Monday 18 March 2024

Caveat Emptor









At Midnight I’ll
Ditch Your Pre-Order


Caveat Emptor -
The Long Road
To Coffin Joe


Caveat emptor is right.

Today’s article is not a review, alas. Make no mistake, it’s both a warning to physical media buyers and collectors everywhere but it also, I think, asks an important question about one of the underlying tent pegs of obtaining the latest releases in a Blu Ray marketplace, which seems to be in the midst of a ‘last chance’ inspired golden age of rarely seen releases being thrust into the UK and US marketplace. This is something of an extended rant, primarily about three specific entities involved in an incident which is the basis of this entry of NUTS4R2. Let’s call them The Good, The Bad and The Ugly... but I will also name them, right now!

So we have The Ugly, being Arrow Films, who have made some mistakes over the years but always (for the most part) try to fix them. Then there’s The Bad, aka the usually very helpful amazon.co.uk, who are usually really good at customer service and a very approachable organisation. I spend a lot of money with them every year... especially at Christmas time and on many birthdays. And then there’s The Good, the hero of the hour if you like, aka diabolikdvd.com... who you will also hear more of a little later.

Okay... so I said this would be a long one but, like a Tarkovsky or Bergman movie, the long lead in always makes for a more powerful ending, right? I hope. Anyway, so what I’m going to do is start with two flashbacks, to give a demonstration to the way two of these companies have behaved in the past.

So, by no means the main villains of this piece but this is relevant I think, lets go back to Fopp Records, some years ago now. I can’t remember exactly when this was but it must have been a year or two before the pandemic. The great Arrow Films... and they are great, despite the constant technical problems they are apparently plagued with and the ‘money for old rope’ nature of some of their re-releases... announced for pre-order a Blu Ray box of Mario Bava films. Now, it’s not got as many films in it as the two US DVD Bava boxes that Anchor Bay released back in the day but, if there’s a director whose films you want to upgrade to Blu Ray then, surely, Bava must fit the bill with his beautiful shot compositions and use of bright colours. So I went to Fopp Records near Covent Garden, put a cash deposit down and pre-ordered the box set. Because a pre-order means you buy a copy in advance so as not to miss out if it sells out right? Or so I have always thought (otherwise what’s the point of them?). So I went to Fopp on the day the set was due to be released only to find that, the sets had sold out before the physical stores could get the copies they ordered. I wasn’t best pleased and, while Arrow themselves had no copies left either, I immediately got on my phone and ordered what turned out to be one of the very last copies Amazon.co.uk had in stock. And, success, it arrived. Job done, by the skin of my teeth. Although I wasn’t very impressed that Fopp (and I’m sure many other retail outlets) had been left in the cold with a queue of disappointed customers who had also pre-ordered the set from them.

Okay, so my takeaway was... maybe if I wanted something this badly, I should just pre-order direct from Arrow and so, this is what I was doing for a time. And it was great because they give reward points every time you shop so I managed to get a few free films off of them too. All was good until the incident that leads me into...

Flashback number two. Sometime during the pandemic lock down, UK location undisclosed...

One day the postman brought me a completely flat-packed, sealed cardboard box... well it wasn’t a box because it was still flat, despite having the cardboard strip to unwrap it still intact. I opened it and, unsurprisingly given the appearance of said object, there was absolutely nothing inside.  I had a few things on order so I emailed a few companies who I thought it could be before, eventually, finding the phone number of the company on the address label via the internet and giving them a call (after a couple of days of attempts they finally answered). I found myself talking to the manager of a packaging and fulfilment centre who told me the package would have come from Arrow films. Okay, so that narrowed it down to one thing at the time, the pre-order of their Yokai Monsters boxed edition (you can find my reviews of the four films here, here, here and here) which I desperately wanted to see as, to the best of my knowledge, they’d not been released in this country before.

So I got onto Arrow who... really did not do well at sorting this out. They said it was nothing to do with them (possibly true given the box was sealed) and eventually suggested I fill a form out at the post office if the postman had stolen an item. Again, it was a sealed, flat  piece of card... so if anything was stolen, it would have been by one of the workers at the distribution centre they were using, surely? It took me to ‘offer’ to write about the whole experience on my blog for Arrow to finally replace (I use the term replace fairly loosely) the Yokai Monsters boxed set. So hoorah but, lesson learned. I never, to my knowledge, ordered anything directly from Arrow films again... despite their rewards points being very enticing.

Okay... bang up to date and now onto the main story. Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me and made it through this far...

Sometime in the third quarter of last year, Arrow announced pre-orders for a complete Coffin Joe Blu Ray set entitled, Inside The Mind Of Coffin Joe. Essentially a more complete and somehow even more beautiful package than the Platform Entertainment DVD box set a decade or so before. So, having learned from my mistaken trust with both Fopp and Arrow, I mistakenly pre-ordered it from Amazon.co.uk (the real villains of this piece) on 29th September 2023, with an expected delivery date of 4th December 2023. And that was that... or so I thought.

The first sign that there would be any trouble was when somebody, it might well have been Arrow themselves, posted on Twitter that one of the films on the third disc in the set was faulty in that the English subtitles cut out after half an hour. Now I’ve had Blu Rays from Arrow before with similar kinds of errors where either something didn’t work or it was the wrong cut or an advertised extra was accidentally left off. And, sure, it’s sloppy quality control but, to their credit, they always followed it up with a general repressing and disc replacement scheme for all those affected by this. Which, to be fair, is what they did this time around. I just figured it would eventually filter through to Amazon and they’d delay the, already significantly delayed delivery date while they waited for a replacement disc.

However, and here’s where things take an almost sinister twist... a few days later, maybe a week, Amazon emailed me to inform me the order had been cancelled completely. No reason was given. Which is crazy right? Like I said earlier, a PRE-order is what you do to guarantee a copy because you think the discs might sell out. It’s an agreement between you and a company that the product will make its way to you. So I did what I usually do... I went on to Amazon to find it in my order history so I could contact them. Here’s the thing though... and I’ve never heard of Amazon doing this before... they didn’t just cancel my order... they erased it. It was actually deleted from my order history completely. I’d never heard of this happening, even when I’ve had the occasional order cancelled. They were just making it as hard as they could for me and the gazillions of other people who had ordered the Coffin Joe box set from them to complain about it.

I didn’t let that deter me... too many important films were on the line... I found a way to eventually bypass it (after all, I still had the order number in my original email) and got them on the phone. I explained to the guy why this had happened and he told me to wait while he found out. His answer was... the order’s been cancelled.  

Not what I asked, I explained, I wanted to know why it’s been cancelled when a pre-order is supposed to be a guarantee, as far as I knew, that the order would eventually be here. I didn’t care how long I had to wait for the product, I didn’t want my order cancelled. There was another long wait while he again talked to his line manager and when he eventually returned it was with the news that... um... my order had been cancelled. What the heck? Again I explained to him that I already knew this and so I enlightened him once more as to what the issue was with Arrow and how I’m sure there would be a replacement disc coming at some point. So he put me on hold again for a while more and talked to his line manager once more and, you know what he said? He said my order had been cancelled. Yup, I said. I am aware. It’s not just been cancelled it’s been erased. Did I need to get a Delorean, go back in time and take actions to stop my order being erased from history? I asked to speak to his manager. Oh certainly sir, was the reply. He transferred the call only for his manager at Amazon to deliberately hang up without saying a word to me, ending both the call and any trust I’d built up with Amazon over the past few decades.

Okay...meanwhile, I’d done some asking around. At a film fair I went to, one supplier hadn’t even received his shipment of Coffin Joe boxes. Another had received his own personal copy but he was still awaiting a replacement disc for their last release which was wrongly pressed, let alone getting a replacement disc for this. And, when I was buying some stuff from Fopp (just so I can write about cool stuff for my lovely readers) I casually asked about the Coffin Joe box to be met with a tirade of... well let’s not say swearing, this is a family blog, but met with a tirade of negative energy against Arrow who have ‘pulled this stuff’ one too many times. Apparently there are a lot more instances of this happening with this company than I realised (and again, to their credit, Arrow always did something about this). It’s fair to say though that the general perception of the company from the people who shift their product for them is not particularly glowing, it turns out.

