Abbott And Costello Meet The Invisible Man

Defective Inspector

Abbott And Costello
Meet The Invisible Man
USA 1951
Directed by Charles Lamont
Universal Blu Ray Zone A

This one will be a short one as there’s not all that much to say about this final part of the Invisible Man franchise other than, it’s a not bad Bud and Lou vehicle which mostly works. Abbott And Costello Meet The Invisible Man was originally planned as a another straight entry in the series but, after the success of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and what followed for the comedy duo’s career revival in the wake of it, the straight script was recrafted to fit into their subsequent successes of the Abbott And Costello Meet... films.

Of course, at the end of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (which I reviewed here), the two had already briefly met an iteration of The Invisible Man in the form of Vincent Price, who had already played the character in The Invisible Man Returns (reviewed here). This time, however, it was yet another title character, this time in the form of boxer Tommy Nelson (played by Arthur Franz), who is friends with a doctor who has the invisibility serum. Actually, the mechanics of the plot fit right into the Invisible franchise, as it’s established that it’s the same serum used by Dr. Griffin in the first film. Alas, although the doctor in this film has a portrait of Griffin as played by Claude Rains (in 1933’s The Invisible Man, reviewed here), they say that his name was John Griffin... when the character name of Rains character was actually, of course, Jack Griffin. However, the threat to Griffin’s mental state is exactly the same and I guess nobody can remember the antidote serum used in some of the previous Invisible pictures because, although the formula is once again expected to bring madness on the user within a week or two, the doctor has to start developing a re-agent from scratch here.

Meanwhile, the now invisible Tommy has to clear his name after his manager was murdered for not throwing a fight in a crooked boxing match. So he hires two bumbling detectives fresh from graduating from detective school (played by Bud Abbott and Lou Costello... we see the graduation ceremony as the opening scene) and between the three of them they end up putting Lou undercover as a boxing sensation in order to attract the same crooked offer and so expose the operation and get a confession to clear Tommy’s name. While all the while they work to escape detection from the mostly ineffective police inspector who knows the game is afoot, played by William Frawley (who people may remember from the popular I Love Lucy TV show).

That’s the set up and it’s all pretty much the kind of comedy shenanigans you’d expect from Bud and Lou (they retain their real names for their characters and their middle names for the character’s surnames) while also blending the invisible routines into the plot. And, to be fair, it’s a perfect fit for all kinds of zany antics, culminating in the big boxing match where invisible Tommy throws the punches while Lou tries to look like he’s doing the fighting.

So yeah, nicely comedic with some standout sequences such as a nice ‘money grab’ routine between Bud and Lou as they fight over their retainer money and a good three handed card game with the invisible guy. The scene where the invisible boxer steals Lou’s spaghetti before he notices it and Lou ends up rolling up his own napkin in his fork and stuffing it into his mouth is typical of how these two comics can sell their antics so well. It was an unexpected moment and well executed, like many of their comedy routines.

The special effects are all top rate in terms of the invisibility stuff and, even though some of these sequences are recycled footage from The Invisible Man Returns, the new stuff is equally impressive and really shows how well the studio could knock out these trick shots just 18 years after the first one. To be fair, the majority of the effects work in all of the Invisible Man franchise was pretty good right from the start and Universal were not a poverty row studio who would try and cut corners on this kind of stuff. It all looks pretty convincing although, the recycled footage of an invisible hamster disappearing does contradict the way Tommy transforms in terms of continuity of the process, to be fair.

Of course the jokes are thick and fast and a nice running joke where eye witnesses keep ending up in the office of the police psychiatrist also breaks up the action and gives a quick break here and there. A nice one liner is when the psychiatrist asks Lou if he knows where the subconscious mind comes from? Lou’s answer of “The subway?” does not disappoint.

One thing I noticed was that the humour is a lot gentler than some other comedians in terms of what they were bringing to the table, particular in terms of sexuality. It’s present but it’s not spelled out for the kids. So, for example, a line to Lou from a seductive femme fatale that she has “Two good reasons for wanting to meet you.” is filled with the expected innuendo but Lou just looks away to milk it... rather than follow it up with a line of his own, allowing it to float over the heads of the more innocent audience without making a big production out of it.

At the end of the day, Tommy’s name is cleared, Bud and Lou presumably get paid and the main villain gets his come uppance. Incidentally, eagle eyed viewers might recognise the villain, Morgan, as being played by Sheldon Leonard. Leonard had, of course, played Nick the bartender in a couple of scenes in It’s A Wonderful Life (reviewed by me here...)... “Hey get me, I’m giving out wings!”... so it was a nice surprise seeing him in something else.

And that’s about all I've got in me for Abbott And Costello Meet The Invisible Man. However, it’s not the end of my Abbott and Costello nor Universal franchise reviews because the fifth classic Universal monster was just around the corner in Creature From The Black Lagoon (which I’ve already reviewed for this blog and you can read that here) and also, Abbott and Costello would meet a new incarnation of yet another of the five big Universal horrors too. And, as usual, it’s all coming soon to this blog so... stay tuned.

Tales Of The Shadowmen 17 - Noblesse Oblige

Cops & Roburs

Tales Of The
Shadowmen 17
Noblesse Oblige
Edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier
& Randy Lofficier
Black Coat Press ISBN: 97816493202478

Okay, it’s that time of the year again when I do a very small shout out of a review to what has now become my third Christmas reading ritual over the years, following the latest Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs novels (okay, don’t panic, I’ve not read the latest Reichs yet for various reasons but that review will hopefully be coming in a couple of months). That ritual is the devouring of the ‘second from latest’ Tales Of The Shadowmen collection from Black Coat Press... never quite up to date for a Christmas present because the latest one is never published until the middle of each December of the year.

So, December 2020’s collection is Volume 17 in the series, subtitled Noblesse Oblige and, like all the others before it, it contains a collection of short stories with the common thread of each writer taking two or more famous literary pulp or comic book characters and having them cross paths in a new tale. Because of the huge amount of different characters, many of them French, I don’t always get all of the references but, as in previous editions, there’s a handy guide to the origins of all the characters, objects and place names in a kind of index at the back for each story, which attributes these various appearances to the original writer who created them.

This volume has the usual interesting kinds of ‘mash ups’ (in the common, current parlance) and so you have characters like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Moriarty or Jules Verne’s Robur The Conqueror (you know, The Master Of The World) cropping up or at least mentioned in more than one of these tales. There are also, again as in previous volumes, the next story in ongoing arcs from various authors, acting as sequel segments to their stories in various editions of the Tales Of The Shadowmen collections. So, for example, The Revolution Begins Tonight by Nigel Malcom, which has people like Sexton Blake, The Nyctalope, Una Persson, Doctor Omega, Zenith and Judex fighting a corrupt government, transplanted into the future world of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, is the fourth and final installment of this story arc.

And, while some of the combinations of characters are not as odd as they’ve sometimes been in the past... there are still some really nice homages to both the literary and certain cinematic variations of characters. For example, there’s a nice short tale called Only One... by Frank Schildiner about Boysie Oakes (aka The Liquidator, Rod Taylor played him in the movie version of the first book) being brought, by Elke Sommers’ character from the Bulldog Drummond movie Deadlier Than The Male, face to face with the Jean Marais 1960s cinematic incarnation of Fantômas. Or another in which ‘that woman’ from Sherlock Holmes, aka Irene Adler, brings about the downfall of the latest scheme by Robur... in a story called Master Of The Six Gun by Nathan Cabannis.

