The Mandalorian

Bounty Lines

The Mandalorian
2019 USA Created by Jon Favreau
Series One. Eight episodes.

Warning: Some mild spoilers.

Okay, I finally got around to seeing the new Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian and... it’s not too bad. I think it’s weird that the Disney+ channel has only just started in the UK but almost everyone I know seems to have seen it already. I think it’s even stranger now, having seen it, that this is the big ‘blackmail you into signing up for a Disney + subscription’ bargaining chip at present because, frankly, I think people who are signing up just to see The Mandalorian are going to be angry they did so and want their money back. It’s quite good but not enough to warrant any subscription costs, I reckon.

Okay, so, set five years after the fall of the Empire at the Battle Of Endor in Return Of The Jedi, The Mandalorian is about a bounty hunter who is a Mandalorian (I’m not going to explain why he’s a Mandalorian when you may think he’s not in the early episodes because there’s a reveal coming in the last episode in terms of what ‘Mandalorian’ actually means)... so yeah, the same kind of armour as Bobba Fett with a certain ritualistic and almost spiritual adherence to the ‘faith’, for want of a better word, of his fellow Mandalorians (who are rarely seen and live ‘underground’ since certain incidents from their past took place).

And yes, it’s the Star Wars version of a weekly Western TV show we were all expecting it to be. I mean, there’s an argument that the ‘space opera’ genre of science fiction that encapsulates the Star Wars Saga is pretty much a Western to all intents and purposes anyway but this show is, it seems to me, deliberately trying to be like those old 50s, 60s and 70s TV Westerns like Bonanza, The High Chaparral and The Virginian. And it does feel very seventies and, well, despite the laser blasts and desert canyons, somewhat less epic and more a chamber version of the Star Wars universe we’ve come to know and, for the most part, love.

The plot all springboards from the specific piece of ‘live cargo’ that the titular bounty hunter is asked to retrieve in the first episode and, form then on, the tale becomes one of a fugitive who is trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities and fellow bounty hunters and keep said cargo free from harm. That’s the plot and it’s very much ‘mission of the week’ territory as The Mandalorian picks up a new job or task leading to the ultimate resolution of certain things in a final episode, where he gathers together the various people he’s met individually in former episodes to help him perform a specific mission.

And there’s good and there’s bad, to be honest.

There are some nice Japanese film culture and manga references in some episodes which, in a way, also contributes to the elevation of the Western flavour of the show. For instance, episode four is an absolutely blatant remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai which, of course, was remade as The Magnificent Seven... but let’s not forget that Kurosawa himself was heavily influenced by the cinema of John Ford, one of the leading directors of the Western genre in his time. Also, in the shots where a certain fifty year old child (you may have heard about him referred to with a thoroughly inaccurate nick-name on the internet) is riding in a kind of ‘hover pram’ or floating crib, it immediately lends the episodes where he is doing this a kind of Lone Wolf And Cub vibe.

There’s also a heck of a lot of obvious but still fun Star Wars references littered throughout... with absolutely gazillions of previously seen alien species (including Nick Nolte as an Ugnaught) and I even think I caught a glimpse of a Rodean... except this time it was red? There are also some nice references leading back to the Star Wars Summer Special (I still need to get a contraband copy of that to watch at some point) and some great cracks, including an expanded joke about the legendary inaccuracy of a typical stormtrooper’s aim when handling firearms. I think my favourite thing about the show, though, was IG-11. When I was a kid, I was always tantalised by IG-88 in The Empire Strikes Back (reviewed here) and it was one of my favourite action figures (even though he literally just stands around in a few shots in that movie). In a few episodes here we finally get to see an IG unit in action and it’s really awesome. Hope they release a figure for that one at some point.

Another awesome thing is a toy which I refused to buy in the 1970s called an Imperial Troop Transporter or some such. My cousin had one but I didn’t want it because it wasn’t in any of the movies and was obviously just a needless accessory that either Palitoy or Kenner had dreamed up to a) part gullible kids from their pocket money and b) ensure those same kids would buy multiple stormtrooper figures to populate it with. Well... showrunner Favreau must have had some fond memories of his childhood toy because they’ve finally put one of these things in a Star Wars show and it looks just like the old toy. So this was nice.

Also, the acting is pretty great. Pedro Pascal does an amazing job considering he is only seen without his helmet for a few seconds in the last episode. And it’s great seeing Carl Weathers and Gina Carano again... not to mention 'surprising', seeing somebody like infamous German director Werner Herzog play a recurring villain. These are all solid, reliable people and you really can’t complain about the cast in this.

However, there are a lot of clunky things as well here... or in light of the recent re-edits to the original movies, maybe I should say MaClunkey things?

For example, the sound design brings back a lot of old favourites (I think the mouse robot is really getting a little overdone now guys) but while it’s nice to hear the carbon freezing sound again in the first episode... it seems completely inappropriate to hear the hyperdrive malfunction sound effect when The Mandalorian can’t start up his ship, the Razor Crest, at some point. Why would that even sound the same?

Another thing that gave me pause to think was a new kind of TIE Fighter which is the standard model that can fold it’s wings up when it comes in for a landing. Seriously? If they had these somehow (after the defeat of the Empire) just five years after Return Of The Jedi then why did they not still have them during The Force Awakens? That makes no sense.

My biggest problem with the show, though, is the musical score. Ludwig Göransson’s music is totally appropriate to the action and has some nice, catchy moments. It’s not sounding anything like a Star Wars score though... it’s a much more modern use of an orchestra and is missing that iconic, 'early German refugees invade Hollywood in the 1930s' sound that John Williams (and a couple of other composers) have used in the movies over the years. It’s something that really lets the side down, as far as I’m concerned and I just wish they’d have gone with a more traditional Star Wars sound here. Because as much as the show tries to assimilate itself in with the much loved saga, the soundtrack is working against it and throwing it all away most of the time. Which is unfortunate... especially since it is very nicely scored and could work on any other generic brand, I think.

And that’s me done on The Mandalorian. This is an okay series but not something, as I said earlier, that anybody is going to be that happy about paying expensive subscriptions for. I’d be quite happy to watch a second series but I’m not so sure I’d bother to rewatch the first, in all honesty. They should have taken my Blu Ray cash when they had the chance. Recommended to die hard Star Wars fans only... or those who don’t have to spend a wadge of cash to get this thing.

Twins Of Evil

The Last Vam-pair

Twins Of Evil
UK 1971
Directed by John Hough
Hammer/Network  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoiler on the death of
one of the villains at the end of the movie.

Twins Of Evil is the last of the Karnstein trilogy of films produced by Hammer in the space of about a year and a half, based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story Carmilla. Well... no... the first one in the sequence, The Vampire Lovers (reviewed by me here) was certainly using that story as a template, the second one... well, there wasn’t much more you could do with it but at least the main antagonist Carmilla, aka Mircalla Karnstein, was continued over into the next film (played by a different actress).

Here, the character’s appearance is very brief, maybe lasting five minutes in total, as she is resurrected from her tomb by accident... the blood pooled from a victim of this films main villain, Count Karnstein played by Damien Thomas, during a devil worshipping ritual... drips into Mircalla’s tomb below and brings her back to her undead state. This is yet a third actress, Katya Wyeth, in the role after, once again, the part had been offered to Indgrid Pitt (who played her in The Vampire Lovers), who turned it down. She exists in the narrative purely to vamp up Damien Thomas’ character before, bizarrely, just dropping out of the movie. So that’s about as close as being ‘inspired’ by Le Fanu that this third film gets.

I said in previous reviews of the other parts of the trilogy that, by this time, Hammer were trying to spice up their films to keep them popular by putting nudity and lesbian sex scenes in them. At first glance of the casting in this one, you might assume they were making an extra special effort here, as the twins from the title, Maria and Frieda, are played by the Collinson twins, Mary and Madeleine. The Collinson twins had been the October 1970 Playboy playmates of the month but, surprisingly, this third film in the trilogy, which seems to be a prequel to the previous films, doesn’t really capitalise on the notoriety of the two ladies in question. When they do strip off... or one of them does... it’s only for a second or two and, frankly, there’s very little nudity in this film and almost no sapphic shenanigans at all which, given the original story’s implied subtext of vampiric lesbianism, seems rather strange. If anything, the film is rather tasteful in this kind of stuff... which in a way makes it an odd fit with the previous two movies. Also, it turns out that only Frieda is the evil one here and Maria is actually ‘the good sister’... so I’ve no idea why the title of this movie is Twins Of Evil, to be honest.