Okay... enter the hero of the hour... @Diabolikdvd. A brief exchange on the Twitternet with this US based speciality store convinced me to get one of the faulty copies as soon as I could because it was selling out fast and wouldn’t be reissued (it has been reissued and gone on for resale on both Arrow and Amazon, it turns out, but that information was emphatically not what was being said at the time so that’s not Diabolik’s fault). So, having at least being refunded the money from Amazon (I’d purchased those with vouchers so redirected those to grabbing the third volume of Shout Factory’s Shaw Bros boxed sets), I ordered one from Diabolik in the US (for a heck of a lot more money than the UK version, what with all the postage... again, not the fault of the supplier) and it arrived in around a week. Good service and I shall consider ordering from them more than I do already when it comes to new releases, I think.

I won’t dwell on the various claims from FedEx* trying to get taxes for the shipment both before and after they delivered it, when Diabolik had made clear that it was all pre-paid up front as part of the price... I looked on the internet and it seems FedEx have been doing this to a lot to people lately, incorrectly, for whatever reason. So I then put in a claim to Arrow who... after literally four emails worth of toing and froing about their disc replacement scheme and a further follow up last week (by the time you read this blog post) when I queried why some people had received them but I still hadn’t... finally sent me a replacement disc yesterday (again, just under a week before this blog post is published). I haven’t checked this yet... I’m almost afraid to. The replacement disc has the UK certification on it over the same disc artwork as the US version I got but I’m assured by all and sundry that this is only a cosmetic difference and that the content is exactly the same.

So there you are, after six months of stress about this title, I finally have the whole thing. But, I’m understandably, I think, not very happy with Amazon at all about all of this trouble. And so, I’ll leave the reader with the same question I pitched earlier, because I think this is the long term take away from all this... apart from not trusting Amazon again. And it’s this...

Is a pre-order of a physical item supposed to be a way of guaranteeing you get a copy before they sell out? And, if not, then what the heck is the point of having a pre-ordering system anyway, if it doesn’t benefit the customer? Food for thought.

Meanwhile... if you have a multizone Blu Ray player then https://diabolikdvd.com/ is worth investigating, for sure.

 *A few days after writing this, FedEx sent me another letter threatening legal action, for the sake of £22.24 they thought I owed them. I have now, finally, been able to contact FedEx and settled that matter once and for all.

Sunday 17 March 2024

Immaculate









Hot Cross Nuns

Immaculate
Directed by Michael Mohan
Italy/USA
2024 Black Bear
UK Cinema Print


Warning: Some slight spoilers as this is a celebration of the film as much as it is a review.

Wow... just absolutely wow. Immaculate is an amazing film which, I suspect will get enthusiastic reviews from horror fans of a certain age and bad reviews from anyone else. I absolutely loved it and hats off to Sydney Sweeney, not just for her continually impressive acting talent but for her to get this thing produced and finally accepted after it stalled some years ago.

Okay, so this one is a blisteringly wild and deeply satisfying ride of a motion picture. The basic plot is, after dying in a Damien Omen 2 inspired, accidental swim under some ice when she was a kid, Sister Cecilia, played by Sydney Sweeney, is revived after almost ten minutes and tries to find out what the heck God has saved her life for. She joins a monastery in the US but is then rescued... when that goes under due to a lack of attendance... by a convent in Italy. We already know, though, that things are really bad there from the pre-credits scene, when four sinister nuns break the leg of another nun and then bury her alive because she was trying to escape.

Then, as Cecilia is getting used to the spooky place, she undergoes a trauma, which she and the audience perceive as a nightmare/dream sequence, only to awaken pregnant. Since she is still a virgin, carrying a seemingly immaculate conception, the various nuns worship her for the miracle she is hosting but, as you may guess by now... demonic things are afoot.

That’s the basic intro and I have to say, this one impressed me so much. It totally goes where most modern horror films don’t go these days. It doesn’t quite make the nunsploitation genre... I think topless, lesbian nuns and whips would be needed to sell that one... but it has torture, violence, gore (and wet, flimsy, see through habits which leave absolutely nothing to the imagination) and it absolutely feels like a 1970s/early 1980s Italian exploitation/horror film. I mean it when I say that this tongue slicing, foot branding, face pummelling, womb cutting, umbilical cord chewing movie goes the whole hog and, if it had been released on video tape in this country in the 1980s, it would have easily made the Video Nasty list, for sure. In fact, I’m surprised that the censors let this one in the country right now, to be honest.

And not only that, the movie really embraces that vibe right from the start. I mean, Will Bates’ cimbalom infused score with chorus and atonal colourings is absolutely brilliant (please, somebody release a CD of this). This included an astonishing moment where the music actually acts as a surrogate for the character. When somebody is getting a cross branded onto the sole of her foot, the sound has dropped out without detection and Bates’ score is already standing in, giving voice to her scream with high pitched notes! And, boy, was I surprised when a whole montage sequence of Cecilia settling into the convent needle drops Bruno Nicolai’s exquisite main theme from the giallo The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (one of my favourite pieces by this composer). It’s admittedly striking to the point of distraction but, heck, it’s toe tapping as hell and I was surprised to see that none of the other audience members were getting down the beat, as it were.

And Sydney Sweeney totally leans into the atmosphere of the film completely, giving a really brave performance that is an absolute powerhouse (more so even than her brilliant turn in Reality, reviewed here). There’s something primal about the way she pulls this one off and the last five to ten minutes of the film are totally owned by her. Talk about pulling out the stops.

The ending was a satisfying moment, too. This doesn’t do the Hollywood thing where we cut to an epilogue releasing the tension of all that’s come before and giving a nudge towards closure. No, this ending reminded me specifically of a late 1960s/early 1970s Hammer horror movie like Quatermass And The Pit (reviewed here). At the time, those films would usually end with whatever surviving protagonist(s) just wallowing silently in the aftermath of the sheer grimness of what they’ve just survived, their minds adjusting slowly to what they’ve fought through. This one does exactly that and... yeah... the film is intense and grim but, if you are not too distracted by the harsh suspense of certain scenes, there’s also a thread of somewhat blasphemous humour shot through it as well.

And, honestly, I have nothing but good things to say about Immaculate and it looks truly beautiful (just as an Italian horror film from that period would). I hope that a boutique Blu Ray label such as Severin or Vinegar Syndrome or Arrow pick this one up for release because it certainly wouldn’t look out of place with certain parts of their catalogues and I know they could do some amazing extras with the correct kind of context. Talking of which, I absolutely cannot wait to get this one on Blu Ray so I can watch it again. Unfortunately, limited time and a slew of ‘to be seen’ cinema releases for the next month or so means I won’t be able to experience this one at the cinema again but, back in the day, I would have been going back to this one a couple of times, I can tell you. So there you go, if you are into 70s/80s Italian horror movies then... run, don’t walk, to your nearest cinema and check this one out. Such a treat.

Tuesday 12 March 2024

The Brides Of Dracula










Meinster Mash

The Brides Of Dracula
UK 1960 Directed by Terence Fisher
Hammer Films Blu Ray Zone B


I remember that when I first saw The Brides Of Dracula many decades after I’d seen the other films in Hammer’s Dracula sequence, most of which I saw in my pre-teen years. I remember being hugely disappointed with this one and had a similar reaction in subsequent revisits.

My initial disappointment was that neither Dracula nor, it could be argued, the Brides of Dracula actually feature in the movie... unless you want to argue that various female vampires created by the film’s vampire villain Baron Meinster, could be given this title as a kind of extended metaphor for the brief narrative introduction to the movie, where the audience are told that, after Dracula’s death, his cult of vampirism lives on. Christopher Lee did not want to reprise his successful role two years after his initial appearance in Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula, reviewed here), for fear of being typecast in the role. Which he kind of was, of course... and he made a fair few Dracula movies after this one (at least one of them wasn’t even for Hammer).

