Weapons

 

Hair Of The Stick 
That Bit Me

Weapons
Directed by Zach Cregger
USA 2025
New Line Cinema
UK cinema release print.

After containing my disappointment that the movie in question does not include a return to cinema for Chesty Morgan, I went to my local cinema to take a look at Weapons, because both the trailer and the one short clip I’d seen of it were, if nothing else, certainly intriguing. And, I would add that the film, while not great as some people have been hailing it, is certainly not a bad movie either and, though I was disappointed by some obvious aspects of it, it certainly kept me entertained throughout... so that’s pretty good. 

The film concerns the events of a day when Justine (played by Julia Garner) shows up to teach the kids in her third grade class and 17 of the 18 children in that specific class did not show up to school that day. This is because, at 2.17* that morning, all the kids ran out of their homes and ran off, disappearing into the night. So, naturally, the townsfolk aren’t very happy with Justine, who they all think is somehow responsible. Especially Archer, played by Josh Brolin, who lost his son to the incident too. 

The film then unfolds events to a total resolution of that story, split into chapters and each telling a portion of the events through the point of view of different characters. Such as Benedict Wong as the principal of the school, or Alden Ehrenreich as an ex-alcoholic cop. 

Now, the critics have been saying two things about this film that have me annoyed. One is that some of them are citing Rashomon as the way in which the narrative works. Now I’m assuming not many of them have read the original story on which Rashomon is based but, even if they are, as I suspect, referring to Akira Kurosawa’s excellent movie version... well, I have to wonder if any of them are actually familiar with that movie at all. That film (and story) tells of the same incident taking place over the same time from different points of view and, like Mario Bava’s sex comedy version Four Times That Night, each viewpoint recalls the same events in a much different way, relying on memory and interpretation of what has been seen. This film doesn’t do that. 

So, no, it’s not Rashomon. 

What it is more like is a series of Matryoshka dolls with each one presented reflecting what you’ve already seen but then taking you a little further into the same narrative from when you left it last. And that works fine as a somewhat gadgety narrative structure... even if it’s not completely necessary much of the time. It at least allows the story to build some kind of suspenseful impetus by not revealing everything at once... a tactic also employed by the cinematography which tends to focus on people and then move slowly over to what they are seeing, to imbue the shot with tension, as the environment a character is standing in is slowly revealed (thus harbouring the potential of a jump scare... even though that doesn’t happen that often). 

The other thing which annoys me is critics saying the movie makes no sense. It totally does, everything is fully explained and even the big visual metaphor we get at one point... which somehow left some critics pretty baffled.... seems a little too obvious, it seemed to me. However, I would have much preferred the film if it had left a lot of things hanging because, frankly, the film makes the same mistake as the popular (with everyone except me) Longlegs (reviewed here), in that it not only explains things too much but, delving firmly into a specific kind of folk horror, it gives the movie an actual main antagonist and, to be honest, the film suffers from it. Giving the film an actual villain to focus on not only denies the mystery of the film but, in this case, also leaves little flaws in the logic that governs the way in which the main antagonist weaponises people in the film. Which kind of sucks and ensures that I probably won’t be picking this one up on Blu Ray because, once it’s all been explained, I don’t feel the need to watch this one again. 

So... yeah. Weapons is a fine film in the horror tradition for sure. If anything, it feels like the kind of thick spined best selling novels that both Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz were putting out in the 1980s. And I do feel that this movie would have made a better, 600 page plus novel than the format it’s ended up in. But, you know, very nice to look at, some good performances, some intense moments but, for me at least, not really essential viewing. 

*Room 217 is the infamous room in the Overlook Hotel in the original Stephen King novel The Shining (though not in the movie versions of both that and the follow up, Doctor Sleep).  

True Detective Series One

No Regrets For Our Sleuth

True Detective Series One
8 episodes February - April 2014
USA HBO

I’ve been wanting to catch up with True Detective for a while now... since hearing about Series Four, in which Jodie Foster apparently takes on a story with a supernatural horror element. And, despite the fact that each series is set in a different location and telling the story of different characters portrayed by different actors, I really wanted to do it properly and watch it from the start.

So the two main protagonists in this first series are Detective Marty Hart, played by Woody Harrelson and his new, unlikely partner Detective Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey. And these two do not like each other much right off the bat, mainly because... due to a back story which we find out a little way into it... Rust is basically a nihilistic, anti-social and somewhat unfeeling (and certainly unsubtle) person. Marty is more of a religious family man but, not above cheating on his wife Maggie, played by the great Michelle Monaghan.

