie (reviewed here). 

Oh, and one James Carrey... that’s Jim Carrey to you and I... plays one of the early victims, a rock star whose death is made to look like a drug overdose by the killer, who completely fails at that cover up too. Another thing worth noticing is that the movie critic who is stabbed to death by the killer is made up to look like legendary film critic Pauline Kael (who was quite critical of the first movie in the franchise). 

And that’s all I’ve got on The Dead Pool, I think. It looks nice enough but the cinematography and set dressing makes it feel more dated and mired in the 1980s, unlike the other four which seem to be somewhat timeless. I thought it was fine though and I’m certainly more into it than I was as a 21 year old, that’s for sure. It’s as shame this was the final one but at least Callahan walks off at the end with Patricia Clarkson, so it’s nice to think that was a long and happy partnership for the characters in their fictional life beyond the screen. Not as much of a dud as I’d originally thought and Mr. Eastwood does a fine job with it.

Supergirl

Tales From 
The Krypto

Supergirl
Directed by Craig Gillespie
USA 2026
DC Studios
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Very light spoilers.

Supergirl is a direct follow up to last year’s new Superman movie (reviewed here) and the second film (kinda, it’s complicated) in James Gunn’s rebooted DC Cinematic Universe... which I still think was totally unnecessary and has deprived the world of a third, stand alone Gal Gadot/Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman movie. So I had every reason to hate this movie going in and... not just for that. 

I mean, as we already discovered from her cameo in the last Superman movie, Kara (aka Supergirl) is a bratty teen with a bad attitude who nobody would really want to hang out with. Added to that, the trailers for this movie were terrible and made me not want to see the movie... I mean, why can nobody cut a trailer which wants you to go see a film anymore? More importantly, to what I finally thought about the movie here... why are trailers not effective at showing the true spirit of the product anymore? Are they deliberately trying to keep people in the dark (frankly, the only time when I wished they’d done that to people was when Takashi Mike’s Audition came out... I’d have much rather gone into that movie thinking it was a standard, romantic comedy but, of course, if I’d thought that then I never would have gone in at all so... it’s a conundrum)?

Anyway, for all the expectations I had of this movie... I actually loved it and, though it has its flaws, it manages to somehow do a tonal tightrope walk and really pulls it off to give a coherent story with characters who grow through their adventures and... yeah, I was certainly entertained. Even though, through pretty much the whole movie, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak... expecting the director or somebody to screw it up and let everything down. Instead, we have a movie which leads to a quite moving ending. There may even have been a tear in my eye although, to be fair, the air conditioning in the cinema wasn’t great and I could have been responding to something else.

The film tells of a teenage girl called Ruthye, played by Eve Ridley. She sees her whole family slaughtered at the start of the film by this tale’s bad guy Krem... played somewhat charismatically by Matthias Schoenaerts. So she goes to various places on her planet, trying to ‘True Grit’ somebody into accompanying her in her quest for revenge. 

And I’m just going to pause a little here and compliment myself because, as I watched the movie I thought... yeah, revenge for hire just like in True Grit and I wondered if they even realised they were doing this. Well, when I looked up the trivia for the movie after I’d seen the film, it turns out that the original Supergirl comic this film is mostly adapted from is actually confirmed to be based on True Grit so, yay! Go me. 

Anyway, Ruthye stumbles upon Kara, aka Supergirl, played by Milly Alcock, who, like John Wayne before her, is always only a half step away from the next bottle. In fact, it’s mentioned both here and in Superman that she spends lots of time in Red Sun solar systems so she can get drunk on alcohol because, just like Superman, her powers reject intoxication when she is in a Yellow Sun environment. Anyway, she gets roped in by accident when her dog, Krypto (who is used less of a crutch in this movie and more as a catalyst), gets poisoned by Krem and has to stay with a vet as he slowly dies over three days, unless Kara can get the antidote from the bad guys. 

Shenanigans ensue, including a nice turn by Jason Momoa, somehow playing DC character Lobo and retrofitted into the story. Now, I’ve never read a Lobo comic in my life but he was all over the marketing of the DC universe in the 1990s (if I recall correctly) and, if I was being cynical, I’d question why you’d have an 18 rated character like Lobo turning up in a 12A rated movie. But, they somehow make it work and, I have to say, for a 12A movie, they do manage to push the envelope on the brutality of some of the shenanigans. I guess it’s that questionable, modern censorship issue where studios have learned they can go hard on the violence as long as they don’t show any actual blood or if the blood is a different colour. Personally, I’d rather they just raised the age rating and did it all properly but, cynically, the studios are just maximising the box office potential... I get it. I just don’t think it’s the right move. 

And the film works really well... quite surprisingly. There are a few problems, mostly around Kara’s constant and repetitive healing and weakening by red and yellow suns, depending on her situation. And the way her body rejects the Kryptonite in her system with exposure to the yellow sun does, of course, make a mockery of the whole plot because, as I wondered at the start of the movie... why doesn’t she just fly Krypto near to a yellow sun and heal him in minutes? But then we’d have no movie, I guess.

Anyhow, the performances and the well written dialogue really worked in this one and I was really surprised that I was still loving it by the end of the movie. Kara’s back story/origin and how she happens to stumble upon Krypto keeps coming in to give the audience something to believe in, with regards to the main character and, though it maybe does it one time too many, it doesn’t hurt the film so much. Tonally it feels a lot like Marvel’s Captain Marvel movie, to the point when music and song cues are structured to come and go at the same kinds of story beats, to give the longer battle scenes a kind of second wind halfway through, for example.

And that’s me done with Supergirl. I didn’t bother staying past the end credits because I read that there were no post or mid credits scenes on this one (which is a shame in this case) so I’ve no idea where the DC Cinematic Universe Mark II is going next. Two relatively good films in a row does not a franchise make (or break, for that matter) so, yeah, I guess we’ll see what happens next. 

Planet Of The Vampires

Come On Alien

Planet Of The Vampires
aka Terrore nello spazio
Directed by Mario Bava
Italy 1965
Radiance Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers if you’ve never seen it, I guess.

I’ve got a fair few Blu Rays put out by a relatively new UK company called Radiance over the last year (or two now, at time of writing)... I’ve just not got around to watching any yet. But what better way to start than to revisit an old favourite with their new (again, at time of writing) Blu Ray special edition of the great Mario Bava’s Terrore nello spazio (aka Planet Of The Vampires). Especially with a director like Bava... he does such an amazing job with the colours in his movies that a Blu Ray upgrade of pretty much everything he directed (maybe barring the second Dr. Goldfoot movie) is a no brainer.