The film is fairly bloody in places, though and it’s also interesting for a number of reasons. I was fascinated by Peter Cushing’s role in this film and the way the story is pitched. Right from the start, we see Cushing playing Gustav Weil, the head of a clan of witch-finders and they go around to find unsuspecting, single women who they think should be married by now (otherwise they must be an evil temptress of a witch, right?) and burn them at the stake. The horrible Witchfinder General film from a few years before must have been a vein Hammer were trying to tap with this and Cushing is not someone who I would normally associate with this kind of role. After all, when it comes to bible thumping Witchfinders, I can only seem them as dim-witted psychopaths or, you know, nutters and that’s not what this actor represents to me. However, Cushing plays it really straight, almost chilling, allowing absolutely no humour into his character whatsoever, spending most of the film as a villain, only to redeem himself at the end of the movie after the other leading man here, David ‘The Horror Man’ Warbeck, shows him that the supernatural force he is dealing with cannot be effectively vanquished by his preferred method of burning but, instead, needs to be either decapitated or staked. Both Warbeck and Cushing are great in this so, there’s another reason to watch this movie.

Another interesting thing this movie does, comes after Count Karnstein and Mircalla indulge in an outrageously chaste but camp sex scene. The sex scene itself is hilarious because, rather than focus on the action, we track up to Mircalla’s arm just above her head as she grabs hold of a candle and starts stroking it up and down... I wonder how the actors kept straight faces during these scenes. However, the cool thing is, just after she fangs up Karnstein, he looks in the mirror and we can see him as his reflection fades out, thus signifying he has joined the ranks of the undead. So that’s quite cool... I wonder if this was the first time this had been done in a movie before. I’m sure it probably wasn’t but I can’t think of an earlier example off the top of my head. Answers in the comments box below or on Twitter please.

There’s also a section at the end which had me scratching my head. Karnstein can only be in his twenties and the film takes place over, maybe, just a week. He’s only been a vampire that long so how is it possible, in the world of supernatural vampire physics that, at the end of the movie after he’s been staked and in a nicely done special effect, he ages before our eyes into a wizened old man and crumbles. I mean, seriously? He’s only in his twenties... he’s not an old vampire at all. This makes absolutely no sense!

One other thing of note is the score by Harry Robinson, one of only a handful of the Hammer film scores that got issued on CD. It’s pretty good but there’s a kind of riding/action theme which, in structure (not orchestration) is very much the kind of music you might get in a spaghetti western of the time. Lovely score and I need to go and listen to the disc again now that I’ve finally seen the movie it comes from.

And that’s me done with the Hammer Karnstein trilogy finally... but not yet done with all the films based on Le Fanu’s original story (I’ll hopefully get to those eventually). Twins Of Evil is less exploitational but much more interesting than the previous film in the series, Lust For A Vampire (which I reviewed here) and it’s definitely a film that fans of the original incarnation of Hammer should check out if they haven’t done so already. Peter Cushing playing against type, at least in terms of what I’ve seen him do... even in the Frankenstein films... is definitely worth a look.

10 Years Of NUTS4R2

The Decablog

10 Years Of NUTS4R2

Well, here I am at 10 years of reviews then.

Over the years, when I’ve contemplated this ‘blog anniversary’ I’ve often wanted to do something special for it like, I dunno, a competition or something. Instead, I’ve just had the worst 15 months of my life with various tragedies and... well, the next installment seems to be a grim landscape ravaged by the walking dead of the Cora Nora virus (my name for it, I won’t let other names gain a negative power over my thinking, thanks very much).

So, yeah, not much for me to celebrate for sure but at least ten years is something positive done with my time, I guess. Or, you know, you might take the tack that it’s ten years of not having a life... it’s pretty time consuming trying to do something like this while also holding down a full time job I can tell you... but either way I’m happy to have stuck it out for so long. Hopefully I’ll still be in a position where I can continue with it... the way the world's changed in the last few weeks (and is going to change) seems pretty worrying. There’s always a chance I’ll be roaming around in a post-apocalyptic wasteland trying to secure old film prints for trading with the mohawk-headed tribes that wander the decaying environment.

Or... you know... not.

Anyway, purely because I haven’t got a better idea right now and I’m trying to be both self isolating for another few days with a nasty cough while at the same time being the mad food shopper for the family, I thought maybe I’d celebrate this miniversary with some of the articles which keep me doing this from time to time. These are not necessarily my most entertaining blog entries but I think these ones I've picked out here are among my most informative or enlightening. That is to say... these are the ones that I hope I’ve either made some connections nobody else has spotted before or, at the very least, they bring a fair amount to the table. Or not... you decide. Just click the titles to take you to my review.

So first up we have three British spy movie reviews for The IPCRESS File, The Quiller Memorandum and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Next up I offer you my thoughts on three of the classic Universal Monster movies of the 1930s and 1950s... Dracula, Frankenstein and Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Here are some of my Dario Argento reviews for his Animal Trilogy gialli... The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, The Cat O’ Nine Tails and Four Flies On Grey Velvet.

Here are a couple of reviews of two very different movies, both of which have central figures who are a huge influence on my 'adult' personality... The Final Programme and Doc Savage.

And finally, my all time favourite movie, Blade Runner.

And that’s my tenth anniversary post I guess. Sorry it’s not a little more spectacular but hopefully I can make that up for you on my 20th anniversary... if I get that far.

Anyway, thanks very much for reading, that’s always appreciated.

Stay safe and survive.

The Invisible Man (2020)

Now You See Me Too

The Invisible Man (2020)
2020 Australia/USA/Canada/UK
Directed by Leigh Whannell
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Mild spoilers.

Writer/director Leigh Whannell’s new version of Universal’s franchise based on The Invisible Man is, I’m sure surprising nobody and just like many of the Universal sequels, really nothing to do with H. G. Wells original novel. That being said, the two things which both Well’s source and this movie version have in common is a central antagonist that shares the same last name as the original, Griffin and, similarly, the idea that he is an antagonist rather than protagonist... unlike the majority of the six original Universal films, is also retained.

Given director Leigh Whannell’s track record, the man who made the absolutely brilliant but still prohibitedly expensive to buy on Blu Ray movie Upgrade (reviewed by me here but, honestly, nobody wants to be paying £24 for this) you would expect that this film would be pretty good and, I have to say... yes, it really is. If you’re happy that this isn’t the same character that you knew from the 1933 version, then you should have a good time with this.

This time around, the film has been pitched firmly, it seems to me, to support the ‘me too’ movement and, although the final scenes of the movie are as troubling as the overly black and white ‘your perceived judgement of a situation trumps the possible truth of the situation’ reality of real life at the moment, there’s enough at the climax to make the ambiguity of the end game of an abusive relationship feel very true and I think it’s an extra feather in the cap for Whannell that some of the audience are going to walk out of the film with conflicting ideas as to whether justice has been served here for any of the characters.

Elisabeth Moss is absolutely fantastic in the role of abused girlfriend Cecilia Kass and she does carry the film extraordinarily well, backed up by a good supporting cast of people like Aldis Hodge and Storm Reid. Also, the film is well shot and edited but where it really comes into its own is with the sound design. This combined with Benjamin Wallfisch’s terrifically jumpy score (alas, not available on CD, only as a stupid electronic download) are what provide the film with the most scares. The film in itself, has no really big ‘fright moments’ but, due to the use of sound and music, you still get some quite intense suspense sequences in this thing.

Okay, so two standout things for me.

That sound work I just mentioned really comes into its own when, after two weeks confined in her friend’s house, Cecilia tries to brave the outside world once more by walking outside for ten seconds or so. The tension of her inner intimidation by the big, scary outside is strengthened incredibly as she puts her first foot out the door and the sound design gets suddenly muted and echoey as it does things to her footsteps. A really nice touch.

