Monday Night Roundup #3

I've posted a couple of reviews to Apocalypse Later this week, both part of my Make It a Double series in which the stars pick two movies from their careers for me to review. These two were picked by the late Gunnar Hansen.

Gimme Skelter (2007), a character study of a small New Mexico town masquerading as a horror movie, because it revolves around the arrival of a man who believes himself to be the bastard son of Charlie Manson, complete with five followers. Eager to get noticed, he plans to take the population of Banion's Cross down from 67 to zero.

Brutal Massacre: A Comedy (2007), a mockumentary in the This is Spinal Tap style, in which an interviewer follows Harry Penderecki as he attempts to make his new movie, Brutal Massacre, against all the odds, capturing all two months of the three week shoot. It has a killer cast and a clever script, full of little details that make this funnier the more we know about the movie industry.

Here are brief reviews of the other films I've watched this week that won't end up reviewed on that site, at least anytime soon.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Director: S Craig Zahler
Stars: Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Lili Simmons and Richard Jenkins

It’s good to see the weird west apparently thriving in the indie world. I’ve just finished Ghostwalkers, a glorious ride of a novel by Jonathan Maberry that’s based on a video game. Now here’s an indie feature with a real budget that allows for many recognisable faces.

It begins with David Arquette cutting a man’s throat while he sleeps. He and Sid Haig take down a whole camp site, searching for something, but, with horses fast approaching, they attempt an escape into the hills, only to get caught up in some sort of burial ground skull art installation. ‘It ain’t no concern for a civilised man,’ says Haig, scratching his nuts with the barrel of his gun. He’s taken down quickly but Arquette manages to stumble away, eventually making it into the town of Bright Hope, where he unwittingly sparks all the events to follow.

What we see is done with style and it’s done with some substance. It looks great, it sounds great and it pays a lot of attention to character development. There are quite a few cast members with something notable to do here and the opportunity to shine while doing so; most of them take that opportunity with both hands. Best of all, for what is partly a brutal horror movie, there’s a wry humour that pervades the script and keeps us interested in a whole bunch of different people.

The catches are that it’s a slow burn that gets slower until the final showdown and it carries a great inevitability to it that means few surprises are forthcoming. I have no concerns with slowness when that’s called for, such as the glacial pace of Beyond the Black Rainbow, but this could have sped up a little and shed a few scenes without the desert’s sense of vast emptiness being lost to the tone of the piece. The inevitability is more understandable, as this is a Heart of Darkness-type journey as much as it ever is a destination, summed up well by a single line late in the movie.

Kurt Russell is the biggest name. He plays Sheriff Franklin Hunt of Bright Hope, not a stupid man but one who perhaps has too much confidence in his abilities. When Arquette vanishes from the town’s jail, apparently kidnapped along with Sabrina O’Dwyer, the lady doctor treating his wounds, and Hunt’s young deputy, Nick, leaving only her doctor’s bag and an arrow stuck in a wall, it’s the sheriff who leads the party to rescue them.

Going along for the ride are Arthur O’Dwyer, the lady doctor’s cowboy husband who’s supposed to be in bed resting his own wounds; Chicory, the town’s other deputy; and John Brooder, a mysterious but very well dressed man with an apparent talent for killing Indians. Given that Chicory is far from a young man and O’Dwyer’s leg is bad enough that he has trouble walking, we don’t need to wait for the bewildering end credits song to tell us that ‘four doomed men ride out’.

Each of these actors are names too, though I have to admit that I didn’t recognise most of them. Brooder is Matthew Fox, best known as Jack Shephard in Lost, O’Dwyer is Patrick Wilson, Nite Owl from Watchmen, and Chicory is character actor Richard Jenkins; just look at his long list of credits to see how many times you’ve seen him without necessarily knowing it. We’ve already met Arquette and Haig. The sheriff’s wife is Kathryn Morris, Lilli from Cold Case. The mayor’s wife is Sean Young and there’s also Michael Paré as a local gentleman of importance. S Craig Zahler, who wrote and directed, clearly knew who to talk to when putting his cast together.

Perhaps most impressive out of all of them, though, is Lili Simmons who plays Samantha O’Dwyer as a very different sort of damsel in distress. She’s only made a couple of movies but she has done a lot of TV work, where she’s best known for a show called Banshee. Maybe, now that I’ve heard of it, I should seek it out to see how she does with the much more expansive screen time that a TV show provides. She doesn’t get anywhere near a lot here.

The story of Bone Tomahawk is pretty simple and is frankly given away by the one sentence IMDb has for plot description: ‘Four men set out in the Wild West to rescue a group of captives from cannibalistic cave dwellers.’ It’s not really cowboys and indians, where the cowboys have lost their horses and the indians are troglodytes in the Valley of the Starving Men. It’s more like the cannibal horror movies where the first world protagonists gradually come to realise just how far they are from home, not just physically but culturally too, that ‘You’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy’ feeling. This is the wild west rather than the unexplored jungles of South America, so these caves are only a three day ride, but that’s a lot further on foot with a crutch and unimaginably further in mind.

I enjoyed the film, but more for its detail than its sweep. I admired the character building, which is too often prioritised far below the action, but felt that the balance had shifted a little too far the other way. The dialogue is superb, both in its writing and its delivery, but there are points that could easily have been trimmed. The stunning brutality of some scenes highlights how this is very much an indie feature, but the stars on show, the use of a decent budget and the obvious quality of many technical aspects often make us forget that. That last sentence translates to a strong recommendation, however flawed the film is.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Stars: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Simon McBurney, Zhang Jingchu, Tom Hollander, Jens Hultén and Alec Baldwin

We begin with comedy in Belarus. Marvel’s Hawkeye talks to Shaun of the Dead and Marsellus Wallace about a package. It’s on a plane and the plane needs to not take off. Fortunately Ethan Hunt is ready to leap onto that plane and rescue that package at incredible risk to himself. It’s telling that when we see Tom Cruise nowadays, we have no problem thinking of him as his Mission: Impossible character, while we’re not really ready to do that with any of these other very recognisable faces. This is his fifth Mission: Impossible movie, but he’s kept them spaced out, the first one dating as far back as 1996.

‘I’ve heard stories,’ says the record store girl, who gives him an LP to listen to in a booth. ‘They can’t all be true.’ Unfortunately the recording turns out not to be from the Impossible Mission Force but from the Syndicate, whom Ethan Hunt has been trying to prove exists for a year.

Back in the US, Jeremy Renner battles Alec Baldwin. Renner is William Brandt, fighting for the IMF’s survival in front of a senate committee. Baldwin is Alan Hunley, the director of the CIA, fighting to take over its operation. The latter wins and the IMF is history.

Cruise is Ethan Hunt, of course, whose job is now to take on the Syndicate solo. This experience proves that they exist, but he has very little to go on, just a former, supposedly dead, agent called Janik Vinter, better known as the Bone Doctor.

Baldwin pledges to have him in a day. Six months later, our story really begins, with Hunt setting up a wall of details for the inevitable CIA squad to find, details that show that he really hasn’t been inactive.