Planet Of The Vampires plays out with the relatively small crew (about ten people) of a starship headed up by Barry Sullivan as Capt. Mark Markary and Norma Bengell as Sanya. They, along with the crew of a sister starship in the same area of the galaxy, are investigating a mysterious signal put out from another planet. When the two ships get within range of the planet, they go out of control and crash, or in the case of Sullivan’s ship, land. Then, immediately upon everyone regaining consciousness, half of them are trying to kill each other, until, temporarily knocked unconscious and waking up as themselves again. It’s a case of trying to rescue the crew of the other ship (all dead but, not to remain that way) and, later, to recover the ‘asteroid deflector’ stolen from their ship, so they can escape the clutches of the planet and its invisible inhabitants... who can take over the dead and, sometimes alive, bodies of their colleagues.

Now, I remember when I first watched this and didn’t know much about it (other than it was by Bava and also the first film his son, future director Lamberto Bava, was helping out on, behind the camera). Watching the crew following a signal down to the planet and then, in one case, finding the almost fossilised skeleton of a giant alien creature in an alien ship. Hmm... ring any bells? I mean, Ridley Scott has denied that he saw this movie before he directed Alien but, yeah... really? There’s even a scene where some of the controls of the alien ship are activated by musical notes from a big tuning fork. Um... if you’re going to deny Alien had any legacy from Planet Of The Vampires (especially when special effects guru Carlo Rambaldi worked on both films) then maybe don’t compound the felony by bringing in the idea of a spaceship controlled by musical notes when you do a prequel to Alien decades later. But enough of all that. 

Actually, this film is immensely entertaining and Bava’s reputation for using glass paintings and bits of scenery reflected in mirrors to create the illusion of massive sets really pays off. And, of course, since it’s Bava, it’s a wonderful, psychedelic delirium of a planet, lit in greens, reds and purples all pitched against each other. The film looks wonderful... right down to the quasi SS uniforms the cast are wearing (which were deliberately copied for Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom just recently, reviewed here). 

Also, everything feels a little bit like a classic episode of Star Trek (which debuted the same year as this... I wonder if those long funnel like shapes on the starship were copied for the Enterprise or if it was the other way around) and, perhaps even more, like the great science fiction movie Forbidden Planet. A further nod to that great film would be Gino Marinuzzi Jr’s amazing electronic score for this one, which does indeed sound a little like the ‘electronic tonalities’ produced by husband and wife team Bebe and Louis Barron, who built special circuits for Forbidden Planet, making it the first electronic movie score. I can’t help but think that Marinuzzi Jr was asked to provide something reminiscent of that one. 

And there’s even a wonderful twist ending to the movie... not the reveal about two of the three survivors actually being controlled by the invisible bad guys all along but... well, spoiler warning... the fact that the original heroes you were watching were never from Earth to begin with. Indeed, the so called ‘vampires’ of the title are set to conquer the Earth next. 

The new Radiance edition has a few interesting extras on it... which I haven’t had time to watch yet (will I ever... I hope so) and a nice accompanying 80+ page booklet on this original slipcase edition. Also, as you would expect from a half decent transfer of a Mario Bava film... it looks spectacular. Certainly the best I’ve ever seen it looking. So, yeah, if you count yourself as a fan or admirer of the movie (and even if you’re not, you should definitely see something by this director) then the new(ish) Radiance version of Planet Of The Vampires is a not-to-be-missed item for your Blu Ray shelving. A great film given its due. 

Mapp And Lucia (1985/86)

Au Reservoir

Mapp and Lucia 
Two Series
comprising ten episodes
Series 1 1985
Series 2 1986
Granada TV for Channel 4
Cinema Club DVD Region 2

Well now… after years of waiting for a Blu Ray release (which has never happened), I finally revisited (to be fair, for about the fifth time), what is probably my second favourite TV series of all time (lagging just behind The Prisoner), the one and only Mapp And Lucia. Not to be confused with he shoddy BBC remake (which I also plan on rewatching at some point), this was based on the last three novels in a series of six books written in the 20s and 30s by E. F. Benson… the first three novels being Queen Lucia, Miss Mapp and Lucia In London… followed by the full-on crossover novels which are covered by this show, Mapp And Lucia (which comprised series one) and then on to Lucia’s Progress and Trouble For Lucia (which both were adapted for series two).

What can I say… bearing in mind I don’t watch a lot of comedy and I’m also somewhat averse to certain kinds of British period pieces… I saw these back when they first aired and the family was so struck by them that it wasn’t long before we were all visiting the town in which the books were kinda set… in Rye, where Benson lived. In the books the town of Tilling was based on Rye (if memory serves) and the show was shot there. It’s a lovely place and you can see a lot of it in the show. So, of course, while I was down there I bought and read all the books (I need to revisit those now, over 40 years since I last read them) and, also discovered one of the last surviving CD Soundtrack shops left in the country, Backtrack Records.

The show, adapted by Gerald Savory and directed by Donald Machinise, is a work of genius. The first episode shows Miss Emmeline Lucas aka Lucia, played incomparably by Geraldine McEwan and her effeminate best friend Georgie Pelson, played beautifully by Nigel Hawthorne, finishing up business in their home town of Risholme but, there’s a long interlude in the story in this episode to show their house hunting trip to Tilling, where the rest of the show is set. It’s here that we meet all the other regular characters in the show, in their brief overnight stay.

There’s Mistress Map, played ‘perfectly tiresomely’ by the late, great Prunella Scales, who is the rival character in the show (and books) to Lucia and who stole Lucia’s farewell pun catchphrase of “Au Reservoir” in a former book. There’s Godiva (Diva) Plaistow, played by Mary MacLeod, who is a bit of former canon fodder in Mapp’s social circle but now she’s a little more shrewd about things after Lucia comes to town. Then there’s the exquisite performance of Denis Lill as the almost permanently drunken Major Benjy Flint, with his constant shouts of “Quai Hi!”. 

Other quirky characters are James Greene as the local padre, who hails from Birmingham but affects a Scottish accent throughout (peppered with Irish sayings in the second series) for his own amusement. There’s Mr. Wise played by Geoffrey Chater, with his little bows to people to punctuate his various bits of dialogue and there’s his wife played by Marion Mathie, who also has her own quirks and foibles. 

And then there’s Irene Coles, aka Quaint Irene, who is easily my favourite character, played amazingly by Cecily Hobbs. The queer or bisexual local artist who shocks with her bold canvasses and steals some of the best lines in the show. She’s the saucy one who is obviously besotted by Lucia, once she’s become a resident of Tilling.

And rounding out the regulars are the long suffering servants of Lucia and Mapp. Geraldine Newman as Grovesnor, Ken Kitson as Cadman, Lucinda Gane as Foljambe and Cherry Morris as Withers.