The other thing I liked about this is the way they played with modern conventions of horror which, in a way, also mimicked things Universal were doing with the series back in the 1930s and 1940s, for different reasons. That is the modern horror movie thing of the camera turning around and looking at empty rooms as you wait to spot some little detail in the shot that you know is going to scare you. It’s certainly something they would, by necessity, do in the original films in order to show you the visible signs of an invisible person being in the room... as you wait to see a tell tale foot print or a breath of cold air or a door opening. Here, though, Whannell does this purely, it seemed to me, to have fun with the modern viewer expecting to see these things. He’ll similarly focus the camera on an empty room as Cecilia is trying to see if she’s alone or not but, brilliantly, quite often does nothing with it. In the most cases, there are no indications to show there is anyone there or not... and you certainly know about it when it all kicks off. This, of course, strengthens the mood of carefully prepared paranoia which perpetually permeates the movie and I think taking this approach, at this particular time in horror film history, was a good idea.

There are some small problems I had with the movie... apart from the UK print being censored by a few seconds, ensuring that any future Blu Ray purchase from me needs to be imported from the US.

One of those problems is it’s not really a horror film. The weird science aspect of the chemical potion which gave invisibility but turned ones brain against one as it stayed in your system is gone. Instead, the lead antagonist is an optical science specialist and he’s basically wearing a stealth suit... it’s not unlike the terribly stupid car in Pierce Brosnan’s sad misstep of a Bond movie Die Another Day (reviewed by me here).

The other thing was the way it telegraphs an obvious twist in the middle of the film, where Cecilia gets a visit from a certain attorney. It totally gives away a reveal from later in the movie and I was a little disappointed that this was so blatant. However, it does lead the way for the second ending of the story and the whole problematic issue of the ‘me too’ element of the film... so I guess it’s at least good that this ‘almost twist’ is still in here. The final scenes give the film an interesting lack of clarity which may spark of debate at some point in the future, I suspect. Certainly, by the end of the movie, I would be as scared of the main protagonist as I was of the main antagonist so... yeah, I’m sure I’ll get moaned at for suggesting the ending could be read in more than one way but I suspect this was the writer’s intention.

So yeah, the new version of The Invisible Man is a pretty great time at the cinema and something I would recommend to fans of well put together suspense thrillers. A good attempt to resurrect a part of the Universal franchise.

Sacrilege

Girls’ Light Out

Sacrilege
2020 UK Directed by David Creed
UK cinema release print.

Sacrilege is a UK horror movie which falls into that unfortunate subgenre known as ‘folk horror’, to an extent. This would include films such as Blood On Satan’s Claw, The Wicker Man and the recent Midsommar and... I say unfortunate because, well, I’ve never really gotten on with folk horror movies, for the most part. That being said, Sacrilege is actually a pretty entertaining film, albeit with some problems, one of these being that, just occasionally, its low budget status is somewhat noticeable... but only in parts.

The film tells a tale of four girls... Kayla (played by Tamaryn Payne), Trish (Emily Wyatt), Blake (Sian Abrahams) and Stacey (Naomi Willow)... who decide to go on a ‘girl’s weekend’ in a cottage in the country but, alas, the local community invite them to their ritualistic festival where they are targeted by their protecting demon in exchange for ‘a good season’ and by the next morning, the supernatural shenanigans have already started.

Probably the best thing about this movie is the chemistry between the four lead characters. I’ve always been a bit confused about the conversations and body language I’ve observed from afar of ‘girls’ night out’ style get togethers and I was equally baffled by the way the ladies in question were acting around one another here... so this does ring kind of true to me that the film has a good handle on the dynamics of that kind of camaraderie.

Another good thing is that it moves along at a fair lick, not outstaying its welcome and getting into the typical horror movie shenanigans fairly quickly, once the ‘party’ night has played out. There is a small element of goriness to the proceedings but I’m not sure that it was enough to warrant the 15 rating it received here, I think.

Some of the film does look a little cheap in places but, that being said, the cinematography is quite stunning in some sections and everything is cut right so you’re never at a loss to know what’s going on from scene to scene.

One of the worst things about the movie is a lesbian sex scene between two of the lead characters (at least three of the girls are implied lesbians or bisexuals)... let’s just say that there’s nothing to see here. The extended scene of sexual hijinks between the two ex-lovers who are reunited is shot in such a way that, amazingly, you don’t get to see anything of the girls other than hands and backs covering the more interesting parts of the undisplayed anatomy. This is where the film really started to lose credibility with me, it has to be said. There’s nothing worse than a ‘bashful’ love scene which is fabricated in such a meticulous way that nothing is on show. Better to have left this out completely than to tease the audience in a pointless exercise of hidden virtues.

The other main bugbear for me was the ending. For one thing, it had a sloppily quick denouement which didn’t amount to much and which exploits the clues fed to two of the girls in the earlier parts of the movie to give us a fairly formulaic approach to the way in which they can weaken the forces of darkness. To make matters worse on this front though... the science of the supernatural heart of the film, so to speak, doesn’t really hold up in any logical fashion. At the start of the movie there is a pre-credits sequence where a guy is killed in a wholly ‘otherworldly’ manner. However, the deaths which follow in the later parts of the movie are bound by a certain set of laws which, frankly, this opening sequence blatantly ignores. I mean, yes it’s a cool effect at the start of the movie but the way in which this death is presented just plays at odds with the ‘accidental suicide’ incidents which all the later death scenes involve.

Also, having seen the bizarrely out of place ‘very pistol’ in the dashboard of the van that the girls are driving... you pretty much know that it must be there for a reason and it’s going to get some action later in the film. Alas, the use of this item in a somewhat fizzling end sequence really doesn’t help matters in terms of giving the thing an exciting finish and I’d have to say the build up throughout the film, which at least evokes a certain kind of ‘scareless’ atmosphere, is much more interesting and watchable than the ending, which doesn’t even leave much for anywhere to go in terms of loose ends, it has to be said.

So there you have it... Sacrilege is a not bad little British horror film which sadly wears its budget on its sleeve on occasion but which makes up for it with some interesting acting and a fast pace that will at least mean you won’t get bored. Definitely one to check out if you’re into this kind of thing but, perhaps not a recommendation for those who are not best friends with the genre.

The Hunt

Thus Spake Zaroff’s Story

The Hunt
2020 USA Directed by Craig Zobel
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very slight spoilers.

The Hunt is yet another in a long line of cinematic ‘adaptations’ of The Hounds Of Zaroff (aka The Most Dangerous Game)... heck, even Jess Franco made a version of it at one point (reviewed by me here). It even turned up as a sub-plot in The Purge: Anarchy (reviewed here). The classic story is, of course, that ‘the most dangerous game’ for hunting are human beings. Single people are usually hunted for sport in a remote setting like an island in these adaptations. For this latest spin on the classic tale, we have multiple quarry and a setting in a remote country.

I’ve been wanting to see this movie since I saw a trailer for it last year, shortly before the film got rescheduled from an August 2019 release due to a mass shooting in America. It’s finally now in cinemas and, I have to say, coming from the Blumhouse studios, I was expecting a somewhat competent and maybe slightly edgy action thriller.... well, I have to say that I got so much more. This is a brilliantly entertaining film although, I should probably warn you that it’s also quite brutal and gory, which some of us might argue it kind of needs to be when treating this subject matter for modern times.

I knew I was going to be in for more than the average action flick when I realised the film includes a pig called Orwell and a character referred to as Snowball. There’s very much a satirical edge to this tale of a cadre of rich people hunting down ‘undesirables’... so much more than at first meets the eye here and it’s really not just a run, shoot kill movie, although on the surface that’s exactly what it is.

The opening sequence was a bit problematic for me since it was so obvious what was going to happen, when one of the drugged ‘targets’ wakes up before he is supposed to. I even knew the doctor was probably going to ask to borrow a pen to do what he does in this opening and... yeah, I was disappointed that you could see exactly where this was going.