Pegg is Benji Dunn, Hunt’s tech genius, now playing Halo at the CIA and lying on his weekly polygraph. Hunt brings him back in by sending him tickets to Turandot at the Vienna Opera.

This is strong stuff. We’re in a classic setting, with a European head of state in attendance, the Austrian Chancellor. There’s a killer, of course, a big, tough killer with cool tech and a cool gun. There’s another shooter too, a stylish lady in yellow. And... well, let’s just say that things aren’t quite as simple as they might seem because this is intrigue as much as it is action.

Rebecca Ferguson is Ilsa Faust, part of that intrigue, and hers is a name I wasn’t familiar with, even though I’d seen her in Dwayne Johnson’s Hercules. She’s a Swedish actress who does good work here, with solid acting chops, impressive agility and a Charlotte Rampling meets Maggie Gyllenhaal look. Clearly she’s the key to the puzzle. She’s also the means by which the picture sets up all the usual impossibilities for Hunt and Dunn to find a way to achieve, beginning with an impressive underground and underwater datacenter in Casablanca that’s right out of science fiction and complete lunacy. It’s hilarious how impressively air gapped networks are set to allow USB keys to plug right in.

That leaves Ving Rhames for the good guys. He’s Luther Stickell, who resigned rather than shift from the IMF to the CIA along with Brandt and Dunn. Once we find out about Ilsa Faust and what she’s up to, Brandt brings Stickell back into the picture to find the other two and figure out what’s going on, without the CIA finding out in the process.

Of course, we’re set up from moment one to believe that Baldwin is clearly a major player in the Syndicate, if not the head of it. However, that’s too obvious and the last piece of the puzzle is Solomon Lane, a former British intelligence agent played by Sean Harris. This is a long way from his role as Ian Curtis, the singer of Joy Division, in the underrated 24 Hour Party People, though sadly I’d guess most people know him nowadays from Prometheus. This reminds me that I really need to get round to watching Creep.

There’s a lot of good here, but there’s some Hollywood excess, of course. The Casablanca chase scenes are truly spectacular, for instance, but it’s a ridiculously empty city and the stuntwork has none of the impact of Mad Max: Fury Road because we don’t believe that almost any of it is real. It doesn’t help that, as ever, Tom Cruise appears to be entirely immune to bruises. And that’s just Casablanca. After that, as the web of intrigue starts to unravel, things get shouty as if secret agents all do their training on The Jerry Springer Show. And so it goes.

I enjoyed this mostly for the writing, because it ponders interestingly on ethics in espionage and weaves a complex web with move and countermove, and for the quality character acting in a surprisingly small supporting cast. Rebecca Ferguson impressed me most and Sean Harris was very interesting, especially vocally. Simon McBurney fills a brief supporting role with impressive gravitas. The franchise regulars are less impressive but they do everything they need to, even Ving Rhames who seems to act without acting. As for Tom Cruise, he ought to be getting too old for this shit but he’s actually getting more interesting. I liked this, in many ways, more than I remember liking the first few films in the franchise.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Director: Brian De Palma
Stars: Paul Williams and William Finley

One of the Top 100 lists that I’ve enjoyed the most is the Top 100 Cult Films list put out by the long defunct debased.com website, but I haven’t quite seen all the films on it or rated them all since 2004 when I started tracking that sort of thing. I have seen Phantom of the Paradise, but it’s been so long that I’m not sure that I even knew who Rod Serling was when I first heard him give the opening narration.

That was my first surprise revisiting the film and the outrageous behaviour of the backing singers of the Juicy Fruits during their opening number was the second. Swan seems to approve and he’s the producer who matters, so much so that we’re first introduced to his white gloved hands and his monotone voice rather than his face. He’s about to open the Paradise, a grand auditorium to his greatness. He, through his enforcer, Arnold Philbin, is also about to steal the music of Winslow Leach to open it. Leach is the singer/songwriter playing piano after the Juicy Fruits and he has a whole cantata written around the legend of Faust, hardly a accidental choice of subject matter given the circumstances.

Leach unwisely lets Philbin take it on the promise that Swan will produce his first album, but a month later he’s heard nothing and they won’t even let him through the door of Death Records to talk to them. When he breaks in, he discovers girls rehearsing his music for audition, without his name on it. Of course, he’s promptly thrown out again, but this time also framed for a serious drug offence and sent to a Swan-funded medical experimentation laboratory at Sing Sing. It’s only when he hears on the radio that Swan is opening the Paradise with the Juicy Fruits doing Faust that he goes mad, escapes and breaks back into Death Records to sabotage it with dynamite.

The catch is that he gets stuck in a record press and horribly disfigured. Last seen diving into the East River, the world believes him drowned but, as the title suggests, he survives and finds his way into the Paradise where he starts a campaign of destruction because hey, this was always going to be the old Phantom of the Opera story updated into a 1970s rock opera framework. Just check out the wild sets, outrageous costumes and camp sensibilities. There are also claustrophobic angles, overlaid frames and split screen, not to mention an early use of handheld camera.

What follows isn’t just Phantom of the Opera, it’s also Faust, because Swan isn’t just a debauched 70s music producer, he’s clearly playing Satan, as is made quite obvious in the key contract signing scene. Well, sort of. The Picture of Dorian Gray comes into play before too long as well. Brian De Palma took from a variety of the best.

Faust kicks in when Swan’s eagle eyes notice Winslow after only one explosion. He quickly tracks him down and talks him into a partnership, where he’ll rewrite the cantata for Phoenix, the girl he wants to sing his work now that his voice has been taken from him. Of course, he doesn’t get what he wants because then we wouldn’t get a movie and Swan is just too wicked a part for Paul Williams to play it that easily. Of course, Swan is always going to go back on every promise he makes just because he can.

This is something of a trip to watch outside the mid-seventies. It’s overdone throughout, even though it takes itself as seriously as rock opera always did. This is a year before The Rocky Horror Picture Show, though a year after that debuted on stage. It’s a year before Bohemian Rhapsody and the recording of Bat Out of Hell, which wasn’t released until 1977. It plays with prog rock, glam rock, shock rock and all the excess of the decade. The opening night even presages a certain iconic scene in Carrie, made by the same director, Brian De Palma, only two years later.

It hasn’t aged as well as it could have done. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is still playing forty years on across the globe, Bohemian Rhapsody is as great as ever and I can still sing along to Bat Out of Hell, but the music here is much more weighed down by its time. I can appreciate what De Palma (and his DP Larry Pizer) did, because the variety of technique is impossible to ignore and it’s consistently strong throughout, with some stunning dolly shots and a gorgeous dive into psychedelic bloody chaos for the finale. I’m less impressed by the music of Paul Williams though. On screen he’s a glorious creature, the quintessential corrupt seventies music impresario, as tied to the iconic character of the Devil. He sings well too, providing the singing voice for William Finley, who rages outrageously otherwise as Leach. It’s just that the songs are mostly forgettable. They’re also repeated rather a lot.