Of course we have Peter Cushing returning here in the role of Van Helsing and, in one of a few factors which completely shoots the continuity of the series where he’s concerned, we are told that we are in the last years of the 19th Century. Cushing, of course, is always watchable and I’d maintain he’s one of the few reasons why The Brides Of Dracula is worth a watch. It has to be said, I’m not the biggest fan of this entry into the series but I do like the director and I can appreciate some of the things he, along with his set designer, brings to the production. I do find myself quite at odds with Fisher’s biographer Tony Dalton, it has to be said, in that he says in his recent book about the director, reviewed here, that he thinks The Brides Of Dracula is one of the best films in the series. Then again, he also doesn’t have much of a good word to say about my favourite movie in the sequence, Dracula Ad 1972 (reviewed by me here), so there you go.

After the opening narration we are treated to a bumpy coach ride (Michael Ripper is a rough coach driver, I can tell you) and we are introduced to the main female protagonist  Marianne (played by Yvonne Monlaur), who is on her way to teach at a private school in Transylvania. Unable to get to the school due to an incident (which half involves a man who lurks around in various scenes looking threatening and mysterious before dropping out of the narrative completely, still leaving me with no idea who or why the character was) she stays the night with Baroness Meinster in Meinster Castle, releasing her son from his imprisonment, not knowing that he’s a vampire...

Chaos ensues but she is found and helped the next morning by Cushing’s Van Helsing character, after a lengthy series of set pieces which means he doesn’t enter the film until the 30 minute mark. Which is similar to what was done in the previous Dracula movie, where a fair piece of narrative action leading into the story was dealt with before the entrance of the title character’s arch nemesis. Lots of shenanigans ensue as Van Helsing tries to help with the local vampire problem and save Marianne from being made... well... a Bride Of Meinster... yeah, that stupid title really makes no sense for this film.

The story is not great, it has to be said but it’s the magnetic presence of Cushing and the interesting direction of Fisher which just about keeps it vaguely watchable. He moves the camera a fair amount to good effect and quite often uses the height of the actors to create vivid triangular patterns in the compositions, something which I’ve noticed him doing a lot before. Another trick to make the staging interesting is to use areas of the set which are lit just slightly darker than others and to shoot the actors in these patches before having them move forward into the light, to increase the impact of their lines as their faces are suddenly lit up. Indeed, there’s one scene in this film where he does it in rapid succession with the only two actors in the scene, a real double whammy as one steps ito the light and then the other does the same in the reverse shot.

Indeed, he uses a lot of good little tricks to create interest in the dialogue heavy scenes. For instance, a shot where Peter Cushing is standing about two thirds of the way to the right of screen, talking to a local priest who is seated on the left. We can see the priest talking to him from both the left of the screen and also in reflection in a mirror behind Cushing on the direct right of the screen, as he's nicely sandwiched  between two of the same talking head, so to speak.

Another nice thing Fisher does is bring a lot of value to his sets, partially by using the old Roger Corman trick of ‘leaving the doors open’. One fantastic instance of this is in the first scene shot in a very narrow tavern. The set goes back a long way with various protuberances coming in from the sides and then with another room seen through the back alcove which is lit in a completely different colour to the first... bathed red in stark contrast to the rest of the set, highlighting the sense of depth. Very nice stuff.

There are some real problems with the ideas about vampires though. For instance, after being bitten by one, Cushing cauterises his neck with a red hot iron and this, combined with some Holy Water, stops what is presumably a viral, chemical reaction from taking place and turning him into a vampire... somehow. It’s a nice idea but makes no sense as far as I’m concerned. Furthermore, using the shadows of the blades of a windmill to project a cross and thus stop Meinster escaping is a wonderfully creative idea... except it only works if the body of the windmill would bizarrely project no shadow, which it doesn’t in this, somehow. There is no earthly set of circumstances in the world where the shadow of the crossing blades would be seen in isolation as they are here.

And another big problem is the continuity between this picture and the previous one in the sequence. In Dracula, Van Helsing clearly states that the idea that a vampire can change one’s shape into a bat is a fallacy. In this one, however, he clearly states that a vampire can change into a bat.... which the vampires in this movie do quite frequently... at least into a dodgy looking rubber bat at any rat.

I’m curious as to why Fisher wasn’t able to tap James Bernard for repeat scoring duties on this one. Instead, the score is provided by Malcolm Williamson. Good musical continuity, at least, is kept between the two films in that, although Williamson’ doesn’t use Bernard’s famous Dracula theme, the orchestration on this is very similar to the score from the first one and provides a modicum of auditory glue between the two films. So that’s okay at least but, despite some nicely creative shots, I wouldn’t recommend The Brides Of Dracula to many people, it has to be said. I’m not saying it’s the worst Dracula picture that the studio put out but, it’s very far from the best, it seems to me. Still, I look forward to revisiting the next film in the series fairly soon.

Monday 11 March 2024

The Ice Cream Blonde










Todd’s Laughter,
Todd Slaughter


The Ice Cream Blonde -
The Whirlwind Life And
Mysterious Death of Screwball
Comedienne Thelma Todd

by Michelle Morgan
Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 9781613730386


Just a short review of a wonderful book given to me by a good friend for Christmas. Subtitled The Whirlwind Life And Mysterious Death Of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd, Michelle Morgan’s tome The Ice Cream Blond paints a compelling picture of the actresses life, doing exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak, in as breezy and entertaining way as possible.

I remember seeing Todd as a co-star in various Laurel And Hardy shorts as a kid (back when they were regularly shown on television throughout the 1970s) but I didn’t really discover her until I took notice of her as a pretty wonderful co-star opposite Groucho Marx in two of the five, absolutely brilliant films starring The Four Marx Brothers (as they were known before Zeppo left the fold) which they did while still under contract to Paramount... which as far as I’m concerned were their greatest films... more so, even, than their first couple of films for Irvin Thalberg at MGM. Those two films being their third and fourth features, Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. Thelma is pretty brilliant in these two, especially in the former film as a gangster’s moll... she certainly fills the void left by the former and, soon back again, foil Margaret Dumont in the Marx Brothers’ movies.

I’d heard there was possibly some sinister side to her very early death over the years but, I thought the time was right to finally investigate it. This book lays it all out on the line, beginning with what is thought of to be either accidental death, suicide or, perhaps as likely when you ponder certain post mortem findings... murder. So the book starts at the point when the housekeeper finds her 29 year old dead body, filled with carbon monoxide and with blood on her face, in a car (also with blood in it) in a garage beneath her apartment, by the cafe she co-owned and ran. She then proceeds to tell her story from early life, where many things I didn’t know about the actress were revealed to me for the first time.

Indeed, it seemed that Thelma was no stranger to trauma, having been the sole witness, when she was just four, to her unsupervised seven year old brother being accidentally mangled to death in a machine at her local creamery. It then tells of her going into tomboy mode to please her father in the absence of his son and how she won beauty contests she wasn’t really interested in going in for that much and training to become a school teacher, before accidentally being ‘discovered’ by a husband and wife who wanted her to be in their new show. 

We then follow her as she goes from being one of the first pupil’s in Paramount’s acting school to being one of their most successful graduates... and how she got into films and how much of a beloved star she became while under contract to Hal Roach. I hadn’t realised that he’d set her up in a series of shorts partnered firstly with ZaSu Pitts and then, when Pitts didn’t get the money she wanted to continue after a period of time, in similar films partnered with Patsy Kelly. Indeed, these physical slapstick films were said to be as popular as the ones she made with comedy duo Laurel and Hardy at the time*... I had no idea (although, I will now seek them out now, for sure).

Another interesting thing about her when she was just starting out is her part in Howard Hughes’ famous movie Hell’s Angels, which, due to the very long editing and reshoot process going on for years, eventually ended up with her role falling on the cutting room floor, alas, with co-star Jean Harlow reaping the benefits from that one.

So yeah, lots more besides this and lots of stuff I didn’t know, including what an upbeat, super intelligent and kind hearted person she was. It also talks about her possible gangster connections... or rather connections she didn’t want in her life... as well as a year (the one in which she died) of death threats for money and various other things which were a huge worry to her, involving herself ‘locking down’ for a small period of her life. There’s not really any new fresh, compelling evidence to suggest that her death wasn’t accidental or a suicide but, given the comments by the police and various things said over the years by people who lived through this at the time since the case was closed, it seems a fairly likely possibility that she was murdered for refusing to let the mob start up a gambling racket in her well frequented and very successful cafe. Indeed, it’s strongly implied that director Roland West, who she was having a second, long term affair with and who co-owned the cafe with here, might have either been complicit in her demise or, possibly just hastily covered up for it (with some very contradictory testimonial he delivered in court).