After this, though, the film smartens itself up considerably and we have one of those situations where the main protagonist doesn’t even come into the film properly for a bit. The first 20 minutes or so is of the majority of the human fodder in the movie being killed in, it has to be said, some unexpectedly brutal ways and it reminded me of fixating on the Janet Leigh character in Hitchcock’s Psycho before she is killed off and you have no idea of who the main protagonist really is anymore. The start of this movie is just like that where, every time you are encouraged by the director to latch onto a ‘main character’, they’re taken out in some spectacularly bloody manner. It’s a nice way of playing it and it also gives the audience some impression of what to expect in terms of the efficiency of this rich bunch of killers. It also, of course, means you can never be sure just who is going to be next on the list of deaths.

And then, after a scene at a gas station where a particularly satirical and violent conflict has just played out, we get the real protagonist of the movie turning up... Crystal, played in an astonishingly hypnotic performance by an actress I’d not heard of before called Betty Gilpin. She’s the survivor of the group of targets having served time in the military at some point and she’s the one who pretty much does all the thinking throughout the movie, as she uncovers various ‘rich antagonists in disguise’ while the story progresses. Also, I really got behind this actress because the way she plays the character with some wildly exaggerated expressions is just perfect and, often, quite funny. The way she is written and performed as the ‘dumb redneck’ who turns out to be the smartest one in the room is pretty cool and a nice step up from some of the Hollywood stereotypes we’ve been living with for the last 100 or so years.

My only real problem with it was the final reveal of the villain. There’s an element of self fulfilling prophecy about the set up of the mechanics in motion to make The Hunt a thing in this world and I’m not going to say anything about that because this, perhaps unnecessary information, could be considered a bit of a spoiler for some. I will give away the bizarre villain reveal though because it’s totally stupid and pointless. All through the film there is a ‘mystery character’. She’s deliberately hidden from the camera and we only see the back of her head... it’s a bit like looking at Blofeld in the early bond movies where all you would see was the back of a head and some hands stroking a cat to denote the important status of this character. When we finally see her for the third act she’s revealed as... Hilary Swank. But we knew this already right? She has prominent billing doesn’t she? So... everybody knows Hilary Swank is in the movie and her face hasn’t been on screen for the first two thirds so... this reveal is not hard to guess now, is it?. That’s my one real... huh?... moment of the film. Why they bothered to hide her face when everyone knew she was in it.

Anyway, when Betty Gilpin’s character has killed pretty much everyone else off and she’s on her own, she finds the compound of Swank’s character and it’s not long before these two are indulging in a lethal, up close and personal fight. I’m pretty sure the filmmakers are going for a scene reminiscent of the opening fight between Uma Thurman and Vivica A Fox in Kill Bill Volume 1 in intensity and... well it doesn’t really top or match up to that scene to be fair but it does get a lot more in your face than most movies do these days, it has to be said.

And that’s me more or less done on The Hunt, other than to say I could stand watching this a few more times and I’ll be keeping my eyes open for a Blu Ray release when the time comes. It’s a nice version of The Hounds Of Zaroff with a certain intelligence behind the characters and their perceptions of a certain ‘class’ of people, is beautifully acted (great seeing Ethan Suplee again), has some brilliantly choreographed and ferociously well edited action sequences, a stand-out turn from the person who does eventually turn out to be the main protagonist and, as it turns out, a really nice post-denouement end scene that also elevates the main character, in my opinion.

If you’re into action cinema, make sure you see this one... it’s a well put together and surprisingly rewarding stand out of the genre.

Tales Of The Shadowmen 15 - Trompe l'Oeil

League Of Mental Men

Tales Of The Shadowmen 15
Trompe l'Oeil
Edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier
Black Coat Press ISBN: 978-1612278131

I previously reviewed the first 14 collections in the Tales Of The Shadowmen series here and explained about my annual ritual of receiving the next volume in the series either at Christmas or for my birthday a couple of weeks later. And, as I said before, since these things aren’t published until December each year I’m usually one year behind when I get to finally read these things. It’s a cycle I keep meaning to break (if I ever get time around all the other things I’ve got to read) but for now I will quickly... very quickly in this case... cover the December 2019 release which I read a little while ago, Tales Of The Shadowmen 15 - Trompe l'Oeil.

As usual, the gallery of stories by different authors on offer, all utilising two or more heroes, villains or supporting characters from known literary (and other) works and then mixing them together in the same stories, is a bit of a hit and miss affair. As is sometimes the case, actually knowing the characters that are being continually referenced in these stories is part of the fun. This is not to deny that, when a really good writer gives these tales a go, even if you are not acquainted with the character of choice, they will be gripping reads. Usually these books are, once you get the first few volumes out of the way, more hit than miss but occasionally you get a volume where it’s maybe not quite as engaging as previous volumes and, I think that’s definitely the case here.

The book starts off fairly strongly following a short, dimension hopping tale called The Vertigo by Daniel Alhadeff. Like many of the characters in this particular volume, I hadn’t heard of the central protagonist and the brief intro to this tale gave him the hint of an atmosphere which didn’t seem to tally up with what I was actually reading. Frankly, the style it had been written in reminded me of an entirely different flavour, that of the Jerry Cornelius books by Michael Moorcock (I reviewed the movie version of one of them, The Final Programme, right here). So I was pleasantly surprised when a character from that series, Miss Brunner, turned up as one of the main characters a little later on... now it made sense as to why the writer was delving into this style.

Another stand out would be when the human-sized spider detective character, Spiridon, goes on a mission where the villain turns out to be another in a long line of Dr. Moreaus, who is also in this tale, responsible for the creation of the giant ants seen in the film THEM!

In other stories you will find the usual mash up of characters and ideas and, if you want to see what happens when Professor Challenger invents time travel, or when a very young Alfred Hitchcock gets involved in a plot involving Rouletabille and Harry Dickson, then this is a tome for you.

I particularly liked a tale by Travis Hiltz set around a time traveller marooned in Medieval France being assisted by the Wandering Jew to help rid the locals of Rotwang, from Metropolis, who was controlling not just Maria but the Volkites from the old Republic serial Undersea Kingdom. Another story has the Nyctalope and others trying to round up Edgar Allan Poe from 1940s America after he has been displaced by 'The Philadelphia Experiment'... a story in which a certain Ian Fleming spots James Bond’s name on a copy of the Field Guide To Birds Of The West Indies and notes how bland a sounding moniker it is (which parallels the real life creation of his famous character of course). They also refer to Edith Keeler in this story and how two other time travellers (which would be Kirk and Spock) allow her to die at her alloted time. You may remember this character played by Joan Collins in the Star Trek episode City On The Edge Of Forever, of course.

Other appearances of note might be the son of Bernard Quatermass, Indiana Jones, Doctor Omega, Liz Shaw, The Master and an interesting Carnacki tale where the Bachus is responsible, in a roundabout way, for the Whitechapel murders believed to have been committed by Jack The Ripper. Not to mention more than a few appearances in various stories for Les Vampires’ number one figurehead, Irma Vep. Another interesting story by Nigel Malcolm called Enemies Of The People is set in Paris in a future that is obviously an homage to the world created by Ridley Scott in Blade Runner. In this, after a near fateful encounter with the being that may or may not be the original Fantomas, Judex joins forces with Michael Moorcock’s character Una Persson and the Nyctalope to try and survive the corrupt government that wants the ‘terrorist’ Judex dead.

Out of many of the Shadowmen collections, I wouldn’t say this particular one is a good jumping on point. Asides from taking on some tales originally written for an unpublished volume collecting stories about characters from the Hexagon Comics range (an imprint I’m not familiar with myself), there are also a lot of tales which are follow ups from various yarns told in other volumes... such as Brian Gallagher’s latest chapter in the ongoing history of Captain Vampire or the latest yarn in the continuing exploits of Felifax.

All in all, it’s not the best in the series but, honestly, some of these collections are so entertaining that they can afford to have a few misses every now and again. I’m not a hundred percent sure I was fully on board with the Madam Atomos, tale where it turns out she was responsible for the death of John Lennon... I dunno, it just felt a little in bad taste to me but that’s no excuse not to let any writer or artist do what they want so, yeah, no real complaints from me there.

Tales Of The Shadowmen 15 - Trompe l'Oeil is not one of the best entries in the series but regular readers should get something out of this, I think... especially if they are enjoying the specific tales which, in some ways, could be seen as multi-parters. As I said, though, I wouldn’t jump into this one if you’re new to the series. Best to start off with one of the earlier collections if this is the case. Check out the full range of these and many other interesting curios at https://www.blackcoatpress.com if you want to peruse a publisher who has some very interesting volumes on the market.