And the comedy is high, right from the word go and, honestly, there’s not a bad performance among the lot of them. It’s like watching very broad but somehow subtle acting as Mapp and Lucia go about their business of oneupmanship against each other. The facial expressions from all of this lot which tells you exactly what they are thinking, whether they’re delivering their hilarious dialogue or just staying silent, is absolutely brilliant. In fact, I’d go as far as to suggest that all of the actors in this one did their finest work here, which is saying something considering the calibre of some of the cast.

And it’s what the British perhaps do best... a wonderful comedy of manners set among the upper classes and the silly shenanigans they get themselves into. With Lucia conquering the social heart of Tilling as Mapp continually tries to sew the seeds of discontent as her own grip on the social circle begins to slip through here fingers. With incidents like the way Lucia managed to get out of a jam which would expose her fake Italian as just that, a fake… or the time when Mapp and Lucia float out on an upturned table during a flood and get lost at sea, presumed dead... and the aftermath of all that. Plus three separate marriages throughout the show and the political pressures these seem to provoke.

If I had one criticism it’s that the second series seems more episodic rather than a single arc and maybe loses a little in the mix. With incidents like the shares and stocks craze, the Roman excavations in Lucia’s gardens, the bicycle craze and the hunt for Lucia’s mayoress, it feels like in that second iteration they don’t spend long enough on each separate thing.... and I suspect this is a symptom of trying to squeeze two books into one series of five episodes at this point. That being said, once you know the characters and exactly how they’ll think in any given situation, both series are an absolute joy to watch and, like I said, it’s my second favourite TV show of all time (and much better than the rebooted BBC mini series of a few decades later… which I guess I’ll have to revisit soon, I suppose). 

And that’s me done, for now, with Mapp And Lucia. If you are a fan of British comedy and want to see the absolute best comic performances of a very witty script, then you should definitely try and get hold of the original 1980s series for sure. What a joy but, for now… Au Reservoir!

Jessie Stone - No Remorse

Human Remorses

No Remorse
USA 2010 Directed by Robert Harmon 
Sony Pictures TV Blu Ray Zone 1.

Warning: This one has some spoilers.

No Remorse, the sixth of the films presented in the Blu Ray set of Jesse Stone movies, is all set within Jesse Stone’s unpaid suspension from the job of Paradise police chief. It’s set both in Boston and Paradise and, typically for one of these Jesse Stone stories, it has at least two cases going on at the same time.

On the one hand we have Jesse (Tom Selleck) who, angered by his ex-wife’s calls, rips his land line out. He finally buys a cell phone but, it turns out, he can only use it when he’s out of his house in Paradise, because his home is in a no signal zone. Anyway, Boston homicide Captain Healy (Stephen McHattie), who is still recovering from the many gunshots he received at the beginning of the previous movie, Thin Ice (reviewed here), hires Jesse as a consultant on a double homicide with no apparent pattern or connection but, obviously done by the same killer. He says he needs his ‘coply intuition’ but, also, because the suspension is not sitting well with Jesse, who spends a lot of it on the end of a bottle of scotch. 

Meanwhile, Rose (Kathy Baker) and Suitcase (Kohl Sudduth) are trying to solve a case involving convenience stores which are robbed with the sales clerks beaten almost to death (or actually to death in the case of the one they are aware of in Paradise, as the story opens). However, it’s just the two of them on their own because the guy at the town council wants them and Jesse gone from the force... to make a clean sweep after the upcoming hearing for Jesse. So they need to solve the case... which they do with Jesse’s unofficial help, of course. 

So once again Selleck and his co-stars do wonders in this. Hasty Hathaway (Saul Rubinek) is out on parole but the actress playing his now ‘ex’ wife has been changed. She still wants to sleep with Jesse Stone, however. There’s a lot of character development in this one... or character building, if you will. We learn that Jesse loves his dog and is frightened of losing him. We see Rose grow closer to Jesse while she decides to divorce her husband. And we also see Jesse dating a nun... or at least having dinner with her, making good on his offer to take her out to dinner in the previous movie. And we hear the story of Jesse’s psychiatrist Dr. Dix (William Devane)... how and why he quit the police force to change his vocation (another grim tale). 

We also see the death of a regular character in the series... who we always know works for one of the questionable mobsters but who has a much bigger role this time around. Unlike the majority of how these Jesse Stone movies go, he doesn’t die at the hands of Jesse but, instead, kills himself where Jess can see him doing it, crossing the street when the green light shows and walking out into heavy traffic. 

All in all, this one is a good, solid episode and it even reunites Jesse with the young victim of an earlier installment. That being said, the ending of the episode is very much a cliffhanger... with Rose, Suitcase and eventually Jesse (and his dog), gathering for the hearing at the town council, where they all suspect they are going to get fired... roll credits. I guess we’ll find out what happened to them all in the next one.

So, yeah, No Remorse is another entertaining mix of mystery and police procedural, with Selleck once again very subtly playing Stone as an incredibly simple (though far from stupid) man who rolls with the punches as best he can and who follows his own moral code (which quite often has nothing to do with the legal system, it seems to me). And, once again, I’m very much looking forward to taking a peek at the next one as soon as possible. As the credits role, there’s a memorial statement to the writer Robert B. Parker (who wrote the original books and characters these films are inspired by), who died the year of this one’s release.

Under The Shadow - Almeida Theatre

Djiin And Djang

Under The Shadow (stage adaptation)
Directed by Nadia Latif
Adapted by Carmen Nasr
From the film by Babak Anvari,
Almeida Theatre on Saturday 20th June 2026

The Almeida Theatre is possibly my favourite theatre... despite this being only my third visit since the mid-1980s, when I saw Joanne Whalley in a production of Wedekind’s The Lulu Plays (playing the role Louise Brooks made famous in Pandora's Box) and also, about nine years ago, an amazing adaptation of The Twilight Zone (reviewed here). I just like the look of the theatre, I think... although the surrounding streets seem to have changed quite a bit since I was last there. 

I’m on their mailing list though so was surprised then I saw that they’ve put on a theatrical production of the amazing ‘evil djiin’ movie Under The Shadow from 2016 (which I reviewed here). On the one hand it’s perfect for a stage adaptation because the film is mostly just set in one apartment building, for most of the time. But, yeah, there are special effects to think about which would make a stage adaptation very hard. Also, I couldn’t see how my favourite moment, when Shideh runs from the house in terror, only to be promptly detained by the local authorities for not wearing her head scarf, could be recreated on stage. And as for that last point... I was right, they didn’t even try and I can certainly see why it was cut, even just for pacing reasons here because you need to keep the momentum going on this particular stage show, I think.

But I went anyway and was astonished to find that, actually, it was a pretty great, solid two hours of theatre and I absolutely loved it. The format is such that, to get certain things across which are done easier and quicker on film, things had to be added. For instance, there are some wonderful scenes with the entire cast stuffed into a small space under a trap door at the front of the stage, which is doubling for their underground shelter from the bombs and, ultimately, missiles falling on their home city of Tehran and these serve to get huge amount of information across about both the characters and their relationships to each other... and the political turmoil of the country in 1988, when this tale is set. 