There are few people on screen to compete with Finley and Williams. Gerrit Graham is utterly outrageous as Beef, a sort of flamboyantly gay Gary Glitter type glam singer. He’s awful but in exactly the way he’s supposed to be, so he’s doing a great job. Jessica Harper is decent as Phoenix but not so much that she warrants the attention lavished upon her by Leach and Swan both. She was far more memorable in Dario Argento’s Suspiria three years later, also on the debased.com Top 100 list, as was Inserts, which was released in between them in 1974. Other than those, there’s only really George Memmoli as Philbin, who’s good at his job but hardly a scenestealer.

Really, Phantom of the Paradise is a relic, a product of its time, a fascinating artifact. I’m very happy that I got to see this again after what must surely be three decades, but I doubt I’ll come back to it any time soon and I’m certainly not going to be humming the music tomorrow at work.

This was film #78 in my runthrough of the debased.com 100 Greatest Cult Films. You can find the full list here.

November Book Reviews at the Nameless Zine

As I mentioned here last month, I write book reviews for The Nameless Zine, an online zine run by the Western Science Fiction Association (WesternSFA), a non-profit fandom group based here in Arizona.

As the Nameless Zine follows a graphical indexing system, I also maintain my own text index of what I've written at my own website. You can find it here at the Reviews at the Nameless Zine page.

Reviews at the Nameless Zine post monthly on the 15th of each month and November's batch are now online. I reviewed three books this month:

Gideon Smith and the Mark of the Ripper



This is the third in the Gideon Smith series and I believe, after one eager read, may be my favourite. Instead of whisking us around the globe, as the first two books did, it keeps us firmly in London, the heart of this alternate British empire, with problems for many of the regulars in the series.

Gideon Smith himself, the Hero of the Empire, is hypnotised by the sinister vaudeville performer, Markus Mesmer, into forgetting who he is and what he's investigating, namely the disappearance of a young lady who looks exactly like Maria, the Mechanical Girl. He finds his way quickly off the streets of London, which are hounded both by the murders of Jack the Ripper and the growing mob mentality of the locals, upset at the inability of the police to keep them safe. What's more, Rowena Fanshawe, the Belle of the Airways, has been arrested and charged with murder.

It therefore falls to Aloysius Bent, Smith's foul mouthed chronicler, and Maria herself, who is trying to come to terms with her growing humanity, to solve all the mysteries of the day, which are more numerous than merely what I've mentioned above. Barnett weaves in many characters from the previous two Gideon Smith books and even from the history that predates them to craft this complex web of a story.

I much prefer Smith in peril to Smith the routine heroic lead and I was happy to see both Bent and Maria grow massively as characters. I'm always in favour of the fictionalisation of new historical or fictional characters, chief amongst which here are Inspector Lestrade, in charge of the Ripper investigations, and the pairing of Dr John Watson and his mental patient, the unnamed 'Great Detective'. The latter alone has already prompted negative reviews on Amazon, which makes it all the more enjoyable a concept for me.

Like the earlier books, this is a fast-paced blitzkrieg of a ride that will no doubt be worth a much more sedate re-read.

For more, visit my review at the Nameless Zine. I also reviewed the first two books at the Nameless Zine: Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl and Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon.

The Drawing of the Dark



I was honoured to appear on a panel with Tim Powers, one of the triumvirate of writers who pioneered steampunk, at the 2015 Gaslight Gathering, and I felt it was about time I read some of his work. For some reason, it was much easier to find books by the other two in England, James P Blaylock and K W Jeter. Fortunately Mysterious Galaxy was happy to sell me a bunch and Powers was happy to sign them.

This 1979 novel is set in the Vienna of 1529, where we discover that the most important place in the entirety of the western world is the Zimmermann Inn where they brew Herzwesten beer. Clearly we're soon going to be let in on historical, fantastic and mystical reasons why, but we're kept completely in the dark (pun not intended but I'll take it) for a while.

Instead we follow an Irishman, Brian Duffy, a mercenary not coincidentally hired to be a bouncer at the Zimmermann, even if he thinks he'd be put to better use fighting the approaching Turks of Suleiman, who are about to lay siege to the city. Of course, he ends up doing both, amongst other things, because, in the tradition of Tim Powers novels, what might appear to be the case to the majority of people, isn't necessarily what's really going behind the scenes and that is fantastic indeed.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, perhaps partly because there aren't too many fantasy novels featuring magical stout. Now I just need to read some more of Powers's work and discover why this highly enjoyable read isn't generally regarded as one of his best. Surely the rest must be pretty astounding. Expect reviews of some of those over the coming months.

For more, visit my review at the Nameless Zine.

The Man of Bronze



I had such a blast at Doc Con, a local Doc Savage convention in its eighteenth year, that I had to go back to reread the original novel. It was turned into an annoyingly camp Hollywood movie forty years ago, an event that was the focal point of this years con, and Ron Ely, the well-cast star, was the highly enjoyable guest of honour.

The book is far superior to the movie, even if Lester Dent, the man writing as Kenneth Robeson, hadn't quite mastered a lot of the writing techniques that would serve him well over hundreds of future books. The sentences often blast out of the page like staccato bullets and the Fabulous Five aren't well featured in this one, but the action is strong and the setup for what was a new pulp magazine in 1933 is superb.

For those who don't know, Doc Savage was the original Superman and the latter stole a lot from the former. The biggest difference between them is that Doc's powers didn't come through being an alien cast adrift onto our planet but through a lifetime of dedicated training which includes two hours of focused mental and physical exercise per day. In other words, we could become a Doc Savage, as unlikely as that is, but we could never become a Superman. That's the primary reason I enjoyed Doc's adventures far more than Clark Kent's.

This first adventure sees him investigate the murder of his father in central America, a trip in which he and his five cohorts survive concerted attacks and experience fantastic events in a lost valley populated by a forgotten tribe of Mayans. How they survive it sets up not only what they do, but how they can continue to do it, because globetrotting is an expensive business and a lifetime supply of mysterious gold is a great way to finance it!

For more, visit my review at the Nameless Zine.

Book 4 - The International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival: The Transition Years

I'm proud to announce today the publication of my fourth book, The International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival: The Transition Years through Apocalypse Later Press. Yeah, not all my books were going to have titles as catchy as Huh? and yeah, you haven't seen book three yet. I'm still working through cover issues but that will be out soon too!

It will be available at Amazon.com, the various international Amazon stores and other usual online merchants such as Barnes & Noble in the next few days, priced at $17.99 in the US, £12.99 in the UK and €16.99 in Europe. It's not only my longest book thus far, but actually longer than my previous two put together, running to 446 pages. Here's my author page at Amazon.com, where you'll see it first.

The inspiration for this book came from the realisation that many of my reviews of festival films, especially but not only for this particular festival, were the only reviews that existed online. What's more, some films had no presence left on the internet, as if they had never been. Film festival sites tend to last twelve months before rolling over to the next year's event. Many short films never have websites of their own, but those that do tend to lapse as filmmakers move on to new projects. Films don't even always make it to IMDb, the 'source of record' in this industry. If a feature doesn't obtain distribution or a short film doesn't get uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube, then a few years can be all it takes for them to vanish from the internet.