Lust For A Vampire

Bosom Vladdies

Lust For A Vampire
UK 1971 Directed by Jimmy Sangster
Hammer  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoiler at the end.

Lust For A Vampire is the second installment in a trilogy of films put out by the Hammer Studios based loosely on Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th Century gothic, lesbian vampire tale Carmilla. The first in the series, The Vampire Lovers (which I reviewed some time ago here and which can now be found in a much better Blu Ray version), was the first of a short series of attempts by Hammer to spice up their films with partial nudity and sex in an attempt to reclaim some box office after the company, if memory serves, had started its decline... at least in terms of generating revenue.

The results of their new approach to a more ‘sexified’ horror genre can be seen straight away in the amount of nudity and syrupy sapphic seductions in The Vampire Lovers which was, I have to say, still fairly faithful to the original story. For this direct sequel... well, things are much less connected to the source material other than the central character of Mircalla, who is of course an anagram of her real name Carmilla Karnstein, the vampire at the heart of Le Fanu’s story. However, there’s definitely a continuity problem in terms of the female lead here...

After her death in the last film... almost a century ago, some of her surviving vampire family who were somehow not mentioned in the last movie resurrect her from the skeleton she has become in a black magic ceremony. When she sits up in her coffin in one of two fairly iconic Hammer Glamour shots in the company’s history to be found in this movie, she looks nothing like Ingrid Pitt, who played her in the last film. That’s because in this one, she’s played by the equally beautiful Yutte Stensgaard who looks spectacular and does an okay job with the script she’s given to work with. However, the role was originally offered to Ingrid Pitt to reprise her turn from The Vampire Lovers but after, she’d read the script to Lust For A Vampire, she turned it down and went on to make Countess Dracula for Hammer instead (reviewed here).

After a few scenes in a church and a public house which serve to introduce us to young male hero of the film, Michael Johnson as novelist Richard Lestrange, the majority of the rest of the movie is set in a finishing school for young ladies in the locale of Carmilla’s old castle... as Mircalla starts to seduce and eat her way through the school in a fairly sedate fashion. Until things finally catch up with her and she and her family are cornered in the church by a proper, traditional ‘angry mob’ armed with lighted torches and so on.

And it’s certainly an entertaining ‘romp’ for sure. Not actually a good film in any shape or form but I certainly had a good time watching this one. Why is it not a good film? Well, let me list some of the things here... I know director Sangster was an eleventh hour replacement, as were some of the cast and I know some people were less than enthusiastic about being in it... especially after they’d seen the final product.

Let’s start with the acting. The one really good actor who looks like she actually wants to be here is Suzanna Leigh, playing the ludicrously named fitness teacher Janet Playfair. Yes, that’s right, fitness teacher as the girls in their flimsy clothing slowly move around seductively to the sound of a harp in front of the school. If ever there was a film which gives the ‘male gaze’ a bad name, it’s surely this one.

By contrast, Johnson seems to be less enthused by his place in things and the other male lead, local history teacher Giles Barton, is played by Ralph Bates in a way that would certainly cause anyone to think that this was definitely not his best work. Mr. Bates thought it was the worst performance he’d done in the worst movie he’d been in, by all accounts. It’s interesting because he seems to be playing him in the same way that George Lazenby played a certain aspect of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here). In that film, Bond assumed the identity of an English scholar played by Stanley Baker and he uses a well spoken accent and a timidity which looks and sounds vaguely ridiculous (despite it being the greatest James Bond movie ever made). I believe Baker even overdubbed George Lazenby’s impersonation in the finished film. So we have Ralph Bates coming across as a fop, regardless, in his personal obsession about the fate of the Karnstein family. Actually, I believe the role was originally written for Peter Cushing, which makes much more sense but Cushing had to be ‘let off’ the role when he had to go and care for his very sick wife. Which is unfortunate.

And then there’s Mircalla herself. Stensgaard looks great in the role, despite looking nothing like the version of the character from the previous film, when Ingrid Pitt played the role as a very confident young vampire, manipulating her victims to her own ends. Here, she’s the absolute opposite and comes across as an innocent victim being made to live up to her family name. Not Stensgaard’s fault of course, if that’s the way the script portrays her in this then she just has to say her lines and take her clothes off at suitable intervals and her job is done. It would have been nice if it had gelled better with the previous film, however.

And then there’s all of the sex and nudity, which was pretty much the mission brief for Hammer at this point. The Vampire Lovers was never exactly subtle about the unclothed state many of the cast found themselves in at regular intervals but Lust For A Vampire really outdoes itself for inserting inappropriate material and comes across, a lot of the time, as a vampire movie mixed together with a Mary Millington flick. Honestly, any excuse here and they’re all at it...

For example, when a young girl is placed on a church altar to be sacrificed early in the film, she is placed face up in front of the camera with her head hanging upside down and taking up the bottom half of the shot while her prominent bosoms are thrust up towards the top of the frame. Like I said, there’s not a lot of subtlety within this one.

Another historically iconic shot of Yutte Stensgaard sitting up topless in bed comes about when she’s simply massaging her neck and the student with whom she shares a bedroom offers to take over. The next thing you know, the movements about her neck causes her diaphanous night wear to inexplicably fall towards the floor, leaving her hanging, so to speak. It really is just like those old Kenny Everett sketches from the 1970s and early 1980s when he played a Hollywood starlet who used to constantly proclaim, “when suddenly, all my clothes fell off.” Yeah, this movie certainly is fun, for sure.

It’s not just the ‘schoolboy erotica’ content of the film which make it such a pleasure to watch either.

For instance, there’s a member of the Karnstein family who mostly just looks sinister and can be found lurking in the background to a lot of scenes. There’s one shot of two women kissing in a pool and we suddenly cut to a real non-sequitur of a shot depicting him standing with his hand on his hips at a funny angle while the music suddenly gives us this real, over the top howler of a stinger to tell us that what we’re looking at is really bad... although, I have to be honest, without that musical cue I would never had realised anything bad was happening in the scene at all.

And talking of musical stingers... the sequence where Mircalla tries to seduce our buxom Miss Playfair is accompanied by what I can only imagine was supposed to be the ethereal sound of her hypnotic gaze. However, it kinda just comes across as a bit of an over-the-top, speeded up, higher pitched version of the sound the ants make in the movie THEM! so, yeah, again it’s quite hilarious, I have to say.

There’s some nice stuff too.. with a dream sequence using shots from the movie washed out into single colours, a little like the posterised, opening sequence to The Monkees movie Head... and there’s a nice moment in a sequence where the footage of vampire bites revealed on a woman’s neck from earlier in the film is tinted out into a pale green with the bites shown up as a vivid blood red against everything else... which was nice. Unfortunately, the whole dream is accompanied by a truly, hilariously inappropriate song singing of the character’s ‘Strange Love’ and, yeah, I’ll just stop there. And it’s nothing compared to the bizarre faces Miss Stensgaard makes when the camera is focused on just her eyes... which sometimes become cross-eyed when she is emoting her ecstasy at the carnal things Mr. Lestrange is doing to Mircalla ‘out of shot’. How she kept a straight face doing that I’ll never know.

And goodness knows why they have the same actor who played the butler in the previous film as a police inspector in this one. He’s actually quite a good little character actor by the name of Harvey Hall. He wasn't in much but he even turns up, playing yet another character, in the next film in the sequence, by the looks of it.

Anyway, not much more to say about this one apart from one of the vampire characters, I’m not saying which, having a somewhat unusual but nevertheless stupid death whereby the pointy rafter from the burning roof of a church splinters off and drops to stake said vampire through the heart. The film keeps running through the end credits to remind us that these particular vampires can’t be hurt by fire and thus it’s a thread that can be yanked on for a sequel, although this is not actually used in the next one, from what I understand. I’ll let you know for sure very soon.