Perhaps my favourite stories this time around were the more involved and longer tales which spent a while building up the characters. For instance, John Peel’s The Child That Time Forgot, where the inhabitants of Verne’s travelling, mechanical island get caught on Skull Island in the late Nineteenth Century and one of those left behind ensures the survival of baby Kong. But I even enjoyed the ones where I really didn’t know the characters so well. Such as Randy Lofficier’s The Phantom Angel And The Dwarves Of Death, which has Sleeping Beauty, who is now living in the modern world with a fairyland community often hidden from human eyes, helping out a lady detective from a French police procedural TV series called Spiral, as they work to uncover the murderer of one of the seven dwarves.

Plus, as per usual, all kinds of appearances by the likes of Dr. Moreau, The Morlocks, The Liliputians, Dr. Fu Manchu, Rip Kirby, Maigret, Arsene Lupin and also, a brilliant little tale called Doctor’s Note by Matthew Dennion, in which Eric (aka The Phantom Of The Opera) seeks to have his deformity cured, seen first through the diary of Dr. Van Helsing and subsequently through the notes of Dr. Jekyll.

So, yeah, it’s all just delightful business as usual and, once again, I can do nothing else but recommend Tales Of The Shadowmen 17 - Noblesse Oblige to any readers who have a penchant for stories where old characters from different kinds of fiction and walks of life encounter each other. As always, these collections can be a bit hit and miss depending on your tastes, due to the wide variety of different writing styles and, I would say start from the first volume because there are often multi-part stories running through the various collections.

Wonder Woman

Bullets & Bracelets

Wonder Woman/
The New Adventures
Of Wonder Woman
USA 1975 - 1979
Three Seasons
Blu Ray Zone B

Following a somewhat muted attempt at a Wonder Woman TV show with a pilot starring Cathy Lee Crosby, in a much toned down version of the role (similar to a run on the DC comics around that time, when the character had lost her powers and become a kind of secret agent, I suspect) a new attempt was made to capture the lightning of the character (DCs top female superhero character, pretty much since her first appearances in Sensation Comics in 1942). A new pilot starring Miss World 1972, the great Lynda Carter, was commissioned... along with a couple of episodes. Then a gap as this first series proved good with the ratings and another load of episodes were commissioned, giving a total of 14 episodes in total made by Warner Brothers for ABC. Despite the popularity, ABC didn’t renew the contract but two more seasons were created for CBS, under the slightly revised title The New Adventures Of Wonder Woman.

Now, I didn’t really watch these as a kid. I saw a few episodes and liked what I saw at the time but couldn’t get over the fact that I’d managed to miss the Cathy Lee Crosby TV movie from the year before (it aired on the week I was away on holiday) and I found it hard to get invested in something if I couldn’t see all the episodes (even when I was six). By the time I was eight, though, I was very much interested in her as a pin up girl and I treasured any issues of Starburst, Starlog and the like which had photos of Lynda in her sexy costume.

However, visiting them properly now for the first time on Blu Ray (I’ll get to the 1974 TV movie when I finally get around to purchasing it), I can see just how great this must have been for young female viewers in the 1970s. Shows like Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman and Charlie’s Angels, all of which had relatively strong female characters (while still operating with highly sexist values, it has to be said) must have had a considerable impact on women of the time and I’m so glad these were made. I came to Wonder Woman as an interesting character very late (asides from seeing her regularly on the old Super Friends cartoon show), when I grudgingly went to the first Gal Gadot movie... which completely blew me away and forced me to re-examine this character.

All I can say is, wow, this was a really great show. Especially the first series where you had Lynda as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, Lyle Waggoner (who was just pipped at the post by Adam West for the role of Batman in 1966) as Steve Trevor and Beatrice Colen as Etta Candy (all characters from the comic books). These first season episodes were set in the 1940s during the war (as were the original comics penned by William Moulton Marston, although the TV show continues using his literary pen name, Charles Moulton, on the credits). This debut season was amazing in that it used a brilliant series of animated comic book panels for the opening credits (pitched against a rollicking song which was toned down more and more each season) and the comic book style would continue into the story so you’d have comic book drawings become photos and the constant use of captions superimposed on the live action footage such as ‘Meanwhile’ and so on. One minor problem in the writing, perhaps, was that the villains were always the ‘Nazi of the week’ during the first year but, heck, the entertainment value was high and she also had her ‘invisible jet’ in this season. I don’t recall if it was used more than maybe only once more from Season 2 onwards... which is strange because I can remember that invisible jet being a hugely popular thing when I was a kid and the recent Wonder Woman 84 movie (reviewed here) also features an homage to it.

Like later seasons, the show was peppered with guest stars, many of them big names and one of the fun things about watching the various incarnations of the show now is spotting the various people who were either nearing the end of their careers or just starting out. There were people like Frank Gorshin, Roddy McDowell, John Saxon, Ron Ely and Ann Francis turning up in various shows. Even Roy Rogers was in one, although he refused to work with Carter until they got her some Western style clothes... so Wonder Woman has a new cowboy themed look to her costume for that episode (which actually works quite well, it has to be said). Also, a young Debra Winger was in a few episodes as Diana’s sister, Wonder Girl for the first season, although she bought herself out of the contract and turned down offers for episodes in a future season and her own spin off series (I’m currently reading Elvira’s wonderful autobiography and I now know why that particular piece of casting came to be).

For the second season, the show was updated to contemporary times... which was fine with the Wonder Woman character, as she’s not supposed to age. However, Lyle Waggoner also returned, this time playing the son of the character he'd played in the first season, also called Steve Trevor. This version of Trevor works for the Inter-Agency Defence Command (IADC) and, following an opening episode which half plays as a repeat of the first season pilot, Diana becomes an agent working under him. However, the revamped show lost its ‘comic book’ visual connections and, although the villains in the stories were more varied in their motivations, it did kind of lose a little in the updating. Especially when a ‘funny computer’ and a ‘funny robot’ were thrown into the mix.

In the third from last episode of Season 3, the show’s producers went for another reboot and Diana moves to LA, to work for a different branch of the IADC... introducing a whole host of new regular characters including a streetwise, Gary Colemanesque kid, a chimpanzee and an invincible man. This must have been made after the last two episodes (which were aired a little later as specials) because, in those two (which make up a single story), Diana is back in Washington and working for Steve Trevor Jr again. So yeah... I would have liked to have seen it continue but, honestly, not in the new format they were steering towards for an LA version of the show so... perhaps it’s best it ended when it did, with 60 episodes under its belt.

Still it’s a really interesting series but I did notice it always kept reinventing itself a little more than I would have liked... which is my polite way of saying it kept changing the rules. For example, the famous spin created for the TV show, where Diana Prince transforms into Wonder Woman, is shown as it should be for the first three episodes. It’s slowed down and shows Diana moving at super speed and throwing off her outer clothes to change costume. But it was time consuming (and therefore expensive) to keep doing that and locking off the camera before a 45 minute make-up and costume change so... pretty soon they developed a magical woosh superimposed over the two parts of the spin to bridge the footage and, it looks fine and is a staple of TV nostalgia now (again, there are even a couple of very subtle references to them in the Gal Gadot movies) but it’s also problematic. And the reason it’s problematic and the reason I say it’s reinventing itself is because the rules of Diana’s powers change over time due to this. When she’s tied up or imprisoned as Diana, she no longer has her powers unless she’s completed her spin in later episodes. So she becomes more like a Billy Batson changing to Captain Marvel style character, when he used to have to shout SHAZAM! to change and gain his powers. She is vulnerable when she’s Diana Prince which, obviously, is total rubbish and not the way the character is supposed to work at all. Not how she did work in the earlier episodes, where she had various other powers such as the ability to mimic any voice, many of which were dropped for the post-season one incarnations of the show. There seems to be a definite lack of consistency as the show develops as to what she can and can’t do and, if you’re watching them back to back in a compressed time slot as I just did, you’ll notice these little changes more.