The main story about an investigation of a series of murders involving ritualistic, devil worship style symbols and possible child molestation is told in flashback as part of a look at ten or so years of the partnership between Marty and Rust, before something gets in the way of their abrasive relationship which Marty can’t let go (which, by the way, you will see coming a mile off). The flashback comes from multiple, cross cut narratives around about 20 years later, as each of the two, in turn, are being questioned by police detectives about a new case which resembles their old one. In the original first murder discovered by the detectives and the audience, a naked girl is left for dead, tied to a tree with antlers on her head. The case in their ‘present’ versions also has a posed, naked woman with antlers. At some point towards the last third, Maggie is also brought in and questioned, to add to the narrative. The last two episodes show Rust and Marty reunited in present day, over their own research into the killings, which Marty had thought been put to bed a couple of decades before. 

And this was a brilliant show for a few reasons... one is that the characters are so well built and developed that you really believe in the relationship between them, as they verbally careen off one another. Secondly, the dark nature of the murders and the way it almost feeds Rust and taps into his bleak outlook as he takes work well into the point of obsession, makes for an interesting show. 

Thirdly... and take this as a back handed compliment if you will... I didn’t see where the ending was going. In that, after episode three I was pretty sure where it was going but, it turns out, the story of the show wasn’t nearly as twisted as I was expecting, to be honest. I’d assumed Marty’s wife and two young girls were part of a devil worshipping community that tied directly into the killings but, it seems I was wrong. On the downside, the villain is more like the version of the Green Goblin that Steve Dikto had wanted to give the readers of The Amazing Spider-Man comic book(and which caused him to leave Marvel comics way back when) as opposed to the one that Stan Lee gave us, when it turned out to be someone very known and visible to the readers. Here, the villain of the piece is pretty anonymous and, although Rust does meet him in his investigations decades before, he doesn’t put that together until after the final confrontation with said villain. 

But, yeah, I had a really good time watching this one... partially, perhaps, because I seemed to be able to worryingly identify and relate to Rust rather than the more optimistic Marty character but, hey ho, that’s the way it goes sometimes. I was a little disappointed that one of the main characters I was expecting to die at the end doesn’t but, that sense of slight let down was somewhat tempered with the way in which a central character’s outlook was forever changed by his experiences at the conclusion of the story.

So, yeah... I really liked True Detective Season One and am looking forward to seeing the other three seasons at some point very soon, I hope. This was definitely good television, as far as I’m concerned.

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.

Pecking Order

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.
aka Captain Horatio Hornblower
Directed by Raoul Walsh 
UK/USA/France 1951 
Warner Brothers
Spanish Blu Ray Zone B 

This will be, not much more than a short series of notes on Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. rather than a full blown review because, well, I felt the film was hugely entertaining but don’t have much to say about the cinematography, shot composition or music, to tell the truth. The acting is all excellent but, it’s what you’d expect from a top notch cast like this, working with some very well written dialogue.

Ever since I was a barely conscious child, I remember being impressed by my dad’s bookshelves but three specific sets of books remain in my memory to this day. One was his collection of hardbacks of the main works of Alexandre Dumas, another was a small Mervyn Peak boxed edition and, last but by no means least, his impressive box of C. S Forester’s Hornblower novels. Now, the film and TV shows have been on numerous times over the years on British TV but, I’ve somehow never got around to seeing any of them. For Father’s Day this year I wanted to get him a good Blu Ray transfer of the film starring Gregory Peck as the titular character but, nobody in the UK or the US seem to have put it out in a restored format. But I got one put out in Spain and, I have to say, it’s a fine transfer and has the full English language track on it. 

Forester himself helped somewhat to adapt his stories to the big screen for this one, which is based on three Hornblower tales (two novels and one short story I am told). I don’t know how this one is handled as an adaptation but, in one section where an officer has his leg injured but recovers sufficiently in order to have more adventures later in the movie, well... all my dad said was about this matter was that, in the book, he loses that leg. 

The film starts us with a scene of Hornblower having one of his crew flogged and it shows everything about his character as he takes an officer aside and impresses on him that it’s because that officer threatened the crew member with flogging that he has ordered it so. He personally disagrees with it and thinks it a harsh punishment but needs to uphold the officer’s judgement in the eyes of the men... but that said officer should think twice before lightly referring to this kind of judicial penalty in future. Which says everything, I think, about the kind of man Hornblower is.