So, while I'd already been reviewing films from this particular film festival, the first one that I'd ever attended and still the closest one to my heart, I redoubled my efforts to cover everything that screened, not only the features but especially the short films. This book, whatever else it is, is a line in the sand to say that these films existed, that they played a festival, were seen by an audience, even won awards. Hopefully reading about them here will keep some of them alive because no film deserves to die. No, not even that one.

The scope is every feature and every short film which screened at the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival at the Harkins Ciné Capri in Phoenix, AZ in 2011, 2012 and 2013. These were 'the transition years' as, after six years as a separate entity, the festival had merged into its big sister, the Phoenix Film Festival, and it was forced to reinvent itself.

They followed 'the early years' of 2005 to 2007 at the Harkins Centerpoint in Tempe, when founders Brian Pulido and Chris Lamont were building it into something sustainable, and 'the classic years' of 2008 to 2010, when it went on the road, playing indie venues like Chandler Cinemas and MADCAP Theatres. 2016's event, which you can follow at horrorscifi.com, will be the last in the fourth set of three years and I'm still trying to figure out what they will be known as. I hope to cover all these in future books.

The thoughtful foreword was written by Mike Flanagan, the director of Absentia, my favourite film of the last decade, which won Best Horror Feature at this festival in 2011, and Oculus, which screened in 2014 as a showcase feature.

The gracious afterword was written by Andrea Canales (formerly Beesley-Brown), the Midnite Movie Mamacita, who had served as the festival's program director for many years.

The handsome cover is by Marty Freetage, who was responsible for some of the most memorable posters, T-shirts and other imagery that the festival has had over the years. He also handles that work for the parent Phoenix Film Festival.

The book is dedicated to Jason Carney, the most obvious face of the Phoenix Film Foundation, which puts on this festival every year, not only because he's had to put up with me for the last, holy crap, nine years and has done so without throttling me to death.

Features reviewed include Absentia, Midnight Son, The Mole Man of Belmont Avenue, Triple Hit, Hisss, I am Nancy, The People vs George Lucas, Stake Land, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Below Zero, It's in the Blood, Folklore, Pig, Beyond the Black Rainbow, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, FDR: American Badass!, Monster Brawl, Slumber Party Slaughter, The Theatre Bizarre, The Victim, With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, Found, Nailbiter, Sader Ridge, Channeling, Found in Time, Space Milkshake, Errors of the Human Body, The Four, Gamera vs Guiron, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, Kiss of the Damned, Play Dead, Saw and They Live.

Short horror films reviewed include Zombiefication, I Rot, Last Seen on Dolores Street, Cold Sore, Bugbaby, Red Umbrella, Cell Phone Psycho, Escape, Shoreditch Slayer, Follow the Sun!, Brutal Relax, Bad Moon Rising, Ambush, The Table, Roid Rage, The Waking, Employee of the Month, Diecons, Game, The Root of the Problem, Steve from Accounting vs The Shadow Dwellers, Sybling Rivalry, Midnight Daisy, Welcome Wagon and Killer Kart.

Short sci-fi films reviewed include The Island, Earthship, Picture Show at the End of the World, Roman's Ark, Earwigs, Antedon, The Hollow Men, SNAFU, The Turing Love Affair, The Recipient, Carry Tiger to the Mountain, The Uncanny Valley, Doctor Glamour, Hollywood Forever, Secret Identity, 20th Century Man, Solaria, Alchemy and Other Imperfections, Mirage, Y Sci Fi, How to Kill Your Clone, Anaphora, Outsight, Dream Cleaners, Dry Gulch, Ontogenesis, Ellie, A Conversation About Cheating with My Time Traveling Future Self, The Secret Keeper, Low Tide in the High Desert, Restitution, Iris, Odokuro, Sol, All I Think of is You, Quantum, Golem, Sunset Day, Flashback, White Room: 02B3 and The Phoenix.

Gunnar Hansen and Make It a Double

I've met and talked with a lot of filmmakers over the years, at screenings, festivals and conventions. In and amongst those conversations, I've come to realise that the films with which we generally associate them are not necessarily the ones that they would prefer to be remembered for.

That's not to say that they're not proud of the titles that made them famous and wrote their names in the annals of popular culture. Those pictures usually did well because the people who made them did memorable work, but that's never the only reason why films are successful. There are so many other reasons that they can't be counted, but often the most important one is that they were simply the right film at the right time to touch the right nerve.

Sadly, that often means that many far worthier titles are unjustly forgotten, relegated to obscurity by the sheer quantity of films that are made and the overwhelming power that is generated by the publicity departments of the major studios.

Back in 2012, at Phoenix FearCon V, I decided to start asking each name I met to select two films from their careers that they would like to see reviewed at Apocalypse Later. I left the reasons entirely up to them, very deliberately to see what they would come up with. They could pick their personal favourites, the ones that they feel are most unjustly neglected, those which were most memorable to make. They could merely be movies which were special to them for reasons that they may or may not wish to disclose.

The first person I asked was Tiffany Shepis, but the list gained momentum in 2014 and I have no doubt will continue to do so. Very few people decline to take part. Thus far, 32 filmmakers (mostly actors, but with a few effects guys) have given me their doubles and I've even had doubles picked for four others who are deceased by their descendants. Only three have said no and one of those decide to join in a couple of years later. The other two were clearly not happy with critics in general and so foresaw the worst.

Shepis made her two choices quickly and surely, while I've found that many have one title ready on their tongue but have to ponder on the second. I've found it fascinating to see their minds conjure up a pair of titles from often expansive filmographies, especially as they don't always explain themselves. Sometimes I can only figure out why the films were important to certain actors by actually watching them. I hope you find their choices as interesting as I have.

And the reason I bring this up now is because we lost Gunnar Hansen at the weekend.



He died on Saturday, 7th November, 2015, leaving behind an interesting body of work that was dominated by one film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

When I met Hansen at Mad Monster Party in 2014, he was a gentleman. Not only did he sign 8x10s for my better half and I, he also signed one for her ex. Way back before I ever came along, my wife's first date with the man who would become her first husband was to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Hansen kindly dedicated it with the words, 'What were you thinking, taking a 15 year old girl to this movie?'

During our brief chat, he picked his two choices for my Make It a Double project. Like many, he didn't go for the one everyone knows, selecting instead a couple of odd comedies from 2007 that tie to the horror genre but don't really fit within it. He didn't have a large part in either film, but he made both of them count, the first with an odd monologue and the latter with some glorious overacting.

Gimme Skelter

Gimme Skelter appears to be a horror movie because it revolves around the arrival in a small New Mexico town of a man who believes himself to be the bastard son of Charlie Manson, complete with five followers. Eager to get noticed, he plans to take the population of Banion's Cross down from 67 to zero.

Regardless of how many boobs and how much gore director Scott Phillips puts on screen, this is a character study of a small town rather than a horror movie. Eventually we realise that at least Charlie Jr is honest about what he wants to do, while the townsfolk all put on faces when they leave their homes and take them back off when they get home. They're not exactly the nicest of people either.

For more, visit my review at Apocalypse Later.

Brutal Massacre: A Comedy

Brutal Massacre: A Comedy is a mockumentary in the This is Spinal Tap style, in which an interviewer follows Harry Penderecki as he attempts to make his new movie, Brutal Massacre against all the odds, capturing all two months of the three week shoot.

