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!

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. 

In The Navy

Navy Lark Ascending

In The Navy
Directed by Arthur Lubin
USA 1941
Universal Pictures
Shout Factory Blu Ray Zone A

Abbott and Costello were so popular already that they released four movies in 1941 alone and this one, In The Navy, was the second of them. This one stars the famous singing star Dick Powell as the main romantic lead (three years before he tried to change his image by playing a pretty good version of Philip Marlow, if memory serves, in Murder My Sweet aka Farewell My Lovely), Claire Dodd as his romantic interest (who played Della Street in the Perry Mason flick The Case Of The Velvet Claws, reviewed here) and, also as a kind of semi-villainous authority figure role, Dick Foran (this film sandwiched between, among others, his two The Mummy sequels The Mummy’s Hand, reviewed here and The Mummy’s Tomb, reviewed here). 

While it’s a case of Bud and Lou being punctuated by the intrusive ‘reporter tries to break the story of the singing sensation who joins the Navy incognito to escape his adoring, female public before falling in love with him’ plot, along with various musical outbursts, most of which didn’t land for me this time, apart from the wonderful Andrews Sisters numbers in the movie, they don’t take a back seat as much... but, I have to say, I didn’t like this one as much as the previous two movies, for sure. Which just shows how much I know because, the general public liked it fine and the picture raked in even more box office bullion than their previous picture Buck Privates (reviewed here). This wasn’t a direct sequel to that movie, with the boys playing different characters but, there was one coming for sure. Actually, they already had the next picture in the can before this but, because the American public wanted more ‘service pictures’, the Navy movie was released first.

And, although I didn’t find it quite as entertaining, there’s still a lot of nice comedy moments in this and some points of interest too. The routines they do, a couple of them aided by Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges again, are mostly okay but they are still quite amusing and there’s one extended sequence involving spitting water at each other where the guys (and everyone else on set) keep cracking up and spilling the water, with all those takes left in. There are some nice dialogue moments too... for instance, when the lead actress stowing away introduces herself to Lou as Dot and when Lou sees someone coming for her, he yells “Dash, Dot! Dash!” Which made me smile. Also, when Lou asks Bud what some men are working on in a photo, Bud replies ‘That’s a hull of a ship!” Lou says, “You’re telling me. But what’s that thing they’re working on!” Or when Lou is reading about what Stern, Bow and Starboard is and Dot asks him where the Port is, he directs her that it’s near the ice box. 

So yeah, there’s some good dialogue and also some nice visual comedy, such as the moment Lou draws a big hook on a blackboard and then hangs his hat on it like it’s a real one. But there’s also some interesting metatextual stuff going on in the movie too, such as the opening credits where Bud and Lou are hoisting flags up with the names and titles on them and they flag up that it’s Buck Privates, before Bud points out that Lou got the wrong flag and they hoist it back up as In The Navy. And another scene where Lou says he’s going to go out and buy loads of Andrews Sisters records and starts singing one of the songs from the previous film... which is almost fine because the Andrews Sisters are kinda playing versions of themselves in this one but... yeah, it’s still kinda hammering lightly at that fourth wall, for sure. 

The most curious thing, for me, was a whole extended 15 or 20 minute sequence near the end of the movie where Lou accidentally gains control of the ship and sends it on some bizarre military manoeuvres (courtesy of some not too convincing miniatures, it has to be said)... which then suddenly turns out to be part of a dream after he knocks himself out with a sleeping draft. Well, I thought this was a pretty strange choice for the movie, being as it’s right near the end but, reading up on it, it was never originally supposed to be a dream sequence. What happened was, when the Navy saw the crazy movements the ship was making in this big sequence, they immediately withdrew their support for the film... so the studio changed it to being a dream sequence and then they were back ‘on board’ with the film, if you’ll excuse the pun (and why wouldn’t you?). 

And that’s me done on In The Navy, I think. Again, I didn’t like this one as much as the other two but it’s still quite entertaining for the most part and I’m still looking forward to seeing the other 20 plus movies in Shout Factory’s well restored Blu Ray box. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

Buck Privates

Private Parts

Buck Privates
USA 1941 
Directed by Arthur Lubin
Universal/Shout Factory Blu Ray Zone A

Following on from the box office failure of One Night In The Tropics (reviewed here) but, also marking the success and popularity of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in their joint movie debut in that film (although, it turns out, not quite in Lou's case... more on that in a silent Laurel & Hardy review coming to the blog), they were signed to at least two more pictures and Buck Privates was the first of many where they were the main draw. Having said that, there are a couple of other characters who are also there to provide a kind of romantic rivalry in the film and who share the limelight with the two comedians.

Bud and Lou play two illegal street salesmen who run away from a police sergeant and join the line in a cinema for cover. They’re both too stupid to realise it’s a line for ‘peacetime recruitment’ for a year’s national service, to get people trained up as soldiers ‘just in case’ America entered the war... and so end up recruited themselves. Also recruited is a millionaire playboy portrayed by Lee Bowman and his ex-servant and main romantic competitor, played by Alan Curtis. Both of these mostly loathe each other and are both after the same army gal, played by Jane Frazee and, when the camera isn’t concentrating on various Abbott and Costello routines worked into the story, the rivalry between these two is shown as quite cut throat and nasty, until the rich playboy saves the life of his ex-employee and they both do their company proud in an army game at the finish of the movie.

So, yeah, it’s all the kinds of gags you would expect from this kind of ‘little people joining up for a greater cause’ movie but, of course, in terms of American movies, it would have been one of their earlier ones so, at the time, it wouldn’t have seemed quite to formula. Indeed, the movie was a huge hit, making more money than any other Universal picture had made up until that point. 

The comedy is mostly good stuff... some of the physical stuff is really creaky and there’s a hell of a lot of ad libbing going on (for instance, a drill routine was supposed to last three minutes but went on for over five, because all the ad libs from the boys were kept in) but the fast dialogue shenanigans, many once again based on ways Abbot could con money out of Costello, are all great and very witty. There’s also an early appearance of a boxing match that Costello gets conned into fighting which, if I remember rightly, was revisited in various ways by the duo over the years. 

Interjected among the comedy is the story of the rivalry between the two other male leads and, some really great song and dance numbers including The Andrews Sisters. This was the first of a few collaborations they filmed with Bud and Lou and they got a few big hit singles out of this one, including the tremendous Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Of Company B, of course. 

A couple of things to mention here too. Firstly, keep an eye out for the cook who features prominently with Lou in a musical scene in the army kitchen tent... it’s none other than Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges fame. Secondly, that long drill scene (which I have to say, was not exactly a highlight of the picture for me) was something that the Japanese used to show their soldiers during the war, to demonstrate just how stupid the American soldiers were. Hmmm... a somewhat back handed compliment I guess. 

