Ivan_Bradley Reviews

Night of the Templar (2012)

Reviewed from a parallel universe, far, far away

[8 June 2013]

A Paul Sampson Film.

Occasionally I watch a film that leaves me so dumbstruck that I go and look it up on the ol' net thingy. This is one such film. I watched amazed as this trope-fest unfolded in front of me, shook my head and went looking for the reviews. My amazement at the film was nothing compared with my amazement at the glowing reviews with their talk of fine acting and marvellous story, superb direction, lavish sets..

I was so amazed that I checked the profiles and review of a couple of the critics. Yep. it was the only film they'd reviewed. I checked a couple more, then another half dozen, then a dozen... Sure enough, in each and every case it was the only film they'd ever reviewed on IMDb. I gave up after just over half of the reviews. All were on-offs. Am I seeing a smoking gun here, anyone? Of course, my selection of reviewers was made blindly, though apparently with the sort of randomness that makes us all lightning-struck lottery winners. Maybe the ones I didn't look at were all seasoned critics who had never met Paul Sampson. You can do your own leg-work - or let your inner statistician decide.

A Paul Sampson Film.

The hilarity began with the opening credits.. A Paul Sampson film, handled by Sampson Enterprises. Produced by Paul Sampson. Directed by Paul Sampson. I think maybe Wardrobe by Paul Sampson, Catering by... I'm sure you get the picture. Starring wait for it... wait for it, it'll be a surprise... PAUL SAMPSON!!!

Rather like - Starring George Lucas as Darth Solo!!!-

Now I've absolutely nothing against vanity enterprises. Some great art has come our way thusly. This isn't some of it, unfortunately. This is to film what the Dave Clarke Five was to drumming - pretty boy with the business plan at the front of the stage. In this case, pretty boy with (it seems) a lot of friends with favours he can call in, in front of the camera. The whole premise is "look how handsome/cool I am.. how can I wrap some kind of plot around that to justify me mugging at the camera for an entire feature film?" Well, he's appealing enough in a caricature-handsome large-featured kind of way and he's in pretty good shape, but boy, he wants us to notice it. If anyone doubts this, check out the whole new genre of "Sword and Underwear" he seems to have invented as an answer to decades of chain-mail bikini fantasies. Unfortunately it presents as very dry parody, which is often a wonderful thing - but not when it's this clumsy and the thing being parodied is the ongoing film itself. Anyway, the acting, and "feel" of the entire film was that of a comedy TV series doing a sketch based on an early 80s porn film, without any of the porn. Not the Swedish/Dutch "I haff cumm to mends your vashink machine. It looks ferry vet down there, let me get my tool out while the funky guitar and keyboard play..." but the American/German "We have rented a place in the country and have only one reel of film. Let us party and think up a situation we can finish up by being naked and smearing each other with offal and ketchup" type of entertainment that my grandmother so likes to watch, but purely for the soundtrack.

I enjoyed the watching of the film, rather than enjoyed watching it if you see the difference. Sometimes I enjoy the process of watching the film-making, not necessarily the end result. Here the end result was risible, which is rather a shame because a couple of the cast were really putting something special into it and it was nice to see Carradine again though the parallels with Béla Lugosi in Plan Nine From Outer Space drew rather poignant grid lines. Sadly missed, both. Worth seeing as a curiosity, and if I must draw another parallel - in intent if not style or subject matter - I'd say Easy Rider for the focus on the ac-tors rather than the pseudo medievalism of Monty Python and the Holy Grail - which was far funnier on a smaller budget. Knights/Night Templar was not intentionally funny, and was not terrible enough to be really great as some truly memorable turkeys are, but it is an awful, fascinating train wreck of a movie which has no charm whatever. I feel the same cast could have pulled it off with more astute direction, but we'll never know for certain.

Oh - nice to see Mr Mxyzptlk again, playing The Butler.

3 out of 10 as it stopped me thinking about the overdraft and sciatica for the duration.

Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012 Video)

Plan 9 for the New Millennium

[9/10 · 24 March 2013]

I enjoyed this documentary.

I watch it for my school history research. I had heard that Nazis were not very nice people, but not sure how not nice that was. This film explain exactly why people not like Nazis. They have no sense of humour and they do not care that people get upset at having their face ripped off or spleen removed. Doctor Mengele is not a nice doctor. His bedside manner needs some work, and he needs refresher on infection control. Has nice hat and coat, however. Now I understand how bad Nazis are, even worse when zombies. I have decided not to become Nazi now. Was not sure until see this film. Maybe I think people say bad things about Nazis. Maybe they just misunderstood? No, Nazis are rather unpleasant. Yes, really. They not care about abortion or cut head off. This I have learned from this film and have cancelled interview at recruit bureau. Close thing, Pheww! Also, secret of UFO is explained. I have no need to watch discovery channel or Penn and Teller again because this film show me truth. German technology more advanced than Chinese or even Korean. I like that everything is made to last. Not shoddy plastic. Big rivets and sheets of iron - probably galvanized before assembly for better life.

Wish more time spent on showing character of average Nazi soldier. Do he have wife and maybe zombie kids? What does he like to do on day off'? Does he watch television, maybe Oprah or Jay Lenno? Where he buy groceries and hobby supplies? What product to wash blood off? Must use a lot of it, whatever.

How Hitler comb his hair? This is never explained and I worry sleepless about it. Otherwise great documentary on what became of master race after world war. I never believe they went to moon, so not easily fooled by lies and conspiracy theories. This is much easier to understand, simple truth of it.

I would give ten points, but relentless seriousness in delivery means I can only give nein (!)

Dead Man (1995)

"I hate westerns," said the daughter

[10/10 · 27 April 2012]

I watched this two nights ago, then watched it again last night with The Young Daughter, whom I had to bribe to sit down with me because she "hates westerns" and has the attention span of a teenage girl/guppy. As the film progressed, she became more and more focused and more and more astonished. Part way through, she said, "I don't know if I like it…" and then she went on to explain in great detail exactly how much she DID like it. Her only negative - if indeed that is what it was - comment was that it scored 11/10 on the BatSh**CrazyOmeter. "I want to be Nobody. He's awesome!" she announced, adding him to the list of fictional characters she finds inspirational. The others are, I think, Sherlock Holmes and Death, along with Neil Gaiman who is less fictional than the others.

Me? I found myself thinking of everything by Kurosawa, and The Seventh Seal, and, for a moment or two, Blazing Saddles. It led to discussions about Carlos Castaneda and Danté's Divine Comedy. The Tibetan book of the Dead was also right in there as it surely had to be. What it maybe lacked in conventional narrative it more than made up for in provocation,inspiration and philosophical stimulation and it was a truly wonderful daddy/daughter meeting place. I'd recommend it for that alone.

Like being exposed to some pieces of classical music which aren't quite as immediate as pop culture offerings, she realized that she really enjoyed it only after seeing it through, and wants to see it again.

At the moment, I think it's probably the finest film I've ever seen, but that is context dependent, of course. It's hard to compare apples with oranges, or cheese with girders. However considered, it is a wonderful - awesome - film which I enjoyed immensely - more so on the second watching. There's not a spare shot anywhere in the film. Definitely on the re-re-watch list. One minor caveat: if you turn the sound up enough to catch the quietest dialogue, the guitar cutting in will take your fillings out.