It’s a short book and, if it seems a little bit like a quick read, it’s as much to do with the highly entertaining and enlightening way in which Michelle Morgan has put together and presented all the relevant facts, as much as it is to do with the brevity of Thelma’s existence, to be sure. So, as I said, a short review but, if you are interested in this iconic actress (although much less well known these days, it seems to me) then I would thoroughly recommend The Ice Cream Blonde - The Whirlwind Life And Mysterious Death Of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd as a good starting point for both you and your movie related book shelf. A breezy tale about a bright light snuffed out far too young. Give it a go.

*Indeed, they apparently made a cameo appearance in one of her shorts and were at her funeral.

Sunday 10 March 2024

Imaginary










Imaginary Fiend

Imaginary
Directed by Jeff Wadlow
USA
2024 Blumhouse
UK Cinema Print


Okay, so the latest from successful horror movie company Blumhouse is Imaginary and, I have to say, I really quite liked this one. I’d also have to say that I don’t think it’s going to be that successful with some audiences but, hopefully I’ll be proven wrong on that.

The film stars DeWanda Wise as Jessica, step mother to two new children (played by Taegen Burns and Pyper Braun) who, with their father, moves back to her former home where, it turns out, she had a definite ‘childhood trauma’ event... though she certainly didn’t remember just what that was all about until something laying in wait reminds her. And when her boyfriend goes away on a concert tour (he’s presumably in a band) she’s left to look after the two girls, the youngest of whom has taken an ‘imaginary friend’, who takes the form of an old Teddy bear named Chancey.

And then things start going wrong and getting traumatic as Chancey isn’t ‘just’ an imaginary friend and, as it turns out, has his own agenda to abscond with the younger daughter, for reasons (perhaps way too obvious reasons) which come to light nearer the end of the movie.

Okay, so let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. There are no real surprises a lot of the time but, that being said, there are a couple. A lot of the stuff is telegraphed way too soon, such as Jessica’s dad, when he visits her in hospital, talking about CB... I was just kinda waiting for an hour for everyone else in the movie to play catch up on that one.

And another problem is that the film suffers a little bit from is the dreaded curse of most modern day horror films... sound design that lets you know things are about to get tense and scary long before you’re supposed to realise this stuff on anything other than a subconscious level. So as soon as the ambient sound changes, you are on the alert right away. Don’t get me wrong, I think you are supposed to be unsettled by this audio phenomenon... I just don’t think your brain is meant to be aware of it while you are watching. So, yeah, that element, which is the modern cinematic equivalent of an old 1970s horror movie using a heartbeat on the soundtrack, kinda lets it down a bit. However, that being said, the sound cliché also happens to absolutely work... so you may know why you are feeling unsettled in certain scenes but, dammit, knowing it doesn’t make it any less effective, for sure.

Now I said that half the twists in the film don’t work and are telegraphed but, guess what? Yeah, that means the other half of the twists did actually work well. The director actually uses things like the bear appearing in different positions and beginning to move a little as a really nice piece of misdirection for a certain twist that is revealed when a child psychiatrist comes to visit the younger daughter. I really fell for that one hook, line and sinker so... yeah, this film sure has its moments. And I loved that the film goes full on into creating a surrealist world which the main characters get to visit... the element which I think may be too much for certain ‘hip’ young audiences who are, of course, the main target here. But I loved that the movie leaned into this surreal stuff for the end game and I found it refreshing, to be honest.

And now, I suppose, I should address the elephant in the room because, there’s a reason I went to the cinema to see this one. And that reason was... Mario Bava. There’s a moment, right at the end of one of the trailers, which it turns out also made the final cut of the movie, that is a dead steal of a famous moment in Mario Bava’s 1977 movie Schock. In that film, a kid rushes towards Dario Nicolodi and, runs off the bottom of the screen only to pop back up immediately into the frame as a different, grown up person. It’s a beautiful shot using a practical piece of sleight of hand with the photography to pull off the effect (something which Mario Bava was known for when making his movies). And it really is a complete copy of that moment used in this movie... I mean, it’s not as deftly done because, due to the subject matter, the shot has to use a lot of CGI but, it does deliberately echo the camera movement from Bava’s movie and, yeah, I’m sure the director knew exactly what he was doing here. It’s a nice piece of homage which, I think they should have left out of the trailer because... well... now the audience will see it coming.

Other than that... not much else to report. The score of the movie is nice and it’s credited to Sparks & Shadows... which is a company formed by Bear McCreary (one of my favourite modern day composers) so I’m guessing the score is a group effort by him and some of his colleagues/friends/apprentices. I’d love to hear this one away from the movie but, no such luck as it doesn’t seem to have had a proper CD release... so I guess I won’t get to listen to it, which is a shame.

Other than that, though... yeah, Imaginary is nicely acted, well put together, could have had more surprises but still, it’s nicely done and I could imagine picking up a Blu Ray of this one at some point. Like I said though, I suspect it’s not going to be as well received by everyone so... time will tell, I guess.

Tuesday 5 March 2024

The Pearl Of Death








Rondo Macabre

The Pearl Of Death
USA 1944 Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B


The Pearl Of Death is the ninth of the series of Sherlock Holmes films put out by 20th Century Fox and then Universal. This one toplines Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson again but, unlike the last film in the series, The Scarlet Claw (reviewed by me here), we have the return of both Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson and Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade. It’s based on Arthur Conan Doyles story The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons.

The plot of this one involves Giles Conover (played brilliantly by Miles Mander), a master criminal who is after an enormous pearl with a bloody history. Holmes, in the guise of a clergyman... after Conover’s accomplice Naomi Drake (played by Universal monster scream queen Evelyn Ankers) steals the pearl from a secure location on a cruise ship... uses his disguise to have her relinquish the pearl, hidden in a camera, so it can get through customs and, due to Holmes ingenuity, she doesn’t realise her mistake until they’ve parted ways and Holmes, Watson and Lestrade deliver the pearl to the ‘Royal Regent Museum’ (no such museum in London, I can assure you), waiting for the precious pearl. And this is where it gets interesting because Holmes doesn’t trust the electronic eye security in the museum... so, in a twist to the way these tales are usually set up, Holmes disables the system momentarily to prove a point but, in that moment, Conover steals the pearl and hides it before the police can catch up with him. So Holmes has inadvertently allowed the pearl to be stolen... which doesn’t do his reputation much good.

After Conover is released on the grounds that there’s no evidence, people are found with their backs broken at various locations, midst a pile of smashed china (smashed to hide the one thing which is being smashed during the murders, to muddy up the scene of the crime). Holmes... after surviving a couple of attempts on his life, including a wonderful death trap of a ‘jack-in-a-box’ knife in a book which is thrown up into the ceiling because Holmes is suspicious of it... deduces that, when Conover was running from the police, he hid the pearl inside one of six wet busts of Napoleon. It’s up to Holmes, Watson and Lestrade to try and find the pearl before Conover’s sinister, back breaking heavy The Hoxton Creeper, of whom I shall say more in a little while, can finish their murderous spree and make off with the stone. I have to say though, it’s unintentionally hilarious when, after surviving the dagger in a box gag, Watson proclaims the obvious with his, “Great Scott. That was meant for you!”

And it’s another wonderfully entertaining slice of a movie, of course. The cast is perfect and Rathbone plays Holmes with a certain amount of anger since he’s the one who, after recovering the pearl at the start, allowed it to be stolen again. His temper is very thin in this one, especially in dealing with Lestrade’s usual fat-headed deductions. There’s some lovely, comical support from Watson in this one too, including a nice scene where he’s sticking a newspaper article in his scrapbook and loses said article. “What would Holmes do?”, he says, and reconstructs his movements with the paste and tea cup until he relocates the cutting, stuck to the underside of his sleeve (where the audience can see it all along).

Also, producer/director Roy William Neill seems to be thinking more about his shot compositions here. There’s a column suddenly grown now in 221B Baker Street, used to separate the actors within via the vertical split on screen and, similarly, he has a bizarre arch put into the middle of a room at the museum so he can use it the same way. These visual devices aren’t wasted, however... he uses them to full advantage visually.