And, like I said, Buck Privates really did the business at the box office and the prints were at a shortage and in demand from cinemas. In fact, it delayed the production of the next Abbott and Costello film, also directed by Lubin (who did a number of these and was given a $5000 bonus by the company after this one proved so successful), because the studio wanted to give it a bigger budget and restyle it to a bigger picture. So I guess that’ll be the third film coming up in this beautifully restored Abbott And Costello - The Universal Collection Blu Ray set so... I’ll get onto that one soon. 

Mon Oncle

The Man From Oncle

Mon Oncle
France/Italy 1958
Directed by Jacques Tati
Studio Canal UK Blu Ray

Mon Oncle is the second of Jacques Tati’s films where he plays his beloved character Monsieur Hulot (uncredited, for some reason). It was made five years after Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (reviewed here) and he won Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards for his trouble. 

This time around we see Hulot living in an apartment of a maze like, multistory house (which was actually two houses put together) and, said house and his elabourate route to his apartment at the top is definitely something I’ve seen done before... or rather, after. Like I said in my review of the previous movie, these films were much loved and cast a very long shadow of influence on the film industry (globally, not just in France). I’m sure, for example, there’s a very similar sequence rendered in homage in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (reviewed here). 

Most of the action, though, is split between the local environment... as Hulot collects his sister’s son from school and also takes walks around the neighbourhood with him... and at his brother-in-law’s high tech home, built by his company. The sister is played by Adrienne Servantie, her husband is played by Jean-Pierre Zola and their ‘always up to mischief’ son is played by Alain Bécourt. There’s also some action at the brother-in-law’s factory as he tries to employ Hulot to help him out. 

Like the first movie, there’s not too much dialogue and it’s a slow comedy of observations as Hulot and the local populace find themselves in various comical situations and eccentricities. There’s the road sweeper who talks so much to all and sundry that he never manages to move his pile of rubbish, for example. Or the wonderful moment when a dog is snarling at the toothy fish that Hulot has in his bag.

About those dogs... the movie begins and ends with a bunch of dogs, rummaging through the bins of the neighbourhood in the morning and, this is where the film also ends. And these dogs are prominent anchor points throughout the film, one of which is the dog owned by Hulot’s brother-in-law, 

Now, I have to say that, this one is another slow burn of a movie and, unlike Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, I didn’t quite warm to this one in the same way and so I prefer the first one. I have to say though that, like the first one, the film is extremely clever and has a lot of great visual gags. Such as the way Hulot has to angle the open window of his flat in just the right way every morning so that the reflection from the sun hits the canary in the building opposite to get it to sing. Or, when he’s trying to fix a problem caused by the kid (involving some decorative plant life) and he’s in the grounds of the high tech home at night, the two round windows at the top of the house become eyes that follow him around with the pupils made up of the husband and wife peering out into the night. 

Also, unlike Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, this film is shot in colour and there are some really nice colour combinations captured for the film, not least of which is the combination of hues found in the high tech home itself. The mise en scène is absolutely stunning in this and even if some of the comedy antics of the various characters don’t quite wash with you, the film at the very least looks great so, yeah, something for everyone, perhaps. 

In a way, this film reminded me a little of the Peter Sellars vehicle The Party (which my friend Kerry used to love so much) and, as I said in my previous review, the influence of Tati on Sellars, especially his work on the Inspector Clouseau films, seems pretty obvious (and I’m sure Rowan Atkinson and his Mr. Bean creation must also have been heavily influenced by Tati too). 

Okay, I think that’s me just about done with Mon Oncle. Unlike the first Hulot film (which I really have to watch again soon), this one felt a little flatter to me but I could still marvel at some of the clever, visual jokes and I can certainly see why this film captured the imagination in the way it did. I shall certainly be continuing with these films, for sure. 

Nobody 2

Does It Better

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

Warning: Extremely minor spoiler you will see coming anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Night Life Of The Gods

Apollo’s Creed

Night Life Of The Gods 
Directed by Lowell Sherman
USA 1935
DVD Region 0

Warning: Full on spoilers.

“Once upon a time, a famous author named Thorne Smith wrote a book, conceived in a moment of delirium, and written in a cuckoo clock, the first chapters convinced us He was crazy. The ensuing left no doubt that possibly WE were. So we leave you to enjoy this new and completely mad type of whimsical humor on the screen.

Stop rattling cellophane! Take Sonny's shoes off! Park your gum under the seat where it belongs, and let's all go crazy together.”
Foreword from the movie version of Night Life Of The Gods

Just a quick dash of a smidgeon of a short review for what was, up until relatively recently (I believe) thought of as a lost film. That is to say, the movie adaptation of Thorne Smith’s Night Life Of The Gods. Dead at the age of 42, one year before this movie was made, Smith was a famous and much loved contemporary humourist who wrote a number of books and collections which tackled booze, sex and society in a comedic and witty manner. Night Life Of The Gods is certainly one of his best remembered but two of his other novels, Topper and Topper Takes A Trip, are perhaps even more known works, both of which were the basis for the first two of three Topper films in the 1930s and 40s, followed by a popular spin off TV show and, in later decades, various other TV films and shows which were less successful.

Now I said above that this movie version of Night Life Of The Gods was thought to be lost, certainly according to a book I’ve recently been reading which was revised around about ten years ago. Well, it must have turned up somewhere but I am surprised that such a title has not, since its rediscovery, had a proper DVD or Blu Ray restoration since its ‘found’ status. As such, I have been forced to take the ‘underground’ route and have acquired a ‘copy’ from that sometimes great resource for ‘unreleased and consigned to the scrapheap for good’ movies... eBay. 

So here I am and... I can understand in some way why this one has not been polished up for a modern audience. The foreword, which I have duplicated in its entirety at the start of this page, is somewhat off putting but it shows how ‘less than confident’ the producers were about putting this somewhat unusual concoction before the general public in the first place. Yeah, let’s tell them it’s crazy in case they don’t enter into the spirit of the thing, right? Not to mention using the horrible US spelling of the word humour, of course.

Okay, so I’ve no idea if this measures up to the original novel (nope, I haven’t read it but I should probably read this author’s works at some stage, he’s one of my dad’s favourite writers) but the plot is about an inventor called Hunter Hawk, played by Alan Mowbray and his crazy explosions which leave his family, who all live in the same house as him, somewhat nervous... and perhaps hopeful that he might die in one of his own explosions and leave them all his money. 