Don't attempt to operate heavy machinery immediately after watching it.

The Book of Eli (2010)

Terrible.

[16 October 2010]

no dialogue....... mumble mumble... whisper...no dialogue... angry mumbling...fight scene...trudge trudge..mumble..

I rarely give up on a film. This one, I abandoned about a third of the way into the soul-sucking black hole that passed for a piece of cinema.

I went back and tried again, managing to ratchet my way a bit further.. I was right the first time.

This is monotonous turgid drivel pretending to be meaningful.. and the great meaning behind all the self-conscious posturing that the filmmakers inflict on us is the necessity to sublimate our humanity to the preservation of superstition. This is presented as a virtue. The perpetuation of prejudice and misunderstanding is something worth killing and dying for, apparently. No irony. No objectivity nor dispassionate portrait of a zealot, just the veneration of blind ignorance. I think this is a cult movie, but not in the usual sense. Far more literally, unfortunately. This is hagiographic fantasy akin to Joan of Arc, a story of delusion fuelled "purpose" which ultimately is an empty gesture. Visually, there's something stylish going on, albeit formulaic as if it's inspired by a reference cookbook of cinematography's greatest gimmicks, but beyond that, this film has nothing to offer but might work as an insomnia cure.

A great cast put to the oars of a floundering ship.

2 out of 10 for the odd moment of lighting - the back-lit fight scene was rather good. The rest? Bleughhh! Bleak.

The Hanging Tree (1959)

Better than I remember

[8/10 · 27 April 2010]

I saw this mid 60s as a B reel on one of my early going to the cinema alone (as in without parents but with a couple of mates)trips. I remember the very catchy theme tune and had vague memories of it being an excellent film and little more than that. I recently borrowed a DVD from a friend of a friend who'd found it posted on usenet a year or so back (I'd tried to buy it, unsuccessfully)

Well, it blew me away. The transfer was pretty good, though slightly blocked in the shadows. A bit "Technicolor" but perfectly watchable. The screenplay more than made up for any slight shortcomings in the print. Solid acting, great scenery too. My only reservation is the portrayal of mob mentality... the utter mindless greed and viciousness shown near the end of the film seemed almost one-dimensional compared with the rest of the story, but I suppose it could be more accurate than I'm finding comfortable. Photography is superb btw - the closing scene - personal redemption - is absolutely iconic - and not what you might expect from such a description. The fade out song a great touch.

The main sung title is rather dated, I'm afraid, but in a guilty pleasure sort of way - the production and singing style would let any musicologist date it to within a couple of years either way (If you know Rawhide, for example...) but I'm rather partial to that. My young daughter isn't, unfortunately. I digress. Well worth seeing I'm posting this to confirm that there MUST be adequate source material to warrant a remastering. If Warner ever extract their proverbial and get to it, I'll be first in the queue.

Kill Switch (2008 Video)

W-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-hat the h-h-h-h-eck?

[1/10 · 29 March 2010]

Shoot the editor. No, really. This is the worst cut film in the history of film cutting. A linear mosaic, it reads like a bar-code scanner being run over a cubist painting by a dervish with St. Vitus' dance. Using the stuttering "ner-ner-ner-ner-nineteen+ visual cut'n'paste once - even twice - throughout the whole film would be acceptable, if a little gimmicky. Using it as the default widget in every fight scene - not only for cuts, but to highlight random fist impact frames - is just naffly tasteless, like some prat holding the camera on the diagonal to be "cool."

Was this cut on a suite set up for an MTV job with all the presets set up for hip-hop gangsta rap and then operated randomly by a blindfolded passer-by? This level of medium intrusion is criminally incompetent, and has made what was probably a fairly bad but entertaining project into a completely rubbish unintelligible piece of pointless drivel.

I was looking forward to a bit of mindless, gratuitously violent entertainment - why else would I have watched a Big Steve film? I think I saw some, but I was so dazzled and wrong-footed with all the smoke and mirrors that I'm not really sure. Frustrated. I am.

Technical rant over.

Everything else I want to say has already been said throughout this thread, which makes better viewing than the film.

Go watch Death Wish 2 instead. Probably just as bad in most ways, but at least you can see what's going on.

Bah!

Pickman's Model (1981)

A near miss, nearly

[4/10 · 25 August 2008]

THE Twist in this is rather different from that in the novel, and is therefore er, more of a twist than it would be otherwise for Lovecraft aficionados. Unfortunately it's telegraphed rather unsubtly at frequent intervals throughout the film, so it comes as a it of a let-down.

That being said, the whole story rests on Pickman's genius at being able to portray the unimaginably horrible, and if, perforce, Pickman's work needs to be shown in the film, we have an insurmountable problems on our hands. Any prop painting would either need to be the result of unbelievable insane genius - say someone of the calibre of Dali painting inside a death camp whose inmates were all surgically mutilated, starving eat 'em raw cannibals, overseen by guards who were actually demons who genuinely enjoyed eyeball-gouging public necrophilia. Maybe H.R. Giger could do it. Maybe Bosch could have done it, but "a friend of the director" can't.

The artwork suffices to a large extent because of the changes made to the novel to erect the less-ambitious screenplay, but it may have been better implied than featured explicitly. It's a pretty fair attempt, but it tends to come over as faintly comical rather than profoundly disturbing. Perhaps the Radio Play is the best medium of all for presenting Lovecraft.

Add to the distractingly "prop" props the excruciatingly slow pace and dialogue delivery by actors of the "let's parody Orson Welles on moggadon" school and the presentation becomes too tedious for this ever to rate highly. It's a shame because the atmosphere is really pretty good for a film-club production and the soundtrack score is very good - good enough to justify watching the film, in fact.

Were it not for the all too obvious Acting and the amateurish images ostensibly made by an artistic genius, I'd give this a 6 or 7, but unfortunately it has to be content with a 4.

I'd watch it again, though. At least the sound is in English. Other versions I've seen have been foreign language productions (with much scarier visuals) but no English soundtrack OR subtitles.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

Reality shows

[9/10 · 26 June 2008]

This was a disturbing documentary.

Anyone who has "that thing" about clowns will recognise this warning for what it really is, and heed its advice carefully.

I've just checked under the bed and I'm safe to write this - for now.

Killer Klowns is an astonishing film that hits the ickiness of clowns reaction (not really a phobia, more of a complete revulsion) right on the button. Yep, all clowns actually look just like the ones in the film but they have a certain glamour that dazzles most people and stops them from seeing them how utterly grossandickynasty they really are. This fine film should brush the scales from their eyes..

Everything else has been said in some excellent reviews on here. Marvellous craftsmanship and excellent cinema on a low budget. This isn't in the same pile as Plan 9 or all the other acknowledged bad films that are fun to watch because of their stunning incompetence. Killer Klowns is actually great film-making which makes a self- referential, aware virtue of its low budget and ends up being somehow understatedly camp. It is whimsical, certainly, but very creative, perceptive and strangely (I know, I know... ) horrifying.