And there’s a lot more of Shideh’s husband in this for the first half, before he’s sent off as a doctor to ‘the front’. Again, lots of information given throughout these scenes and they work very well.

The performances in this, even from the child actors, are pretty strong too. I really liked Leila Farzad, the lead actress playing Shideh in this version and, I loved her chemistry with both her daughter and, especially, her older neighbour played by Souad Faress. Farzad really came across as a woman who is living with the hell of not being allowed to continue her medical studies, due to early political affiliations, while also being a modern, independently thinking woman in a country which, perhaps, did not encourage such attitudes at the time (if I’m off here in that assumption, please put me right in the comments below). 

The staging is wonderful too. The way the space is divided and an amazing set of Shideh’s apartment, with depth added through open doors (again, the artistic world owes a debt to Roger Corman’s set dressing technique) is impressive and allows for a small strip of ‘the street’ down the front of the stage. Okay, some of the scares didn’t quite work for me but I’m putting that down to being jaded and old and, I can tell you, they were certainly working for the rest of the audience. And the sequence where the unexploded missile lands above Shideh’s ceiling and is poking through it, revealed in a top section of the stage you didn’t even know existed until the reveal... is absolutely stunning. 

Another big change is the ending of the film... if I remember it rightly... and without giving too much away, it gives us something both more hopeful in one sense but, depending on how you interpret things, something far more cynical than the original version. In fact, I’d have to say that I kind of liked this ending a little better, which all hangs on a monologue given by Leila Farzad.

And that’s me done with the stage version of Under The Shadow, I think. I had a really good time with this one and was really pleased I saw it. However, it’s only on for another couple of weeks so do yourself a favour and grab a ticket while you can. And while you’re there, grab a small tub of the salted butterscotch ice cream from their bar, it’s wonderful stuff. 

 To grab a ticket for the show, check out their website here... https://almeida.co.uk/ 

Jour De Fête

Post Haste

Jour De Fête
France 1948
Directed by Jacques Tati
Studio Canal UK Blu Ray

Okay, so Jour de fête is Jacques Tati’s first feature film, inspired from an earlier short film. And it’s a film which has him playing a much different character to the Monsieur Hulot character he created next. I mean, the similarities are, of course, a bumbling personality who gets caught in comic situations but, yeah, he’s not just an observer to the situations he finds himself in here, he kind of brings a lot more of this on himself. 

Now, had I known that the film had been shot in an experimental colour format, which was unable to be processed properly at the time, I would have watched the1995 colour version which is also, along with a third version, on the Blu Ray in the Jacques Tati boxed set. However, I’d just assumed that was a colourised version, as opposed to what it is, which is a successful attempt at finally being able to process the colour negative, which Tati had thrown out but which his daughter retained. 

This one, like both the other Tati film’s I’ve seen so far... Monsier Hulot’s Holiday (reviewed here) and Mon Oncle (reviewed here) takes an awful long time for Tati’s character to enter the film. Preferring, instead, to quitely observe the comedic and eccentric antics of the village in which Tati plays the postman... riding through on his bike and getting caught up in things other than delivering the letters and packages on his route. But it’s his way of doing things and it works well.

The primary ingredient for these scenes and a lot of the movie is an observer character to witness some of the chaos and give the audience an anchor point to see things from. In this movie it takes the form of an old woman, walking around the village, dragging her goat who she talks to (as much to herself) and this device is used to fill the audience on the background story of what is going on as she continues her perambulations.

What is going on is it’s carnival day in the village and we watch the stalls and the carousel arrive in lorries to be assembled, as well as the erection of the mayor’s new pole (something which Tati’s postman inevitably gets caught up in, trying to raise it). The thing about the Tati character here is... things don’t just happen to him but they are engineered by others to also happen to him. He perhaps doesn’t realise it but most of the village seems to disrespect him enough to egg him on to uncontrollable situations and generally just take the mickey out of him. 

This includes showing him a film in the cinema marquee, which is a documentary about the American post. After a drunken slumber (the villagers deliberately get him drunk and set him free again), he awakes the next morning determined to put into practice the spirit of the speedy US mailmen and incorporate it into his work. And, as usual it’s filled with clever moments...

Such as, after his new found mission to speed up his service, he hitches his bike to a lorry heading for the centre of the village and uses the drop down back as his desk while he rubber stamps all his letters, making his way to his destination at high speed. And the film is full of the wonderful scenes of inventive and often very comic turns which this director seems to be noted for. And, as I watched his postman ride his bike around, I remembered the Wallace & Gromit films of Nick Park and thought to myself, oh yeah, of course, there’s another director who you can see Tati has been a major influence on. 

Now, it has to be said, the film didn’t do a lot for me... or at least not as much as the wonderful Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday... but I really didn’t mind it either and, I think, if the character had been more in keeping with the spirit of his later Hulot character, I would have probably responded a lot more to it. As it is, the film must have been a huge success because the studio apparently asked him to do a sequel. Instead, he pushed ahead with Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday and the rest, as they say, is history.

So that’s me done with Jour De Fête and I’m looking forward to delving further into the rest of this box at some point soon... and getting back to Monsieur Hulot, of course. 

Spaceways

 

Three Stage Lovers

Spaceways
Directed by Terence Fisher
UK/USA 1953 
Hammer Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Yeah, this’ll have spoilers rocketing your way.

I’ve been wanting to catch up with Spaceways for a few decades now so, this brand new UHD/Blu Ray set from Hammer films seemed like a good excuse to finally get to see this one. Since this was released much later in the same year as the utterly brilliant Four Sided Triangle (reviewed years ago by me here), I think this is technically the first science fiction film made by Hammer (although I believe there may have been sci-fi elements in others before this but, I’ve not seen certain films so I’m not going to question the established spiel at time of writing (maybe later). 

Now, I have to say I’m glad I finally saw this because it’s quite an interesting little movie. It’s a bit of a slow burn, for sure (a very slow burn even for audiences at the time, I would guess, judging from its critical reception) but I found it both charming and very well made. 

The film involves a community of military scientists living at the Deanfield Experimental Station. Our two heroes are the scientists Dr. Stephen Mitchell played by Howard Duff and Dr. Lisa Frank played by the always watchable Eva Bartok, who I best know from her roles in two fantastic movies, The Crimson Pirate (reviewed here) and Blood And Black Lace (reviewed here). However, Mitchell is married to a restless gold digger played by Cecile Chevreau (who was the voice of Buddha years later on the English dub of the Monkey TV show). She’s having an affair with one of the other scientists there, something which Mitchell finds out about but doesn’t challenge.