After he is knocked unconscious in his laboratory, pretty much the rest of the movie takes place in his dream. He invents a machine, which he can wear as a ring, which turns people into stone statues and, I have to say, it’s a power used a lot and looks particularly good when shown on screen... especially for a 1935 movie but, perhaps even for modern times. However, the ring can also bring the stone back to flesh but, more so, it can bring statues to life and so, in the usual drunken adventures which are possibly a signature of a Thorne Smith protagonist, Hawk and his friend bring to life the statues of the Gods, such as Apollo (played here by the great serial and b-movie player Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan, billed under his real name of Raymond Benard), Neptune and Diana... and they all go on drunken revelries around the city, pursued by the police and leaving a trail of chaos behind them. 

Now, it’s not a bad film by any means... one particular moment, where Bacchus (as played here by George Hassell) is getting a massage and then decides to neck down the massage oil as there is no suitable alcohol around, certainly tickled me. But, the film does feel somewhat like it’s in the mode of that special kind of chaotic humour you would find in an early Marx Brothers movie... without having the benefit of Groucho, Harpo, Chico... or even Zeppo... present to give the shenanigans that special ingredient. That being said, bearing in mind audiences were already used to and loving Minie’s boys* by this point in their career, I am somewhat puzzled as to why Universal thought they needed that wordy and somewhat cringeworthy opening foreword to introduce the proceedings.

I mean, it’s not terrible but, it’s not terribly good either. The saving grace is, perhaps, that everyone seems really invested in their role and Alan Mowbray certainly seems to be taking things very seriously indeed. And at the start, Hawk seems downright sinister but it’s tempered by Mowbray’s performance once the wine induced hijinks are underway, for sure. 

And there I am with a longer review than I’d expected to be able to write and nothing much more to say about this one other than... while the costumes and scantily clad nature of them seem more appropriate to the pre-code days of Hollywood, which ended only the year before, the modesty of all the actors and actresses here is kept firmly intact. 

Would I recommend Night Life Of The Gods, in terms of the movie version. Well it’s certainly not for everybody but I think such a film, which is somewhat different from most of the other stuff being pumped out by the major studios at the time, certainly deserves a modern audience. I don’t think it will necessarily win any big fans but it’s certainly something which I feel should be seen by people, nevertheless. So, yeah, I would kind of recommend it to various shades of cinephile, actually.

*The Marx Brothers

The Inspector Wears Skirts

 

The Skirty Dozen

The Inspector Wears Skirts
aka Ba wong fa
Hong Kong 1988 
Directed by Wellson Chin
Golden Harvest 
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

The Inspector Wears Skirts (the first one, at least) is a pretty entertaining slice of Hong Kong action cinema, produced by Jackie Chan and initially top lining Sibelle Hu in the first instance, who is really good in this one. Sometime during the production, the producers didn’t think it was working out all that well so they added Cynthia Rothrock into the cast, already making a name for herself in Hong Kong before she conquered the American market... and she turns up in the absolutely brilliant opening sequence, where she and Hu take on a bunch of terrorists... and then is brought in for the third reel for a section of training sequences and the big scene to catch out some lethal diamond robbers at the end. I think she’d already gone to America by the time of the first sequel to this one so, as far as I know, she doesn’t turn up in the other three films.

After the opening sequence, which is one of the best action scenes in the movie, the Hong King police decide to put Sibelle Hu’s character Madam Wu in charge of a new, special unit of female police officers, known as SKIRTS (no acronym origins of the codename are given because, you know, Cantonese to English translation is probably not doable in terms of getting it to make sense in English), who she will train up to help support the male police force when needed for special assignments. And this is when the film turns into Police Academy for a good long while, as Wu trains her band of recruits like an army drill sergeant and these sections and the inevitable ‘battle of the sexes’ between the male and female cadets are played for laughs a lot of the time. And, if you’re not familiar with the style of Hong Kong movies during this period of their cinema... the comedy is played very broadly with a lot of crudity and slapstick, it seems to me. It’s not all to my taste, I have to admit but, like most comedy, some of it hits and some of it definitely misses. 

And then Cynthia Rothrock’s character, Madam Law, is brought back to take an even tougher training stance with the girls and then, when both the male and female units are despatched undercover to a fashion show to protect the jewellery... well... somewhat predictably, it’s the gals who save the day with a nicely put together series of creatively choreographed fight scenes, which are all pretty entertaining. 

And, helpfully, the various cadets played by the likes of Regina Kent and Ann Bridgewater all play likeable characters who the audience can, at least, sorta relate to and, luckily, are all doing some good action work here too. Although, with some of the male leads... I could have perhaps done without the song and dance number, truth be told. 

The editing is quite good in this too, asides from the normal action editing... where the timing has to be just right. In one scene, for instance, after one of the male police cadets has taken part in a drinking competition with one of the girls, he passes out and starts to fall to the floor. This cuts then to a new scene which starts off with a bang of an explosion, timed perfectly to when the guy’s head in the previous shot would have hit the floor. Giving the previous sequence a kind of audio/visual punctuation period point (or full stop as we call it here in the UK). 

Another stand out thing is the score... which perhaps stands out for some of the wrong reasons but it seems appropriate to the comic undertones of the whole thing. So, yeah, the score for this one by Noel Quinlan (who I only know from The Man From Hong Kong... reviewed by me at some point in the future... it’s in the pile, okay?) like the comedy content of the film, is not exactly subtle or clever but, unfortunately for me, it’s quite an infectious ear worm of a cheesy synth-pop main theme which helps give some of the scenes a certain buoyancy, it has to be said.

And I think that’s me about done on the first The Inspector Wears Skirts film. I didn’t know what to expect from this and I’m pleased to say that I liked it just fine (to the point where I’m going to have to go and buy all the sequels, which have fortunately now been released over here by the same company in the UK) and I’m still hearing that annoyingly catchy theme tune in my head... more’s the pity. So, yeah, expect some other reviews of similar films to follow this one soonest. 

Yellowjackets 3

 

Misty Meaner

Yellowjackets
USA February - April 2025
Series 3 Ten episodes

Warning: Spoilers below.

After the second series of Yellowjackets (reviewed here)... when one of my favourites of the adult characters of the two parallel stories, as played by Juliette Lewis, was accidentally killed by the adult version of Misty (played by Christina Ricci)... I didn’t think it had much story left to tell, to be honest. At least not enough to hold my attention.

However, as it happens, Yellowjackets Series 3 was a pretty cool one and maybe a little better than that second batch, to be fair. However, as gripped as I still am by the show, I do think the writers are maybe now spinning the story on a little longer than it has to go to naturally play out. The story once again progresses with the adult versions of the survivors of the Yellowjackets and their teen counterparts, still stuck in the wilderness in their Lord Of The Flies kind of existence, cross cutting and informing each other.