And then of course, there’s The Creeper, played by the iconic actor Rondo Hatton. Hatton was exposed to poison gas during his service in the First World War and, as a result of that (it’s believed), went on to develop a rare disease called acromegaly, which does something to the bones of the face and warped his into the sinister visage he’s known for. He was a tall guy and this, when combined with his unusual features, made him perfect casting for heavies in Hollywoodland. This film, made when he was fifty, kinda catapulted him to success but... too late. Just as Gail Sondergaard, the villainess from the Sherlock Holmes film The Spider Woman (reviewed here) had made another film playing a ‘spider woman’ to trade in on the name (if not the character), so Rondo Hatton made a further two films as a different back breaking menace called ‘The Creeper’ the year after this. Alas, before they were both posthumously released in early 1946, Hatton had died of a heart attack due to his acromegaly.

He would, of course, leave a lasting legacy and he has been referenced in many things over the years such as a villain made to look like him in the movie version of The Rocketeer and even Judge Dredd disguised himself as his likeness in one of the early issues of 2000AD, if memory serves. And, of course, there are the annual Rondo Awards, made to celebrate the best in classic horror research, creativity and film preservation... which were named after the actor and which actually are miniature likenesses of him. So, he died young but was definitely, in his own small way, an influential presence on the pop culture scene. And if you want to know more ‘shady facts’ about acromegaly, take a look at the giant spider movie Tarantula sometime (review coming soon).

And that’s me done with The Pearl Of Death. Another great entry in what is surely one of the best film series of all time. It’s also a film where Holmes is forced to kill someone at the end of the picture (I won’t say who) which is a regrettable outcome. I must make a point to try and track down those Creeper movies at some point though. If they have survived the years, that is.*

*Since time of writing, Eureka Masters Of Cinema have released one of them last year as part of a box set.

Monday 4 March 2024

Midnight Mass










Fallen Angel

Midnight Mass
TV Mini Series
7 episodes September 2021
Canada/USA
Directed by Mike Flanagan


Warning: All the spoilers... well, many of them implied, at the very least. If you don’t want to know, don’t read.

Midnight Mass is the third recent(ish) hit series created by Mike Flanagan, who is a director I find a little hit and miss. I loved Absentia (reviewed here) and Doctor Sleep (reviewed here) for example but hated Oculus (reviewed here) and was fairly entertained but ultimately disappointed in his hit show The Haunting Of Hill House (reviewed here), which took more than just a few liberties with the original source material. Although some of the cast from that show and his follow up adaptation of The Turn Of The Screw, aka The Haunting Of Blye Manor, are still working with him here.

And that was one of the good things about this show... the acting in this is, once again, incredible and the highly talented cast, including such people as Zach Gilford, Kate Siegel, Hamish Linklater, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli and Henry Thomas... are what keep you watching. That and the way the script unfolds although, I have to say, I did have a few problems myself in that I was disappointed in the way the story chose to develop, the lack of any surprises and what I also think might be a major mistake in terms of the inner ‘physics’ of the series that seems to have been overlooked (unless a load of stuff was cut out which would originally explain a certain oversight).

The series has a strong theme of Religious faith, practice and, ultimately, fanaticism and the story deals, on the surface of the first episode, with a new priest transferred to a small island community who, well, starts bringing little miracles with him. Indeed the seven episodes are named after biblical terms so we have Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs, Lamentations, Gospel, Acts Of The Apostles and Revelations. The majority of the small population of the island are Christian, asides from a Muslim sheriff and his son... and the more they attend the Sunday service and take the sacrament, where they eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, as proxied by wafers and wine... the more their senses start to sharpen, some of them begin to look younger, a paralysed girl walks... and so on. The only real non-practicing Christian character is a young man who has just served four years in prison for drink driving and killing a woman as he fell asleep at the wheel. He is haunted each night by the corpse of the woman watching over him as he tries to sleep and he is the one who really starts to question what he’s seeing on the island when things start to get... miraculous.

Okay, I will say that I loved the show, it held my attention, I was hooked and entertained for all seven episodes and I would recommend it to all my horror loving friends... but...

Okay, here’s the thing. It telegraphs itself heavily as it goes. By the end of the first episode I realised who the mystery priest really was due to the story being a little too heavy handed with its hints... something not ‘revealed’ until the end of episode three. In the second episode I realised just who the father of the young lady who is the island doctor was. And added to this, my first reaction at seeing a lot of the people in this show was... why are they all wearing ‘old person’ make up. Ever since I was a kid and I saw the Star Trek episode The Deadly Years, I’ve been disappointed with ‘ageing’ make-up. You can tell right away when someone has been done up with this, even if they’ve only been aged a little... so I knew very early on that it was only there to slowly come off as the show progressed and that the only common catalyst that could get this reaction in people was the sacrament. I figured out the priest, played absolutely brilliantly by Hamish Linklater in a riveting performance, was putting something in the wine and, yes, that it was probably something like blood.

The story felt just a little too much like ‘Salem’s Lot to me but, that’s okay, I love that book and the original TV mini series. And the reason it disappointed me a little is because, when it’s revealed that the ‘angel’ in the desert who de-aged the priest was a kind of flying demon of some kind, the story went directly into vampire mode, with the priest mistaking the word of God for vampire mythos (although the word vampire is never referenced and none of the characters seem to have any point of reference for them... which frankly they could have used by the time they’d get up to episode seven). Also, the priest in question has already died and been infused with vampire blood before he returns to the island as a young man... so he really should already be sensitive to light and start burning up in the sunlight (like everybody else in the story) but, no, he kind of dies again and then starts going through that whole process... which really makes no sense compared to the ‘rules’ that exist for everybody else. So, yeah, bits  of this really annoyed me, to be honest.

That being said, I did like the flying vampire guy who is somewhat reminiscent in appearance of a winged version of Nosferatu (who was, of course, the basis for the look of the vampire in ‘Salem’s Lot, my review of the TV show can be found here). However, it also seems clear to me that his look is greatly inspired from Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell’s iconic painting of a winged demon entitled Vampire’s Kiss... which has inspired a few movie monsters in its time, I believe. So, I guess, if they had to go down the vampire route... at least we have one in this series which looks really great, it has to be said (and who eats a lot of cats, too).

However, asides from these gaping plot holes and going down the vampire route instead of, well, maybe exploring the ways religion taken as a literal thing can also overlap with vampire folklore, which I think would have been more interesting, I thought Midnight Mass was a pretty addictive show and certainly worth a look for fans of horror. Also, there’s some great imagery introduced into the show, like waking up to a beach full of hundreds of dead cats one morning... lots to look at but, ultimately, it felt as flawed as it was entertaining.

Sunday 3 March 2024

Dune Part Two









Harkonnen
The Barbarian


Dune Part Two
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
USA/Canada
2024 Warner Brothers
UK Cinema Print


Okay, so I quite liked Denis Villeneuve’s first attempt to film Frank Herbert’s landmark science fiction novel Dune (reviewed here) and, I have to say, I really liked the second one too. People are maybe over hyping this a little and calling Dune Part Two a great masterpiece. I can appreciate it may feel like that due to the epic scale of the production (although, I think that’s something of an illusion) but, out of Villeneuve’s various films I’d say that some of his others, such as Arrival (reviewed here) are much better.

Nevertheless, this is a pretty entertaining film with an incredibly long running time which, honestly, doesn’t feel like anything half as long. The reason I say the epic scale is a bit of an illusion is because, honestly, the majority of this one takes place just on Dune (aka Arrakis) itself... with the only other scenes being set on the worlds of the Emperor and Baron Harkonnen. But they are brief scenes in the scheme of things and, the majority of the action here follows the plight of Paul Atriedes, played pretty well by Timothée Chalamet (I’ll get to that in a minute) and Chani, played wonderfully by Zendaya. So it’s a lot of running around in the sand with some really great guerilla warfare action scenes and lots of stuff like sandworm riding. And it really doesn’t get dull.

Oh... and about that. The special effects in this are great but, UK readers of a certain age will, I’m sure, know exactly what I’m talking about when I say the sandworm riding scenes are like something straight out of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time. It was all I could think of while watching these sequences throughout the movie. So, I also got a lot of smiles mixed in with the drama.