And there’s a heck of a lot more I could write about this show, actually. I wrote a lot of notes as I watched but, honestly, I don’t want to write a book on the subject (although, if anyone wants to commission me to write a book on the first of the Gal Gadot movies, I’d be happy to oblige). Unless you want to read about me getting annoyed about how every corporation depicted in Season Three having exactly the same bizarrely shaped coffee mugs and things like that. Suffice it to say that Lynda Carter totally nails it in the role and is an amazing hero who, I guess, happened to hit at the right time when she was needed by an audience that appreciated her. The only thing which occasionally grates is the big, cheesy, freeze frame grin she gives at the end of pretty much every story but, honestly, she’s absolutely brilliant in this and I’m surprised she didn’t go on to do more higher profile things in Hollywood once the show had ended. 

 If you are interested in the character then this show, despite its differences to the comic, does not let the character down too much and the title role is a strong, positive role model for people, as far as I’m concerned. Or if you don’t want to go the long haul, maybe give Season One a spin, where the visual style of the comic book source material is played up  in a really nice way... something which should never have been dropped in my opinion. Anyway, the recent Warner Brother Blu Ray set of the entire three seasons of Wonder Woman is definitely worth a twirl, whichever way you look at it.

The French Dispatch

French Letters

The French Dispatch
USA/Germany 2021
Directed by Wes Anderson

Warning: Very mild spoilers.

A new Wes Anderson movie is always a cause for celebration. He’s a director who, in my humble opinion, has been consistently stunning since fairly early on in his career and when I sat down to watch this, I was fully expecting this to be my favourite film of the year... which it was for the first third of the movie but, although this is indeed another of Anderson’s amazing, cinematic spectacles which once again remind people that you can shoot an intensely personal artistic vision and still turn it into a glorious epic in this kind of medium, I’d have to say the film came up just a little short of being movie of the year for me. But, hey, this would surely be in anybody’s top ten last year once they’ve seen this amazing, visual feast.

The film starts off with the death of the founder of the news magazine The French Dispatch, played by Bill Murray and, in typical Anderson style, the film is presented to the audience as articles in that magazine. The magazine is an American publication but based in France, in the small fictional town of Ennui (Ha! I love that Anderson can boldly get away with ridiculous jokes like this without losing credibility for his elaborately concocted fictions) and, in addition to Bill Murray, includes a whole host of A list actors in all kinds of roles, large and small, such as Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban, Henry Winkler (yes, The Fonz is back in a movie and doing an unbelievably good job as a perfect, understated Anderson character), Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan and Elisabeth Moss.

So a star studded cast and all caught in little pockets of the story but, as I said, the structure is that for the main sections sandwiched between the obituary and the End Note - Declines and Deaths section, the film is actually four ‘articles’ told from the point of view of one of the main writers of the magazine. So we have The Cycling Reporter from the Travel section (the briefest of the four main ‘articles’ told by Owen Wilson’s character) followed by Tilda Swinton of the Art And Artists section telling us about The Concrete Masterpiece (my favourite section of the movie), Frances McDormand’s Revisions To A Manifesto for the Politics/Poetry section and Jeffrey Wright, who seems to be channeling the performance style of Orson Welles (unless I’m missing a more literary allusion to the basis of his line delivery) to captivate the audience with the tale of The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner for the Tastes And Smells section.

So, what we actually have, rather than one consistent linear narrative, is a medley or showcase of Wes Anderson short films... which is alright by me. The only weakness of the film is the inherent one of taking this format as the break from a single arc, meaning the audience will naturally compare and rate the various sections, as they would do in any kind of portmanteau movie. The ‘hit and miss’ nature of the strength of each episode being part of the territory. That being said, with Anderson being such a master of his craft now, it’s more of a ‘hit and not quite as much of a hit’ affair in terms of quality. In other words... there are no misses.

I’m not sure when each article is set but the death of the editor comes in 1975, with the publication of the last issue of The French Dispatch, which is shut down as part of the provision of the will. Whether these articles are all put together for this final issue or are a selection from various years is not something I could quite make out but, certainly, the Revisions To A Manifesto felt more 1960s to me than some of the other articles.

And once again, Anderson is mixing it up in terms of the different formats of the picture... a lot of it is black and white, some of it is in colour, most of it is in a 4:3 ratio with other moments in widescreen and even split screen where additions to the 4:3 ratio can be added as an appendix or reference to the content of the main shot mixing both colour and monotone simultaneously in one, nice sequence. This is not a division between different sections, more that every section contains all these kinds of treatments within the boundaries of its own ‘magazine article’. He also, uses a couple of animated cartoons to illustrate parts of some of these sections and, as quirky as that is... and also considering his past works where live action and animated styles have co-existed in the same picture (such as The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou or The Grand Budapest Hotel)... I couldn’t help but think that in the second, cartoon animated car chase, the budgetary concerns of shooting such a section may also have come into play as to where best to unleash this technique.

The storytelling of each segment continues the style of the writer/director as sudden tangents to the storyline of each segment are often revealed to be Russian nesting dolls of ideas that ultimately grow from each other to add to the forward momentum of that particular arc.

There’s not much more for me to say on this one but I will reveal one delightful thing which, I suspect, would have had an audience composed of Jean Luc Godard and David Lynch howling with delight if such a situation were possible. When Tony Revolori (Zero from The Grand Budapest Hotel) is playing a young version of the imprisoned, psychotic, homicidal Moses Rosenthaler, he suddenly grows up into the later version of the artist, played by Benicio Del Toro. This is not done with a clever dissolve or other trickery but with the simple and ‘immersive defying’ moment of Revolori vacating his chair as Del Toro then sits in it, while taking his medallion off and putting it around Del Toros neck. One actor handing a character over to another, in fact. A truly nice touch and this one brought my personal house down, so to speak.

And that’s me done on this. If you like Anderson’s quirky, ‘catalogue and categorise’ style of narrative coupled by his squeaky clean shots, quirky physical space negotiations (such as when we track the progress of a character journeying up a tall building by his accelerated appearances at windows and balconies) and truly strong performances by actors investing in larger than life characters, then The French Dispatch should definitely top your list of ‘must see’ movies of 2021. And, of course, it’s all made more sweeter by the needledrop soundtrack selections punctuated by another of Alexandre Desplat’s masterpiece scores... this one very similar to his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel and yet another great triumph in this composer/director relationship. If not the best then, certainly, one of the best of last year.

Gamera Super Monster

Turtle Recall

Gamera Super Monster
aka Uchu kaijû Gamera
Japan 1980
Directed by Noriaki Yuasa
and Shigeo Tanaka  
Daiei/Arrow Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers but... you’re probably
not going to care either way with this movie.

Gamera Super Monster is considered both the last of the Showa era Gamera films and, also, the last kaiju movie of the Showa era. Out of the films I’ve watched so far in Arrow’s truly superb Gamera - The Complete Collection Blu Ray box (which is now in its second edition but split down into two, smaller boxes), both this one and the last one have been quite disappointing, following on from a load of truly bizarre and wonderfully surreal monster movies.

Now, 1980 is a bit late for people to be talking of it in terms of the Showa era, as far as I’m concerned but, I can certainly understand why, now that I’ve finally seen this. The most disappointing thing about this truly low budget, attempted revival of everyone’s favourite giant-sized flying turtle, which was not a success and failed to save the new, resurrected and bought out version of Daiei Studios (which filed for bankruptcy shortly after), is the fact that every single monster fight scene in the film is culled from previous Gamera movies! There are very few original kaiju themed special effects shots in this film apart from a couple of new Gamera fly-bys. So you will see him battle almost all of the monsters from the previous films, as spliced in footage highlights making up the total of the kaiju confrontations in this movie and, it’s only the supporting alien and human content which is original to this version.