To help them with sustaining this, the writers have gone to picking on another of the teens who has actually been in it since season two (okay... I guess the survivors didn’t notice they’d grown another person or two) and once again brought the adult version of them into the story. 

This one had Melanie Lynskey once more trying to survive the ridiculous plots she gets into as an adult Shauna, trying to keep things together and de-escalate the effect of her daughter witnessing the death at the end of series two... but by the end of the series, she is much more reverting to the angry, strict and ruthless survivor version of her teenage self (played by Sophie Nélisse) as she pursues a ‘normal life’. Meanwhile, the others are also pitching in to try and find out who killed adult Lottie (played by Simone Kessell)... the second of three big adult character deaths in this series.

The third big adult death (but there are more), after gaining a sacrificial reprieve from her cancer, is the adult version of Van (played by Lauren Ambrose). Unlike last season, though, this actually happens in the penultimate episode, rather than act as the season finale, which goes in its own direction. As for the first adult death, this time around... I’ll leave you to discover it for yourself.

Okay, so one of my theories about either the teen or adult versions of the story line being a little fictional and spawned from the other is, I suspect, beginning to see the light of day here. For starters, the ghosts of the dead that show up don’t always have to be somebody else. It gets kind of complicated but, for instance, Van starts having visitations from her teen self and, when she is finally dead, she ends up on the same ethereal aircraft as some of the previous victims did when they died. 

Furthermore, when the teen version of Lotte somehow crosses time and wakes up her corpse version from the slab of the morgue, she takes her to the place where she meets that very death which got her there... which is a time conundrum but I’m not really sure the temporal mechanics of that kind of bootstrap paradox are necessarily something which needs to be taken into account here. I think a more obvious clue lays in what teen Travis (Kevin Alves) says about experiencing the action through different people’s versions of reality, which would make more sense with the dead people suddenly finding themselves turning up on an airplane watching events play out on some kind of TV. And especially since some of the characters have been experiencing interpenetrating dreams (or something like a dream) together when under the influence of a gas found in a cave.

I think this one does have a very specific endgame to it but what worries me is that the creators are planning for this one to end on series five. Which seems way too long for me but, even so, the fourth season hasn’t even started filming (the show was only renewed back in May of this year) so what we have here is the prospect of this next series not airing until late 2026 or perhaps even 2027 (ample time to forget everything again, then). And in the case of some of the ‘teens’ in the show, well... some of them will be nearer to, or even past, 30 years old when the show is finally over. Let’s see what happens next, I guess. 

Novocaine

No Pain, No’caine

Novocaine
Directed by Dan Berk & Robert Olsen
United States/Canada/South Africa 2025
Paramount
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: One mention of an injury spoiler.

Well now, I saw what I thought wasa particularly harsh review of this one so I was going into Novocaine concentrating on how good the trailer was, as opposed to the word of mouth. And I have to say that, while it has some slight technical problems, I thought this one was actually pretty good.

Novocaine deals with a bank manager, Nathan Caine (played by Jack Quaid and nicknamed Novocaine) who falls in love with one of the new workers at the bank, Sherry (played brilliantly by Amber Midthunder). Nathan is called Novocaine because he has a condition in that he doesn’t feel pain (like the villain from The World Is Not Enough, reviewed here). What this means is, when the bank is robbed by three quite vicious criminals and Sherry is carted away as a hostage, he can go on a ‘somewhat apologetic’ manhunt to get Sherry back without worrying about the pain inflicted on him, while the police also hunt him... because it’s not long before he’s accidentally killed one of the gunmen in a brutal fight.

That’s it, in a nutshell and the film has been accused of being a ‘one joke’ wonder in terms of the kind of brutal violence the hero can just take and walk away from in a playful manner and... yeah, okay, in some ways it is. But that being said, the writers get a lot of mileage out of it and it really doesn’t get dull throughout the course of the picture. It’s also got some nice chemistry and strong performances from the two leads, Quaid and Midthunder... and some pretty charismatic and downright hateable villains too. Jacob Batalon from the recent Spider-Man films is pretty good as Novocaine’s ‘guy in the chair’ and Betty Gabriel does a really good job as one of the sympathetic cops pursuing both Caine and the bad guys.

Now, there are some problems. For instance, there’s a twist moment with one character that, in terms of the movie as a whole, should have been revealed much later on in the story than the halfway point because it kind of detracts from the motivation of the main character you are following. That being said, both myself and my friend,* who went with me, saw that twist coming as soon as the character first appeared (and I’m pretty sure I got a sense of it from the trailer too) so I was somewhat disappointed with that direction. Also, once you have the twist confirmed on screen, you figure that ‘this incident’ and ‘that incident’ now have to happen in order to get the characters worth believing in again and, sure enough... !

One other thing is the editing is a bit choppy and obfuscating in some sequences. 

Plus, there’s a gun in a room suddenly appearing on the floor of a kitchen when it should have been in the alley outside of the building at one point... so I’m guessing the first big fight scene of the movie was deliberately cut down by the director to speed things up for this sequence and the by-product of this decision was having a gun suddenly turn up where there couldn’t possibly have been a gun at this point. Or did I just miss something here? Answers on a postcard.

The biggest problem, however, is that it doesn’t matter how little pain you feel, if a man takes some of these over the top injuries... such as half an arm breaking off like a broken Pez dispenser but then using the long bone protruding from the flappy stump as a weapon... then I don’t buy that a lot of bandages and a few months rest is going to mean you’re all stitched up and good as new. There are some life changing injuries in this film (it may be an action comedy but it doesn’t skimp on the brutal violence) and there’s no way a person just gets up and then is right as rain a little while later.

So, yeah, beyond the execution and limits of the premise, there are huge credibility issues with Novocaine for sure (including characters that just seem to dissappear for the rest of a scene when they’re not wanted and some super extra slow response times from the pursuing police). That being said though, I had a great time with this one and would be happy to see a sequel to it if it comes to pass. The main leads were likeable and I’ll happily pick up a Blu Ray for my parents to check out at some point, I suspect.

*We were the only people in the audience... which would possibly explain why Starbucks has suddenly upped stakes and left all cinemas last week, leaving a huge space which my local cinema doesn't know what to do with. 

Anora

 

A Choice Between Two Indefinite Articles

Anora
USA 2024
Directed by Sean Baker
Universal

I’ve been wanting to see Anora since the end of last year. Alas, it played for one week in limited showings at my local cinema and trying to get to somewhere else to see it during the pre-Christmas rush proved impossible for me. But I knew enough from the advertising that it might well have been one of my favourite films last year, enough to give it a mention in my intro to my New Year’s Day list. And the reason for that is, primarily, because I really trust writer/director Sean Baker... even though I’ve not seen any of his prior films (a couple of them deal with subject matter I’m not comfortable with... my problem specific to me).