Shaun of the Dead and Black Sheep were wonderful gore-fests, with stomach turning entrail-waving humour (Ewww!!) to delight any comedy horror crowd, but Killer Klowns has a sideways, knowing look at apparent reality that tinges the viewing with genuine horror. Very slight, but definitely there. If H P Lovecraft had ever been taken to the circus as a 3 yr old and dragged behind the scenes by a grandparent and forced to meet one of these shadow- glimpsed monsters from a shunned dimension, he would likely have penned such a tale.

Millions (2004)

The Fly.. Oops!

[1/10 · 8 March 2008]

Here's the first half:

Shallow Grave gets into a teleporter booth. Unbeknown to it, buzzing round in the corner is a reel of Whistle Down The Wind. When the door hisses open, out strides Millions...

I've got about half way through this, watching it with my daughter (11) and we've both decided that it's not worth continuing. This film is essentially a big screen version of a made-for-kids type drama of the sort that is aired on television in that slot between school turn out and tea time. If it had featured an all Australian cast and setting, I think most people would know what I mean. Cutesy naive kiddies, daft situation and a paper thin plot do not make good cinema though they would probably be OK to babysit the children till dinner is ready.

Personally, the syrupy film made me squirm uncomfortably. The child o'mine had exactly the same reaction. Perhaps it's a genetic aversion.

If you like reading magazines about what flavour underwear today's celebrities go for, can;t bear to miss Coronation Street and drool over chocolate box pictures of big-eyed puppies sitting in an old boot.. if you sit at a work tea break and discuss ONLY the content of last night's soaps or their contents of your grandkids diapers and their teething problems... If your idea of heaven is the Queen Mother nursing the little baby Jesus while waving benignly at lookers-on.. If you keep the plastic delivery bags on your furniture to stop it getting dirty or insist that visitors take their shoes off in case they soil the carpet you've chosen for its looks rather than its function, You'll like this film.

IF, however, you have an I.Q. of more than 80 or a reading age of over 8, enjoy strong coffee and stimulating conversation and hate that Birdy Song, you maybe don't do "twee." In that case, do NOT waste any of your life on seeing this treacly irritation. Others have warned you but maybe you don't believe them - after all, so many critics can't be wrong, can they? Hmmm.. just look at how TV viewing figures correlate with program "quality." It seems a great number of people actually enjoy being fed dumbed-down mind-numbing ^&*(, so if you LIKE that sort of thing, I have no place telling you not to watch it. Enjoy and mark my review down.

I'm going to miss the second half of the film, so if anything interesting happens, I'll miss that too.

Maybe the schizophrenic delusional kid will get carried away and murdered by the villain?

Maybe Skippy will get back in time to save everyone from being run over by the train?

'Allo 'Allo! (1982–1992)

Fine champagne left out and losing its sparkle.

[5/10 · 20 February 2008]

After - or during - far too many series-es, this show became flat and no longer entertaining. A great shame. When it was fresh it excellent.

The first pilot episode - season 1, E00, has to rank among the very very best of television comedy of all time. The introduction of the theatrical device of accent = language is absurdly simple and breathtakingly brilliant. The pilot explains all the rules of the game to the viewer in one hilarious scene (airmen behind the curtains) and thereafter, the device is used consistently, never breaking the rules and yet developing the theme into all sorts of absurd comical extrapolations.

One of the great strengths of Allo Allo is that it plays with xenophobia and national stereotyping in a way that has become unfashionable. As the politically correct movement has blossomed in the wake of the holier-than-thou prissy anal retentive neo-puritans who have tainted social thinking with their rabid chauvinism, an awful lot of areas of expression, analysis are now "bad taste." These areas are tools for exploring the very ideas of nationalism, racial prejudice and bigotry and whilever these ideas cannot be explored because someone has decreed that the playing field must be closed down, then no real progress in understanding can ever be made. Instead we have learned behaviour defined by narrow-mindedness and the fear of being seen not to champion whatever is socially fashionable.

Please do not confuse humour with ideology.

Is it possible to make a racist joke without being racist? Where you stand on this one determines how hidebound by ideology you are.

Would Father Ted be well received everywhere in the world? Would it even be tolerated without Reformation?

Allo Allo seems superficially xenophobic because it draws lines around stereotypes and "differentness" but it pokes fun at the roots of bigotry, reminding us that people are people irrespective of their mindset, beliefs, persuasions or foibles. It doesn't stop us being appalled at Nazism or the atrocities of war. It DOES remind us that these atrocities were carried out by ordinary, probably extremely likable, people whose pressure to conform to an ideology was greater that any individual could stand.

Humour is nothing to be frightened of - unless one subscribes to a repressive ideology which cannot stand humour's light being cast on it.

In Allo Allo we are invited to question. In Newspeak, we are not.

We need more irreverence. What we really need are sitcoms about PC thinking, child abuse, Islam, slavery. Actually, one program could probably cover all of that

Viva la difference, chaps!!!

Rating? Pilot episode 9/10 First series 8/10 Later series 2/10

DOA: Dead or Alive (2006)

Good film, bad film. Bad film, good film.

[6/10 · 10 September 2007]

It's marvellous to see the exploitative process at work.

I enjoy television adverts because of the sheer intensity of the film-making. Every second has to count. There's no padding in the visuals and the visual orchestration tends to be very, very tight. DOA has something of that quality about it. It reads like a very very long advertisement. The visuals are all glossy and efficient. There's nothing extraneous to the process of ramming as much purty laydee and wannabeemeetoo ass-kickery in your face as possible. Great visual stimulation, but ultimately it has nothing to say.

This film excites your visual taste buds.

It does not satisfy your visual hunger.

What it does is show amazing ingenuity in contriving situations that resemble the video game by linking the most tenuously associated elements in a "natural" way that never looks natural but looks… er, contrived.

Is this a good film?

In all conventional senses, it is pure rubbish. No plot, no acting, no story. No realism. As vacuous as Streetfighter. Far shallower than Mortal Kombat. Even dafter than (dare I say it?) Enter The Dragon.

Yet I. for one, will be watching it again. The action is fun. No more, no less. The girlies are all. in their own way, perfect eye candy, and that is, just like the filmmakers knew it would be, entirely enough.

Is it a good film? No - but it's a very cleverly worked out and targeted BAD film A brilliant bad film, really.

It's marvellous to see the exploitative process at work.

Category 7: The End of the World (2005)

I can't see the strings, anyway

[2/10 · 3 September 2007]

I'm 1/4 way through watching this.. so riveted that I'm writing this as I'm continuing watching. See that audience in The Producers, all stunned and jaw-dropped in disbelief? That's me, that is.

Godawful teevee soap with an agenda to see how many OTT special effects can be bolted on in the shortest time. This is the film Gerry Anderson would have made in 1965 if the "Thunderbirds" team had access to CGI but whoever writing the screenplay had never been to the cinema

OK, there are plenty of comments on this board about the laughable script, the casting, the competition to match silly stereotypes as closely as possible, the cheesy, overstating the obvious, PC subtext.

Overall, it's like a text book illustration of "How to write to a tried and tested, lowest common denominator FORMULA." In that sense, it's quite informative and worth watching if you're with a film crew or bunch of journalists seeking to hone your analytical skills. Herein is the film's "strength" and also its core weakness as a piece of as-sold entertainment.

So, in terms of cinema craft.