There are a lot of great actors in this including the almost wasted Rebecca Ferguson (that’s just me... I always want her in more scenes no matter what film she’s in), Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Léa Seydoux, Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd and Charlotte Rampling (who is very underused also, compared to the build up of her role in the first movie). Everyone’s great in this but... I do want to just say something about Chalamet and two other actors in the movie, namely Christopher Walken as the Emperor and Florence Pugh as his daughter. Who are all good in this but, I don’t know, seem a little inappropriately placed, it seems to me.

Okay, so Chalamet is always good in whatever he’s in but, towards the end I don’t think the casting suited him. Lets look at another film series which borrowed heavily from Dune (not to mention a load of other science fiction literature such as Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoomian novels), namely Star Wars. Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy goes through a similar arc in that he goes from being an inexperienced young man who leans into his ‘mystic powers’ and comes out, by the opening of Return Of The Jedi, as a powerful badass who can take down an empire if he so decides. By the end of Dune Part Two, Paul Atreides is in a similar state but, as good as the frenetic fight scene at the end between Chalamet and a psychotic bad guy is... and for all his posturing and ‘using his voice’... well, I just didn’t buy it. It felt undersold to me.

And Christopher Walken, who is absolutely great as always, also felt inappropriately cast... unless the Emperor is supposed to feel like a flimsy old man who doesn’t seem to be able to ever have acquired and held on to the power he has, that is. Why would anyone throw down their allegiance to this guy in the first place, was my main thought in his casting. He was great saying the lines but, like Chalamet, seemed to lack the gravitas his part required... and I’m really surprised to hear myself saying that about the legendary Walken, for sure.

Thirdly... what the heck Florence Pugh? I felt she was being totally misused here as an actress. Literally, from her opening of the film as a kind of a ‘recap girl’ and onwards, she seemed to be just there to provide a narrative clarification for the audience in most (if not all) of her scenes... which is a shame because she’s actually an important bargaining chip in Paul Atreides’ end game.

I also spotted a nice cameo from one of my favourite actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy but, it was literally just a very small scene as a character who won’t enter the narrative properly for another 25 years or so later in the saga. So, yeah, I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing much more of her in the inevitable sequel, to be honest. I looked for her name in the cast list at the end and she wasn’t there so, I thought I’d just imagined it but, no, her own IMDB page confirms her inclusion in this film, for sure.

And, of course, the other big star of the film is Hans Zimmer’s wonderful score, which does provide both atmosphere and gravitas and, honestly, probably makes the film sound more epic than it actually is. I can’t wait to get my hands on a CD release of this one soon (I’m assuming they’ll be releasing one on proper CD... the first movie got two albums, one of which was also a double album, if memory serves). The leitmotif follow through on this one is pretty strong so, at times it does almost feel like they’ve tracked in parts of the previous score... but it works really well and, yeah, hoping to have the opportunity to hear a proper physical release of this one at some point in the near future, for sure.

And I think that’s me done on the quite wonderful Dune Part Two other than to say, the film has something of a cliffhanger ending again so... I hope Villeneuve is called in to direct Dune Messiah pretty soon. I shall be looking forward to it. Also, the film jumps around a bit and, I suspect there was a lot of it cut out from various sequences which, giving Villeneuve’s hatred of showing deleted scenes, I suspect I won’t get to see in my lifetime (although future lovers of cinema might get to see them once the director is dead, is my guess).

Tuesday 27 February 2024

The Living Dead Girl









 

Very Gone Girl

The Living Dead Girl
aka La morte vivante
France 1982 Directed by Jean Rollin
Redemption Blu Ray Zone A


Warning: Big story spoilers but, honestly, who watches a Jean Rollin film for the story?

I remember watching this one quite a while ago and being blown away by the emotional performance on this one... something I’m really not used to having to be dealing with on a Jean Rollin film. Revisiting it now on a gorgeous US Blu Ray from Redemption (some of Rollin’s films are still, bizarrely, cut in the UK... so really, don’t buy British)*, I’d have to say that the emotional performance at the heart of the film by the title character is maybe a little diminished in power but I’m mostly putting that down to knowing exactly where the movie is going. It’s actually a bit of a mixed bag though and I’d have to say now that, although I was remembering a lot more from this movie than I actually got, it’s still a resonant film but it pales a little in the wake of Rollin’s previous film, the truly emotional The Night Of The Hunted (reviewed by me here).

Although there are no actual vampires again in this movie (Rollin would return to his favourite night creatures later in life), it does still continue his idea of having a duo of protagonists in the film... who also double as a duo of antagonists, it has to be said, depending on your point of view. The two in question are two childhood friends and... it’s heavily implied... lovers. They are Catherine Valmont played, impressively, by Françoise Blanchard and Hélène, played by Marina Pierro (the actress/later muse of Walerian Borowczyk).

The film starts off with Catherine deceased for two years before she is accidentally resurrected by three gentleman dumping toxic waste drums into the family crypt... in the most improbably manner and in a coincidental and less than credible series of incidents when they are trying to steal whatever is on her, completely non-decomposed body. Don’t go there... it’s a fantasy movie, after all. Anyway, in her newfound, revived by fumes, zombie status, she kills one by gouging his eyes out, another by tearing his throat out... the third has already died by having his face accidentally melted in the chemical spill.

The film plays out like a series of bizarre coincidences, as Catherine returns to her house... more like a castle... and eventually kills the estate agent who is staying at the place while she is trying to sell it, as she is making love to her boyfriend. Then Hélène turns up and discovers Catherine has been resurrected from the dead and, their bond reunited, reminds Catherine how to speak, in a sequence not totally unlike, in Blanchard’s impressive performance, the famous blind man sequence in the 1931 version of Frankenstein (reviewed by me here). Shenanigans ensue as an actress/photographer is trying to find and take more pictures of the dead Catherine who she snapped in the field earlier in the film. Meanwhile, Hélène is starting to gather human victims for her dead friend in order to keep her alive, when it’s found that birds or animals are not good enough as a decent food stock.

But it’s not the story, which kind of hangs together in spite of how it sounds here, that’s the thing that keeps you watching. Nor is it all of the performances as, like Rollin’s early pictures, it’s all a bit hit and miss in that department, with some people doing good and others... best left uncommented on. But Blanchard and Pierro are spot on and the film explores the relationship and the way that Catherine’s zombie is increasingly, through her own growing self awareness (and attempted suicide by drowning... something which doesn’t really work when you’re already dead), seeming less of a bad person while Hélène is actually becoming the evil one of the two, attempting to procure living victims for her friend (indeed, Catherine actually cuts one of them free to help her escape before Hélène returns again).

The film ends with a moving moment where Catherine, driven by her own hunger, eats her willing friend and is left totally alone in the world with an uncertain future. It’s a bleak, nihilistic ending with Catherine screaming at the bloody demise of her friend by her own hand and, I guess it is quite powerful at that.

The film is somewhat atypical of Rollin in some ways. I mean, there’s some nice camerawork, for instance, when Hélène has left a body for Catherine she goes into a small tower filled with pigeons to get away from the screams and, looking up at the ceiling, the camera rotates on a POV from her viewpoint... which is cross cut with the camera rotating the other way at the same speed as we watch Cathrine eat her latest victim. However, there are also various things which I don’t remember seeing Rollin typically do that often, if at all, such as zoom shots, repeats of a shot in slow motion with a phased sound in the background to emphasise a moment early on in the film... and a section of the film shot in jerky, hand held camera and edited to give a kind of chaotic vibe. So, yeah, I guess he was trying something new here too... although there is some confusion about a simultaneous American version made on the same sets at the same time on a different camera in English and shot with a different, quite hostile and aggressive director by all accounts, which never got released... so I’m wondering if some of those shots maybe made their way into the French version.

Another thing is that the goriness of the violence is quite high for Rollin and one wonders if that was a natural progression to be more explicit in the graphic violence or whether that was a condition imposed on him by the producer? It’s kinda interesting but, shot by Rollin, it nevertheless looks incredible. The score however, by one of Rollin’s earlier musical collaborators, Philippe D'Aram, seems a trifle ‘against the grain’ in certain parts of the film. Also, there’s a musical group playing in the village square who have obviously been overdubbed with something completely different... the big giveaway being that they’re seemingly playing an instrumental track but this doesn’t stop the singer belting out whatever song she was singing, with absolutely no vocal on the audio. Um... yeah, okay.