So why trust Sean Baker so much... and did the film live up to my expectations?

Well, back when we were in lockdown during the pandemic, I was watching a lot of those brilliant Criterion Closet videos to pass the time after work and one of them was Sean Baker and I liked his style. But the clincher was when, as America was just locking down, he flew up to the Severin Films HQ and recorded their equivalent version of the CC, the Severin Cellar. At the time, I think he was the first person to do both the Criterion and Severin movie grabs (I think there’s been one other guy since). And in the Severin one he not only did me a solid by forewarning me ( to allow me to save some cash a couple of years in advance) that Severin were working on their big Black Emanuelle box set (reviews coming to this blog at some point) but, honestly, you could see how much the guy loved film in any kind of genre and budget (as it should be) and I just have a huge amount of respect for him (not sure about his singing voice but I’ll get back to that). These can be found on YouTube here and here.

Two other things which endear me to him and this film in particular is that... firstly, the Blu Ray release in a month or two is bypassing the main distributor and going straight to Criterion... the first time a film has done that in a long while, I think. Even the great Wes Anderson generally has to go through a distributor version first before ending up with the definitive edition on Criterion. Secondly... man, the cover of the Blu Ray they are putting out is a wonderful nod to a shot of the late, great Soledad Miranda for one of her poster shots for Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (reviewed here) so, well, you’ve got to love this guy.

So, yeah, Anora.

Mikey Madison (who I hated as one of Manson’s psychopaths in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood... which means she did her job well) plays the terminally cute sex worker Ani (which she prefers over her real name Anora), who works in a strip club and, because she can speak Russian, gets hooked up with a young client, Ivan, played by Mark Eydelshteyn, who is the son of a ‘beyond rich’ Russian family who are amazingly famous for reasons we, the audience, never find out. And, after an extended ‘escort vacation’ the two get hitched in Las Vegas, marrying Anora into Ivan's family. Which doesn’t go down well with said family who send some heavies in to make the two annul the marriage pronto but, Ivan does a runner and then Anora has to work with these goons to find Ivan, primarily because she wants to stay married.

And it’s brilliant, as is one of the heavies, Igor, played by Yura Borisov, who had my sympathies right from the start because of Anora’s ‘fighting for survival’ abuse of his character... which is feeding into the wonderful conclusion to the film. Which I won’t spoil but I will touch upon in a little while.

Firstly, the film is shot wonderfully with a rich colour palette leaning into reds and blues which, honestly, just looks like eye candy all the way through. There’s lots of nudity, of course, and the film starts strongly in the strip club in which Anora works, panning down a column of lap-dancers giving shows before getting to Anora and her dance... and with the credits superimposed against her brightly lit face and body, I can’t help but think that Baker intended this sequence to be exactly as I interpreted it. Which is as a kind of ‘live and unplugged’ variant of a James Bond opening title sequence. It looks fantastic and puts us into a kind of ‘adult fantasy’ environment straight away.

So the cinematography is wonderful and... so is the editing, actually (which, again, I think was also handled by Sean Baker). Madison’s performance is absolutely blisteringly funny at some points of this frenetic movie and the comedy of the extended ‘home invasion’ sequence has some high comedy where the heavies just don’t know what to do with a kicking, biting, screaming, abusive Anora so they can calculate their best move. And that editing and timing really come into their own here, as Baker sets up a shot where the camera is just trained on Madison’s mouth while the audience are waiting to see if she starts screaming the house down again. This is a marvellous example, I would say, of the art of cinema where the performance and the editing are absolutely in synch with each other... so if nothing else, Baker is an incredible director. And the lead actress really is a force of nature.

Now the film has no musical score but it does have a heck of a lot of needle drop songs in it. Normally this would be a huge turn off for me but... even though I really didn’t think much of the majority of the songs... they fit the milieu of the characters nicely and, yeah, they didn’t frighten me away. Which is another good sign for this movie as far as I’m concerned.

What it also has is a magnificent ending between Anora and Igor which, is hard to pin down as a definitive conclusion but which acts, finally, as an emotional release for the central character. It’s a wonderful, almost ambiguous ending which, in my mind, pushes further the kind of 1970s, stylistic aesthetic which I feel the movie is kind of soaked in. It’s an ending which feels like its very important, while at the same time being completely open to interpretation as it seems to pitch different, almost contrasting emotional states and slip them into a blender together... good stuff.

And I think that’s me done, more or less, on Anora (which I shall be purchasing on Blu Ray as soon as Criterion get it out over here). It’s a hard recommendation from me and, frankly, it may well have pipped Hundreds Of Beavers (reviewed here) to the 2024 top spot if I’d seen it last year. And I’m glad to say the critical and audience response to this one has been ‘through the roof’ too. It is, I would say, very much a masterpiece of a movie and I can’t help but think that both director and stars alike are left feeling, in the singing voice of Baker in the Severin Cellar when talking about Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals (review coming to this blog at some point in the nearish future)... “so happy, like a clown.”

The Monkey

Hey! Hey!

The Monkey
Directed by Osgood Perkins
USA/UK/Canada 2025
Atomic Monster
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Some spoilerage.

I’m not the most avid admirer of Osgood Perkins (son of the famous Anthony Perkins) but I’m definitely warming to him. I kinda liked (with reservations) his movie February aka The Blackcoat’s Daughter (I really should get around to putting up the review I wrote of it during Covid Lockdown sometime soon) but I really don’t think he lands his endings well. Longlegs (reviewed here), for example, was a great build up leading to a less than satisfying ending and, I think the same accusation could be levelled at February, to be sure.

The Monkey, though... The Monkey I really liked. Now this is based on and is an expansion of a short story I read by Stephen King back in 1985, of the same name and featured in that year’s collection Skeleton Crew. I don’t remember much about it other than the toy monkey in it was the old cymbal banging kind which, because of rights issues with Disney (which also has an irony to it, if you look at the origins of why Disney have the rights in the first place... I’ll let you follow that rabbit hole for yourselves), has been changed to a drumming monkey in this iteration of the story. For the better, I would say... much is made of the way the titular automaton starts up and preps for its drumrolls of death in little montages which build tension here.