Anyway, after a small rocket carrying mice returns to Earth (with said mice deceased from the pressures of the journey), the team are ready to try out an orbiting capsule with a bigger rocket, in order to get it to navigate the Earth in orbit for all time. However, something goes wrong which means it orbits at a much lower place (which is an orbit which will eventually decay) and this is blamed on the third and final stage of the rocket somehow losing some of its fuel.  

Meanwhile, Mitchell’s wife and her lover have gone missing from this secure site and nobody can find them. So a military detective called Dr. Smith, played by Alan Wheatley, is called in and the film turns into... well... not exactly a whodunnit but a howdunnit. Smith accuses Mitchell of killing the two missing lovers, siphoning out some of the fuel before that test flight and then stuffing their bodies aboard to circle the Earth for the forseeable future. 

So, of course, there’s only one way for Mitchell to prove his innocence. Which is to speed up the time to develop a rocket capable of carrying a human being... and then going up and pulling the rocket back down to Earth with him. The game is afoot, so to speak, for Mitchell... with the aid of his new lover Lisa, to clear his name while Smith keeps up his pursuit for the truth. 

Okay, so it’s twisty, it’s turny and it’s ... incredibly slow. But I found that last trait kind of comforting actually and I loved the interesting shot designs and wonderful lighting in particular here. I’m used to seeing the extraordinary Hammer director Terence Fisher working with a nice colour palette but his black and white work in this is equally beautiful. I especially liked the way a party scene was shot, with a room full of people composed of a few set ups which made sure the chaos you might expect was absent and you could work out just where everybody was in the room. Not saying that’s the best approach for every film, of course, but it worked quite nicely here, I would say.

The acting is all very good and, although he’s pitched as almost a human villain, I found the Dr. Smith character quite an interesting fellow who, kind of, redeems himself by the end. Also, I found an early scene, where a bunch of scientists in a room are watching a camera playback of what was going on during the flight, to be almost a foreshadowing of a similar but more intense and complicated scene in the Hammer adaptation The Quatermass Xperiment (reviewed here). I’m guessing the scene was also in the 1953 original serial The Quatermass Experiment but, I’m guessing this was being shot around the same time as that was being broadcast so, I don’t think either story necessarily influenced the other in that respect. 

Another interesting thing I found was when the top scientist in charge of the project and his military counterpart were trying to justify funding for that fateful test rocket. The scientist pushes the wonders of space flight and discovery while the military guy pushes the ability to be able to keep close surveillance of the Earth from afar and the ability to weaponise that asset. Some things never change, I guess. 

But that’s me about done on Spaceways. As usual, the latest incarnation of Hammer gives us a nice transfer and a slew of supporting extras and printed materials (I especially liked the miniaturised press kit in the slipcase, for sure). As for the movie itself, well I really enjoyed it but I couldn’t, in all conscience, recommend it to everyone. However, I think people of a certain age who like slow moving drama should find something in this to keep them entertained. I had a good time with this one.

Disclosure Day

Disclose Encounters

Disclosure Day
Directed by Steven Spielberg
USA/Canada/New Zealand/Japan 2026
Universal
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Well then... Disclosure Day is not the suspected sequel to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind it was rumoured to be (although it does have a couple of on screen references and could easily be taking part in the same shared world... in which case it definitely is, despite Spielberg’s protests). What it is happens to be Spielberg’s third ‘aliens on Earth’ movie after his brilliant, original, studio release cut of Close Encounters and his abysmal ET - The Extra Terrestrial movie. Disclosure Day is somewhere in the middle of the quality of those two... not quite as good as the former but walking all over the latter.

We have the various ‘everymen sucked into extraordinary adventures’ which is a particular Spielberg signature, often seen as a legacy archetype in his pictures. These are played by the wonderful Emily Blunt, Josh O’ Connor and Eve Hewson. Then you have the obligatory human villain, played by Colin Firth and the wise, helpful ally to the good guys, played by Colman Domingo. Plus assorted ‘also ran’ characters performed by the likes of Wyatt Russell and Elisabeth Marvel. 

The film is not quite, as I’d suspected, a reveal about the various alien/human hybrids living in society among us (see the Al Adamson documentary Blood And Flesh: The Reel Life And Ghastly Death of Al Adamson, reviewed here, to find out more about those, since Adamson actually met one and then died in particular ghastly circumstances sometime after, before he could finish his expose documentary... whether that aspect of his life was relevant to his death or not) but more a look at the way aliens are trying to escape the knowledge-prison of the independent task force trying to stop the leakage of their existence on Earth.

So, in terms of the plot... it’s not what I was expecting but, the sad thing is, everything else went exactly as I’d expected. It’s not a bad movie by any means and it hits some nice Spielberg moments such as an elabourate and suspenseful ‘car being dragged along on the side of a train’ chase and various metatextual references back to cinema over the years. It’s true to say that in some ways it’s somewhat of a postmodern pastiche of things we’ve seen over the years in many movies.* 

Perhaps my favourite appropriation is when Eve Hewson’s character is being psychically interrogated from afar by Firth’s sinister invasion of her mind and, she uses her crucifix in just the same manner that Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer used the rusty nail in the brainwashing sequence of The IPCRESS File (reviewed here) so, yeah, Spielberg really nailed that one. 

The film neatly bypasses the effect on mass culture of the possible lack of faith in religious practices in a way which is, perhaps, not multiculturally sensitive (although I don’t mind) and uses a direct quote from the Bible to directly allow for the possibility of alien life forms being present in the universe. So for a certain section of the audience he has that pretty well sewed up. 

I did object to the use of animal scenes in the film... not because this is not what aliens do, as documented in numerous cases (whether you believe those cases or not) but because, the logic of using those encounters out of an environment where there are only one or two humans present seems contrary to logic and not a part of, as Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp neatly put it, how aliens represent. So, atmospherically it works effectively in a spooky manner in the movie but, one or two of those scenes seem somewhat out of place. 

Now the ending is, I suspect, going to divide people. Not because you won’t see it coming... I defy anyone to not figure out exactly when the camera is going to cut to the end credits before it actually happens... but because there’s no real sense of closure to the disclosure. That is to say... how else could you end this movie? It’s absolutely the right way to end this without leaving some section of the audience bitterly disappointed in the content of the message of the aliens. That would then become a different movie and this way at least allows for that all important message to go either way, in terms of the fate of mankind, for sure.

Added to this we have an excellent, post-retirement score by regular Spielberg collaborator John Williams, who at 94 is still able to come up with one of his best scores in years. So that’s a CD I will hopefully be getting a hold of soon. 