It's a clever script, full of little details that make this funnier the more we know about the movie industry. It also has a killer cast, led by David Naughton, who also chose this for his double, Ken Foree, who didn't, and two of the ladies from The Evil Dead, Ellen Sandweiss and Betsy Baker.

For more, visit my review at Apocalypse Later.

Monday Night Roundup #2

I've posted a couple of reviews to Apocalypse Later this week:

Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969), which could well depict the real mid-life crisis of Anthony Newley and a possibly subconscious attempt to destroy his own career. The title isn't the only reason why it was this week's Weird Wednesday review.

Firebird 2015 AD (1972), an ecological sci-fi thriller set in the far future America of, erm, 2015. Shortages and corruption have led the US to outlaw cars and gasoline, but 'burners' like Darren McGavin drive illicitly around the Alberta countryside anyway and government thugs like Doug McClure chase him.

Here are brief reviews of the other films I've watched this week that won't end up reviewed on that site, at least anytime soon.

Tower Heist (2011)

Director: Brett Ratner
Stars: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick, Téa Leoni, Michael Peña and Gabourey Sidibe

It feels odd to say that this is Hollywood done right, because it isn't. They really should make better movies with better scripts and I don't buy into the dumbing down of the audience that the studios seem to give as their excuse for throwing out crap year after year. However, if Hollywood is to make each film as a ride, with charismatic actors whisking us with charm past the many plotholes quickly enough that we might not notice them or at least forgive them for existing, then this isn't a bad example of what they can do. I enjoyed the downtime for my brain.

The film did change a lot over its development time though. Originally it was going to be a vehicle for Eddie Murphy and a team of black comedians, including Chris Tucker, Dave Chappelle and Martin Lawrence, among others, playing a set of disgruntled employees who get their revenge on Donald Trump and the Trump Tower. How perfect that would seem today! Perhaps it could only be better if they were all Latino comedians.

After five years it gradually changed into a Ben Stiller movie, though Eddie Murphy did return to the project, both as a producer and an actor, and he provided an edgy performance far superior to anything I've seen him do in at least a couple of decades. He certainly outshines Stiller without even trying, though the latter does what he does well enough to keep his fans happy. Yeah, I know that doesn't take much.

The Trump Tower turned into an exclusive New York apartment block (average cost: $5.6m) and revenge was sought on its most prominent tenant, Arthur Shaw, a 'Wall Street kingpin' played by a double-edged Alan Alda, who lives in the penthouse. He has a swimming pool on the roof, painted to look like a giant dollar bill, and Steve McQueen's Ferrari in his living room. On the 65th floor. He's quickly caught up in an FBI sting because he's a securities fraudster and it doesn't take long for the staff to find that their pensions, of which he'd been taking care, are all gone.

64 floors down is Josh Kovaks, the floor manager, who's responsible for the smooth running of operations. He's Stiller, of course, and he appears to be good at his job. However, he had taken it upon himself to hand the pension fund up to Shaw; the staff didn't even know about it and are really not happy with him. Clearly Kovaks needs to do something to make it right and getting fired for busting all the glass in that Ferrari doesn't help, especially as he takes a couple of other employees with him.

The final piece in the puzzle is the admission by FBI special agent Claire Denham, under the apparent influence of alcohol, that they haven't found Shaw's safety net. There's $20m hidden somewhere and they have no idea where it is. Grab the pitchforks and storm the castle, she drunkenly suggests.

And so we can write the rest of the film ourselves. Kovaks assembles a team of misfits: Enrique the new guy, Charlie the desk clerk, Fitzhugh the broke resident who's just been evicted and Slide, the local crook who he passes every day on the way to work. After all, they've been casing the joint for ten years without realising it: they know everything about the building, the people in it and their routines. Who better to break in and search Shaw's apartment for that $20m?

The cast do have fun, but nobody comes close to Murphy, who plays Slide, that local crook. He's savvy, though not so much as he believes he is, but the rest are well meaning idiots who just happen to have the right skills for this particular job. Matthew Broderick is best as Fitzhugh, providing him with depth while remaining believably lost. Gabourey Sidibi does well with not much. Casey Affleck and Michael Peña do what they're asked to do, but they're as utterly routine as Stiller is as Mr K.

It's people a level further away from the plot who do better work. Alda is great fun in the only supporting role with any real substance. Judd Hirsch is good as Mr K's former boss, but he's stuck in a wasted role. Téa Leoni is great as the tipsy FBI agent, but she can do this sort of thing in her sleep.

And this is the real problem.

I popped this on after a long but very fun weekend at Comic & Media Expo and a deluge of family drama that descended out of nowhere. My better half and I sat back to relax with the magical combination of peace, quiet and alcohol and laughed a lot at this film. I had found out about Tower Heist when the guy next to me on a plane was watching it while I read and my eyes drifted over once in a while. It seemed like it could be a decent choice for an evening that needed laughs but not brains and that turned out to be exactly what it was. We could sleepwalk through it too.

In a more regular scenario, it would have felt much worse. People like Alda, Hirsch and Leoni shouldn't be stuck in work they can do in their sleep. The only winner here is really Eddie Murphy, who had been doing work in his sleep for the last decade and seemed to relish getting his teeth into a part again, even if it could still have had a lot more substance.

Tower Heist is nicely set up and nicely wrapped up, but in between it was only ever going to be fluff. Thinking about it quickly exposes all sorts of problems, but it moves along well enough and with enough character charm to distract us during the ride. As long as you want a ride, you'll certainly get one. If you want anything more, it won't fit the bill.

The Black Cat (1934)

Director: Edgar G Ulmer
Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and David Manners

Of all the Universal horrors in their golden era of the 1930s, this is the one that I never could quite get. Now I've always enjoyed The Black Cat and I've acknowledged it as a good movie, but I never managed to appreciate it the way so many others apparently do. Its inclusion as one of the best, if not the very best of the entire Universal decade, in so many lists always sat oddly with me. So, given that we were still hovering around Halloween, I thought I'd give it a fresh chance.

I now realise where I'd gone wrong. I'd always watched it as a horror movie and, as much as it clearly is one, it's really a precode drama first and foremost. Last time I saw The Black Cat, back in 2004, I hadn't yet discovered the joys of precodes, so didn't really understand what the film was doing. Now, as a confirmed precode aficionado, I get it completely and see how it ties the edge of the precode era with the more traditional gothic horror of the more famous Universal titles into a very polite but very dark drama.

Released in May 1934, only a month before the Production Code would become enforced and films like this no longer viable in Hollywood, its chief claim to fame back then was to put the two biggest stars in horror onto the same screen for the first time: Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, Dracula and the Frankenstein monster, albeit in far more earthly roles for a change. David Manners, a lesser known mainstay of those classic Universal horrors, plays support, eerily reminiscent today of Joseph Gordon Levitt.

We meet Lugosi first, as the sinister Dr Werdegast, who ends up sharing a train compartment with a couple of newlyweds honeymooning in Hungary. He's creepy, paying far too much attention to the sleeping Mrs Alison, but he's also sympathetic, because he explains himself well. He left his own wife to go to war, only to spend the last decade and a half in an infamous Russian prison camp. All he wants is to see his wife Karen again but their time apart has clearly messed with his sanity.