The film tells the story of two twins, Hal and Bill, played by Christian Convery as their younger selves* and Theo James as the ‘grown up’ variants. The toy monkey in their life, which they can’t get rid of no matter how much they try to destroy it or bury it, kills people. Once you wind the key it plays a rendition of ‘I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside’ while drumming away and, when the last drum beat falls, a chain reaction of unfortunate events leads to a bizarre and, certainly in the case of this film, gory death. Their mother, who meets her demise when they are just kids, is played by the brilliant Tatiana Maslany, who was wonderful as She Hulk - Attorney At Law (reviewed by me here).

Now, when one of the estranged brothers is trying to say goodbye to his estranged son (played by Colin O'Brien) in a road trip before he’s adopted by his mum’s latest boyfriend, the monkey is back in his life and he has to survive a wave of unlikely and, honestly, quite funny deaths while keeping his son safe somehow. It all leads back to his brother and, of course, that damned monkey.

And it’s so much fun. Honestly, it’s one of those films where the goriness of the grimness is so elabourate and over the top that you can’t help but laugh at it. And with the addition of Theo James’ deadpan reactions to the situations he finds himself in... it’s a pretty entertaining picture. For example, as he tries to warn a woman not to dive into a swimming pool which he’s just realised has been accidentally electrified by gazillions of volts, he has to dodge her severed leg as she completely explodes as she hits the water. So what I’m saying is that, although its dealing with death in some big, sweeping ways (such as taking out a whole town in one swoop), it’s doing it in a deliberately comic book fashion which is designed to help you see the funny side right away.

Now, being based on a Stephen King story, a lot of the film is set in Maine so, naturally, there are a few King references as you go through the movie... name drops and so on. Some people will probably like that although, the ones I spotted myself were maybe a little clumsy and I could have done without one of the characters being named after a much more famous character in King’s canon.

But that’s pretty much my only criticism of this one. I mean, I even loved the typography on the end credits which took me back to a 1950s/1960s vibe... I just loved it. Oh... and if you are thinking of staying in your seat for the credits, you will be rewarded with a post credit scene which is a first teaser trailer for Osgood Perkins next movie, Keeper, which is currently scheduled to release this year (I think). So yeah, that’s me done on The Monkey... a dripping slice of ‘splatter comedy’ which will have you laughing at the elabourate set ups for each gory demise. Absolutely brilliant. 

*A special mention goes to the set dressers for having a print of the Boris Vallejo cover art from the 1980 Ace Tempo paperback book Flash Gordon Book 3 - Crisis On Citadel II.

The Disco Exorcist

The Devil In Miss Jones

The Disco Exorcist
Directed by Richard Griffin
USA 2011
Monster Pictures
DVD Region 2

Warning: Spoilers deep inside.

Disclaimer: The producers have no memory of making this motion picture.

Ha! Well I’ve had this movie languishing in an old pile of DVDs for some years now but I’ve finally got around to watching it and, I have to say, it’s both hilarious and, honestly, one of the most politically incorrect films I’ve seen in a long time (if ever).

The Disco Exorcist starts with a cold opening at a badly rendered strip club (showing it’s low budget to the full)... we watch as a witch kills one of the punters in a gory way. Cut to main leading man Rex Romanski, played by Michael Reed, as he sexes up his two lady friends in his lava lamp lit apartment during a credits sequence set to a funky disco/bad porno music beat... and then follow him back into the film properly as he gets down at the local disco and picks out a lady for that evening’s pleasure.

Unfortunately for Rex, he picks the witch lady from the pre-credits, Rita Marie played by Ruth Mahala Sullivan. Everything is fine until the next evening, when someone he’s been dying to meet enters the disco in search of love. That someone is introduced to us earlier when Rex and his DJ pal are watching one of her films, Disco Ball Delivery, which is double billed with a Marilyn Chambers film called Saturday Night Beaver (which I think is a fake movie too... I don’t think she was in the real porn film of that title, although I’m no expert so I may be wrong).

The lady in question is world famous porn star Amoreena Jones, played by Sarah Nicklin and, when she walks into Rex’s disco world it’s love (and sex) at first sight... much to the fury of the woman scorned, who curses Amoreena for her trouble. The next day, when Rex is standing in for a late actor on Amoreena’s next porn film, all hell breaks loose and the women, including Amoreena, slaughter most of the crew. When she snaps out of it later, Amoreena and Rex realise they have a problem but, who can they call on for help? Not The Disco Exorcist, for sure, as this movie didn’t play out in any way like I thought it would and, at the film’s denouement, Rex himself has to take up the role of exorcist after another guy’s head explodes while doing the ritual.

And the trailer and my rough synopsis is really selling this short. I haven’t even got into the carnage at the orgy or Rex’s priest brother who is also into nuns whipping him. This movie is one of those ‘ironic grindhouse’ exploitation movies... so you’ve got the worn out 1970s film stock all the way through and the odd “Scene Missing” caption. Now I find these films hit and miss but this one has all the right ingredients... tonnes of nudity, loads of sex with bouncing bosoms and dangling male members, strong goriness, witchcraft, kill crazy demon infested porn actresses and a completely funky score plus songs which, I think, were even written for the film.

Now the inclusion of all those elements should but, rarely do guarantee, a good time is had by all but, in this case, the film also has some slick dialogue and some witty one liners. Not to mention call backs to other films. I mean, fans of The Exorcist will recognising the one-upmanshipness of the line “You suck faggots from you’re mother’s asshole!” and know exactly why it’s in there but there are some really silly gems such as, when the group of porn actresses go to get Rex and he assumed they want to do some more sexing, his line pleading off when he says “I need at least 15 minutes to put a bullet in this chamber, if you know what I mean?” Even the not exactly subtle last line of the film, “From now on, you’re the only devil I want coming inside me.” is a bit of a winner the way it’s delivered.

Yeah, the film isn’t subtle, for sure but it is a hoot and the 1970s style of shooting combined with the low budget and juvenile sex jokes... somewhat surprisingly... give it a certain charm which I didn’t see coming (if you know what I mean?). So, definitely don’t watch The Disco Exorcist with people who wouldn’t understand where it’s coming from but, yeah, this is one fine movie. It’s not just Not Safe For Work... it’s pretty much not safe for most people you know but, I dunno, this film won me over quite quickly and didn’t let go. Definitely worth a look if silliness mixed with gore, nudity and sex is your thing. 

Hundreds Of Beavers

Beaver Pitch

Hundreds Of Beavers
USA 2022
Directed by Mike Cheslik
FilmHub

Warning: The whole format and brilliance of the movie is a spoiler in itself... just watch the damned movie and then maybe head on back here after you’ve seen it.