All in all though, I’m about done with Disclosure Day. Excellent performances in a not too shoddy package with a nice bit of scoring is certainly enough to take a trip to the cinema for but, ultimately, I was a little underwhelmed by the whole experience. I suspect that’s because I’ve been around too long, though and I’m sure the younger audience... who have not seen much of the history of cinema to be as jaded by this plot as I am... will be thrilled with this one and lionise it, to a certain extent. At least until they get a few films under their belt. Not a film I’d easily recommend because I felt it pulled its punches a little too much but, not a huge disappointment either and I think it will find its audience, for sure. 

 *Although, after only a few days of the film’s release into cinemas, I’m already sick of reviewers making assumptions that the Inn-Di-Ana Motel where two of the characters stay overnight is a tip of the hat to Spielberg’s Indiana Jones movies. Take a step back and realise that the home of Roy Neary in the original Close Encounters Of The Third Kind is situated in Indiana and, maybe do a little better at connecting the dots on your film references people!

Battleship Potemkin

Introspective Peasants Revolting... Actually

Battleship Potemkin
aka Bronenosets Potyomkin
Directed by Sergei Eisenstein
USSR 1925 
BFI Blu Ray Zone B

It’s been a few decades since I last revisited Sergei Eisenstein’s oft voted ‘number one film of all time’ classic Battleship Potemkin. So I thought, with the recent Blu Ray release by the BFI of the film coupled with the score that Red Ken, the then mayor of London, commissioned from the Pet Shop Boys for a free live performance accompanying the film in Leicester Square on 12th September 2004, this was a good opportunity to take another look. Although I bought the original CD album of this piece when it was released back then (which is also included in this recent BFI release, along with the Blu Ray), I’d never heard this particular score with the context of the images it was meant to accompany before. So I’m glad this version finally got a release.

Now, Eisenstein was all about the Russian propaganda of course and, this film made in 1925 was put together to commemorate the anniversary of the failed but inspiring Russian Revolution of 1905. And it was much widely acclaimed and, you can’t ask for much more than to have your movie banned in most countries on the fear that it would spark an uprising amongst the working classes in places like France and so on. Over here in the UK, the ban wasn’t lifted for a while and it was finally granted a release, with an X certificate, presumably to deter a certain section of the cinema going population, in 1954. 

The film is a ferocious beast of a movie in terms of the power of images and ideas, for sure. It’s also a case, for those detractors of the art of silent cinema, for a more naturalistic acting style in that medium... it possibly helps that many of the ‘so called actors’ were in fact common people from the streets and navy of good old mother Russia. There’s certainly not much in the way of overdramatic gesturing in this one. 

The film is split into five sections (translated as thus on this particular iteration of the film)... Men And Maggots, Drama On The Deck, The Dead Man Calls Out, The Odessa Staircase and Rendezvous With The Squadron. And it demonstrates a lot of Eisenstein’s signature directorial flourishes for sure. Obviously, Eisenstein was all about the editing and his cross cut montages... to show, for instance, the hard work of the men on the boat cross cut with the mouldering, maggot infested food they are expected to eat being prepared... are all present and correct.

As, of course, is his method of typeage... casting non-professionals to give them an authentic look as visual shorthand and then inserting them into little vignettes staged apart from the main action but made to look like they are part of it, in order to amplify the emotional context of the movie... like little static inserts whereas a film maker today would probably either zoom in or move the camera within the shot. But there’s a lot to be said for doing it this way too and it’s still an effective way of working, I think... if much abandoned in the method of execution these days. 

But there are other things which I feel are less said about the director’s work than is generally lingered on, due no doubt to the incredible impact of his other techniques. I mean, he was obviously as good as Fritz Lang when it came to directing huge crowds of people in unison but, the shot compositions are pretty good too. Like early in the movie when the diagonal ropes of the sailors hammocks as they sleep below decks are juxtaposed with similar shorts of different angles and then, later, reoccurring in the diagonal lines created by the struts, ropes and staircases on the walkways above.

Plus little details which are picked out such as the fallen crucifix of a wrathful priest embedded in the deck or the dislodged glasses hanging from a rope during the scene where the mutineering rebels take control back from their overseers. 

Then there’s the famous slaughter of the civilians by the police on the steps of the Odessa (not that this moment happened on these steps in real life)... one of the most influential sequences in the history of cinema, much used since and always cropping up in cinematic homage to this day, in a film already overflowing with influential and iconographic imagery (there’s a reason why directors like Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder and Michael Mann cite this as their favourite film). 

A brutal and gory sequence with such imagery as the head shot child dying, his mother carrying his body against the troops and also being shot down, the other mother shot and knocking her own baby carriage down the steps (in a fate the actress more or less met in real life 20 years later, when Stalin was having a go at everyone... how many times have we seen this moment reconstructed since?), the woman with the eye shot out and, of course, the montage of the stone lions rearing up from sleep to startlingly awake at last. You can see just why the film is still influential... it’s got some powerful, visual ideas used to push its agenda.

And it’s nice to see this version of the film retains... or perhaps rather recreates... the red coloured flag which Eisenstein himself had hand tinted for the film’s original premiere back in 1925. Which is a very nice touch for modern audiences to see, I think.

As for the score by the Pet Shop Boys... well it’s not bad ‘actually’ and doesn’t, for starters, detract from the movie (I may be hoisted up and taken to task for that but I think it’s fine, sorry). It’s pretty good and well spotted in terms of, for instance, where some sung lyrics might suddenly invade the mix at certain highlights to support and possibly elevate the spirit of revolution which infuses the tale. They could certainly even be accused of Mickey Mousing* it in a few sequences... for good or worse but, again, I think it actually works here.

And, yeah, that’s me done with this recent(ish) Blu Ray presentation of the 2004 UK screening of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. I’d like to think the director would have been okay with this freshly scored version and I think it doesn’t do the film any harm... as long as the kiddies who view it today in their new fangled film studies classes (wish we’d had those in my day) realise that the sonic environment of this version is unlike anything that could be heard contemporary to the film’s original release. I think it’s important that people know that before going in. And, if you are aware of that and haven’t seen this version... maybe pick up a copy. It’s still a pretty great movie.

*The once very popular but unfashionable for a while practice of a composer matching notes to catch on screen action in a film... yeah, they mostly all still do it and I don’t think it’s a particular bone of contention anymore, it’s nice to say. 

Warlords Of Atlantis

Bell To Hell

Warlords Of Atlantis
Directed by Kevin Connor
UK 1978
EMI
Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Full on spoilers I’m afraid.

The fourth and final film in Imprint’s Tales Of Adventure Collection 9, a collection celebrating the British fantasy films of Doug McClure, is Warlords Of Atlantis. Now, I never liked this film as a kid, I’ll say that up front. And it’s easy to see why I was so disappointed. Two simple words... Star Wars. 