Oh, wait. Did I say original. Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking because the remaining, newly shot content is far from original.

So the film starts off with a definition of what a galaxy is and tells us that the ‘Zanon’ spaceship has conquered various planets... showing us a few static illustrations of space battles since the producers really didn’t have the budget to shoot those kinds of scenes at this point. From here on it basically parodies a bunch of American movies which were big in Japan from the last five or so years. Remember, this film is nine years after the previous entry and was released in 1980. So what do we have here?

Well, following on from the two illustrations of space combat, we have a starship which, apart from a couple of oversized fins, looks exactly like the Imperial Star Destroyers from the original Star Wars. So much so that the first moving shot of the film is an almost exact copy of the first shot of the 1977 original, as we watch the impossibly huge (but now quite quick) belly of the ship pass above the camera in space. Seriously, it’s almost the same shot dropped in.

The we meet the three adult stars, Kilara (played by Mach Fumiake), Marsha (played by Yaeko Kojima) and Mitan (played by Yoko Komatsu). All these gals have to do is go through a silly choreography of arm and leg movements and they shed their Earth bound alter egos, transforming into their superhero, space alien selves... with cloaks and costumes to match as they fly around in the sky like Superman. However, because of the big invading starship, they have to be careful about revealing their super powered selves to other people. Then we meet their friend, the child hero of the movie Keichi (played by Koichi Maeda) and also the evil alien woman Giruge (played by Keiko Kudo). Giruge is here to oversee the releasing of the monsters in the evil alien’s plan to invade and destroy the Earth by unleashing stock footage Gamera fights from previous movies at us! Shenanigans ensue including a hazy, bizarre reappearance of Gamera as Earth’s protector in somewhat muddy and questionable circumstances.

After that, the film becomes a rush of scattered ideas as the various players do the bidding of their script writers and rush around to various locations in an attempt to explain why the various kaiju battles are taking place all around the globe, with mismatching Gamera suits and a complete disregard for cars and fashions from the 1960s and early 1970s juxtaposed with new footage of 1980s environments.

Lots of ideas are shoe horned in here including a bizarre scene where the fins of one of the monsters are swimming around the ocean as the cast suddenly seem to be in a Jaws movie for a minute or two... very strange. It’s like the writers were trying to throw everything from a mid to late 1970s American blockbuster into the melting pot to see if some regurgitated idea might capture the attention of the audience. I mean, the alien gals are seen controlling their futuristic technology with musical notes whenever Keichi is around and having a close encounter with them, so to speak.

There are also some real bizarre moments when various famous Japanese anime shots are inserted, sometimes with Gamera superimposed over them. I recognised Space Battleship Yamato when Gamera was bizarrely in front of the cartoon image but another one is from something I don’t know of but which was apparently well known in Japan. About the only interesting reference is when a poster board of a monster, which is obviously supposed to be advertising a Godzilla movie (referred to here as Dojira, although not to be confused with the real Dojira from Ultraman, I guess), is toppled in Gamera’s wake as a kind of poke in the eye to Toho (who would make a big comeback with the first in their second wave of Godzilla films only four years later).

Also, while the music is reminiscent of both John Barry and Barry Grey in a few places, it’s really not very good (and the new Gamera Song is really awful) and I would say inappropriate to the film, not only not functioning to support the scenes it’s underscoring but actually dampening the potency of most of the scenes. It’s amazing how the exciting and humourously grotesque, surrealistic monster fights from previous, much better Gamera films can seem real drudgery when they’re rescored with this new stuff. It’s a bit of a hard watch, if I’m honest. Although, oh joys, that blasted ricochet sound effect is back in one scene... and I didn’t miss it one bit.

At the end, Gamera sacrifices himself to save the Earth but it’s not the moving moment it should be and, it’s then diluted by the three surviving space gals taking the youngster on a fly by of the city at night... just like the Superman and Lois flight scene from Superman The Movie... while the credits roll.

Arrow’s transfer is pretty good I suspect but, as is very apparent from the opening credits, this is a terrible print... if it is taken from a print. It looks, especially at the start, like a really good transfer of an old VHS tape print, which is to say... very fuzzy and almost unwatchable. Things perk up as the movie progresses but, you’ve also got the problems of different footage from different movies derived from different quality prints also fighting each other in the mind and so, the look of this particular one in the box seems inconsistent throughout.

Okay, I’ve nothing much more to say about Gamera Super Monster other than... I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are a die hard fan of the kaiju in question. I’ve only got four more Gamera films to watch left in this boxed edition now but I’m hearing they get very good again, very fast... the first of these being shot some 15 years later and I shall, as always, let you know.  

The Making Of Tomb Raider

Tomb It
May Concern

The Making Of
Tomb Raider
by Daryl Baxter
White Owl Publishing
ISBN: 9781399002059

Lara Croft was a magical name for me when I was a certain age. I’d not been in my working life long but needed to get myself a new Apple computer for home use to keep up with the world of graphic design and, naturally, I wanted some games to play on it evenings. I think the first of these new style 3D games that I loved were Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem and Quake. I’d not been that aware of Tomb Raider the year it came out but, somewhere in the middle of playing that lot, I grabbed myself a copy of Tomb Raider 2 and, yeah, I remember hours of playing Lara through what could sometimes be frustrating and difficult levels. I remember the joy of driving and jumping a speed boat through some windows off the canals of Venice and the frustrations of getting the timing wrong and dying time after time. The amount of obscenities thrown at Lara as I watched her fall from somewhere high and break her neck was almost a constant thing at times.

This new book by Daryl Baxter, The Making Of Tomb Raider, is a look at the creation and development of the first two games, Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2. It would be fair to say the book isn’t what I first expected it to be when I saw it go up for pre-order at the tail end of 2021. I was expecting loads of illustrations and design sketches from the pre-production. Instead, the majority of the illustrations in the book are screen grabs from the games and the occasional shot of one or more of the design teams (and some of those seem way less quality than a standard print resolution would perhaps dictate). The reason for this, I suspect, is because it’s labelled up as an ‘unofficial’ look at the franchise. That will always have the tremendous disadvantages in terms of illustrations and photographic material available for a publication, not to mention restricting the pool of people that can be tapped for the research.

However, the big plus side for an unofficial edition... and the reason why I like them so much... is that they are often far less inhibited about getting to the truth of the matter and will go to places which would be ‘out of bounds’ for an authorised edition. So, yeah, always swings and roundabouts with some of these kinds of accounts of a period of time but, I’d rather something truthful and informative than something which just looks nice for the sake of it.

That being said, I’m not sure how I stand on this particular book... which has a cover which endorses my thoughts on an unauthorised edition by highlighting (or technically lowlighting in this case) the word THE in red letters. So, yeah, this is not just The Making Of Tomb Raider, it’s THE Making Of Tomb Raider... according to the publishers at least.

Well, it’s got its good points in terms of the fact that it certainly tells a credible version of the development time spent making both the initial game and the follow up... which lost its two pioneering creators, who were having creative differences for the idea of a sequel and who left before the incredible sales of the first game could make their fortunes (as it did for many of the people on the team for the first two games). It does this by using huge amounts of interview segments with various creators culled by the author from various sources. And I certainly admire Daryl Baxter for pulling off the incredible task of choosing and organising the many quotes used to drag the volume together... it must have been a pretty big task.