Although it’s got a 2022 copyright date on it, Hundreds Of Beavers has been playing and wowing the festival circuit for a couple of years now and so it didn’t get a proper cinema release in this or other countries until earlier this year (which, hooray, means I can include it in my ‘last year’s best movies list’ in January 2025). It was on my radar and I wanted to see it, even though I’m not the biggest fan of slapstick humour... but it played hardly any cinemas over here at all and practically nobody over here in the UK has even heard of it. Which is a shame since it’s absolutely an amazing and almost unique cinematic experience.

Okay, so the film stars Ryland Brickson Cole Tews as Jean Kayak, aka Apple Jack in the pre-credits sequence. Well, I say pre-credits sequence but they don’t start rolling until just over half an hour into the movie and the title of the film itself doesn’t hit the screen until two thirds of the way in. Anyway, after accidentally destroying his thriving cider trade, partially to do with some beavers eating things they shouldn’t and partially to do with him being quite drunk... he’s left in the wilderness with just himself in the snow trying to survive. And also trying to catch something to eat like a rabbit or, you know, a beaver.

It’s at this point that I should probably add that the film is a blend of live action and animation, in stonking black and white, has barely any dialogue in it at all and that all the animal parts are either puppets or, for the most part, men dressed up in rabbit, beaver, wolf and horse costumes. So hold onto that thought for a minute...

The film immediately turns into a brilliant parody of old roadrunner cartoons, with the beavers/rabbits etc as the roadrunner and Jean as Wiley Coyote. And while there are a few steals from silent comedy and many Looney Toons cartoons, I’d have to say that a lot of the ‘familiar’ gags are new or at least done in different ways. Either way... the film is incredibly inventive and witty and, even though the central character is killing as many beavers as possible... he will totally have your sympathy and you will want him to succeed in his mission.

So, I’d have to say if someone told me I’d have to sit through almost two hours of silent cartoon homage, I’d be pretty put out by the prospect. But, amazingly, this film never gets dull and the story manages to keep finding new ways to develop and hold the interest. I never once got bored in this one, for sure. For instance, when he comes across a beaver fur trader and his beautiful daughter (played wonderfully by Olivia Graves) in a cabin in the wilderness, Jean has to try to keep bringing back beavers with various coins which can be converted into goods as rewards, as he works up to what the proprietor’s price is for the hand of his daughter in marriage... which is, of course, Hundreds Of Beavers. So yeah, Jean becomes a trapper.

As the film goes along we get more and more inventive traps (quite often that’s also all the more to backfire on the trapper), we get a whole host of ideas thrown at the audience in more and more hilarious ways such as... a giant fortress constructed by the beavers from which to mount their ‘special project’, Holmes and Watson beavers, a giant man made up of many beavers walking along in formation and... well, as the saying goes... much, much more.

And, honestly, I can’t recommend this one enough. The music in this is great too, some of it original songs and some of it an old friend I’ve not heard from of late in modern movies... the old De Wolf Music Library... I had no idea these people were still supplying modern movie makers with needle drop scores for their projects!

Anyway, that’s me about done on Hundreds Of Beavers, not because I haven’t got anything else to say but because to say much more than this would be to spoil it somewhat. What I will say further, though, is that at some point about half way through the movie, I began to question what the heck I was watching... I did so with a big grin on my face (well, as near as a grin as I get) and I’m still questioning it now. But in a good way, for sure.

Mr. Vampire II

Top Of The Hops

Mr. Vampire II
aka Geung see ga zuk
Directed by Ricky Lau
Hong Kong 1986
Golden Harvest/Eureka
Blu Ray Zone B


Well then, those hopping vampires from Mr. Vampire (reviewed by me here) are back for what is, it has to be said, a far more enjoyable sequel. Also back for the imaginatively titled Mr. Vampire II is director Ricky Lau, along with some of the original cast playing different roles... such as Ching-Ying Lam, presumably playing an ancestor of the Van Helsing-like character he played in the first one and Moon Lee, again playing a different role. This is because the events in this one take place in contemporary times to when this sequel was made, hundreds of years after the setting of the first one.

The action starts when a bunch of amateur archeologists, played for extremely broad comedy (as are most of the roles in this slapstick packed movie, to be fair), dig up three vampire corpses with the magical scrolls that keep them out of action still sealed to their foreheads. They are obviously a family of vampires - mother, father and son - although the grave robbers obviously have no idea what they are and think they are just incredibly well preserved, ancient relics. Of course, when two of the team take the vampire kid to show an interested buyer, his scroll gets off and he escapes into the night, to make friends and have adventures with two of the local children. Meanwhile, the one left guarding the two other vampires also manages to accidentally remove their scrolls and more chaos ensures. When Lam’s character gets wind of what’s going on, more chaos ensues as the three different story strands come together, the majority of the film being entirely an excuse for comical stunt work as the various factions try to eradicate the vampires.

And... okay, after being more familiar with what to expect since watching the first film, around about the same time last year, thanks again to Eureka Master Of Cinema, I was a lot more happier switching my brain off for this one... not that there’s even much plot to speak of, much less than the first film even. This one is the first film in Eureka’s recently released slipcase edition Hopping Mad - The Mr. Vampire Sequels, which collects the four direct sequels to the first movie, although not any of the spin offs or remakes (which I’m hoping they’re saving for another set, maybe next year?).

It’s fairly fun and it pretty much just more of the same from the first film, relocated to a contemporary setting and, perhaps wisely, without the complicated ‘ghost girl’ sub plot of the original. There’s nothing too clever about the shot design but the choreography of the comedy fight sequences is great and, I have to say, this particular 2K scan from what must have been a quite good source looks, well, possibly the best I’ve seen a Chinese movie looking on Blu Ray, for sure. It’s crystal clear and the colours don’t quite seem as blown out and wishy washy as I was expecting them to be.

Everyone does a fine job here and, although the comedy is a bit too obvious for me, it played fine and I was fairly entertained. There’s even a metatextual joke involving producer Sammo Hung in the movie which, I would probably have found funnier if I had seen some of the films he stars in but at least I, you know, ‘got it’. The music could have maybe been a little less lighter and ‘obviously comic’ but that’s just me, I’m sure nobody else is going to complain about that element. 

 And that’s me done with Mr. Vampire II, I think. A short review, perhaps, but it was a lot more fun than I had any right to expect from it and it’s probably a good thing too... there are three more sequels in this set to sit through. I’ll be sure and let you know how that goes, right here.

Minore

My Big Fat
Greek Cthulhu

Minore
Directed by Konstantinos Koutsoliotas
Greece 2023 Melancholy Star
Screened 26 August at FrightFest, London

Konstantinos Koutsoliotas’ new film Minore had its European premiere at FrightFest this year and, blimey, I had a strange reaction to this one. If I was to sum it up as a quick snapshot I’d say... it’s what you might get if you crossed a 1980s/90s Jean Paul Gaultier perfume advert with an abundance of alien tentacle monsters. So... hmm.