It's lit like a documentary. Colour balance is all over th place in what is maybe an attempt to produce "It's real life" atmosphere with available light footage (footage?) edited in with a hatchet.

The camera is tracking around and re-framing ALL the time, like yer uncle Joe filming a wedding. Actually, the camera work is, in a sense, extremely competent. Subjects in shot are "nicely framed" but every shot has pullbacks, tracking and a "we've paid for this dolly so we're damn-well going to get our money's worth out of it!!" MTV style that is pandering to a generation of film-watchers with no attention span who need to be constantly re-stimulated by intrusive cinematography. I think that's the crucial problem about this film, visually. The direction is constantly shouting "Whoo-Eeh! Look at me!!" instead of telling a story.

As I said, think of uncle Joe shooting home movies. His over-riding thought is, "Hey, this is a MOVIE camera, not a boring, old-fashioned still camera, so everything ought to be moving all the time." So, wherever possible, it does. If the subject can't move, the camera does.

I just got to the part with the smug evangelist rehearsing his stadium speech - it was so hilarious I had to rewind and play it again.

Gerry Anderson would have been PROUD!.

Gerry Anderson, of course, would have a truck or some-such crashing into a power pylon, a tree, a bridge support… Said struck object would always fall over, usually in flames and would ALWAYS explode at least once or twice as it hit the ground. Anderson is my favourite closet pyromaniac, ably sent-up in "Team America." I'm halfway wondering if Category 7: The End of the World is a subconscious homage to the genre. The acting and dialogue would be entirely suited to puppetry

I'll finish watching this now. If my opinion changes, I'll edit this post later.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

Beautifil visuals, charismatic acting, mawkish propaganda

[8/10 · 24 August 2007]

OK the CGI and visual continuity was flawed, but not enough to detract while in the suspension of disbelief mode necessary to enjoy storytelling.

Watching a book, reading a film, tasting a song.. all are enjoyed from a different critical perspective than that of dealing with everyday life. If you can't switch off your pragmatic uberself, you can't be entertained by fantasy because you'll be too busy looking for the cracks in the pavement to find anywhere to walk. SO - watching with my sceptical criticism chip bypassed - this is a hugely enjoyable film. The White Witch is one of THE most marvellous creations in the history of cinema. Gorgeous fantasy. Even the cutesy goat-boy living in the closet was superbly portrayed.

I perversely enjoyed the terribly, terribly stiff upper lip Britishness of the kids and the shiny-armoured pre-raphaelite England. Victorian fairy tales and heroic bronze statues evoking a golden age better-times period that never actually existed but which inhabits a world of alternative nostalgia that we all find ourselves wanting to believe in but which is no more real than the world behind any wardrobe.

Why perversely? The real downfall of the film is not in the continuity, the special effects, casting, acting or (ahem) wardrobe but is something so fundamental that while it IS all the pre-raphaelite imagery and ideology that stirs the emotions so positively, it also is that very pre-raphaelite imagery and ideology that blinds us. Ideology is elevated to undeserved importance. Ideology becomes everything. The criticism harks right back to the original book. The flip-side of the whole Elgar and William Blake Englishmess that I confess to enjoying in my suspended-disbelief world of an entertained film-watcher is a terrible mawkishness that betrays the pleasantry of fantasy in the real world outside of the entertainment medium.

The overwhelming Christian agenda which the film manages to amplify and throw into very sharp relief is utterly cloying. so much so that my 10yr old daughter pointed it out, unbidden and unprompted. It dominates and manipulates and is so-in-yer-face as to be embarrassing in its audacity.

The central problem to Lewis's type of Christian world-view is that it glorifies the nobility of sacrifice as the ultimate spiritual achievement while missing something extremely important. A self sacrifice, undergone in the absolute knowledge of resurrection is not a sacrifice at all. A real sacrifice is one where the outcome is hopeless and unknown. There is no bravery in a suicide-bomber's death or a crusader's riding into certain death if he KNOWS he will obtain eternal life as a consequence of passing through that particular, painful door.

The film, meanwhile, hard-sells us redemption and cosy - in fact smug - Christianity disguised as a fairy tale with a thin veneer of talking animals and sparkliness. The big lion knows he has a trump card up his sleeve so he can afford to string everyone along and get them all upset and bereaved right up to the point of rolling away the metaphorical stone, and this is spiritual dishonesty. This kind of emotional manipulation ( I'm talking about the character as written, not the cinematic direction) is seen as commendable by the writer, and yet it is morally bankrupt. It is the kind of brainwashing that prepares us to know our place and go to war to fight for the ideals of our "betters."

There is a lot of talk about destiny, and accepting it without question as a pont of faith. Whenever Christians run up against something which makes absolutely no sense, it is explained away as a "mystery" which meed not be looked at too closely by anyone who has enough faith. Having faith is the ultimate virtue. You do not need proof of anything, you need no evidence other than hearsay. Someone else says they had proof, told someone else who told someone else and eventually someone else wrote about it and that is proof enough for YOU. You are then told that you have to accept this apocryphal proof with none of your own and eventually you are conditioned to see your emotional reaction as all the proof you need. yes, this is faith. If the subject matter is different, it is superstition. Same thing.

Faith, of course, is the root of all human misery. This is not how lewis's generation tended to see things.

The protagonists, being of good Christian stock as all middle class British school children of their period would have been, have been schooled to believe in things which cannot be scrutinized on the say-so of someone else's claim to a better understanding than ours, and the story reeks of it. Lewis is careful to keep the "real" religious truth out of the story and relies on the allegorical setting to punch the associated values home. Just dial in new names at your convenience.

Duty. Destiny. Faith. Heroism. Sacrifice. Redemption. By Jingo, this sis the stuff that makes our Empire what it is today!

The theme is hammered home so unsubtly that, as I said, my 10yr old daughter was beginning to cringe after about the fifth or tenth biblical allusion. We did, however, really enjoy watching the film together and will certainly watch it again and recommend it to others to watch, albeit with the slight caveat about the heavy-handed theme.

Beerfest (2006)

Cheese, but not English Cheese

[4/10 · 7 April 2007]

I saw the excellent trailer for Beerfest in one of last year's many movie theatre visits, and put it near the top of my "must see" list. I didn't see it playing at any local movie houses, so I eventually caught it on the ol' home cinema.

I enjoyed it in a "I was expecting steak but got served Spam" kind of way. It filled a gap but was, compared to what I was expecting, rather a disappointment.

The slapstick was great. The acting, plot, characterisations, prop sourcing, locations and costumes were all pretty terrible.

The idea was great and parts of the execution were hilarious, but on balance, I think it could have been SO much better with more on-the-ball direction but without any further great expenditure.

A certain amount of self-aware cheesiness can be extremely entertaining, but cheesiness that's the result of inept direction wears thin pretty quickly

I can live with outrageous accents and stereotypical behaviour on cardboard-cutout "Chermans" and "Ozzies" but where the hell are these "English" guys from? Melbourne? Sydney? Jamaica? Mars? Surely the casting team knows someone who can do an accent that passes for English, even if they want to go for an inappropriate, comedic and exaggerated one? Silly-voiced upper-class-twit accents - all the team sounding like Hugh Grant or The Queen would at least sound recognisably English as would a Bob Hoskins guttersnipe or even a wildly exaggerated "Drusilla" (Buffy) approach, but this awful imitation British thing done by someone who can't keep in character from one sentence to the next is just plain annoying.