As was set up in the earlier Karnstein film, these particular vampires are quite happy to walk around in sunlight but the unfortunate thing Hammer have done with the Carmilla character is they’ve not based any of this on Le Fanu’s source (which is fair enough, they already did that in the last movie) and without that, this becomes just another vampire movie which could easily be told with any old vampire in the lead. Which is a shame but, despite the films shortcomings... or rather, because of them, Lust For A Vampire is a very entertaining affair and I have to say this is definitely something I’d watch again a number of times in the future. Perhaps best recommended only to fans of a certain period of British produced horror films but yeah, I kind enjoyed this one. Looking forward to seeing the third movie in the series, Twins Of Evil, very soon.

Fantasy Island

Isle Be Back

Fantasy Island
2020 USA Directed by Jeff Wadlow
UK cinema release print. 

Warning: Small spoilers.

Yeah, I kinda wondered if this would happen. Hot on the heels of the fairly recent The Banana Splits Movie (reviewed by me here), which took an old TV show from decades ago and turned it into a horror film, we have yet another beloved (to many, I’m sure) TV show, this time from the late 1970s/early 1980s, which has undergone a horror movie make over. This time it’s Fantasy Island although, for some reason, the UK certification card billed it as Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island... I don’t see why because it is definitely featuring at least one (technically two) characters from the original TV show, where guests would arrive on the island by plane and Mr. Roarke, played by Ricardo Montalban, would greet them and use the magical powers of the island to give them their fantasy (the real one, not the one they thought they wanted) and teach them a life lesson about themselves in the process.

This time around, the wonderful Michael Peña, who you may remember from his comic turn in the Ant Man movies, replaces Montalban as Roarke and we even have a kind of replacement for his sidekick Tattoo but, the way this happens would probably constitute a major spoiler so I’m not going to say much about that.

What I will say is that yes, it pretty much follows the original formula of the TV show to the letter and, yes, it’s definitely turned into a horror/adventure vehicle... albeit a kind of family friendly one, to be sure. I mean, gosh knows how it managed to land itself with a 15 rating here in the UK... I think this one should probably be a 12 at the very most.

Okay, so this is kind of a fun film but its only going to work for you, I believe, if you are willing to accept the supernatural and magical properties of the island fairly early on. Don’t go expecting any scientific explanation for anything that’s going on in this movie because you certainly aren’t going to get one. In truth, this is a little more like reading one of those old 1950s EC Horror comics like Tales From The Crypt or Vault Of Horror and, if you’re expecting anything more sophisticated than that, then you may be in for a bit of a disappointment. I mean, when you see various bad guys... such as Kim Coates playing absolutely to type as a henchman... and their eyes suddenly explode in their sockets to emit a black ooze... you know there’s something less than scientific going on here, right?

Some of the acting in this is pretty good with Peña giving the film a much needed shot of gravitas in certain places and with an equally sobering performance from the always watchable Maggie Q as one of the guests. It’s nicely put together, not too flashy in terms of shot set ups... although there is a moment where the director seems to go deliberately overboard with vertical spaces made up from trees... and it’s edited in a way that you aren’t going to lose where everybody is. Why and how everybody is, however, is a different matter and I’ll come to that shortly.

Okay, so even if you can make friends with the lack of subtlety of the supernatural element in this movie, there are a few things in this which are not so great. One of them being the fact that the writers/director feel the need to telegraph certain elements such as one character who, right when she gets a nosebleed at the start with some sinister music playing, you know is going to be revealed as something less obvious than she at first appears. And you can see all those all important life lessons coming a mile off, to be honest.

Another thing is how it’s somehow trying to be some kind of ‘family friendly horror’ movie. It just doesn’t work and I’m sure there must be a much stronger cut of this movie out there because every time one of the human characters gets cut up, or whatever, it always seems to be just off camera with no red blood in sight. The only real blood is the black ooze from the eyeball pops in this, which I’m guessing is just a way of getting around certain censorship issues. Not that I particularly wanted to see various violent deaths etc but, honestly, the absence of follow through on the things you know are happening just means the film loses a certain amount of credibility, as far as I’m concerned. At least in terms of the overall tone of this movie.

I’m not even going to talk about one character reveal when, even though that character admits to be ‘acting’ in the earlier parts of the movie, still makes no sense in terms of the character motivations and the actions of said character in one of the earlier scenes.

And then there’s the ending. Honestly, I’ve got no idea what is going on or why any of the ‘surviving’ guests are leaving the island without trying to kill Roarke and his crew. I’m really not sure why no questions are going to be asked when various ‘guests’ don’t survive their stay and, yeah, just really baffled by the bizarre denouement on this one.

The one shining light for me, which was worth the price of admission, was Bear McCreary’s score, which gives a good sense of uneasiness throughout. Alas, at time of writing this, the soundtrack is only available as a dumb electronic download rather than a proper CD but I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it gets a real release at some point. We’ll see what happens.

So, yeah... short review but there’s really not much more to say about this one. Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island is not a film I could really recommend to anyone. It’s fine in places but it’s not brilliant and, while I’m glad I saw it, I don’t think I’d need to ever watch it again. That being said, I do hope this somehow allows for other revamped TV shows from the 1960s - 1980s, redone in the horror genre because, like The Banana Splits Movie before it, sometimes this is a good idea.

Dracula AD 1972

Rising Vamp

Dracula AD 1972
UK 1972 Directed by Alan Gibson
Screening at the Regent Street Cinema
with Q&A from Caroline Munro 5th March 2020

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Okay, so when I found out that my favourite of the Hammer Dracula movies was playing in London, I couldn’t resist seeing this thing on the big screen, finally. Especially since I found out that one of my all time favourite screen personalities, the lovely Caroline Munro, would be doing a Q&A session after the main feature.

Dracula AD 1972 was Caroline’s first feature for Hammer and although she’s not in it all that much... she comes to a definitively sticky end quite early in the movie... she was the first and, as far as I know, the last actress actually put under contract by the Hammer Studios, following this film up with the equally excellent Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter. Alas, she’s not in this much but she surely makes a memorable impression as one of a young group of hippie friends crashing parties and generally having a wild time in ‘swinging London’... an incarnation of the counterculture which had moved on somewhat by the time this movie was shot but, it sure seems like a nice place to be.

Another actress in this group of ‘wild young friends’ is Stephanie Beacham as Jessica, the granddaughter of the contemporary ancestor of Van Helsing... in this film he’s the ‘all new’ Lorimer Van Helsing but he’s still portrayed by Peter Cushing (in a dual role... I’ll get to that in a minute). The group also includes Marsha Hunt, Michael Kitchen and, as Dracula’s main assistant, Christopher Neame as the wonderfully monikered Johnny Alucard (I’ll leave you to ponder the permutations of that last name... I don’t think you’ll need to draw out a hilarious chart like Peter Cushing does in this movie). Neame also plays a dual role here as his own ancestor in the film’s opening sequence.

Of course, we also have the inimitable Christopher Lee back as the charismatic Count and, as far as I can see, this film also stars the only other actor besides Cushing and Lee to play a running character in more than one Hammer Dracula movie... Michael Coles as Inspector Murray, who would also turn up in the next movie in the sequence, The Satanic Rites Of Dracula. Jessica Van Helsing would also be back in the next movie but played by Joanna Lumley the second time around.

And it’s still my favourite of the Hammer Dracula movies, that’s for sure.

The film starts off a little differently than their usual fayre, with an opening reminiscent of the James Bond movies in that it shows an ‘end of mission’ action sequence as an opener. The pre-credits are all set in 1872 as we are witness to the final confrontation between Dracula and Van Helsing, starting with a galloping stage coach, Dracula clinging to the sides as he attacks the latter. The coach crashes into splinters and Dracula finds himself ‘staked’ to one of the broken coach wheels but, not before he has put paid to Van Helsing. However, Christopher Neame’s pre-20th Century character gathers Dracula’s ring, some of his ashes and buries them in a grave next to his nemesis as the burial goes on. We then witness director Alan Gibson’s first flash of creative genius (in a film full of really nice stuff) where he pans up from the graveyard in the Victorian era, into the sky as we see a jumbo jet soaring above London, effectively segueing from one millennium to the next in the space of a few seconds in one shot... which is really cool. Then, more of Mike Vickers excellent and funky 'wah wah' score kicks in as the opening credits play out.