And from hereon in it becomes a series of naval adventures where political decisions are enforced with broadside cannon runs and swordfighting. There’s even a love interest in the form of Lady Barbara Wellesley, played by Virginia Mayo, who was something of an afterthought in the casting, it would appear but who handles the role magnificently. Alas, both Hornblower and Wellesley are married to other people but, the film makes that right in the end so they can continue their shipboard romance on the mainland by the end of the movie. 

There are a few other actors of interest such as an early role for Stanley Baker and a character played by Mr. Pastry himself, Richard Hearne. Not to mention uncredited roles for Sam Kydd and Richard Johnson. Perhaps the most striking of the uncredited roles was the captain of a Spanish vessel who swordfights with Hornblower in one scene, played by Christopher Lee, still a few years away from his big break out role in the Hammer films. 

But my biggest surprise in the movie was the presence of James Roberston Justice as seaman Quist. Now I’m used to seeing the hulking, portly presence of Justice in comedy roles as pompous authority figures in films in the Doctor or Carry On series (for instance). In this one he’s a little slimmer than I remember him, doing a different accent but still as lovable a character as he is in his more comedic roles, for sure. I really loved him in this and I think I need to try and track down some more films where he’s playing against type. 

And that’s me done with Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N., I think, other than to note that another great Forrester novel which caused a big splash in Hollywood was Humphrey Bogart’s Oscar winning vehicle The African Queen. Another entertaining movie but, I think this is pretty good too. I remember reading back in the day that Gene Roddenberry’s concept for Star Trek was Hornblower in Space and this movie certainly bears that out, I think. Even the three note motif that the sailors use to pipe the Captain on and off board, sounded vaguely familiar to my ears... and then I realised it’s the same three notes that Roddenberry used on his communicators in the original Star Trek series so, yeah, Hornblower in space indeed. Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. is a splendid adventure yarn, though and, I’d certainly recommend it to lovers of old Hollywood movies. Very entertaining. 

Baskin

The Eye Gore Sanction

Baskin
Turkey 2013/2015 
Directed by Can Evrenol & Ogulcan Eren Akay 
(Ogulcan co-director on the short 2013 version)
Severin Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: All the spoilers in this one. 

There are two versions of Baskin presented on the Blu Ray edition I watched... the original 2013, 11 minute short written and directed by Can Evrenol & Ogulcan Eren Akay... and the 2015 feature film based on the short, directed by just Evrenol but retaining both of them as writers. Two of the featured cast from the short... Yavuz, played by Muharrem Bayrak and Arda, played by Görkem Kasal, also reprise their roles from the short. And, I have to say that, although the films are a bit different in the way they play out, the short version which I watched first is a lot punchier and more intriguing than the feature length version. 

The short is a bunch of cops in a patrol wagon who get called as backup for ‘something’ happening in a house in the local area. When they get there a dead goat falls onto the roof of the van and when they go in the house there’s lots of human filth, demonic artefacts and two policemen carrying out a suspect. As they delve deeper, they find bizarre people being cut up or in sacks and they are chased back towards the now locked doors of the house while one of the crew just sees a bunch of policemen standing around brainwashed in the basement of the house (which is an idea which is touched on and explored in a much less subtle and ultimately less intriguing way in the feature length version). 

There’s lots of handheld camera in the short and this gives the whole demonic house angle... which is also a lot more atmospheric, I felt, than in the later feature... a quite chaotic feel. It finishes without offering any answers and, yeah, I can see that this short would have done well at various horror festivals (hopefully it played at FrightFest at some point). 

And then there’s the feature length movie. This is an expanded version of the story which has much more fluid camerawork instead of the raw hand held stuff which helped the mood of the first one. The film starts out with a childhood dream that is later revealed to be the dream of one of the policemen and, when we first see the police, they are talking in a cafe about various things such as gambling and how most Turkish men, themselves included, lost their virginity fornicating with animals. No, I’m not making this up.

Ultimately, this is where the film began to lose it for me because, unlike the first film which didn’t have time to get into any character development at all, the cops here are portrayed, in my mind, as just basically thugs who are not nice people and who I could never relate to. I feel this is somewhat of a mistake because, if you have nobody to relate to, you don’t actually care what happens to them and, after encounters with various toads and a person who they hit in their van by accident... but who they can’t find after it happens... they make their way to a much larger house which is said to once have been a police station ‘back in the day’. 