This, and the fancy-dress store costume sourcing, makes the production look badly researched and... cheapskate. Low budget doesn't mean failure - Look at Clerks, for example, or the original Animal House, and the extremely low funded Monty Python And The Holy Grail - but Beerfest looks like it was turned out by inexperienced teenagers who've been lent some gear and who know a few guys at the local drama school or Am Dram society.

In spite of this, I particularly enjoyed the Chermans and the overt but entirely harmless racism permeating the entire film which, unfashionable as it is, can often be genuinely funny to anyone who hasn't got a politically-correct mission statement jammed firmly up their fundamentalism.

The Clangers (1969–1974)

Possibly..

[10/10 · 11 October 2006]

.. The finest thing to come out of the small screen at any time EVER.

The animation is the sort of thing you imagine you could knock up in your kitchen table on a few long winter nights.. stop camera, nudge puppet, expose a couple more frames, nudge puppet again.. it's jerky and quirky and utterly unsophisticated.

The Clangers themselves are basically pink knitted socks with eyes, and the props are, I believe, worked up from bits of thin brass sheeting, cardboard and Styrofoam.. with cotton wool and string, of course.

Without any visible lips to sync speech to, the Clangers just whistle and Oliver Postgate interprets what they say on the fly.

In spite of - or because of - this, the Clangers are more alive and have more personality than the most sophisticated cgi-generated and superbly voice-acted creations.

I look at the Clangers and I believe in them - they're real, but "illustrated" rather than depicted. The Clangers are a story being told, and carry the message with the film as words on a page carry a story. You don't accept that the ink on the paper is somehow alive, but you listen to the story behind the words. AND the storytelling is fantastic.

I look at Shrek, and I believe I'm seeing superb animation, but there's no real character behind the glossy facade. I see the printed words asking me to accept that they are real, rather than what they tell me is real. (yes, I like Shrek)

The Clangers are comfortable childhood dreams, the cosy warmth of snuggling down with a teddy bear with no worries beyond wondering what the weather will be like tomorrow.

The clangers inhabit a cosy, surreal reality where no-one ever gets hurt and something wonderful always happens to delight the senses, even if Mother Clanger doesn't always approve..

image.. Tiny Clanger fishing from her music-powered flying boat with a rod, line and horseshoe magnet and catching a passing "Hoot" - a baby musical horn which she takes home to discover it growing and hooting loudly enough to annoy the "grown up' Clangers..

Marvellous!!

Time for soup, said Mother Clanger.

Watch it with someone you love.

The Driller Killer (1979)

Yawn

[9 October 2006]

I finally got to see this after being aware of it since the "Video Nasty" hype of last century.

I was looking forward to a bit of - I expected - a wry gore fest. I expected blood, upset, low production values and cheesy acting. I also expected wit, and I expected to be entertained.

I sat through the most tedious load of baloney it gas ever been my misfortune to experience since "Fiddler on the roof."

Boring. Tedious. Poorly made (well, I expected that.)

The approach to film making reminded me of Warhol's "Flesh" - and that thing with the Empire State Building light switch. Home movies that no-one had bothered to edit, packaged as "meaningful" for some reason.

Well, obviously this HAD been edited, but not by someone bothering to look vaguely in the direction of what they were cutting.

How can a subject matter like a driller killer possibly come out as boring?????

As an achievement, that monumental feat rates as a 10, but as a film..

1/10

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

Enjoyed it, In spite of @#$%^&*&(

[9 October 2006]

I love flying saucers. I LOVE flying saucers. I love FLYING SAUCERS. I love flying saucers.I love flying saucers. I LOVE flying saucers. I love FLYING SAUCERS. I love flying saucers.I love flying saucers. I LOVE flying saucers. I love FLYING SAUCERS. I love flying saucers.

I kinda enjoyed "Earth versus the jerky grainy hub caps" too.

BUT- When a film is praised for its "seamless special effects" I wonder what the reviewer is watching the film on - maybe a video iPOD from the back of a galloping horse?

Buy the camera man a tripod, somebody - and please give the inset film the SAME amount of jerkiness or non-jerkiness as the foreground, together with the SAME perspective, please. I'll not mention lighting contrast and angle, or film resolution

Actually, I really liked the design of the saucers. Iconic. Didn't like the "heat ray" being penned on the negative with photopaque. Sheesh!! Without an airbrush, too - look at the "end" of the ray striking anything. Ouch. Was it actually just a strip of paper in the printer gate? Tacky.

At least the stock rocket launches weren't V2s. What were these? Corporals or Minuteman or somesuch? Maybe someone here knows their missiles. I don't.

2/10 for everything, but it's got flying saucers in it so I'll give it 6/10

Signs (2002)

well.

[9 October 2006]

I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed it because I'm blessed with the ability to hang my understanding and knowledge on the peg outside the room and just slump into the plot, with no care for how and why...

Most people are, it seems. Look at the reviews for One Million Years B.C. Now there's not a person alive who's had any rudimentary education who can accept the co-existence of dinosaurs and humans, and yet here, no-one seems to give a damn. Protesters are labelled as anal-retentive pedants who don't know how to enjoy themselves. personally I have a lot of trouble with the dinosaurs/humans issue - it's a lot easier to accept aliens, dragons, breathing in outer space with the aid of "oxygen pills' (good grief!!) but the dinosaur thing is just not viable no matter how you try and rationalize it. I still managed to enjoy the film for its other charming strengths, though.

Signs is O.K. if you suspend your natural objection to daftness for the duration of the experience. It's cute, with a hint of terror. Nice little subplot..

Unfortunately the nice little subplot is wrapped up in Gibson's peculiar need to abase and mortify himself publicly to pay for whatever guilt he imagines he has, and this continuing thread is what's giving most of us trouble in accepting all the unexplained stuff.

I think we can accept outrageous premises in films quite easily. Cartoon characters are immortal, etc... What gives us real trouble is when we are asked to accept a belief system that extends beyond the film itself and has maybe demonstrated itself to cause problems in the real world. If a film were made that biographed Hitler and which showed Nazism in an apparently positive light, how many people could enjoy it? I believe I could, because I don't have to subscribe to the idealism of the protagonist. I also believe I'm in a minority because most people seem unable to divorce an argument from its presentation, as witnessed by the number of times I've attempted to prosecute an argument by examining an antithetic argument in order to test the rhetoric and have been attacked for my views, even though I was clearly presenting the argument as a contrary one.

Hang it on the door and enjoy the yarn for what it is, like listening to an Old Time Radio Play. You don't have to buy into Gibson's superstition or get bricked in by the logical flaws.

Necronomicon: Book of Dead (1993)

A Brave Attempt

[9/10 · 8 October 2006]

Lovecraft's, and the other writers of the common mythos' work is SO difficult to translate to film. Attempts to illustrate the alluded-to but barely observed horror of most of the genre tend to fail because the substance is not generally visual. It is a state of mind. Lovecraft paints a picture of terrified paranoia where the haunted protagonist is alone in what he sees, trapped in the inability to communicate the reality of his dire predicament except by rambling about shunned this and forbidden that... It is rarely possible to get inside the head of the victim to see what he sees, because stripped of its "out of the corner of your eye" fleeting impression playing on your mind quality, it also tends to get stripped of its horror and become fairly standard Gothic, splatter or just camp. Reanimator is a fine case of camp. Dunwich Horror is Gothic..