Leaving the train for a carriage, the three of them are swept off the road during a storm which kills their driver. Dr Werdegast therefore takes the newlyweds to his own destination, the home of Hjalmar Poelzig, an Austrian architect who had built a home on the ruins of Fort Marmorus, which he had commanded during the war, the location of a notorious massacre of thousands of Austro-Hungarian soldiers.

Poelzig is Karloff, of course, and he and Lugosi spar immediately in the most polite manner possible, an almost surreal experience given that the latter blames the former for that massacre and believes him to have stolen his wife. Their relentless politeness carries a weight that is impossible not to share, knowing as we do the seriousness of their conflict. It tells us that these two luminaries are both mad, even if they carry the veneer of civilisation better than their guests. By extension, it suggests that the world itself is mad, which is a resonant idea. Their polite game of chess for outrageous stakes, which consumes their attention at a time when the Alisons are trying to escape, adds the idea that in a mad world, it's the madmen who are really in charge.

Much of the rest of the film works as resonant ideas too. It's too short, something I remember from prior viewings, but its mere 65 minute running time includes a nightmarish set of imagery, most of which features subjects that couldn't be even touched on under the Production Code which was looming in the Hollywood shadows, leaving this the last stop on Universal's journey into real horror. Dracula and Frankenstein were great films but traditional ones, as were The Mummy and The Old Dark House. Only with The Black Cat did they really start getting notably horrific and we can only dream of what they might have done over the next few years had the code not stopped them in their tracks. They had to shift gears to make the wildly camp Bride of Frankenstein, which may, ironically, really be the best horror film they ever made.

Werdegast is insane, bent on murderous vengeance on the one man he holds responsible for so much of the pain of his life. His fear of black cats, hence the title, works not to drive a story but to highlight that insanity isn't just the histrionic nonsense we're used to. Only after his overdone first scene with a black cat do we truly realise how scary his everyday insanity really is. Poelzig is insane too, with a Satanic cult under his command and women preserved in glass cases in his dungeons, but Karloff plays the role as straight as he ever did. I've seen outrageous overacting from Karloff, but he's chilling in how everyday he plays this madman. Had these two actors gone overboard, as they both could, this would be a very different and far less successful film.

So The Black Cat is as great as so many people have suggested and I finally understand why. I have a feeling that Edgar G Ulmer, who directed and wrote the original scenario which Peter Ruric adapted into a screenplay, may well be one of the biggest reasons for its success. Because he stole the wife of Universal head Carl Laemmle, he spent most of his career working in Poverty Row studios and didn't get the opportunity to showcase what he could really do with a decent budget. So, instead he occasionally showed what he could really do without one, which is where films like Detour came from. This was his last real shot in major Hollywood.

Island of Lost Souls (1933)

Director: Edgar G Ulmer
Stars: Charles Laughton, Bela Lugosi, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams and the Panther Woman

With my belated reevaluation of The Black Cat as a great amalgam of horror, precode and psychological drama, I felt drawn to rewatch the other classic of the era that I remembered in exactly those terms: the MGM adaptation of The Island of Dr Moreau, released in 1932 at the heart of the precode era, with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi supported by Richard Arlen and Leila Hyams.

Back in those innocent days before I had a clue what a precode was, I saw both this film and its source novel as a logical extension of Frankenstein, in its focus on science run amok and outpacing the much slower progression of morals. Dr Moreau was another Dr Frankenstein, whose scientific skill and ambition rendered him an outcast from the mainstream community. Moreau was merely bright enough to avoid the inevitable pitchforks and torches by moving his research on human/animal hybrids to a remote island of which few were aware.

Now I see much more, because Wells had much to say and scriptwriters at the time were able to bring a great deal of that to the screen. This script was written by Philip Wylie, famous science fiction author, and Waldemar Young, who had written many films for Lon Chaney even though he was, ironically, a grandson of Brigham Young. The precode era was a brief window during which something as dark and adult as this could be made by mainstream Hollywood. Fortunately MGM took that opportunity, even if the British included it as one of the five films they banned outright in the classic era as obscene.

The story is perhaps an exercise in inevitability. Dr Moreau is a classic mad scientist, played to arrogant perfection by Charles Laughton, who sees his island and the creatures who live there as his dominion. Initially we might see a comparison to a plantation owner and his slaves, but soon we realise that the true comparison is to God and his creation. No wonder the British banned it. Moreau wisely left London because his work had already moved beyond what the scientific community saw as remotely ethical and he only shifted to further extremes from then on. That he succeeded with much of his experimentation does not validate what those experiments were.

In such isolation, Moreau could have carried on forever because those few who knew about him, such as the ships delivering animals for his work, shun him as far as possible. The catalyst for change is the arrival of Edward Parker, a shipwreck victim rescued by one of those supply ships who fell afoul of its captain and gets subsequently dumped overboard into Moreau's unwilling custody. While he's treated well by the scientist, even introduced to an oddly charming young lady called Lota, it doesn't take him long to notice what's really going on, as he follows the screams emanating from the House of Pain and finds Moreau apparently vivisecting a human being without any anaesthetic. Soon he realises Lota is a panther/human hybrid.

Normally, I'd suggest that we could write the script ourselves from here, but in this instance we'd need to have a morbid imagination. If Laughton is the lead, playing God over all he surveys, the most recognisable name today is that of Bela Lugosi, playing one of his creations, the Sayer of the Law, who maintains the status quo by submitting to Moreau's (ie God's) rules.

H G Wells apparently wasn't fond of this adaptation, the first on film for it, in his mind, emphasised the horror over the philosophy. I don't buy that interpretation because the horror drives the philosophy which is all the more powerful because of it. We're horrified at Moreau's work, through our screen avatar of Edward Parker, reacting viscerally first but later morally too. The power of what this script throws at us and leaves us to ponder on is vast and very much the product of its brief time.

Like The Black Cat, this could not have been made under the production code, which wouldn't allow man and wife to share the same bed, let alone dream of allowing themes of blasphemy and bestiality. Fortunately today the code is a quirk of history and we can happily revisit these films without censorship.

Evil Roy Slade (1972)

Director: Jerry Paris
Stars: John Astin, Mickey Rooney, Henry Gibson, Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Dom DeLuise and Penny Marshall

While we were in Hollywood in January to work on the short film, Flight Fright (I was an extra, my better half was the set photographer), the film's director, Jim Politano, recommended that we make a side trip to the Fry's Electronics store in Burbank because it's decked out like a sci-fi monster movie from the fifties with giant ants, spaceships and tentacles.

Naturally I wandered through their DVD aisles and couldn't resist buying a pack of two John Astin comedy westerns, collected in one of those tins that looks great but won't fit on regular shelves with regular movies. I hadn't heard of either Evil Roy Slade (1972) or The Brothers O'Toole (1973), but I'm that usual fan of Astin who knows him primarily from The Addams Family but not much else, realising every time he shows up in a TV show or movie that I really ought to track down more of his work.