There are various detours along the way as they explore what is a demon cult shrine and find themselves captured and tortured by the cult leader. This includes lots of gory imagery like... well, okay. Here’s a quick check list which is not for those with a weak stomach but which, somehow, completely failed to shock or move me in any way so... yeah, I think the director was definitely doing something wrong here. 

After a cop gets dragged away to be pulled apart and eaten... one cop has his intestines pulled out. Another has his eye stabbed out before the cult leader licks the empty socket. That cop is then forced to have sex with a goat lady (the ultimate fate of the cops is slightly reminiscent of the nasty conversations they were having at the start of the movie) and, after he dies of stress and a tarantula walks out of his mouth for no apparent reason, the said goat lady lays two eggs (the film is full of little surreal touches like this so... yeah, I really don’t know why I didn’t respond more positively to it). A third cop has his throat slit while the cult leader washes his bald head and face in the blood and the fourth of the remaining cops... well, he’s different. He keeps going back into his dreams to the cafe where various manifestations, such as visiting himself in the dream as a kid or being pulled out of the water by a giant hand after the van crash when they hit the person in the road, play out before he reawakens back in the main ‘reality’ of the hell he finds himself in. On one of these dream visits he manages to somehow free himself and stab the cult leader with a key in the forehead before repeatedly bashing his head with a stall.

And then he escapes, half mad and then, when he rushes to meet a cop van coming through the forest... we get exactly the ending I predicted to the film after a certain incident much earlier into the running time, echoing the cyclic nature of the film and the concept that hell is somewhere we all carry around inside us. 

And, yeah... I didn’t get much out of it. It’s very gory, the acting is all fine and it’s really well put together. Visually it looks great and this is usually enough for me to really enjoy a film but, I think the main problem here... and perhaps it’s because there’s no emotional connection to the characters... is that the film, not only isn’t scary but there absolutely no suspense to it at all. In fact, by the time everyone was being tortured I found myself nodding off. I don’t think I’m particularly jaded to the violence and viscera in particular... it just didn’t engage me emotionally with the scenario and I just found it a bit dull, to be honest. The score by Ulas Pakkan is okay (which I listened to a few times on CD a few years ago) and it serves the film well but it’s a case of the film it’s serving not packing the kind of wallop that was necessary for it to really work as well as the short film. At least, that’s how I felt about it. 

In the first Severin Cellar video on You Tube where director Richard Stanley was ‘in the cellar’ (which I believe has been taken down after certain accusations about Stanley emerged), he says this film is a good example of Lovecraftian horror and madness captured on film. I don’t think it is. I mean, sure, it has a couple of the elements (like most horror films) but I think Lovecraft would have been a bit more subtle in his rendition of such themes as are found in this and I really didn’t get that vibe from it. Not that subtlety is the way to go and I certainly enjoy a little screen violence as much as the next fellow (as long as violence doesn’t manifest in real life then it’s fine by me) but I just felt the feature version of Baskin was not particularly maintaining a Lovecraftian atmosphere... or even the atmosphere of the original short if we’re being honest. It does however, look fantastic but, if anything, it feels like the last half an hour of the terrible remake of Suspiria from a few years ago... which really missed the point and felt equally dull in its last act. So, yeah... Baskin the short is maybe worth a look sometime but the feature length version is probably only for those who enjoy gory special effects in their horror films. As for me, I found it a kind of soulless experience, I’m sad to say. 

OSS117 - Panic In Bangkok

Mr. Kiss Kiss Bangkok

OSS117 - Panic In Bangkok
aka Shadow Of Evil
aka Banco à Bangkok 
pour OSS 117
France/Italy 1964
Directed by André Hunebelle
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

The year following the release of OSS117 Is Unleashed in cinemas (reviewed by me here), Kerwin Mathews once again starred as Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, code name OSS117 in his second and final go at the role, OSS117 - Panic In Bangkok, adapting one of Jean Bruce’s original novels. And, I have to say that although they’ve gone into colour for this second outing to be presented in Kino Lorber’s OSS117 - Five Film Collection Blu Ray set, it’s not a great film and still nowhere near a match for the Bond films it’s obviously trying to compete with. Although they’ve certainly trumped Bond by a year in terms of going for a full 2.35:1 aspect ratio (1965’s Thunderball would be the first Bond film to deploy this treatment... reviewed here) and, to be honest, the whole film looks really good... which I would expect from a director like André Hunebelle.