The only superlative translation, in my opinion, is Dagon, a fairly close following of The Shadow Over Innesmouth, as I recall. Strangely, something that captures the feel rather than any particular plot would be Carpenter's Mouth of Madness... a portrait of a state of mind rather than encounters.

I think that Necronomicon - NOT "the book of the dead" but more properly "the book of dead names" or a similar near translation - is a film that attempts to look behind the veil rather than standing in a panic contemplating the veil itself. In doing this, it runs all sorts of risks and I believe that it largely succeeds. The stories have been discussed enough here, but the final buckets of blood and latex offering actually carries the idea with it of the utter alienness that is the horror that Lovecraft perceives. Unfortunately most viewers revulsion will be at the splatter and sticky redness, and barriers will go up at "yet another" bag of sinews chucked around the studio as the automatic filing system kicks in and the brain immediately categorises it with chainsaw massacres and cannibal holocausts and various other films showing interplanetary roadkill or hell-raised skin-tearing as the end point in audience manipulation.

If we can bear with the direction a little, It's not the "Ickiness" that revolts us.. it's only a vehicle to carry the REAL horror of complete and utter "lostness" - the certainty of a destiny that is so awful that it's something that medieval visions of Hell can only vaguely hint at. Lovecraft was genuinely terrified by it and afraid to look at it head on because he believed that it would drive him completely mad... and if we try and do it for him we either miss the point or see smoke and mirrors. Film is not the best medium for this. Literature, and maybe music and drama tends to work better, but we demand films, and the best we get is interpretation that runs the risk of the viewer not "getting it." Usually, of course, the film maker doesn't "get it" either, which is why most Gothic horror becomes so camp, translated to screen, although this works rather well as entertainment in different ways.Thankyou, Hammer.)

Necronomicon is a brave effort to translate Lovecraft's vision to the screen. It's not perfect by any means, but I'm still going to give it 9 for valour

Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (1969–1978)

Scoopy-Pooh

[1/10 · 30 September 2006]

I've been a cartoon fan all my life - well, as long as I can remember.

I was familiar enough with HB television work from Huck Hound on, and I'm certainly not a purist about minimalist animation style. Yogi Bear was not Snow White. It had about 5% of the line-work of the "classics" and none of the background art, but it was enjoyable just the same. This goes for the Flintstones, Top Cat, the Jetsons.. all the HB stuff really which had the feel of a slightly animated printed cartoon strip. This was enough to carry the story, and provide sight gags. Job done.

Then Scooby Doo came along.

I've seen most of dozens of episodes. I still don't get it. It's utter utter garbage. Individual scenes look OK. but put several together and the result is an endless rambling shaggy dog story with no plot and the promise of something just around the corner which will make sense of it all - except we never turn the corner. Every episode is the same as every other with identical gags and the same vacuous non-plot involving a lot of running around, arm waving and being scared of something that is never explained when the janitor takes off his mask. Is this, ironically, the whole point of it?

Do fans get off on this BECAUSE of the in-joke of the no-plot running gag?

I've tried to suspend my critical faculties and "just enjoy it" in the way that I've approached material for different cultural or historic mindsets. I can enjoy Max Fleischer cartoons (how minimalist can you get?) or the most obtuse Manga creations. I love Mr. Jinx. Futurama rules. I just LOVE animation, but… Scooby Doo? I still just don't "get" it. It seems to be nothing more than a cynical exploitation vehicle presenting a series of icons for kids to latch onto and get clannish about. It's boring repetitive mush that offends in a way that far simpler and more repetitive production does not. I suspect it's because of the "drama" that is piled on in many individual scenes.

Look at Top Cat.. extremely funny and very simplistic. It doesn't need artificially edge-of-seat adrenalin rush graphics heaping on to the storyline. It works fine.

Now look at Scooby Doo. The stories are no more involved than in Top Cat and yet there's a deliberate and constant attempt to raise the emotional ante with all manner of graphical devices to tell us that "this" scene is some sort of climax. Except it never is. It's an endless series of false alarms and high blood pressure panic… and no "real" reason for it.

As if that's bad enough, there's no resolution anywhere. The viewer, having been bombarded with cliffhanger imagery and a series of moments of cheap "excitement" generated by apparently supernatural encounters, is then completely insulted by being told that the apparent scariness seen earlier is now rationally explained away.. yet it never is.

The scary supernatural encounter - gibbering monster dripping toxic waste or maybe exhibiting anti-gravity powers or bursting into flames or whatever else would make a set of "experienced" weirdness hunters quake and run, is "explained" as bloke wearing a dime-store mask at the end. Huh?

Maybe this is the joke that fans go for. I don't, I'm afraid. I see it as cheap manipulation in the way that fashion editorials telling a ten-year old girl what she has to wear this season in order to look cool is cheap manipulation. The soundtrack and the devices are telling us that Scooby Doo IS funny and is worth watching.

It isn't funny. Well, maybe the three or so jokes used in endless permutation might be as one-offs, but the quirkiness of individual scenes is lost as a whole series of them strung together becomes a pointless wallpaper without dynamics. It doesn't hold my attention. I've tried and tried to see the fine suit that the emperor is wearing, but let's be frank, there isn't a stitch on him.

1 out of 10 is being generous.

Superman Returns (2006)

What a surprise.

[9/10 · 30 July 2006]

To be honest, I was almost determined not to like it.

I'd come to regard Reeve as iconic. Replacing him was verging on bad taste. It took a while to warm to Reeve anyway. He was a little on the "small" side compared with the comic-book imagery I'd been brought up with. To keep the Action Comics feel would have required a bodybuilder at least the size of Arnold at his most bulked up, and that would be barely making the grade. However, Reeve's presence generally made up for his chest size and he was so charismatic that... he WAS Superman. Add the real life tragedy and the thought of following with a new actor was almost blasphemously daring.

This movie had better work or it would fail horribly.

From seeing film posters, Routh was frankly too underdeveloped physically, a trend since that TV series with Terri Hatcher opposite the dwarf. I had the distinct impression that the casting brief was to find someone to play Christopher Reeve rather than act the part of Superman.

Once past the spine-tingling homage credits, I was sucked in/blown away by an astonishing film. The legacy problem was handled sensitively (dedicated to... ) which was a huge relief.

Routh's performance was a revelation. His resemblance to Reeve in certain shots - and in certain mannerisms - was unsettling, yet he managed to capitalise on these assets without overplaying his hand. Overall, I could forgive his "too slight" physique for the sake of the acting. I don't think we've seen his last, and even if he's a one trick pony - which I seriously doubt - he's still got a long way to go in this franchise. Yeah, I'd like to see him 50lb heavier, but that's a huge lifestyle (and pharmaceutical) commitment, and maybe not for him.

Kevin Spacey stole the show. I always rated Hackman, but thought his Luthor interpretation just a touch too camp; the teeniest touch, not a shaven-headed Kenneth Wiliiams. Spacey was every bit as insane yet managed to be more believably menacing. I'd bung him the statuette for this one, I think.