Before watching this one, I realised that it was a TV movie with an all-star cast but had no real idea how it would handle itself. Astin's justly famous grin is in full effect on the back of the tin, but it comes truly alive in the movie itself, which went far beyond my expectations to become something ahead of its time.

Now, let's not get off on the wrong foot. This film is dumb and ridiculous and it knows it. Many of the jokes are so obvious that we can see the setup coming a mile away. The gags are traditional, so that this often feels like a sitcom without a laugh track. However, if it sometimes feels old today, it's really a strong look forward, not only to other comedy westerns like Blazing Saddles, which owes this film a debt, but also to the entire genre of movies started by Airplane!, ironically shot at the same studio I was at for Flight Fright.

It's also very funny, partly because of Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall's relentlessly gag-ridden and incredibly politically incorrect script and partly because John Astin plays Slade like it's the best comedy role ever written. He throws himself into this part, albeit the way he always seemed to throw himself into every part. I get the feeling that he's a larger than life person who found his true calling trying to top reality in front of a camera. I've caught up with a bunch of odd Astin roles here and there and not one has ever given me the impression that he didn't have an absolute blast on set. I've never seen anyone who clearly enjoys himself more.

He's Evil Roy Slade, of course, an outlaw in the wild west, who starts out making a cripple dance at gunpoint and then progresses through every dastardly deed you can comfortably imagine. He's villainous through and through, to the degree that when he survived a wagon train massacre as a baby, the Indians and wolves both left him well alone; he had to bring himself up. Of course, he grows up to be the leader of a gang of bank robbers, but he's evil even to them and they love him for it. Come to think of it, Minions owes this film a debt too!

His story arc begins when Betsy Potter and her mum walk into a bank that he's busy robbing. He's immediately smitten, having her write her address on a banknote while his gang swap bullets with the sheriff outside. She's smitten too and naturally thinks she can reform him. The film pursues that conflict with a very sly grin.

The cast are amazing. Astin steals the entire film, of course, because it's tough to even think of competing with his energy. Pamela Austin wisely plumps for being as wholesome and delightful as possible, but the character actors in support give it a go.

Nelson L Stool, the president of Western Express Railroad, the target of many of Slade's jobs, is played by Mickey Rooney, who flounders well. His nephew, Clifford, is Henry Gibson, another actor whose work I need to track down more. With Clifford a rank coward, Stool tries to call in the retired marshal Bing Bell in the form of outrageous singing cowboy Dick Shawn who has, get this, an Indian manservant called Turhan who's played by Pat Morita of The Karate Kid fame. How politically incorrect can this film get?

On top of those guys, there's Luana Anders, Dom DeLuise and Milton Berle, as well as a few names who wouldn't become famous until long after this: a very young Ed Begley Jr, a younger still Penny Marshall and an amazingly young John Ritter as a priest.

Dom DeLuise is the most fun of these, playing a psychiatrist who Betsy has try to treat Slade, but every one of these folk find some fun in the shadows of John Astin.

Needless to say, he gets the vast majority of the great lines, which are so plentiful here that Mel Brooks would be jealous. Take your pick... 'My idea of a nine to five job is nine men robbing five men.' 'I learned two valuable lessons today: never trust a pretty girl or a lonely midget.' 'I can't read, you dumb... love of my life.' 'I figure I didn't commit any really big sins until I turned four years old.'

As willingly stupid as this is, I heartily recommend it, especially to the folk who seek out obscure cult gems. Hey, Cult Film in Review team, you need to add this one to your schedule!

The Return of Weird Wednesdays

Back in the early part of the year, I started up a series of reviews called Weird Wednesdays, which were precisely what they sound like: reviews of the most weird, offbeat and frankly unbelievable movies that I could track down.

I had a lot of fun with those and have more lined up to review, so what better to end the drought at Apocalypse Later than a brand new Weird Wednesday review of a film that even has a title that most people won't believe is real.

It was released in 1969 to critical and popular disdain (but to mild box office success), it's rarely been seen since. In fact, I've heard about it in a number of places, not least from a fellow con-goer at CopperCon FANtasm last year, who had owned and enjoyed the soundtrack album for decades but who had never managed to track down the movie itself.

Well, I have good connections, so I got hold of Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, watched it through in utter amazement and wrote a review that talks about how it must surely have been an attempt by singer/actor Anthony Newley, the writer, director, composer and star, to commit professional suicide. Certainly it's one reason why he lost his third wife of seven years, Joan Collins in her prime, because she cited the movie in her divorce papers.



Here's my review of Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?

And here are links to my earlier Weird Wednesday reviews for those eager to experience the truly bizarre:

The Sperm, a 2007 Thai comedy about an army of mutant nymphomaniac babies.

The Fireman of the Folies Bergère, a 1928 French film about a fireman who visits the Folies Bergère and consequently visualises every woman he sees naked (except Josephine Baker who merely comes close).

Eaten Alive! A Tasteful Revenge, a cannibalism fetish film from WAVE Productions with bad effects (especially for 1999).

Billy's Dad is a Fudge-Packer!, a faux education film from the fifties made in 2004 with as many double entendres as you can comfortably imagine.

The Sex Doll She-Bitch, a rape revenge movie from 2009 in which the victim is a sex doll.

Chocolate Heart, a short 2014 film that introduces the concept of genital handshakes.

The Dragon Lives Again, a 1977 Brucesploitation flick in which Bruce Lee travels to the underground to team up with Popeye, Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu and Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman to take down the Godfather and his henchmen, Clint Eastwood, Dracula, Emmannuelle and James Bond. Oh yeah!

My Grapefruit, My Father, a surreal 2004 film in which a dying man attempts to transfer his soul to his son, only to end up in a grapefruit instead.

Abducted by the Daleks, what can only be described as soft porn movie from 2005. With daleks.

Whew. Are you ready to be traumatised?

Monday Night Roundup #1

With much of the restructuring at Apocalypse Later complete, I'll be posting new reviews very soon. As before, I'll be posting them of the sort of films that most critics don't cover to my main Apocalypse Later site and also reviews of more mainstream pictures to The Nameless Zine.

In the meantime, I'm still watching movies and plan to add a brief weekly roundup here of everything I've seen that won't end up on either of those sites. So here's Monday Night Roundup #1:

Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015)

Director: Don Michael Paul
Stars: Michael Gross and Jamie Kennedy

It's been eleven years since Tremors 4 and that was a prequel. It's about time for a new entry in the series and this starts exactly how it should, with Bert Gummer introducing a survivalist video. He's having a lot of fun, even though he's bald nowadays, and so are we, but sadly it doesn't last.

We don't go downhill immediately. It takes a while for the cool homages to all sorts of other films to multiply and almost shift this film into being a genre parody. It's supposed to be a Tremors film and references to King Kong and Jaws don't detract from that, but the shot for shot kitchen scene from Jurassic Park does and before long it becomes so derivative that it's King Kong Jaws Jurassic Park Predator Tomb Raider Alien Lethal Weapon Die Hard Tremors. Holy crap, that's a lot of references. Of course, we have a supposedly surprising Indiana Jones and a Fridge Too Far setup too.