From then on, the film is one big romp of a fun movie set in early 1970s London... the kind of period and city I love to watch on film anyway because it reminds me of my early days as a child model in the city. It’s a bit of a chamber piece in that it’s not epic in scale but it works really well and there’s a lot of nice stuff. The director designs some wonderful frames and he’s one of those people who is not afraid to use just a quarter of the screen and leave the rest in darkness so he can focus you in... there’s a pretty cool shot of a car pulling into a garage/drive from within, for example, where the only area of the screen that isn’t black is the bottom right hand corner where we can see the car’s arrival.

Also, considering the phenomenally low budgets of these Hammer films, they used to look way better than their actual financial means should have allowed for... the production values are something else. One of the audience asked Caroline Munro after the film if the church was shot in a real church or if it was a set. Her initial reply of... “What do you think?” was followed up with the revelation that the interiors of the church were shot in a studio and... well, honestly, they had me fooled. It looks a lot like a real location to me.

Peter Cushing had recently lost his wife when he made this and there’s even a photo of her on Van Helsing’s desk in the film but, he turns out one of his usual, interesting performances for this and he comes across particularly well in his action scenes, which he doesn’t look like he is able to handle but does so admirably. Lee is his normal, solid self in a role which he had, by all accounts, had enough of.. he didn’t like the idea of Dracula being modernised, from what I understand... and Miss Munro indicated after the movie that his personal feelings about the role and the script were not even felt or realised on set by the other actors... which shows you what a professional he was.

Stephanie Beacham is pretty good as Van Helsing’s grand daughter but I don’t think she has the best or, at least, most credible lines in the movie, for sure. And, of course, Caroline Munroe, in the few scenes she has, is absolutely brilliant. I love her opening dance scenes where she looks like a floppy, bouncy miracle bundle of energy who could go all night. I wish her role could have been a little more expanded but I’m just grateful she got the part, which she explained came about because the producer used to ride the trains a lot and saw her in her famous Lamb’s Navy Rum girl campaign posters at the time (I used to love those when I was a toddler, the colours and poses on those posters were quite striking).

The film is a little problematic in terms of continuity in future films, especially with the death of the original Van Helsing set as 1872... but thats something I’m going to need to look into a little more when I get around to re-watching Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires at some point. But there’s honestly not much I could find at fault here, to be honest, except for maybe the silliness of the dapper Johnny Alucard (he has the best shirts) falling in the bath and accidentally turning the shower on when he grabs it to save himself... effectively killing himself because, in this version of the Dracula mythos, vampires can be killed by running water (never really understood that one myself).

Dracula AD 1972 is a fine, visually inventive entry in the series and is the main one I’ll always come back to. Especially interesting to historians as a time capsule of what the establishment who were making the picture perceived the ‘youth of today’ to be, rather than actually nailing that side of things.  I’m so glad I finally got to see this one on a big screen too... that’s another one crossed off my cinematic bucket list.

Final Score

School Of Hard Knox

Final Score
UK 2018 Directed by Scott Mann
Signature Films  Blu Ray Zone B

I tried to catch Final Score in the cinema when it came out over here but even though I was actively looking out for it, I couldn’t. Why? I honestly don’t even think it came out for more than a day over here in the UK. So, yeah, of course... why should a big Hollywood style action thriller made with UK money be released properly in the country in which it was produced eh? Bloody Sky is probably the answer to that, who seem to have had a hand in funding this project. So the blame for this horrible lack of a proper cinema release for this lands with them, I would guess.

The film itself? Well, what can I say... I like David Bautista and think he’s a pretty great actor. In this film he plays Michael Knox, an ex-army private operator who goes to see his friend’s wife and daughter in London every once in a while, the back story being that his friend lost his life serving with him and he is taking care of his family whenever he gets the chance. So this movie is set in London, in West Ham’s old stadium, actually, where the last game they played there (in fictional form with probably more explosions and drama than real life) is the setting, as Michael takes his friend’s daughter Danni, played by Lara Peake from Spaceship (reviewed here) to the football match. Unbeknownst to him, a Russian warmonger played by Ray Stevenson, the villain of the piece, knows that his ‘defected believed dead’ brother, played by Pierce Brosnan, is watching the match between West Ham and a Russian team and so he locks down the stadium, packs it with explosives and holds it to ransom, threatening to blow it up if the powers that be in the UK don’t give him his brother (who has had plastic surgery after his faked death).

So it’s up to Knox to save the day, try and communicate with the outside world (the cell phone signal in the stadium has been knocked out) and somehow keep his friend’s daughter safe while taking out the bad guys. And if you’re thinking this sounds a little like Die Hard but set in an English football stadium then, ‘bingo’, that’s exactly what this is.

Knowing that, of course, doesn’t make it any less entertaining and though it’s not as cleverly written as most of the Die Hard franchise, the director manages to serve up a fairly serviceable action movie which, even at almost two hours, doesn’t feel overly long and also showcases Bautista’s excellent acting skills, combined with a screen presence which makes you believe that this guy is perfectly capable of doing this kind of thing in real life. Which is always half the battle with the casting in these things.

Actually, everyone I’ve already mentioned is really not bad in this although Brosnan is a little underused, coming into play for just the last third of the movie. There’s some nice comic relief moments from Amit Shah too, as Faisel, Knox’s reluctant sidekick who does prove at least a little more competent than you’d think on the odd occasion.

And, yeah... there’s not too much to say about this one. The novelty of seeing something that looks a lot like an American action movie where everyone is mostly going ‘gor blimey, stone the crows guv’nor’ doesn’t really get old here... and no, not literally those words or accents but bits of this do feel very ‘extra British’. Like the scene where the head of the police force punches a special agent for calling English football soccer.

One thing that is nice in some of the action sequences is the placement of the camera just behind the cast as they look around with their guns aimed about them... kind of like a third person shooter video game along the lines of Tomb Raider. This was a nice way of adding interest to some of the scenes and it gives the film a little more edge in places.

There are some ‘leap of faith’ suspension of disbelief moments here though, too. For instance, up until a certain scene right near the end of the film, nobody in the audience watching the game... nor the players... are aware that anything out of the ordinary is going on. Even in scenes where Bautista crash lands on a bike on the roof of part of the audience seating or when he swings across the pitch to land on the giant video monitor... the crowd seem strangely unaware that there is anything amiss.

This doesn’t really hurt Final Score though and while I wouldn’t say it’s the best action movie I’ve seen, Bautista does well in carrying the movie and, well, like I said earlier, it’s entertaining enough. Possibly not one for people who don’t like action cinema but I certainly had a good time with it and I hope Bautista keeps getting more starring roles because, as anyone who’s seen him in the futuristic, medical safe house movie Hotel Artemis (reviewed here) should know, he’s actually quite an intelligent actor and, combined with his striking screen presence, I think Hollywood are only beginning to scratch the surface of just how good this guy can be. One to watch if you want a quick action fix.

Doctor Who - The Timeless Children

Without Time Or Treason

Doctor Who - The Timeless Children
UK BBC1 Airdate: 1st March 2020

Warning: Spoilers I guess

Well this was just a bit rubbish.

I had my fingers crossed this would be a good series finale but, alas, it really didn’t live up to the teasers laid out earlier in the year.

Okay, so I’ll do my usual shout out to the four really good things in the show at the moment... Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole. They were all really great in this, as per usual although, it has to be said, they had some terrible lines to get through at certain points in the episode.

That’s it... that’s the good stuff.

Following on from last week’s episode, it’s kinda revealed that Brendan, who I’d assumed was The Lone Cyberman, was actually probably The Doctor or, rather, a false memory of The Doctor implanted when her mind was wiped by her fellow Timelords because, unbeknownst to her (and to the loyal audience of the past 50 plus years) she was actually part of a secret team of special agents sent to wander around the galaxy giving help to those in need. Oh... and she’s also not a Timelord at all now but a mysterious alien from another dimension who taught a scientist from Gallifrey who took it in, how to regenerate... so yeah, that’s a lot.