The ladies, in comparison, didn't quite cut it. "Lois" felt right - a beautifully played part - but the wrong look. Sorry. Looked very tasty walking out of shot and crawling on her hands and knees though I don't think these were designed to be memorable moments. Likewise "Kitty" the obligatory moll. What went wrong here? I suppose "doesn't work" for me just means the character isn't appealing. The character was too neutral and uninvolving without the bimbo appeal of a Jessica Rabbit or the verse of a Bonnie Parker. I see the logic in the screenplay, but it still doesn't feel right. She shouldn't present as disposable even if Luthor sees all women that way. It's HIS personal aberration which we don't need to share to appreciate - indeed, our revulsion to Luthor is lessened because of it, and that makes a poor decision in direction.

James Marsden - Richard - and Eva Marie Saint as Martha Kent. Perfect. Nothing more to say, really, but Richard was successfully appealing and worked on all the right levels. Not too cardboardy (that would have been SO easy) and not too mawkishly handled either. Finely played and well written. Martha was gorgeous. Age aside, the best-looking woman in the film. All the other support characters were well cast and well played. Even the kid (we all want to hate kids in films like this) was attractive, charming and.. just right. Tristan Leabu in 20 yrs time? Could be #1 box office.

Downsides. I'll happily suspending disbelief and knowledge of physics for most of this stuff - e.g. there's no leverage consideration when flying and dealing with Large Objects. Superman usually behaves like an object of infinite mass, sometimes with zero inertia and sometimes with infinite inertia depending on the writer's scene requirement.

Nevetheless, there are things that irk me. Compared with the weirdness above, this may seem illogical, but I can accept the behaviour of an utterly alien thing/being thrust into our physical continuum, and this is best if there is no great attempt to explain it in other than phenomenological ways - "Superman came from a HUGE planet so has a denser, impenetrable structure. Our yellow sun gives him super vision, hearing and.. stuff." Bunkum, but good enough for the job.

Far better than the pseudo-science of TNG Star Trek's " By re-routing the nerdular matrix through the outfeed oscillators I can re-bias the resonant positronic mass to give a precisely 0.326 seconds window to fire a photon torpedo, velocity-matched to the yaw angle pulsator. The transparaluminary widget will activate again if the matter-anti-matter bypass-integrator circuit doesn't burn out." THAT kind of thing offends me far more than being told that Superman is "Super' because he's not hampered by a big planet's gravity and a red sun.

Where it goes wrong for me is laws of physics changing inexplicably for otherwise familiar situations. I can accept Superman walking into a hail of midi-gun bullets which bounce of him without the impact knocking him backwards even though this is utterly inconceivable in any universe but a magical or SFX one. I can't accept things which aren't "super" behaving oddly. Seeing someone carried through the air, sightseeing - and their eyes not streaming and stinging from everything being blasted into them. As anyone who skydives or rides motorcycles will know, she gotta wear shades - or stick a cape over the head. Nowhere in the listed superpowers is "invisible force field." Superman descends ex-celestia, upright. His cape hangs DOWN. How? Fishing weights sewn into the hem? Minor niggles, I know, but I'm sure many will understand the logic to my objection.

Such aside, I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the film which finished with a "proper" ending not leaving us hanging, baffled.

I wanted more.

Recommended.

Space Marines (1996)

a critique, not a review

[6/10 · 22 July 2006]

How do you tell someone what a film "tastes" like? Well, wine-lovers, instead of giving you a list of ingredients, amply covered in other commentaries by those who are better than I at such things, . I'll simply try and describe the taste.

I LOVED this film. I loved it because though it has enough schlock and splatter to have it rated an "18," it is nevertheless a film for young kids: kids who can't legally watch it. Not a recipe for box-office success, unfortunately. It IS great fun for adults who enjoy camp, over-acted larger than life drama as humour.

In terms of taking itself seriously, this film sits just this side - but right on the line - of parody. Think of the A Team with a Thunderbirds plot played by Peter Pan pantomime characters with the look and feel of Unreal Tournament and you've got it summed up. Bluto, playing Pugwash, auditions for the part of a villain in Power Rangers.

Any more to it than that?

Not really. Not necessary in a film aimed at six year-olds.

It's got: Bad guys who declare themselves to be Evil. Good guys who see the only way forward as gung-ho heroism. Diplomats who haven't got the common-sense of the heroes and basically get in the way. I'll contrast this with the diplomats and politicians in Battlestar Galactica who also keep thwarting the common-sense heroics of the good-guy military, but whereas in Battlestar, the diplomats are irredeemably stupid, weak and corrupt and keep getting in the way of the 100% right xenophobic all-action solution, here they vacillate with reasonable and clearly understandable cause and show an understanding, a view of the big picture which seems to escape the military mind. This gives the screenplay the only grown-up element and pretence at purpose. But it's only a pretence, and a McGuffin to bring in a Girl. The screenplay and this plot component has a token effort at making the hero(s) try very hard to be complex, but it doesn't come off.

Hell, this film don't need no mamby-pamby plot or gratuitous human interest 'cuz it's got action.

Lots of action; even more posturing. The Space Marines meet, er, Space Pirates.

You'd know they were pirates even if their flag and (ahem!) pirate-flag insignia attached to their uniforms and props didn't spell it out for you.

My favourite was the Evil Surgeon's white coat carrying its proud badge of the obsessively organised evil bunch. Just like it would be. Just like all the bad guys wear black hats, but this film hasn't got cowboys. If it did, their black hats would sit atop unshaven scowls and the white hats would keep the sun out of the eyes of ruggedly-handsome heroes wearing freshly-pressed shirts and ironed 'kerchiefs. Nooo, this film's got Pirates. They've all got costumes from the local futuristic fancy dress hire shop's "Pirate" rail and it's only the lack of wooden ships and a token attempt to keep it ostensibly "this" side of parody that eliminates the "Shiver me timbers, me hearties!!" and the random shouting of "Oooh Ahrrr, Jim lad!"

Toned down a bit, and with a few dollars more, this could have been Starsip Troopers. the merest micron further over the top would turn it into Doctor Phibes meets Flash Gordon.

The question is, would you then want to watch a film like this just for the sheer entertainment of it?

It all depends on who you are. When I was a kid and watched the original Adam West Batman,, I didn't quite "get" it. The irony escaped me. I had to develop a slightly more mature outlook to appreciate the humour fully, and I suspect that many people might be a little too literal in their perspective to enjoy this truly amazing film.

WE all know that spaceships don't "Woosh!" through outer space and that there is no sense at all in marking the go-faster widget in a space Viper cockpit "Turbo" or the in the huge amount of lip-gloss necessary to keep Earth's defences running through Buck Rogers' series, but we can still suspend disbelief enough to enjoy the stories and the action. In SM, grenades, bombs and standard military weaponry kill as cleanly as in any made-for- television film or pre Spaghetti Western Hollywood. The schlock is all sort of bolted on to show just how Bad the bad guys are and how "serious" things really are.

Well, if you aren't too worried about a message, future "historical" or logical accuracy and you enjoyed Team America, Adam West's Batman and Plan 9 from Outer Space, you WILL enjoy this.