My main issue with the book is that it’s not particularly well written or inspiring in terms of the glue holding these excerpts together, which is to be fair, the smaller component of the book but, you know, it could be better. For example, apart from various typos, one repetitive sentence starts with the words “Upon his return...” and then finishes up with “on his return.” You certainly don’t need to qualify this stuff twice within the same sentence and there were a few incidences of this happening, not just in what should have been the main body of the book but also in the many interview sections. It’s quite possible of course, even probable, that the interviewees themselves were making these errors in their responses but, you know... anyone heard of editing?

Another thing which surprised me is that sometimes the writer will plug the exact same lengthy paragraph into the text as illustration of a point two pages running. At one point, this is done with two different sets of paragraphs within a couple of pages of each other. So this is either a testament to the fact that the context of their placement wasn’t actually needed or, well, that a final proofread might have been in order before publication (I’ve no idea what the deadlines were on this but I assume getting it out for a Christmas market may well have been the priority here).

So, yeah, that’s about all I’ve got to say about this one. The Making Of Tomb Raider certainly does what it says on the tin in terms of the content of the book (or for the first two games at least). I came away with some sense of just how hard these things were to put together and the mental toll it took on the very young looking teams that made them. And also, a little insight into Nathan McCree’s music was also welcome. Plus little things I didn’t know such as Ian Livingstone, the guy who used to write some of the earlier remembered (but definitely not the first) ‘choose your own adventure’ books being the guy who ran Eidos, who bought out Core Design specifically because he saw the potential of the first Tomb Raider game as it was being developed.

Overall, though, I would say it feels like this is the book you read while waiting for something more robust and spectacular to be released, to give a more detailed overview of the entire lifespan of Lara Croft, in her various forms to date. So, if Tomb Raider was a big deal for you in the mid-nineties, as it was for me, then you’ll probably get something out of this tome. For less die hard readers I’d say, maybe have a mull over spending the cash on this one first.

Cryptic Movie Quiz Answers

 

Annual Cryptic
Movie Quiz 2021
Answers

Hello and thanks to all who had a go at my quiz this time around. Not much of a response this year, it has to be said. Not sure if I’ll bother to do another one at the end of this year to be honest (let me know if you want me to).

This year’s winner is Steve Braham in Australia, who got 11 out of the 16 answers correct.

The answers are pictured above in the grid and this is how you break them down to solve them.

1. Take a detailed look at the bed linen that backwards lad brought in!
A detailed look could be when you ‘scan’ something with your eyes. LAD backwards is DAL. Bed linen could be a sheet. So we get Sam Fuller’s Scandal Sheet.

2. Travelling atop the back of the European Community.
The European Community is often abbreviated to the EC. If you travel atop something you are riding it so... EC Rider... Easy Rider.

3. A gap situated between two of their typical structures for this large body of beavers united by common descent, history or culture.
A structure built by a beaver is a Dam. A body of peoples united by a common descent, history or culture is a Nation. A gap between two structures is an alley. So we have Damnation Alley.

4. Ions pass through... it’s one of many similarly unlawful acts.
Crimes are unlawful acts. An ion through a pass is Pass-Ion so...
Crimes Of Passion.

5. The perfect fusion of VHS and homo sapien.
Well, yeah, man and video spliced together gives you Videoman.

6. Shoo! It was a bit of a scramble yesterday evening.
Yesterday evening was Last Night. Shoo scrambled up is Soho, so... Last Night In Soho.

7. It’s solely an alliance of frozen water.
Solely something means it’s Just something... frozen water is Ice. An alliance is a league so... Justice League.

8. The first games player is a militarised ant of a behemoth.
A games player is often referred to as a Gamer these days. The first one might be titled Gamer A. A soldier in the US military is referred to as a GI. Put it together with Ant and you get Giant. A behemoth is a monster so... Gamera The Giant Monster.

9. Not a light person to pull your stranded vehicle away.
Opposite of light can be dark. Someone who tows your vehicle away could be a tower so... The Dark Tower.

10. The backwards glance.
A glance could be a peek. Backwards it’s The Keep.

11. The act of devouring the coverings on top of her fingers.
Eat her nails... The Eternals.

12. I’m dreaming of a Shark Father Christmas!
Well this one couldn’t be anything other than Santa Jaws.

13. ... as sunlight power does!
Solar is as solar does. So... Solaris.

14. It’s crimson... negative on the frozen water.
Crimson is red. Negative is Not. Frozen water is Ice so... Red Notice.

15. Had all the violence and bloodshed taken out of it.
It had gore... now it’s gone... gore gone... The Gorgon.

16. Carnal relations at the Overlook Hotel.
Sex at the hotel from The Shining is... Jess Franco’s Shining Sex.

Hope all those who had a go enjoyed playing! Thanks very much and congratulations to Steve in Oz... who finally won one after years of trying and failing.

My Favourite Films of 2021

 

21 From 21

My Favourite Films of 2021

“Caveat emptor”, I say!

Okay, there’s a huge problem with my putting together another best films of the year column (after an absence last year due to the way the pandemic affected my viewing habits)... and it’s still mainly due to the Corona that I have to put this warning up front. You see, there are a load of films I wanted to see this year which, for some reason or another, just didn’t make it in front of my eyes and, rather than wait another three months or so until I’ve seen them all, I am going ahead without them. So, yes, it might be foolish of me to do this without having seen Spider-Man No Way Home but, well, there’s a possibility it might be one of my favourites of the year but, I’ll have to wait until I’ve seen it. Similarly, while I’ve seen a lot of non-UK and non-USA films this year, this is not the case with ‘first run UK release films’, which is what this list really has to be. So, yeah, this list is fairly dominated by American product but, so what? They certainly make great movies too.

One last thing... if you’re wondering where the new James Bond film is in this list... well, I’ve decided not to do my usual ‘Worst Films Of The Year’ accompanying list this year so, yeah, that’s why it’s not in my list. And it is quite possibly was the worst film I’ve seen all year, in all honesty. Anyway, nobody will ever agree with a list of movies put up by another person (or there’s something wrong with you) but this one is mine and I hope you enjoy it. In all but one case (where I’ve not got around to publishing the review yet), you can click on the titles to take you to my original review of the film. So, in reverse order then, my 21 first run UK release favourites of 2021 were...

21. Freaky
USA Directed by Christopher Landon
Wonderful comedic take on a classic body swap style movie but in this case, it’s a teenage girl accidentally trading places with a male serial killer. Absolutely hilarious movie from the guy who gave us the two fantastic Happy Death Day movies and it doesn’t skimp on the gore on this one either.

20. Army Of The Dead
USA Directed by Zack Snyder
Snyder's post apocalyptic zombie heist movie has already had a prequel from another director released (it’s on my to watch list, haven’t had time to catch up to it yet) but this was an enjoyable slice of body count carnage. Just wish they’d put it out on a proper Blu Ray.

19. Willy’s Wonderland
USA Directed by Kevin Lewis
Ha. A typical slice of maniacal Nic Cage mayhem as the silent hero finds himself trapped in a locked down, abandoned restaurant... battling evil animatronic animals who want his soul.

18. Jolt
USA Directed by Tanya Wexler
Kate Beckinsale plays a lady who needs to wear an electric shock wire vest to give her a jolt to take away her extreme anger management issues. However, this energetic action thriller works best when she doesn’t pull the trigger to dampen her lethal skills.

17. The Advent Calendar
France/Belgium Directed by Patrick Ridremont
Quite a nice horror franchise opener (one hopes, this one could run and run if it’s picked up) deals with a series of life changing incidents which escalate on a daily basis as each candy in an advent calendar is consumed with dire consequences for the owner.

16. A Quiet Place Part 2
USA Directed by John Krasinski
Not as good as the first movie but a really not bad sequel to the classic first film, which builds on the foundations laid in that one, rather than just repeat them.