I don’t mind them updating the origins of The Doctor a little bit, to be honest and that’s not my biggest problem with this episode. I’ll get onto that in a little while. And, also, it does help certain glaring continuity errors over the years such as the ‘Fourth Doctor’ having had so many previous lives shown to us in the 1970s story The Brain Of Morbius. Although, it also kinda screws that continuity too because, with this retro-fitted back story, he surely shouldn’t have been able to remember them in the first place.

Of course, none of this explains how, in the past, lady Timelords can try on new regenerations like changing clothes in a high street store or the fact that a future incarnation of The Doctor is the Valyard but, well, I guess at least they’re trying, right?

One of the issues I have with this episode is that certain things were just unbelievably obvious. For instance, the humans including two of The Doctor’s companions trapped on the Cybership get the bright idea to wear Cyberman armour to get off the ship. So immediately the first thing the mind jumps to is... well then please don’t let them have a terribly clichéd bit of Deus Ex Machina when someone is about to die at the hands of the Cybermen but then their friends are also around in Cyber armour to save the day. But, yeah... of course that happened. This is so jaded by now... would have worked much better in the sixties, methinks (and probably did). But this wasn’t my main problem with it.

Another problem was that all that stuff about not giving The Lone Cyberman what it wants, as per Captain Jack’s warning in the one outstanding episode of the series, was a bit if a red herring. In fact, The Doctor was able to use The Lone Cyberman to save the day, kinda, at the end of the story. Also, since that was therefore redundant and there was no Captain Jack in sight... well, bit of a nonsense then really, wasn’t it? That wasn’t my main problem with the episode though.

Also, was anyone listening when it was revealed that the death particle housed in The Lone Cyberman’s armour would destroy all organic life in the universe? Because, you know, a character cracked that particle at the end and it meant the destruction of Gallifrey, certainly but... yeah... not actually the universe now, was it? That wasn’t my main problem with the story though.

Oh, and did anyone notice that the Judoon who came to sling The Doctor into pokey at the end of the episode just materialised into her TARDIS with complete ease? Because... that’s not an easy thing to do, is it? Sneak onto the TARDIS undetected. There’s force fields and the like. That wasn’t my main grumble with this week’s show though.

But while I’m at it... did anyone notice the episode was called The Timeless Children? Not, The Timeless Child, who was revealed as an alien organism who became The Doctor. So I assume the other timeless child is perhaps The Master? I dunno because, nobody even thought to write in a sentence or two explaining why it was called The Timeless Children now, did they? Unless it was also referring to the new Cybermen/Time Lord hybrids. Who knows? But even that wasn’t my biggest problem with this one.

You want to know what my biggest issue with this week’s episode was? Stop reading now if you don’t because it’s not mandatory that, just because you got through the rest of this whiny review you don’t have to bother with the last bit...

Okay, if you’re still with me... my biggest problem was this...

It was so dull.

Doctor Who used to be a fun show... even when it was getting very dark. This was not really all that entertaining... it was kinda of like a soporific actually. Even with nobody mentioning Omega or Rassilon (which is fine, they kinda brushed through their invention with one sentence), it was still spectacularly yawn inducing. I mean Whitaker was absolutely brilliant but she had some really stupid stuff to try and sell here. The fact is she did it pretty well but... did this feel like quality writing?

I dunno. Maybe I’ve just outgrown the show in some way... although I still enjoy a lot of the older ones up until the start of Matt Smith so, maybe not. I’m kinda glad that I don’t have to review anymore of these new Doctor Who stories until either Christmas or the New Year, in the upcoming Revolution Of The Daleks special, that's for sure. There will still be plenty of old school Doctor Who reviews coming to the blog over the next 9 months though... starting with a forthcoming look at the classic story The Ark In Space.

As for The Timeless Children though.. I wouldn’t recommend it, to be honest. Especially if you’re a Doctor Who fan.

Little Joe

Pollen Goods

Little Joe
2019 USA Directed by Jessica Hausner
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some minor spoilers as to the plot mechanics here.

I hadn’t heard of this film until about a week ago and, at first, I dismissed it as something to not bother with because I just assumed from its title, Little Joe, that it would be another look at Warhol’s Factory through the eyes of Joe Dallesandro. Luckily, I caught a look at the poster a few days later and realised that this was nothing to do with that. Instead, we have a home grown British sci-fi/horror movie which is, unbelievably, yet another in... I dunno, four or five ‘unofficial reworkings’ in the past 12 months, of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. The difference being that, in the case of Little Joe, it also happens to be a really good movie and something I can see myself watching again.

So the plot involves the main protagonist Alice, played by the brilliant Emily Beecham who was so good in Daphne (which I reviewed here), heading a team to meet the deadline for a new engineered plant. The plant is named Little Joe, after her own son Joe, played by Kit Connor and the idea is that the plant is not as resilient as some and needs love and care to grow. In return, it rewards the owner with a pollen that makes people happy. Due to various commercial reasons, the plant is engineered so that it is not able to reproduce itself and this turns out to be an important plot point when it comes to the plant’s own survival instincts. Alice gives a plant to her son while they are still in the testing stage but it’s soon apparent to the audience, as well as a member of the team played by Kerry Fox, that the plant is doing a little more than what it’s supposed to.

And it’s a neat little movie full of great performances by those three and co-star Ben Whishaw, who plays Alice’s assistant with a crush on her. The way each of the characters and the other people who work for the same company are set up is presumably so that Hausner, who also wrote this, can use deviations from what the audience can see are their normal behaviours to ratchet up the paranoia as we begin to realise that anybody who has sniffed the pollen has become a host being with the main directive of protecting the future of the plants at all costs.

The cinematography is interesting too. The film starts off with a credit sequence of a slow camera pan above the room full of plants at the factory and the rest of the movie takes its cue from this. There is camera movement throughout almost all of the movie. Not very fast camera movement, think the opening of A Clockwork Orange with that slow zoom... there are some static shots in the movie but they are very few and far between. The movement isn’t too obtrusive but it does tend to call attention to itself a lot. The film therefore feels more European because there is no focus in the shots on any particular person at times...

It’s like that shot in Scorcese’s Taxi Driver where the camera pans away from the main protagonist and looks at a blank hallway instead while the scene plays out. This film achieves the same thing and focuses your brain on what is being said by not matching up the content of the frame exactly to the action and it gives the film an almost constant, voyeuristic, fly-on-the-wall feel to it... which is helpful in some ways because the film is mostly split between two locations... Alice’s work space and her house... which both have very carefully delineated shapes, patterns and colours giving an almost artificial feel to the environments depicted.

In at least two shots at different points in the movie, she takes the camera's deliberate lack of focus on the content of the shot to extremes where she has conversations taking place between two people, one at each side of the screen... and then slowly but surely zooms into the middle space of the frame where there’s absolutely nothing happening, in kind of an unfocussed area of the shot, as the heads disappear off the sides of the shot and we are just left with, effectively, dead space as the conversation plays out. Which is an interesting and, for me at least, unexpected choice to make.

The film is a slow burn as various characters are slowly ‘going over’ to a kind of hive plant mind but the real fright moments are caused by the friction and tension created by the music of Teiji Ito, which is amazing. I don’t know if it was composed specifically for this film or whether it is needle-dropped in from existing works (having trouble finding out that info at the moment) but I would love to get a hold of it. It’s like listening to a chorus of slowly boiling, whistling kettles which are then suddenly punctuated by harsh percussion with a real lack of harmony and... I hope I can find this stuff on CD somewhere is all I’m saying about that.

So yeah, the maybe slightly disappointing stuff is the fact that, by about three quarters of the way through the movie, they feel the need to start hitting us over the head with plot points which are, by now, blatantly obvious... almost like the film-makers weren’t confident of the job they’d done earlier in the picture. My companion as I watched this one remarked to me, “How stupid do they think we are?” at the end of the movie. I think the film just about gets away with it myself but the ending, too, is something you can see coming a mile off. It’s problematic anyway because, honestly, I can’t think of a better ending for Little Joe but, yeah, don’t expect to be going to see a movie that’s full of surprises here. Instead, go to see a wonderful and interestingly made piece which is somewhat hypnotic in the way it washes over the audience. Definitely one I’d recommend to anybody who’s remotely interested in the moving image and certainly one of the more subtle and effective remakes of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers I’ve seen in quite some time.