I’d seen the George Lucas opus as it was released in the UK, right in the last week of 1977 and, well... anything else which didn’t live up to that film (which changed cinema forever, for bad or worse, depending on what particular aspect of the art/business you are examining) wasn't going to hold my attention for very long. No droids, nobody spraying laser beams at each other, no spaceship dogfights. Unfair to poor old Warlords Of Atlantis, for sure but, yeah, in this case, to this 10 year old boy... timing was everything. 

Anyway, I don’t remember sitting through it again since (even on the telly when it used to get shown regularly during the holiday seasons in the 1980s), so I really wasn’t expecting much from it now. 

I was very surprised, therefore, that I found this one more than held it’s own with two of the previous movies in this set, not to mention walking all over The People That Time Forgot (reviewed here) in terms of being an interesting movie. 

Set in 1896, the film’s two main stars are Doug McClure and Peter Gilmore as the brawn and brains team searching a certain part of the ocean for, unknown to McClure, the lost city of Atlantis. They go down in a diving bell and actually find it, while the crew in the ship above are split into two factions and trying to kill each other because of a big, gold, Atlantean statue they’ve sent up. Then they are dragged into Atlantis, along with the majority of the crew on the ship above (who are attacked by a giant octopus), under a cave in the ocean and out into one of the five surviving cities of Atlantis. 

Populated by Atlanteans who, pretty much on all accounts, seem friendly but mean them some harm. Gilmore is segregated and the two Atlantean ‘chief warlords’ (just trying to make any sense of the title here folks), played by Raymond Massey and, in her last film, Cyd Charisse, put a future seeing helmet on him and intend to drain his brain, after showing him sights of the future such as Hitler’s Third Reich which they plan to instigate (which makes you wonder if anyone learns anything after the conclusion of this movie). 

Meanwhile, Doug McClure and the surviving sailors... including Shane Rimmer playing against type (and with a beard, no less) and a young, villanous John Ratzenberger (four years before he became the regular character Cliff on Cheers)... team up with the former crewmembers of the Marie Celeste and other ships. These include McClure’s sexy love interest played by Lea Brodie (and her astonishingly adorable cleavage, shots of her used from this film in the opening credits of much missed Saturday children's TV show Tiswas) with future replacement M, James Bond’s boss, Robert Brown, playing her father (before he gets quickly devoured by a giant monster). These people have been altered and given gills so they can never leave the place of their imprisonment but, they all help in an attempt to get the heroes and villains of the upper world to make their escape, while various monsters are attacking Atlantis. And of course, adventurous, not bad for the budget, shenanigans ensue.

Now then, I wasn’t expecting much from this but, the film is interesting in the decisions it takes because, yeah, it really is dark. For instance, the girl remains behind at the end because, as I said, they’ve all been surgically altered to have to stay in Atlantis (even though they’re all breathing air in their environments, so that makes absolutely no sense!) and some of the villains of the crew get away with no consequences for their scoundrel actions either. The story just seems to heap on misfortune after misfortune but, grim as it is, McClure gives the film some uplift when it’s needed. And there’s also some unintentional humour along the way too. For instance, most of the monsters look splendid but, towards the end of the movie, when McClure and co are trying to escape Atlantis, they are attacked by a constant barrage of flying coelacanths, which looks pretty silly and you can imagine the crew just throwing them into shot at the actors off camera.

Other things of note? 

Well, there’s an absolutely brilliant jump scare in the early sequences of the movie, when a big aquatic dinosaur pops it’s head up into the bottom of the diving bell (numerous times, in fact) and tries to eat McClure and Gilmore. I wasn’t expecting it from a film like this and, yeah, it really got me. I was delighted I actually jumped. 

What else? Okay... the colours and shot compositions in the film look absolutely amazing, especially in the scenes in the higher echelons of the city, where columns shaped like inverted pyramids purport to hold the structure up and the director and cinematographer make much, brilliant use of the many diagonals to frame the various characters. 

One last thing... the Atlanteans are depicted as an alien race who have come to Earth from a dying Mars. Now the writer of this film is none other than Brian Hayles, who you may or may not remember was, eleven years prior to this movie, the original creator and writer of the Doctor Who villains, The Ice Warriors... who also hailed from that same planet. So Hayles must have had an interest in Mars at the time, I reckon. 

But that’s me about done with Warlords Of Atlantis and, I’m delighted to say I had an absolutely splendid time with it, in general, this time around. My one regret is that the film Peter Cushing was shooting at the time over-ran and so he couldn’t join this one and renew his working relationship with McClure, as was originally intended. But, this is still a nice little example (perhaps one of the last hurrahs) of British adventure fantasy of this type to get a release in cinemas and, yeah, I think it works really well. The superbly transferred Imprint disc is a little lighter on extras than the others in the set and I can’t help but think that if UK label Indicator had got hold of these, they would probably have also included the Super 8 digest versions of the movies as well. Still, this particular Tales Of Adventure box is a superb treat for fans of these kinds of cinematic marvels and Imprint have done a wonderful job. So thank you Imprint... can we have some more old serials now please?

The Inspector Wears Skirts IV

 

Retirement Blues

The Inspector Wears Skirts IV
aka 92 Ba wang hua yu Ba wang hua
Hong Kong 1992 Directed by Wellson Chin 
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Well now, apart from the first of these movies, which included Cynthia Rothrock, I’d have to say that this series of films is not something I’d really wish to revisit again anytime soon. That being said, The Inspector Wears Skirts IV starts off with a fairly strong opening half an hour, before completely blowing it for most of the rest of the running time. So this at least puts it a little higher in terms of entertainment value than the second and third films in the franchise. 

We actually start with a full blown action sequence of the remaining members of the old SKIRTS unit, trying to save some hostages, with some getting killed or injured. We then get some cartoon illustrations and later freeze frames from old films in the series to fill us in on what some of the characters have been doing since leaving the force. Then we have the graduation ceremony for the new girls, almost all of whom resign because they don’t respect their boss. However, due to a hostage situation and a gangster trying to get the police to release his kingpin father, the remaining two skirts go to recruit some of the old gals, by fair means or fowl, to help them get their mojo back (for want of a better description). They are also led by the new ‘Golden Skirt’ who is there to teach them, played by none other than Cynthia Khan. 

Now, one of the old gals they manage to get back, just about, is May, played again by Kara Ying Hung Wai as a person driven crazy by her experiences in the SKIRTS... so they have to get her released from a mental health institution (think like a female version of Murdoch from The A Team, is the way she plays her this time around). And then, of course, no SKIRTS movie would be complete without the return of Sandra Kwan Yue Ng as Amy, now divorced from the most unlikely guy in the third film and raising her son as a single parent. I have to say, this really shows up the producers idea that the third movie, though still sharing the same director, doesn’t really count as part of the franchise in their books... so it really doesn’t follow on from the character as we left her at the end of the last movie at all.