15. Deerskin
France/Belgium/Switzerland
Directed by Quentin Dupieux
Wonderfully surreal film about a man obsessed with his newly purchased deerskin jacket. From the genius who gave the world Rubber (reviewed here).

14. In The Earth
UK Directed by Ben Wheatley
Wonderful film made by Wheatley during the pandemic and set in the pandemic. A modern tale of folk horror which gets extremely intense and suspenseful in certain scenes.

13. Censor
UK Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond
A really interesting tale set during the height of the Video Nasty moral panic in Britain in the 1980s, as seen from the point of view of a character who is one of the offensive censors of the time.

12. Jungle Cruise
USA Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
A wonderfully pun-tastic movie based on the old, 1950s Disneyland ride that’s a total joy from start to finish. It’s like watching Indiana Jones crossed with the first Pirates Of The Caribbean movie by way of the Stephen Sommers Mummy movies. Just a completely entertaining family film adventure with a genuinely surprising twist about three quarters of the way through.

11. Malignant
USA/China Directed by James Wan
If you like Brian DePalma’s Sisters (reviewed by me here) then you’ll probably be one of those audience members who really appreciated Malignant for the wonderful movie it is, rather than one of its ‘surprisingly many’ detractors. I was puzzled by what was going on in this movie for a while until the idea behind the central antagonist was revealed (not completely a surprise reveal but I’m glad they did it this way).

10. The Suicide Squad
USA/Canada Directed by James Gunn
This follow up to Suicide Squad is absolutely brilliant. It’s easily one of the best four of the recent DC Cinematic Universe films put out and, with its surprisingly gory content coupled with a very strong dose of black humour, it seems to be much more reflective of the content of modern comic books, as opposed to what people who don’t read them think comic books are like nowadays.

9. Gaia
South Africa Directed by Jaco Bouwer
Another wonderful eco-friendly horror film about the Earth fighting back at the human species who overrun it. A perfect film to double bill with In The Earth (from earlier in this list).

8. Adrienne
USA Directed by Andy Ostroy
Powerful documentary film about the wonderful actress/director Adrienne Shelley, who was murdered just before she saw how successful her movie Waitress was about to become... directed by her husband and featuring their daughter, this is both a hard movie to watch but also a wonderful celebration of her life.

7. One Cut Of The Dead In Hollywood
Japan Directed by Yûya Nakaizumi
While not quite as brilliant as the original movie, One Cut Of The Dead (reviewed by me here), this is still a very charming and funny companion piece to it.  While the final scenes where the truth behind the Hollywood sign is revealed is not as brilliant as the reveal behind the ‘crane shot’ in the first movie, it still brings a big smile to the face and is worth a look if you loved the original.

6. Reminiscence
USA Directed by Lisa Joy
This is a beautiful film noir filtered through a kind of Philip K. Dick tinted lens which doesn’t end the way you might hope. It would not be out of place in a triple bill with the original cut of Blade Runner (reviewed here) and Hotel Artemis (reviewed here).

5. The French Dispatch
(review coming soon)
USA Directed by Wes Anderson
I’m kinda shocked that, in a year when Wes Anderson has a new film out, it only scrapes into my top five rather than take the number one spot. It’s certainly not in my top five Anderson films either but, it’s still a pretty remarkable film. One of my favourite, living directors, for sure.

4. French Exit
Canada/Ireland/UK
Directed by Azazel Jacobs
Wonderful film dealing with some dark ideas in a funny and quirky way. This one had me immediately thinking that I’m going to have to track down the source novel at some point soon.

3. Last Night In Soho
UK Directed by Edgar Wright
Cinematic chameleon Edgar Wright takes us on a nostalgia infused look at London in the 1960s via a modern day prism. No real surprises in this one but it’s so skillfully put together and so beautiful to look at that you can’t help but admire it.

2. Gunpowder Milkshake
France/Germany Directed by Navot Papushado
A truly spectacular slice of colourful, female led action thriller which should be on more people’s ‘film of the year’ lists. This is everything a modern action movie should aspire towards being. Simply astonishing.

1. Pig
UK/USA Directed by Michael Sarnoski
Nicolas Cage again, this time playing a man who is trying to retrieve his stolen truffle pig. This gives us a classic Cage set up and then proceeds to completely ignore it as the incredibly beautiful film about friendship, bonding and loss does nothing you would expect it to. My second watch through cemented it for me as the film of the year, as far as I’m concerned.

And there you have it... I’m sure most readers worth their salt will disagree with my choices but, you know, I can’t help it if you’re all wrong... ;-) I hope you enjoyed reading this list and, if possible, hope some of you discover what you consider to be some real corkers from checking this out. Thanks for reading.

Terror Of Mecha-Godzilla

Mech N’ Roll

Terror Of Mecha-Godzilla
aka Mekagojira no gyakushu
Japan 1975
Directed by Ishirô Honda
Criterion Blu Ray Zone B

It’s funny how one’s perceptions of a movie can change when you revisit it years later. I remember watching  Terror Of Mecha-Godzilla once, almost thirty years ago and thinking that it wasn’t that great (that being said, it was an English VHS version, which was probably the dubbed American cut, I would expect). Looking at it now I realise it’s one of the high points in the series.

This is the ‘last film’ of things in a few ways. Firstly, it was the final Godzilla film in the Showa Era wave (and hence the last in Criterion’s wonderful Showa Era boxed edition). The character would not return to cinemas for another nine years later, rebooted back to being the antagonist rather than hero of the films, with the Heisei Era movies which revisited the monsters and encounters of the original series in ‘modern’, re-imagined ways.

Secondly, it’s the last Godzilla film of the director of the original (and many of the early sequels), Ishirô Honda. He decided to do this film on a freelance basis, years after he had been ‘let go’ by the struggling Toho, because he liked that the woman who wrote the original script was from his area and I think he realised there was an interesting plot at the heart of this one, which is still effectively a direct sequel to the previous movie in the series.

Thirdly, not only was it’s Honda’s last Godzilla movie, it was his last feature length film period. Although, as I’ve mentioned before, he afterwards went to work as assistant director on some of the films of his good friend Akira Kurosawa. I personally belive it’s Honda’s assured direction of this one which makes the film superior to many of the other, later entries in the Showa Era movies.

Look at the lengthy opening credits sequence, for example. Honda chooses to play selected highlights of Jun Fukuda’s footage from the final fight of Godzilla VS Mecha-Godzilla (reviewed here), by way of a recap, of sorts. Also, true to Honda’s ‘very slow burn’ approach, since Godzilla only turns up in the film about two thirds of the way through, it’s a way of giving the viewers a taste of what’s to come and keep them in their seats. However, the way this is edited together is far more exciting and attention grabbing than it was in the original film the footage was culled from. This is not a failing of Fukuda, perhaps, since it obviously is paced faster but, I did find it interesting how there was even a sense of gravitas to the clash of these two titans in this revisited opening as opposed to just the humour of watching it the first time around.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that while the opening credits are playing out, we have the return of another old, absentee from the series for a while in the form of composer extraordinaire Akira Ifukube... and it’s great to hear his original Godzilla march playing over this titanic battle. In fact, in terms of the first two thirds of this movie, I’d say this is right up there as one of Ifukube’s finest Godzilla scores, although, towards the end, is does tend to sound like he’s constantly playing the same cue over and over, it has to be said.

The plot of this film involves the wreckage of the Mecha-Godzilla under the surface of the sea going missing. A submarine searching for it is destroyed by a dinosaur called Titanosaurus. For some reason, the good guy scientist at the Japanese equivalent of an Oceanic research lab are puzzled as to how a dinosaur could suddenly be alive. I’m more puzzled, bearing in mind they all clearly demonstrate they have a working knowledge of not only Godzilla’s various appearances... but also many of his kaiju antagonists and allies... that they are suddenly surprised there’s another one. But, hey... whatever!