Either way, The Living Dead Girl looks fantastic with Rollin’s usual penchant for the naked female form coming to the fore, mingled with buckets of blood (usually splashed all over said female forms) and some beautiful looking shots. It’s a nice enough movie and, still unusually for Rollin, has an emotional depth to it barely approached by the majority of his movies... but I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a jumping on point if you’ve not seen any of his other masterpieces, for sure. Great if you’re a Rollin fan but maybe best to seek out some of his other movies first, if you are not in the vicinity of that particular fanbase.

*Actually, the recent Indicator editions, which are also quite beautiful in their limited edition versions, seem to be free from cuts in the UK... although it’s very telling as to which of the more famous Rollin titles have not been released by them over here yet. So far they’re safe releases so far but, you know, do your research.

Monday 26 February 2024

The Target Book











Lest We Target

The Target Book -
A History Of The
Target Doctor Who Books

by David J Howe
Telos Publishing
ISBN: 9781845831844


Just a quick shout out of a review to a wonderful book my cousin got me for Christmas. The Target Book - A History Of The Target Doctor Who Books will, I’m sure, bring back lots of memories and rushes of childhood nostalgia for many fans of Doctor Who, above a certain age. I think I had maybe around 60 of these as a nipper (I gave up buying these when I felt I’d outgrown them, very soon after the first few Peter Davidson adaptations were released). Although, the point is made in the book that many of the authors and readers thought of these as being a bit more pitched at an older audience than just the kiddies, as evidenced by the fact, perhaps, that during the Tom Baker era of the series, two of the Baker adaptations, Robot (aka Doctor Who and the Giant Robot) and The Brain Of Morbius were also reissued as separate, ‘dumbed down’ junior editions.

This book is a long and loving look at the history of Target which, despite having a few other titles on its books, became a publishing phenomenon purely on the Doctor Who titles, which sold millions. This takes you right through the history of the company - the rise and fall, so to speak - starting off with a guy called Richard Henwood joining the Universal Tandem publishing company, initially based at Gloucester Road in South Kensington, in the early 70s and starting off a new imprint of the company which he called Target (and which had that distinctive logo that was a sign of quality and adventure to the... um... ‘target audience’ everywhere. The rights to the three Doctor Who novels previously written for the BBC and based on William Hartnell stories were, perhaps somewhat hesitantly, purchased by Henwood and reissued in new covers and... within a month he knew he needed to commission loads more to feed that very popular furnace... they sold like the proverbial hot cakes.

And so it was a deal was struck by the BBC and he approached writers to novelise various existing stories, many of them earmarked by Terrance Dicks, who was synonymous with the Target books and who has written a nice foreward to this very tome. He and other writers delivered the goods and the series went from record sales to more record sales.

The writer then charts the full history of Target up until its demise, when all the stories they were able to get (which was almost all of them) had been adapted and the well ran dry, at which point they semi successfully started commissioning both ‘new’ and ‘missing’ adventures when they were owned by Virgin (the missing ones being stories that existed as scripts for the show but then weren’t, for whatever reason, produced).

The book is absolutely chock full of colourful illustrations including the entire range of Doctor Who Target books up until they were acquired by Virgin and the decision was made to stop using the imprint (it’s back now, with new Doctor Who adventures put out in covers imitating the style of the ones used in the early seventies, by original artist Chris Achilleos no less... who sadly passed away back in 2021, after this book was first published). There are also many previously unpublished illustrations such as various original cover sketches, many of them nothing like the final covers which adorned the finished books.

In addition to this there are constant sidebars throughout, covering the writers - such as Dicks, Malcome Hulke, David Whittaker etc - and the various cover artists - such as Achilleos, Jeff Cummins and Andrew Skilleter - not to mention the odd member of the production staff through various eras of the company. There are also some interesting nuggets such as tables of the various alternate titles used, when the original story title was not deemed exciting enough to capture the imagination of the reading public. I’d forgotten about this and there were a fair few than I’d remembered but, for example, Spearhead From Space became Doctor Who And The Auton Invasion, The Web Planet became Doctor Who And The Zarbi, The Silurians became Doctor Who And The Cave Monsters, Terror Of The Zygons became Doctor Who And The Loch Ness Monster... and so on.

My only criticism with this wonderful tome would be two glaring omissions in terms of the stories behind the novels. One was... well most fans of the series would know when I say KKLAK! Yes, the time Chris Achilleos experimented with using a comic book style piece of onomatopoeia on the cover and made himself unobtainable so the art department at Target, that hated the idea, had to run with it. 

The other was when former screen companion Harry Sullivan... who was played by actor Ian Marter, who wrote a fair few Target adaptations himself (and who tragically died in his forties) introducing something which is almost a swear word into one of his books. Now, I’ve never seen this discussed anywhere but, when his adaptation of the Patrick Troughton story Enemy Of The World was published, a decade or more since the story first aired, I distinctly remember Marter having one character call another a ‘bastard’. This caused a sensation in the playground because, for one, everyone assumed Target was an imprint for children and secondly... and much more controversially for me... since it was a BBC family show, there was no way that word would have been used on the original broadcast (and since tapes of the original broadcast version of that show were happily discovered a decade or so ago, I can confirm that the word is definitely missing from the televised edition). So, yeah, I always wondered if there was any controversy within the headquarters of Target at the time but, this book doesn’t shed any enlightenment on that one, I’m afraid.

But even so, The Target Book - A History Of The Target Doctor Who Books is an outstanding tome for fans of the show who were buying these things in the 70s and 80s (and beyond although, the novelisations stopped becoming special when home video arrived, obviously) and it also gives a fascinating insight into the thought processes and contract deals behind the release of these, once very popular novels. Not to mention some little panels called VWOORP! VWOORP! which reprint various Target writers’ descriptions of the noise the TARDIS makes when it materialises and dematerialises. And, also, it was nice seeing the cover of The Doctor Who Monster Book again (although I might have actually hung onto that one, somewhere, maybe in the loft).

Sunday 25 February 2024

The Five Venoms








Spied A Man
Fighting Venom


The Five Venoms
aka Five Deadly Venoms
aka Wu du
Hong Kong 1978
Directed by Cheh Chang
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B


Ninth up in the recent(ish) Arrow films ShawScope Volume 1 boxed edition is The Five Deadly Venoms and it’s one of just two of the films presented here which I had already seen. The last time I watched it was on my old Region 3 Celestial pictures DVD under the title which I personally think it’s still more well known as, Five Deadly Venoms. I think I quite liked it the first time I saw it but, I have to say, catching up with it again now I feel it drags quite considerably compared to many of the other films in this set.

This one starts of with an old master trying to cure himself of some unspecified illness by boiling himself in a large cauldron of medicine. He is alone in his house with his young student. However, that particular house he is the master of is the... drumroll... House Of The Five Venoms. The young student he has taken on recently is technically the sixth venom but, he is not fully trained up in martial arts yet. The old master is a villain and the Venoms have committed unspecified evils against martial artists over the years as they are ‘anti-martial arts’. All have since gone into the world under special aliases and continue to do things that some may find could be be considered regrettable.

And then we are shown each of the five venoms in training scenarios practicing martial arts as the master breaks down their special skills to the kid. Which, excuse me, makes absolutely no sense since they are an organisation opposed to martial arts but, who am I to argue with the ways of kung fu. So, in the training sessions, each of the five venoms wears an elabourately painted face mask that makes each one look like a member of rock group KISS. The only real difference being that each has the animal of his special skill stuck as a kind of 3D relief on the mask on the forehead (don’t worry folks... it looks sillier than it sounds).

So we have Thousand Hands... who practices the Centipede Style and can move his hands around very fast to make it appear he has lots of hands (kind of). We see him smashing lots of plates to somehow demonstrate this. We have Snake Spirit, who does Snake Style... his hands imitating the style of the head and tail of the snake (originally this was supposed to be a female character in the original script). I don’t think they needed to explain that one to me too much, I would say since, later in the movie, whenever he fights, his hands make hissing, snakey noises for emphasis.  We also have three more venoms practicing in Scorpion Style, Gecko Style and Toad Style. Yeah, don’t ask.