It’s fun and games in Bangkok this time around, as Hubert gets involved in trying to stop villain Dr. Sinn (played by Robert Hossein) from unleashing a master plague to destroy all the inferior races on the globe (apart from the chosen few with the vaccine, obviously). Hubert recruits, through means of his irresistible charms, Dr. Sinn’s beautiful sister Lila (played by Pier Angeli) and it’s the usual shenanigans with... a little more action than the first movie but in terms of pacing and punchiness, nowhere near the likes of Bond, or indeed, some of the American productions which would start spoofing the British franchise over the next few years. 

And there are some nice little quirky things about the project though, asides from Hunebelle’s wonderful use of verticals to split compositions. He’s definitely into the whole visual compartmentalisation thing and it all looks pretty spectacular, especially now it’s in colour and with a much wider canvas, so to speak. So one great moment is at the start of the picture where, a couple of decades before Lethal Weapon did a similar thing, OSS117 shoots eyes, nose and big smiley face on the target when he’s practicing his shooting skills near the start. 

And another nice thing is when Dr. Sinn presses the alarm bells in his Monastery Plague Lab... which, by the way, is not quite up to Ken Adams’ designs for the Bond films but it is pretty impressive. Each time the klaxon of the alarm sounds, the frame goes red until it stops sounding for a second, then goes red again. And it’s not done with lightning as it would be too difficult to get the actors running around various rooms on the set, the sound and the lights coordinated in editing, I think. That’s why they’ve gone for a full red tint on the print whenever the siren sounds... like an old silent film frame might be tinted. It’s obvious that’s what’s been done but that makes it no less effective and gives things an almost psychedelic feel. 

Okay, those are the positives. There are a heap loads of negatives too, other than it being a fairly dull film throughout (I think I preferred the first one, in some ways). For example... that old trope often associated with comic moments where a character says that they’re definitely not going to be getting talked into doing a thing... cut to them now doing that thing? Well Lila Sinn does this twice in the space of just a few minutes... it’s just not good writing to use that device twice in a row, I think. It makes the following shots quite predictable. You can always see that stuff coming a mile off. 

And the music isn’t great either. Well, okay, scratch that. The music is great, as a stand alone listen but, like the first movie, Michel Magne’s score is really not hitting the right notes of support for the piece. It’s doing its own thing and really not supporting the on screen visuals with the kind of dramatic emphasis needed, it seemed to me. At several points, a cute, stereo-typically orientalised, ‘this music denotes Asian people’ style instrumental rendition of Magne’s OSS117 song from the first movie kicks in and, yeah it sounds fine but somehow fairly racist to my ears. It doesn’t bother me in the least, this is just the norm for the time and even John Barry’s score and opening song for You Only Live Twice (reviewed here) had a degree of this in it... but this one does seem like a fairly ‘in your face’ use of this particular musical tool and, at a couple of points in the movie, I kept thinking to myself that they just couldn’t get away with this kind of thing on a score these days. 

And that’s me done on this one... Kerwin Mathews is fine in this but doesn’t really have the larger than life personality of actors like James Coburn and Dean Martin, who would use their presence to carry them through their own Bond parodies in a much more successful manner (reviews of all these coming to the blog at some point soon). OSS117 - Panic In Bangkok is a nice enough film but, it’s just not punchy or innovative enough to hold it’s own in the Bond/spy market, I think. Still, I’m hoping these things get better and, with Kino Lorber’s lovely Blu Ray set, I guess I’ll know soon enough. 

The Fantastic Four - First Steps

The Foxy Mr. Fantastic

The Fantastic Four - 
First Steps
Directed by Matt Shakman
UK/USA/Canada/New Zealand 2025
Marvel/Disney
UK cinema release print.

Foreshadowing: The only spoilers in this are hints of what doesn’t happen. I think you can read in safety... or, you know, Reed in safety. 

What is it with the July Blockbuster trailers this year?

I mean, the marketing has been terrible. 

The Jurassic World Rebirth trailer looked as awful as I assumed it would be, the Superman trailer, Krypto aside, looked pretty appalling and the trailer for The Fantastic Four - First Steps, was surprisingly bad. I’d been looking forward to that last one because I knew it was going to be set in the 1960s and, admittedly this meant the film had to have been set in a multiversal alternative version of Earth (since they are not past characters in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe aka MCU, other than in alternate cameos)... but they are right up front about that in this movie, with the characters living in a version of Earth named after original co-creator Jack Kirby’s birthday. 