Anyway, Dr. Mashumi, played by Akihiko Hirata, is helping the aliens from Black Hole Planet 3 (the antagonists of the previous movie) by controlling Titanosaurus and also helping them with their super duper, ‘rebuilt and improved from the previous wreckage’ version of Mecha-Godzilla. He does this because a) he is an embittered man who was sacked 15 years before for believing in dinosaurs and controlling them (which makes no sense, see previous paragraph) and b) because they saved his daughter when she got accidentally electrocuted helping him. His daughter, Katsura, played by the beautiful Tomoko Ai, was given robotic insides and helps control Titanosaurus. When she takes a knock later in the film, they also bury the controller of Mecha-Godzilla in her, to make things easier. Probably shouldn’t have fallen in love with one of the good guys then, I guess. Which is what is really at the heart of this story and probably what drew Honda to it... can a cybernetic girl still love and have human thoughts and feelings. Gee, I guess so, is what the writer and director conclude here. By the way, if you’re wondering why the name Akihiko Hirata, who plays Dr. Mashumi, looks familiar, he’s no stranger to having parts in various Godzilla films over the years and it was he, of course, who played the doomed hero Dr. Serizawa who created the Oxygen Destroyer in the original Gojira (aka Godzilla, reviewed by me here).

There are a couple of things of note in this one, such as a prisoner of the aliens being gunned down with multiple bullets and the director actually using blood squibs... which you wouldn’t really expect to see in a movie made specifically for the Children's Champion Film Festival in Japan. Similarly, there is some nudity, of a sort, when Katsura is undergoing surgery and her mechanical innards are being repaired... her breasts are clearly visible here. Admittedly, they’re bizarre, prosthetic breasts such as you might find on a department store mannequin but this didn’t stop the footage from being censored in the US release of the film.

Other than that it’s kaiju shenanigans as usual but Honda genuinely brings a certain levity to the proceedings and, like many of his previous movies, takes things quite slow. It’s the first time in a while Godzilla hasn’t had an ally other than the humans to help him defeat his foes and, arguably this is noticeable. He gets beaten up quite badly by Titanosaurus and Mecha-Godzilla in this one and, it has to be said, without the humans blocking Titanosaurus’ controls with sonic waves and Katsura killing herself to relinquish control of Mecha-Godzilla for the good of humanity, then Godzilla wouldn’t have had a chance here. As it is, he gets to swim off into the sunset and this is his goodbye for the original cycle of films.

Criterions presentation of the film is wonderful, as are all of their entries (barring the ‘hidden on a different disc’ and slightly less quality transfer of the Japanese version of King Kong VS Godzilla, reviewed here). This really is the only set of these you need to be going for if you don’t speak Japanese and want a quality presentation of the material. Terror Of Mecha-Godzilla is a fine film from the franchise although, you kinda need to see the previous film to get all the references. Definitely it would be high on my list of Showa Era films, for sure and, as such, is one of my recommendations in the series. As is the wonderful Criterion boxed edition, Spine Number 1000 for all you Criterionphiles out there. Definitely worth the investment... these films have never looked better in English speaking territories.

No Time To Die

 



A Die For A Die

No Time To Die
UK/USA 2021
Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
EON Productions
Blu Ray Zone B

Let me once more state for the record that I don’t have anything against Daniel Craig. In fact, I think he’s a great actor. He’s just got the wrong colour hair for James Bond and, also, I just don’t like any of the Craig Bond films. I’d frankly rather watch him in other roles. That being said, my expectations were hopeful for No Time To Die because I was receiving some very mixed, word of mouth reviews from the various friends I have. For instance, my die hard, Bond fanatical friend Chris, who usually has very few bad words to say about the Daniel Craig Bond films, was very disappointed with this one... thinking it one of the all time lows of the series, from what I can make out. Conversely, my cousin Steve said this was one of the very best Bond films and went back to his local cinema in Australia to see it a number of times. So, yeah, I thought this one would at least be interesting if it was dividing people’s opinion so much.

Alas, I have to report back that this latest outing for England’s popular secret agent has a lot in common with the previous Craig films, as far as I’m concerned... in that it’s very boring, drab, dull and any other descriptions which could be best summed up with the modern term... meh! My initial response once the film had concluded was... how can they make a movie which was both worse than Quantum Of Solace (reviewed here) and simultaneously, unbelievably more boring than Octopussy (reviewed here)?

Once again, the film picks up the plot threads from the previous Craig films, allowing them to all be seen as one single arc. We catch up with a now retired Bond living with his girlfriend Madeleine (Léa Seydoux reprising her role from S.P.E.C.T.R.E, reviewed here) but then, of course, Bond manages to find himself back in the thick of the action and attempting to save the world from yet another super villain, this time in the form of Safin (played by Rami Malek).

And... it’s a bit of a yawn, to be honest. The fact that the opening gun barrel sequence has Bond missing his target for the first time ever in the history of the EON Bond films (there’s no red blood washing it out in this version... just a really awkward transition), should have given me a heads up. The pre-credits sequence is certainly plot and character motivated but it forgets to be a big blast of action like the many James Bond films before it. I mean, there’s definitely a little action there but just as it starts to get going it’s already over and we are into a quite dreary opening title animation accompanied by a similarly dreary opening song. Sadly, this is a good guide to how the rest of the film is going to go... it’s a long, slow burn (running two and three quarter hours) with very few action sequences and, for the most part, not enough ooomph in them to really deliver the kind of pace and energy a loyal legion of Bond fans might expect from the franchise. This would perhaps explain why the response to the movie in my timeline on Twitter has been lukewarm at best.

Now, I was pretty careful to pick up absolutely no spoilers for this one before I fired up the Blu Ray but, alas, as I’d revealed to my friend @cultofthecinema on the phone a few days before, I was pretty sure how the movie was going to end (using the same kind of casting information with which I’d predicted, a couple of years before release, a certain event which takes place towards the end of the Star Wars movie The Force Awakens). And, yes, I was dead right on that one. I really don’t want to give away the ending of the film here but, even if I’d had no suspicion before the movie started as to the final trajectory of the story, the writers and director manage to telegraph it so much that it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion by the midway mark. Scenes which would have been better occurring at the end of the movie play out earlier than you might expect and, by some point, I suspect most people in the audience would realise there’s a reason why certain plot points are explored more fully before the final innings, so to speak.

Okay, enough on that. Let me say something positive here. There are two things I did like about the movie. One was the brief but effective scenes where a new character played Ana de Armas shares the one good action scene with her Knives Out co-star Daniel Craig. I could have done with a lot more of her character in the movie, to be honest.

And the other thing was Hans Zimmer’s score. He’s done a wonderful job on this one and managed to deliver a nice score which really gets to the heart of what the John Barry and early David Arnold scores were about. I love Zimmer but I was really surprised he was able to pull something like this off. He also interpolates various themes from the classic Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here) for the score and, although the film doesn’t reference the plot of that movie at all (how could it when the Craig films were supposed to be a total reboot), there are a lot of musical echoes of it... enough to inject a kind of ‘surrogate nostalgia’ into the movie, it has to be said. Probably didn't need that ‘emotional association by proxy’ though. Not that there aren’t a lot of visual references to previous Bond films from the history of the franchise in the movie anyway... bit of a strange kind of homage. Nevertheless, I thought Zimmer did a remarkable job with the music... although now I know why there wasn’t too much action music on the CD soundtrack... you can only score what’s on the screen, I guess.