And I’d like to tell you this was more consistently entertaining than the last one but, we’re again assaulted by very crude and broad humour which mostly fails to land but, at least there’s a lot more action this time around and it feels more like a Hong Kong martial arts piece in that sense. But yeah, there’s really not much going for it and when the finale involves a school full of child hostages (including Amy’s kid) there’s even a sequence where said kid sets booby traps for a comical henchman to get repeatedly caught in, like the film just suddenly turned into Home Alone for a few minutes. 

The one thing which does raise this is the quality of the subtitles... and if you’re buying the British version put out by 88 Films, if you want an extra, unintentional comedy treat (which, lets face it, if you’re watching this series, may well be the only way you’re going to get a laugh)... then said subtitles seem like they’re particular tailored for the British audience. I lost count of the times the various characters say things on the subtitles like... “Bloody Hell”, “Bollocks”, “Piss Off” and “You Wanker”. I mean, I’m assuming this has been re-subtitled for the recent American release of this movie?

Highlights to this one would be the novelty of cartoon pictures, the moment when a gangster in a wheelchair opens fire with twin machine guns coming from said chair and a strange, metatextual moment when one of the characters comments on how dream-like a particular location is, which is all shot soft focus so she’s commenting on the camerawork as much as anything.

However, at the end of the day, a few neat moments and a strong opening do not make for a good film and are unable to hoist The Inspector Wears Skirts IV up from the mess it gets itself into. Probably the second best of the franchise but, yeah, really nothing in here for me to recommend to others, that’s for sure. 

Rashômon

Deceitful Rider

Rashômon
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Daiei Japan 1950 
BFI Blu Ray Zone B

“Women can’t help crying. They’re naturally weak.”
The Bandit

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story ‘In The Grove’, which I have read in English translation but not for a couple of decades now, is the basis for this very important film, Rashômon, by the great Akira Kurosawa. It’s a landmark for so many reasons and, hooray, it has my two favourite actors in this one, Toshiro Mifune as a bandit and the great Takashi Shimura as a woodcutter. 

It’s a film which starts at the Rashômon Gate*, various static shots of which, in the pouring rain, punctuate the opening credit cards. And then we see two characters, Shimura and yet another of he and Mifune’s Seven Samurai co-stars (I think there’s a fair few of them in this, despite the small cast), Minoru Chiaki as a priest. Both are sheltering from the kind of hard rain that only Kurosawa could create and capture (I think with added black ink rather than milk in this case), when they are joined by a third person, played by Kichijirō Ueda, who wants to know why the two are puzzling, despairing in fact, about various witness accounts they’ve just seen in the trial of the aforementioned bandit. 

Okay, so from here the film goes into various flashbacks, both from this refuge and also within the stories from the trial, which tells the tale of a murderous (or possibly even suicidal) forest encounter between Mifune’s bandit, a samurai played by Masayuki Mori and his wife, played by Machiko Kyô. And each person tells a completely different version of the events that the woodcutter himself saw, in his fourth version of the story, which even then is not believed. Each version differing wildly in tone and intent within the same basic set up of a bandit raping the samurai’s wife. Even the samurai who was killed, by one means or another, by the end of the sequence of events, gives his side of the story, being brought back to speech at the trial through a spiritual medium, played by Noriko Honma

Six performances so electrically charged that they positively crackle with energy, combined with what was then deemed, at least by the West, as groundbreaking cinematic technique.

There are a few reasons why people still worship at the cinematic temple of Rashômon to this day and one of them, of course, is that the very phenomena of various eyewitness accounts and people’s memories conflicting with each other has slipped into common usage in the English language, being known now as a Rashômon-like occurrence. I, myself, on numerous occasions where I’ve had to do jury service, have seen how the eyewitness evidence of two or more witnesses can often be diametrically opposed to each other (either that or the police are incredibly stupid... take your pick).

But this is not the only reason why it is remembered...

The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and, two years later, won an Honourary Academy Award, the film often being credited as to why the Academy invented the Best Foreign Movie category. In other words, it was the film that put Japanese cinema on the map (which to the Japanese meant that the film must be somehow deficient, if the crazy Westerners could understand it... and not be a true Japanese product). I mean some film was bound to do that for Japan at some point but... yeah, this was the one. But why?

Well, the first flashback and many subsequent scenes has the moving camera pointing up directly at the sun (with the tree canopy against the sky almost becoming another character here)... often accredited as being the first film to do so (although there were, I suspect, silent films doing that before 1950) but, as importantly, the film uses a lot of hand held camera technique, which was also a bit of an eye opener. I’ve heard many directors tell of the first time they saw this and the way the camera was freed and allowed them to contemplate what else could be done with cinema. Also, in reference to the fact that the different flashback sequences, each eliciting very different performances by the lead actors (it’s quite something when, in the fourth segment, Machiko Kyô kinda goes mad and slips into the trademark, over enthusiastic, wild Mifune laugh from the first sequence which would later reappear in Seven Samurai, and make it her own) and they way the medium of film suddenly seemed so free and flexible. And the rigorous fight between the bandit and the samurai in the first recollection is performed as two inept men fighting comically when it’s observed for the fourth time.

Plus, of course, what Kurosawa could so with a 4:3 aspect ratio is just amazing. Here are just three of the many shots which are utterly brilliant here...

The samurai first coming across Mifune sitting against tree on the opposite side of screen, a huge tree trunk turning the vertical space between them into a thick black separator, framing the actors in their own slivers of space.

Another shot of the upper torso and head of Shimura in close up, centred large in the screen, with two other characters in long shot over each shoulder as they converse. Again, another separator, this time made from one of the characters (see one of the shots pictured above).

Finally, Minoru Chiaki clutching one side of a column in close up, the structure taking up the right half of the screen as an area of darkness. Then Shimura says something and we pan right, the column now taking up the left hand side of the screen as we catch up to a medium shot of Shimura standing in the background all in one motion. It’s like a moving series of frames and all this stuff I’m describing in terms of visual creativity is just a small handful of much of the movie in terms of excellence in shot composition (which, to be fair, you expect from the greatest director in the world... which is, of course, Akira Kurosawa). 

And that’s just about it from me about Rashômon, I think. It’s obviously influential and has also been remade a fair few times... I still need to see the Western remake with Paul Newman and William Shatner entitled The Outrage but, even the great Mario Bava had a crack at this when he turned it into a fairly sexless sex comedy in his film Four Times That Night, if memory recalls (what do you expect when you let Dick Randall produce your movie, eh?). Rashômon, though, is definitely the film that put Japanese cinema and, by default, Kurosawa, on the international map and most cineastes would have surely seen this one by now. But, if you haven’t, you should probably look this one up... it added greatly, I think, to the grammar of cinema in all it’s forms. Another of the great director’s masterpieces. 

*Originally an entranceway to Kyoto but destroyed by storms over the 9th and 10th centuries.