And in each of the cases of the promotional campaigns mentioned above... the films they represented were some of the best blockbuster movies we’ve had in a while. Jurassic Park Rebirth (reviewed here), while totally not needed, was one of the better franchise entries. Superman was pretty solid (it probably helped that Krypto gets a lot of screen time... reviewed here) and, yeah, despite being totally miscast in terms of the way the characters look in the comics... with Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Susan Richards (The Invisible Girl), Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Benjamin Grimm (The Thing*) and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm (The Human Torch)... this film is actually one of the better MCU entries to date. 

The main leads all work well together in terms of their on-screen chemistry and the whole movie looks spectacular in its creation of a kind of retro-fitted, futuristic vision of the 1960s. An aesthetic which I thought would work (until I saw the trailer) but, yeah, in spite of that, it still looks pretty amazing. One might even say... fantastic. 

The film kinda had me from very early on when, after skimping on a proper origin story... much like superhero movies are finally learning to do again, from their 1940s and 1950s on screen counterparts, just cut to the chase... it does a brief potted history of the origins of the team on an Ed Sullivan parody TV show and one of, I’m sure, many comic book homages throughout, it recreates, in live action format, something approximating the cover of the very first issue of the comic, dated November 1961. You know... the titular characters’ famous battle with the Mole Man. Actually, the Mole Man takes on a much more significant role as the film moves forward, rather than just being used as a throwaway for this sequence, it turns out. 

There’s even an homage to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, if my brief glimpse of them working in the offices of Timely Comics (Marvel’s original name in the 1930s) was correctly decoded by my brain. So, yeah, there are lots of homages to the original comics, even if the film strays far from the fine details. 

For instance, I meant to watch the WandaVision follow up TV show Agatha All Along before seeing this (I forgot) because I’d heard Sue Storm is pregnant in this one. So, obviously, Franklin Richards would need a babysitter and, in the comics, that was the witch Agatha Harkness. But, nope, she doesn’t make an appearance here. 

And similarly, you’ll know from the trailers (which include material which didn’t make final cut, by the looks of it) that the big bad of the movie is the mighty Galactus (and he actually looks just like him this time around). So, of course, that means his herald, the Silver Surfer will be making an appearance and... make an appearance he does. Um... no... actually that’s, make an appearance she does. Instead of Norin Rad being this movies Silver Surfer, we have his lover Shalla-Bal, played by Julia Garner, filling that spot. So, yeah, wrong again but, also again, it kinda works here.

What doesn’t work is that damned robot Herbie, who finally makes it to the screen. And why it doesn’t work too well is because, though it speaks English, you can’t really make out what it’s saying. At least, I couldn’t. Could maybe have used some subtitles here guys. 

But it is fast paced, simpler than the usual overcrowded superhero fest (in exactly the way Superman wasn’t... but still managed to make it work) with a lot of oomph and, actually, quite a lot of emotional heart. All set to a Michael Giacchino score which, again, despite being terrible in the trailers, really works for the movie... bet there’s no CD release though, because Marvel seem to have given up on giving their more music literate fans a score on the one useful format they could have put it on. Yeah, not getting into this again right now... their music policy sucks. 

But yeah, other than not being able to enjoy the music for the film away from the movie because it’s not released in an acceptable format at time of writing, The Fantastic Four - First Steps was a surprisingly charming movie and a good time at the cinema, for sure. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this links in to Avengers Doomsday next year (or even, since it’s not picked up here, how it related to the post credits scenes of Thunderbolts, reviewed here). A small hint might be found in the first of the two post credit sequences of this film, methinks.

*Actually, The Thing is based more on his original, early 1960s look here, instead of the more defined, better known version of the character from the 1970s. 

The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1

On A Sting And A Prairie

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

Her kiss was flame, Her gun was doom!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The Line Of Duty III

Duty And The Beast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Glitch In The Matrix

Life’s A Glitch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Beatles And India

Must Be Sitarday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crime Scene - The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel

On The Lam

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

Warning: This one has a few spoilers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Empire Strips Back

Booby Fett’s 
Sith and Tail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Universal Horrors

Shock Theatre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Superman

Kal To Arms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it’s nothing if not a postmodern movie. 

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

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

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