Okay, my biggest problem with the movie is it’s far too long. And that makes no sense since, not long after a scene where M and Bond are at each others throats and Bond is not welcome to return to active duty, it’s almost immediately followed up by them being all pally again and Bond being recruited for the mission. I can only assume that some kind of sequence of events which would have led to this change of heart was cut from the movie to get the time down. Even so, the film drags so much that, you have to wonder why the producers and director didn’t get the editor to trim another hour out of it.

All in all, then, I didn’t have a good time with No Time To Die. I wish Craig all the best in the world and hope to see him in some more movies soon but, as far as Bond films are concerned, I think I’m more than happy to see the back of him. If the series is to continue, as it implies right at the end with the familiar caption ‘James Bond Will Return’, it will have to be a hard reboot with, I suspect, a much younger actor. But let’s see what happens with the ageing producers before we count any more chickens, would be my final word on that.

Doctor Who - Eve Of The Daleks

Exterminating Eve

Doctor Who
Eve Of The Daleks
Airdate: 1st January 2022
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers looping back into spoilers.

Now this is more like it. Doctor Who - Eve Of The Daleks is the best Doctor Who New Years Special ever... with one or two caveats. And also, I mean, yeah there have only been three New Years specials to date, this one being the third but, even so, this was a hugely entertaining one and I loved it. It’s also the first time in a while that Doctor Who has properly aired on a Saturday evening again (which is exactly where it belongs).

Okay, so we have, once again and for the record... Jodie Whitaker, Mandip Gill and John Bishop returning as The Doctor, Yas and Dan. The plot is simple... The Doctor performs a reset on the TARDIS and, while they wander around in a storage facility in Manchester, our heroes get sucked into a time loop, which is presumably caused by the TARDIS, as they try to stop customer Nick (played by Adjani Salmon) and Sarah (played by some woman I’d never heard of called Aisling Bea who, honestly, knocked this out the park and should be in everything from now on) from being killed by rogue Daleks. Trouble is, when they and also The Doctor and her companions get killed each time, it resets the time loop but leaves their memories of their last encounter intact... and they have a slowly diminishing amount of time to try and formulate a plan before the time loop closes at midnight on New Years Eve 2021, defeat the Daleks and remain outside the area of said time loop.

Now, I will be the first to admit many faults with this episode...

Yes, it’s such an old plot it’s unreal that anyone would try and package this idea up yet again. I mean, I don’t remember if they’ve ever bothered doing this one in Doctor Who before but the old ‘attempt to survive each successive time loop’ idea has been done in many sci-fi shows over the years.

Additionally, a lot of it didn’t make sense... such as why the characters assumed the time-loop would be closing at midnight or why their interaction with Sarah’s mum via phone wasn’t affecting the rest of the world and dragging it into a time loop also. And I could probably go on with a whole laundry list of things which shoot holes through this particular plot device.

However, the execution of this... well, asides from the science and technical stuff... was absolutely brilliant. Sarah and Nick were drawn as great characters who managed to shift tone and get together romantically by the end of their time loop experience and the actors had some great lines to deliver. Ditto for The Doctor and her companions. Dan has finally made clear to the characters (if not the audience... I was slowly beginning to suspect, I think) that there’s a probable lesbian romantic entanglement to come between The Doctor and Yas. Which could be interesting but, you know, probably not in any way that the show could get away with and stay a family show (back to the old Dalek porn if you want to go that route, I’m afraid).

And yeah, I was suitably impressed with the whole shenanigans. Also the music was great again too. Segun Akinola provides a score which, amazingly, doesn’t suffer from not including the leitmotif set up for the Daleks by Murray Gold and the driven, bass rhythms used here work really well to help establish them as something of a threat again. That being said, they seem fine at point blank range with their new ‘gatling gun’ style, revolving extermination attachments but... well... just a few metres off with a moving target and, once more, their skills at shooting resemble the stormtroopers in the Star Wars franchise. As in... they can’t hit a thing.

There were some nice references to old Doctor Who history too. For instance, Nick does the old ‘duck down between two shooting Daleks’ trick to take two of them out, which harks back to the William Hartnell and Peter Cushing days if memory serves. And also, at one point in the episode, Sarah exclaims “Oh my giddy Aunt!”... which was, of course, one of Patrick Troughton’s catchphrases as The Doctor at the tail end of the 1960s. That being said, no matter how many times the Daleks have come to Earth now and tried to invade it... how in heck do people still not remember them? It’s a little less than credible that, after everything they’ve put the human race through time and time again, that nobody seems to remember them (unless they work in UNIT, maybe).

And, yeah, that’s that... things are set up for what I think, if I got this right, are Jodie Whittaker’s last three special episodes over the year in the title role. I’m assuming that Yas will also either die or carry on assuming The Doctor has died by the end of Jodie’s last show. I guess we’ll find out by the end of the year. One thing we do have to look forward to though, via the post credits trailer for the next special, is the return of the old Jon Pertwee monster from the 70s (reviewed here and with a brief but memorably bad return in Peter Davison’s reign in the 1980s, reviewed here), the Sea Devils. They always frightened me as a kid and, hopefully, they can be frightening enough again for me to take away the memory of their second appearance in the show. So hopefully... third time’s a charm.

Either way, Doctor Who - Eve Of The Daleks... old plot, technically questionable but, hey, great acting, great music, entertaining presentation... a generally brilliant episode, for sure. This one has, temporarily, restored my faith in the good Doctor, I have to say.

New Year's Day 2022

 

Happy New Year 2022!

Well that’s another year over and another year of Covid behind us (that should leave us with only another four or five years of Covid misery to go before the required global collaboration to defeat it kicks in, is my guess). I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a Happy New Year and say thank you to first time and regular readers alike.

By way of a quick preview of the next one or two years, depending on how quickly I can get posts up, I will say that, midst many reviews of things which are unknown to me (but will hopefully prove interesting), there are some certainties for sure, in the works. As long as I stay in good health and financially solvent, that is.

For instance, the last of my Showa era Godzilla reviews should be up sometime within the next week and also the last few reviews of both the Classic Universal Monster movies (although certainly not all their monster movies for sure... more will eventually follow) and the rest of the Gamera series should be following soon after. Plus, there will definitely be reviews covering various boxed editions... so look out for running series of reviews on William Grefé, Bill Rebane and Yokai Monsters. Those ones are at least certain to come up this year. I’ve also got reviews of the complete run of The Falcon movies and the short run of cinematically released Perry Mason movies completed and waiting in the wings. As are a bunch of Jean Rollin movie reviews. Plus, oh yes, lots of classic Doctor Who stories.

I’m also hoping to finish revisiting the Hammer Dracula films on Blu Ray and, in time, their Frankenstein series... along with a whole raft of other movies from the famous British studio. I also intend to finally dig into those two Sam Fuller boxes from a few years ago... not to mention some more Harryhausen, Corman’s Poe pictures and a revisit to Universal’s Inner Sanctum series of movies. Throw in a whole raft of giallo and horror titles plus some Kolchack and, yeah, I’m hoping it will be a good year for the blog. Plus, loads of surprises which I don’t even know about yet. Most importantly, perhaps, I need to work my way through Severin’s The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee set and, fingers crossed, their All The Haunts Be Ours box of folk horror should also be pitching up on these shores over the next week or two.

Now I come to think of it, I need to get back to Zatoichi and The Sleepy Eyes Of Death movie cycles sometime soon. So, yeah, a full slate of things to come which, yeah, they could take a while to get through. But there wil be lots of non-series films and TV shows in various genres and from various times to throw into the mix too.

I hope at least some of those propositions sound appealing and, once again, Happy New Year to you and thanks for spending some time here. Stay safe!