Torchy, the Battery Boy (1959–1961)

No information about the show's content

[1/10 · 6 July 2006]

I'm out of line writing this.

Why?

I haven't seen the show since (I think) 1958 when I watched it as a preschool-age four year old, and it had a terribly profound effect on me.

Before I go on, I have to say that I was a tremendous fan of Gerry Anderson's work all through my childhood. Four Feather Falls was GREAT. Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray... I watched every episode of every one of them and couldn't get enough. I kinda grew out of it before Joe 90 and I only discovered Captain Scarlet retrospectively - and thoroughly enjoyed it. I've seen occasional reruns of many of these titles and still enjoy them, even though I pretend I'm babysitting my daughter and watching for HER benefit.

But Torchy?

I first saw it because we had relatives over, and their kid, about the same age as me, wanted to watch it - so we did, together. It is the first time in my life I have ever been embarrassed by a children's television programme. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. I was appalled at the utter stupidity of what I was watching and actually felt insulted that this was being fed to me. I didn't say anything because I was waiting for something good to happen, but it never did. I felt cheated - a totally new experience for me.

I watched the next episode, by myself, in case the horrible taste stopped and it turned out O.K - after all, I enjoyed ALL cartoons and puppet shows, I was a kid. It was my job to enjoy cartoons and puppet shows.

It didn't work. I cringed through the show and didn't watch it again.

I have NO idea why this happened. At the time I loved the Watch With Mother stuff, was enchanted by the gross Andy Pandy's cute Teddy, could have watched Rag Tag & Bobtail for hours and wouldn't dream of turning away from any cartoon being shown, but Torchy just embarrassed me for its patronising childish stupidity. The only show that ever did.

As this was a unique experience and reaction, I am quite keen to see an episode again to see if I can analyse this, and I am only writing this cathartic "revue" because of the strength of the show's impact on me, making a negative impression which has stayed with me for nearly fifty years.

Oh well, back to watching The Clangers.

I must get out more.

-------addendum-------------

It's now more than six years after I wrote my original (rather unpopular, I see :-) ) review. The DVDs are out and at least one other person remembers seeing the show. I got hold of the DVD and watched about half of the first disc.

O.K. the overall concept now looks like it was a fairly good idea hampered by production values, syrupy sentimentality and the thing that I wasn't aware of as a kid, the creepiest looking marionettes that have ever appeared on the televisual receivification apparatus.

It's like this Doctor; I always found dolls a bit icky. Not scary, like clowns, just... yuk, like watching someone drool, or vomit, or eat worms. I wouldn't freak if locked in a room with a load of dolls but I'd be more comfortable with soft toys... or books, or live explosives. Dolls are just slightly unpleasant.

The dolls in Torchy are not just slightly unpleasant - they're bloody horrific. They are the sort of thing that crawl out from under a four year old's bed and stand round the terrified kid in the dark, making threats and gnashing their teeth, mumbling and shuffling but always kept at bay by the blankets over your head and the teddy bear holding you tight and keeping you safe…

Tim Burton does the whole creepy thing wonderfully. He can bring bad-trip weirdness t life and it's entertaining and edgy. The crystal clear rendering gives everything a delirious, hallucinatory reality that is not threatening, just constantly odd. Of course it's completely deliberate. I'd call Burton a genuine surrealist, in the art-movement sense though purist art historians may disagree. He definitely evokes a reality that is rather out of phase with comfortable normality. Other-worldly, dream-like - no, it's more like watching a nightmare but not being caught up in it. The Corpse Bride in synopsis sounds horrible. In the viewing, it's great fun.

Torchy's blurry alternative reality should be more obviously "it's all made up" rather than real - after all one can see the strings and the marionetting is, in comparison to modern work, quite clumsy. The process is always very obvious. despite this, it's as creepy as a plate of earwigs.

In Torchy, I don't think the creepiness is deliberate; I think it's a product of trying to be "cute" and appealing to pre-schoolers and somehow completely missing the mark, mainly through the design of the dolls which are horrific because the inept modeling makes them look hideously deformed rather than caricaturish. Trumpeters' cheeks and staring vacant eyes. Furthermore, the strange adults-squeakily-playing-children voice characterization gives it that patronizing quality I hated as a kid. I never had any problems with Roberta's excellent Space Patrol which wasn't much later as I recall, or, as I stated originally, Anderson's "solo" work. Torchy, however, still puts the weirds up me.

Assignment: Outer Space (1960)

afterthoughts

[3/10 · 2 July 2006]

Thanks to junk-monkey ([e-mail]) for the review I read on one screen while watching the movie on the other. Read his excellent review for proper details. This is just a "me too' rider on that.

A quandary on the scoring: 3 out of 10 for stand-alone entertainment, but 7 for teaching value. It's great for analysis.

I'm teaching my 9 yr old daughter the basics of film-making, and so far this is the best "how to do a low budget job without spending money on a continuity girl" effort I've yet found.

You really _could_ make this film at home with a few mates, a roll of black paper and the contents of a junk radio surplus store for props and scenery. You'll also need some fishing line and a couple of plastic construction kits with burning candles stuck up their orifices, some mud and a source of smoke - a cigar, or a pinch of dry ice. Because of that, for the stated instructional purpose, I loved the film. and even though it's not "Dark Star," it must have helped pave the way

The kid's about to do a remake starring teddy bears and a washing-up liquid bottle with fins stuck on. It should be no less convincing.

I downloaded it from a public domain collection.

Would I buy it? Probably not for more than £1.00

Five Fingers of Death (1972)

Without doubt the greatest Kung Fu movie ever made.

[10/10 · 21 June 2006]

Released as KING BOXER in the U.K.

This film was essentially the FIRST kung fu film to go on general release in the U.K. Many of us had ratcheted through Kurosawa's astonishingly gritty and involving dramas and were used to oriental film being beautifully shot and lit, with somewhat restrained pacing, all in all like leafing through an album of very fine still photographs that just happened to be moving.

Along come Run Run Shaw and co. with their widescreen "home movie" production values, and astonishing ripe-for-parody dubbing and all the rules have changed. KIng Boxer was the first in through the door, leaving a clearly marked trail for others to follow with their feet planted firmly on top of the blazed footsteps.

In spite of hokey plots, pantomime acting, cheesy jump-cuts and spaghetti western style snap-stepped zooms, this film was marvellous. Gorgeous without being opulent and with the most brilliant fight choreography ever to grace a screen. We loved the sickening violence, the anguish, the testosterone. The martial artists among us found some of the techniques fascinating, if flamboyant and oftentimes silly. It was so very different from the Japanese stuff we all knew, and it had lovely acrobatic grace that perfectly complemented the sickening violence and bloodstained floors. Delightful.

The "KIng Lear" scene was, at the time, quite a milestone in schlock "You cruel bastards.. My **** !!" Now it's rather less shocking, but still a bit of a gut-churner

We didn't notice that any females in sight were absolutely one-dimensional. After seeing more films of the genre, it now stands out like a sore thumb, but at the time it didn't matter

This film defined what would rapidly become the kung-fu movie clichés. All of them. Watch it and remember that until this burst onto the western screens, there was no genre for it to slot into. It was unique and awesome. It was the first kung fu movie and it still is, for me and many others, the best.