And I found myself a little bit conflicted with it at first. The film slowly sets up its characters... and I mean slowly. So slowly that for the first third of the movie I got kinda bored fairly quickly although, the beautifully ‘muffled’ bursts of colours... everything looks like it’s been shot using strange filters and coloured lighting... were just enough to maintain my interest. It’s a real scene setter which focuses on all the characters in a coastal town in Greece as we learn of the musicians and dancers of a local café and their various friends and regulars, while a lone sailor has come to the town to seek his father... who walked out on the family when he was a mere boy. However, the slow burn coupled with some lengthy singing and dancing sequences did, I admit, begin to lose me but, then again, it’s certainly a quirky film and that kept me going.

And then it started to get really interesting and then, I’ll be honest, it couldn’t get more quirkier if it was a quirky quirk being quirked over with a quirksome quirk machine on Quirkyday. To say the humour and personality of this movie is unique would be an understatement because... about a half way through, things get decidedly surreal, bloody and, somehow, even more humourous. And, ultimately, beautiful too.

Some ancient monsters which, given some of the dialogue are probably more than a little inspired by The Ancient Ones from H. P. Lovecraft’s many Cthulhu stories, attack the town... slowly at first, over a number of days. Some people go missing... perhaps, like the lady played by beautiful actress Daphne Alexander... they have walked into the sea as a result of a dreamlike state siren song of one of the creatures. Luckily, the sailor played by Davide Tucci pulls her out of harm’s way before she is engulfed by the ocean and whatever lays beneath. But it’s what flies above which is giving a rag tag bunch of heroes (and the villanous local crime kingpin) a battle, as the town’s people put up a fight armed with the knowledge of dreams, where the police and the military have failed. People are being tentacle injected with a substance that quickly eats them from inside, so the flying creatures can suck their bodies up like fluid (among other gory treats on display).

Despite my earlier reservations, by the time I was two thirds of the way through the thing, I was totally into it and was invested enough in some of the ridiculous characters... one of them even does a direct parody of the sword kata scene from the John Milius movie Conan The Barbarian... that I really cared when they lost the odd limb or head going into battle. It doesn’t hold back on the gore, for sure and even includes a memorable ‘face peeling’ sequence.

But throughout this, the film is also very funny and has a strange, dream-like, surrealist state underpinning the narrative which both looks gorgeous but also, yeah, is somewhat obfuscating in terms of the clarity of... well... of what the hell is going on. Some of it was easy to understand, such as the desire to hook big speakers up to kill the monsters in a way, perhaps a little inspired by the movie version of Mars Attacks but, as the movie finished and I moved from the darkness of the cinema housing this phantasmagorial art and out into the light of the crowded FrightFest lobby, I realised I had absolutely no idea of how a lot of it got resolved by the end.

That being said, I didn’t really care either because, by this point... I’d had a really good time with it and, yeah, I think I’d even revisit it again a few years down the line. I need to think on it some more.

Would I recommend Minore to others? Well, like I said, it’s got a pacing all its own and the narrative, such as it is, doesn’t exactly rush but that being said, it’s such a unique little film and, you know, quirky (I mentioned that, yeah?), so I’d have to say that if you are a cineaste who’s seen pretty much everything, then this movie at least has it’s own kind of surrealistic atmosphere and dream logic which is individual enough for you to lift the lid and take a peek. I’m really glad I saw this one because, well, who knows if it will get some kind of cinematic release over here anytime down the line.

How To Kill Monsters

Monster Mash

How To Kill Monsters
Directed by Stewart Sparke
UK 2023 Dark Rift Films
Screened 25 August at FrightFest, London

Well now. I was really hoping for a nice, light hearted gorefest of a ‘pick me up’ for my second helping of FrightFest this year and, on first appearances from the trailer and synopsis, it looked like this might be what I would be getting with How To Kill Monsters. The director said some good things about it being just a fun, gory movie with no political messages before the movie started and... probably said some equally good stuff a the end of the movie (alas, I didn’t stay for the Q&A... the movie had made me quite melancholic with the state of modern horror and I just wanted to get home by that point).

So the film is billed as a comedy horror but, I didn’t find it either funny or frightening, truth be told... I’ll get to that later.

The film has the ‘to be admired’ audacity of taking a very familiar genre cliché and running with it to make it the whole of the movie, rather than just a twenty minute sequence of a story. The cliché in question being when the surviving protagonist of a science fiction or horror movie (or, you know, that lovely genre mix of the two) turns up and gets arrested by the police because they think he or she (in the case of this movie it’s a she) has killed a load of people and won’t listen to his/her crazy story about an alien/monster/cyborg/robot or ‘insert other appropriate killing machine’ responsible for the slaughter of those around him/her. Then, while they are still trying to process the character through and build a case against him/her... the monster/robot/mad axe murderer (what have you), turns up to continue the slaughtering spree with the constabulary and their assorted prisoners... as the local law enforcement and the prisoners, together with the former main suspect (who now becomes the one with all the knowledge due to previous experience), all team up together to fight said slaughterer, with results that usually end with the death of almost everyone except the original protagonist.

So there you go... that’s the set up for this one in a nutshell and it pushes that genre cliché front and centre and explores it as a feature length story. It has some nice acting turns from the likes of Lyndsey Craine, Arron Dennis, Fenfen Huang, Daniel Thrace and Juné Tiamatakorn, is relatively intense and suitably bloody, making good use of practical effects (yay, no crappy looking CGI blood here, for sure) and, despite the fact that I had a generally lukewarm reception to it, it keeps the momentum going at a fair lick for the majority of the story.

That being said... I didn’t find How To Kill Monsters scary (not sure it was supposed to be, to be fair... it’s one of those gory, body count kinds of movies) and, well, maybe I have lost all my sense of humour lately but I just didn’t find myself smiling even once throughout the film’s running time. And, yeah, I get it... humour is very subjective and just because I didn’t find it funny it doesn’t mean other people won’t. Case in point, the four girls sitting on my right for the screening were just eating it up and loving every minute, laughing a lot and generally having a good time with it. I’m pretty sure though, by the looks of things, that at least two of them (or more) were actually part of the cast too so, yeah, maybe that’s to be expected.

All in all, sorry for the extremely short review and I really didn’t want to be having to say this but, so far this year I’ve seen two out of two duds at FrightFest. Still, I have a few more to see yet over the next couple of days* so I’m keeping optimistic as to what lays ahead. This one, however, wasn’t for me.

*Spoiler alert... the next movie I saw at FrightFest was absolutely sensational.