The upsides are Bert Gummer and the location, which is the intriguing choice of the Gauteng province of South Africa, known as the Cradle of Humankind, a long way from the normal hunting grounds of the graboids. I liked the new setting and Bert becomes more endearing with each appearance. Michael Gross plays him like he's the thirtieth Republican candidate for president and he's clearly enjoying every moment of it, even in a comedy scene when he's stuck in a cage.

The downsides aren't everything else, but they're certainly more plentiful than the upsides. I think I hated the detachable tentacles the most. Now, they can just leap out of the mouths of graboids and dance around like snakes. Perhaps it makes more sense than the herd of cattle that does precisely nothing during a frickin' graboid attack, especially given the punchline of the first movie, but it's still stupid.

Worst of all, though, is the basic logic, which is completely flawed. The whole idea is that graboids, previously confined to the American southwest, have shown up in South Africa, so off goes Gummer to take them down. Except he quickly finds that they've always been there and nobody told him. Or anybody else. The natives even have ancient tribal warrior dances about fighting assblasters, for Pete's sakes.

I have to say that I enjoyed Tremors 5: Bloodlines, but very much from a guilty pleasure perspective. I absolutely adore the original Tremors, which may well be the best monster movie of the last half century. While I still get a kick out of the sequels, the prequel and even the TV show, I can't pretend that any of them are any good. This may be the worst of them, but it's still a Tremors movie and that's good enough for me. The question is whether it'll be good enough for you.

The Falling (2014)

Director: Carol Morley
Stars: Maisie Williams, Florence Pugh, Maxine Peake, Monica Dolan and Greta Scaachi

Every other movie nowadays seems to feature at least one member of the Game of Thrones cast, but I haven't seen Maisie Williams in anything else except the hilarious short called The Olympic Ticket Scalper, with Sir Patrick Stewart, which can be watched online and should be soon. She's made a couple of other features, Heatstroke and Gold, but this was the first one that I've had a chance to see.

It turns out to be a surprising picture, something of a British version of Picnic at Hanging Rock, set in a girls school in the late sixties where a mysterious fainting epidemic breaks out. The only difference is that this one has at least a token explanation for some of what goes on, though I'm still juggling a few theories as to much of the rest.

Williams plays Lydia who is, of course, the character at the heart of the story, but for a while we don't realise that. In fact, we don't even realise that she's the lead because initially Lydia plays second fiddle to Abbie and Williams plays second fiddle to actor/musician Florence Pugh, who does a great job with the character.

Abbie is Lydia's best friend, a blonde beauty who doesn't behave with the dignity the school expects. She wears her skirt too short, she misbehaves with boys in cars and, we soon discover, she turns up pregnant. Lydia merely, and quite obviously, has the hots for her friend and walks forever in her shadow. Sadly, she can't do that for too long, because Abbie has a seizure which leaves her dead in a hallway.

From here, things get really interesting. While Abbie is clearly into boys, Lydia is clearly into Abbie and we wonder early on if that's a sexual thing or just a deep friendship, with the likelihood being the former. There's a great deal of character building early on as Lydia, who proclaims herself not interested in sex, explores her sexuality without her sexually active best friend to help.

So this is a coming of age picture rooted in confusion and double meaning. Surely the falling of the title doesn't only refer to the fainting fits that begin to occur more and more often with a variety of girls and even one of the teachers, some clearly aimed at attention seeking but others not. Surely it also has a religious connotation, equating sex with sin, as Lydia falls for Abbie and then into a sort of psychological adolescent hell. It may even refer to Abbie's fall from Lydia's life, the pivotal moment in the film. Certainly there's an overt double meaning in the description of the orgasm as the little death.

I liked this a lot, but found it difficult to quantify why. I liked how it refused to explain things but felt it should still have explained more. I appreciated the final scenes that solidify some background but felt that they shouldn't have dominated the explanations. I liked how the teachers were gradually brought into the story rather than keeping it all purely among the students, but wanted more reasoning as to why.

I'm happier to talk up the acting, as Williams, Pugh and others are very good indeed. Best of all though is Greta Scaachi, who is absolutely superb. She appears initially to be a throwaway character, Miss Mantel, just a tough as nails teacher (Lydia calls her a 'malicious prude'), but she grows subtly throughout the film, gradually exposing a little of her background to colleagues and to us in a number of scenes. The one with Miss Charron, the art teacher, is amazing cinema.

If the rest of the film had been that good, this would be a must. Instead, it's merely an enjoyable and engaging curiosity.

Jumper (2008)

Director: Doug Liman
Stars: Samuel L Jackson, Hayden Christensen, Diane Lane, Jamie Bill and Rachel Bilson

David Rice is the jumper of the title, though he doesn't know that as our story begins. He's just a schoolboy with a crush. He gives Millie a snowglobe of the Eiffel Tower, because she dreams of travel, but a bully throws it onto a frozen lake. He goes to retrieve it, falls in, gets stuck under the ice and... teleports into the local library, surrounding water and all. As it's after hours and he can't get out, he has to teleport himself back home.

He's from a broken family, his mum having left when he was five and his dad not being much of one. So he decides that 'this thing that happened, it could set me free'. In other words, if mum could run, so can he and off he goes. He learns how to use his talent and finances his new life with a neat bank robbery.

And as a young adult, he does pretty well. He jumps to London to pick up a random chick in a pub. He has lunch on top of the sphinx's head. He has a secret room in his New York apartment with cash organised by country, a personal bank vault. Yes, life is good for David. How can we learn to teleport too?

And then, after eight years, a grey-haired Samuel L Jackson shows up. He joined the film as an NSA agent investigating that bank robbery, but took his time tracking his prey down, waiting in David's apartment for him to return. Now we find out that he's not really NSA but something a lot more sinister and there's a war going on that David is about to join.

There was a lot of potential here and I can't say that I didn't enjoy parts of the film from the popcorn ride standpoint but there's a great deal that's wrong with it. While many critics have lambasted the departures from Steven Gould's source novel, I haven't read it so can't comment on that front. To me, much of the problem is with the casting, as none of the actors live up to the possibilities opened up in those promising early scenes.

Hayden Christensen is a blah as the adult David. I expect that his role made teenage girls everywhere very happy but I don't see why. Rachel Bilson is a little better as Millie, but she's another blah. Kristen Stewart, who only has to appear on screen to piss me off, is thankfully not in this film for more than a few seconds, but Bilson reminded me enough of her that even the resemblance polluted her performance. Diane Lane is good but hardly in the film. Michael Rooker is good too but not in it for much more.

That leaves Jamie Bell and Samuel L Jackson to try to elevate proceedings and both are worth watching. However, Bell is stuck playing a slightly crazy jumper without any of the edge his character should have had and Jackson plays his odd religious fanatic just like he plays Nick Fury. It isn't remotely enough.

I hated the ending too, which didn't help. I won't spoil it but it made no sense to me and, while it clearly sets up a sequel that hasn't happened, I have no interest whatsoever in watching it if it does. It's wrong in every way and the film as a whole comes close. In the end, the only thing really going for it are the effects. Welcome to Hollywood.