Anyway, the old master is repentant of running a house of evil masters and so he knows that an old man living in a town with the secret of the treasure of the five venoms, will be under threat from these five. He says that youngster venom number six would be no match for any of these guys but if he teams up with any of them who may show that they still have a sense of righteousness, if he can find them, he will be able to defeat the others and then get the secret of where the treasure is, so it can be used for charitable purposes. The old master then dies, leaving his new ward with his noble mission.

So we have a backdrop of a small town with a police force but the five venoms, some known to the audience and some not but, certainly, at this stage, unknown to each other (since none of them knows what each looks like or what name they have taken) are also in town. Two of them murder the old man and his servants but don’t get the location. The mysterious scorpion, whose identity remains hidden but... well... I worked out which one it was from very early on in the film, over an hour before he reveals himself... does have enough intelligence to discover where the treasure map is hidden. Then, when people who are mostly hidden venoms get implicated in the murder, he starts playing people off against other to whittle down the number of surviving venoms Meanwhile, the local police and magistrate, who are taking things very seriously... also have more than a couple of the venoms hiding within the system (yeah, saw through those right away too). In fact, the police take things very seriously indeed and I think modern policing could learn from this method. The officers are told they have ten days to solve the case. The first outstanding day where the case is not solved they will get ten strokes of the cane and the second day, twenty strokes and so on. If only Cressida Dick could have employed these same methods, she may well have had a more efficient police force and still be in charge of them today, I suspect.

There’s not much more to the story than that but I would say that the film is big on mystery, conspiracy and intrigue and little on actual action. There are a few small set pieces including the inevitable fight at the end between four surviving scorpions and the young novice (who has teamed up with one of them) and the action is good, especially the wirework which allows two of the actors to suddenly jump up and stand on a wall at right angles to everybody else like Spider-Man without showing the faintest trace of the wire work. So this stuff is very well done but... there’s just not enough of it to maintain any kind of pace for the movie and it feels a little uneven in that way. There are also some pretty mean spirited torture scenes in the movie which I could have done without.

So yeah, that’s my short take on The Five Venoms and, although the film is highly revered by many, I still can’t see what all the fuss is about on this one and personally I wouldn’t recommend it as a jumping on point for Shaw Brothers. Certainly not the best of the films in this set but still fairly entertaining if you’re not expecting too much from it, I would say.

Tuesday 20 February 2024

Madame Web












Uncle Ben’s
Responsibility


Madame Web
Directed by S.J. Clarkson
USA/Canada
2024 Sony/Columbia
UK Cinema Print


Warning: Some spoilers, if you care enough.

Hmm... okay, Madame Web is the first of three Sony films released this year as part of their extended Spider-Man universe. You would think that now they have absconded again with the rights to the character, that they would, at least, feature Spider-Man in these three stories but... oh no. Or rather, actually, yes kinda in this one but... okay I’ll get to that in a minute. The film stars Dakota Johnson as the titular character (although she’s never once referred to as that in the film... which makes total sense when you see the movie) and, due to shenanigans involving her birth and special powers she doesn’t realise she had (like Diana in the first Wonder Woman movie), she is trying to protect three ‘teenage’ girls from the movie’s main villain, who sees future versions of them killing him at some unspecified point. When I say teenage... Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor and Sydney Sweeney are all in their twenties, the latter only a few ears away from 30 but, still, it’s Hollywoodland and they’re all supposed to be between about 16-18, it seems to me.

Anyhow... the movie itself has got some of the worst reviews (bearing in mind it wasn’t even screened for critics) I’ve heard for a Marvel related movie but, I have to say, though it’s inferior to almost any of the MCU branded Marvel films, it’s actually not the disaster that people are reporting it to be. Saying that though, I can totally see why it has got that reaction because the structure of the movie promises way more than it gives in terms of what the content of the film is actually going to be... the people making this weren’t that smart not to realise what they did, I think.

So, yeah, Johnson’s character is someone who gets brief glimpses of the very near future, like a very strong deja vu, so she can change things just before they are supposed to happen. So the director will sometimes use a big sound (like a champagne cork being pulled) or sometimes, quite cleverly, a distinctive camera movement, to usher in a replay of the events as they are about to repeat. And although it’s an obvious concoction the first time she does it, it is done pretty well throughout and the visual and audio shorthand built on those key aspects does the job very well.

You also have a couple of good performances, especially Sydney Sweeney (who was so brilliant in last year’s Reality, reviewed here), who really does well with facial expressions and so on to make her ‘bizarrely teen’ teenager come to life in quite sophisticated ways. However, although there are some good and likeable performances here, the structure of the film undermines a lot of the work being done.

Here’s the thing, all the stuff in the trailers where the three girls are in costume and using their spider powers are... just seen as brief, visions of the future in the heads of both the title character and the villain. So there are maybe three brief moments, maybe totalling less than a minute and a half, where you see the girls in costume, at some undetermined future date. In fact, whatever superpowers the three ‘teens’ do acquire... they don’t get them in this movie. It’s for some ‘future’ movie which, I’m guessing, might not even get made... and with Dakota Johnson jokingly downplaying the movie when she’s supposed to be promoting it, I’m guessing the four leads would have to be locked into contracts before they return to those characters. Which may well be the case actually but, I’m guessing this movie won’t be doing the numbers enough to make the next film worth making. This is obviously, like the up and coming Venom 3 and Kraven The Hunter movies, supposed to be leading to the Sinister Six, which started happening (again, it’s Sony’s second lead in after the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies) in Morbius (reviewed here)... when Morbius and Michael Keaton’s Vulture character met at the post-credits on that film. But, if the other two perform badly (I suspect Venom will do well but I can’t see the new Kraven doing much better than Morbius), then that may still not happen.

To that end though, there are some really bizarre references to the Spider-Man universe in this film... asides from the Spider powered natives in the Amazon plus the main villain all dressing pretty similarly to Spider-Man. The thing is, though, Sony are making references and shouting them out while simultaneously keeping a lid on things a little with their linking materials. If you are a Spider-Man fan and are not distracted by the visuals, you’ll ‘get’ who a couple of the characters are supposed to be... and one of them is teased but not named, even though fans will know exactly who he is.

The main action of the movie takes place in 2003 and I couldn’t figure out why they did this. Until Dakota Johnson’s character Cassie, a paramedic, calls her partner by name. He’s... drum roll... Ben Parker. Yeah, that’s right... future Uncle Ben. And the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ line, which has been a core Spider-Man ingredient since his first comic book appearance in 1962, is dangled about like crazy in slightly reworded terms. And, that’s not all... Ben’s sister is pregnant and the girls are trying to protect her so she can give birth at the end of the movie. Casual viewers won’t twig it because he’s not named (despite an earlier ‘guess the name of the baby’ scene calling attention to it in the most obvious manner) but by the end of the film she gives birth to Peter Parker... aka Spider-Man. I guess the actor who was/is supposed to be playing that role in ‘films to come’ for Sony is not yet decided, is my guess. Or... you know... not yet given a big enough pay hike to return to that role.

But the biggest problem with the film, as I eluded to earlier, is the fact that it keeps telegraphing the gals suiting up and being super heroes... and so this is what the audience is expecting to happen at some point in the movie. So many people may not be aware that the climactic action scene is exactly that until it's over, I’m guessing, because they are waiting for the superhero element to come into play. It never does and that’s why I suspect we’ve had the huge negative reviews on this. It’s just an overly complicated set up for a film to come (with a poor ending, it has to be said). But, like I said, it’s not a terrible movie... just an unsatisfying one so, yeah, I can totally understand why it’s getting the word-of-mouth that it has. Madame Web is not a crowd pleaser but it’s also not as bad as, say, Morbius was so... there’s that. I had an okay time with it... I’d probably watch it again. Just not anytime soon. Maybe worth watching to see how it locks into the next few Sony Spider-movies perhaps but, there’s absolutely no post-credits scene on this one so, something tells me that rug may have already been pulled.