Paperback Perusalings

Mark Pilkington has penned a highly interesting, mildly amusing study of 60 years of Ufology entitled Mirage Men. The central thesis, essentially, is that a variety of American agencies have quite actively fostered and encouraged the mythos of flying saucery as a handy cover for the development ant testing of experimental craft and as an unusual conduit for espionage. Pilkington carefully reinterprets most of the main historical ‘occurrences’ showing how key players have been closely linked to Psyops groups started in WW2 and how their disinformation was spread to focus and refocus the attention of the curious and/or nutty. A remarkably lucid, rather convincing read that’s only slightly mired by the author’s occasional dips into credulousness.

 

A Time before Genesis is a po-faced little pot boiler that weaves millenarian ramblings into some batshit global demonic/alien conspiracy capering, which, given it was written by the late comedian Les Dawson, really is quite a surprise. The plot is pretty standard stuff with a journalist stumbling into the murky mire but finding respite with a motley band of Crusaders fight together to thwart the evil that pervades the modern world. The writing is fairly terrible, characters paper thin and the plot well, it’s at least as barmy as it is derivative though it does have a nicely downbeat ending. I’m left wondering sadly if the late, great comic was a closet loon, a frustrated author or just trying to cash in on his renown, all in all a puzzling curio that probably isn’t worth the effort in hunting out.

Scifi Scenery

Twisted horror/comedy John Dies At the End gets butchered down into a reasonably successful 90mins by  Don “Phantasm” Coscarelli.Two slackers get drawn into some fantastical hijinks after ingesting an other-worldly drug called Soy Sauce and fumble about dodging death and some unsavoury and unusual characters. The dark, deadpan wit of the novel is mostly intact and there’s a lovely grubby sheen to the production but the sfx occasionally betray its low budget and the plot’s over simplification is at times baffling with some of the funnier, weirder scenes omitted, still a pleasantly offbeat slice of nonsense.
There’s more juice in the recent adaptation of Dredd with plenty of eye popping action decorating it’s deliberately straightforward plot. Karl Urban stars as the titular antihero who, whilst indoctrinating a rookie into the world of instant justice in a degenerate, over populated future, gets trapped in a drug lord’s tower block and a brutal slaughtering ensues. The unabashed action and perfunctory script keep things ticking along nicely and the modest introduction of the comic’s key elements nicely set up a sequel or two. It’s a shame then that despite it’s charms it bombed at the box office.

British '78s

Richard Burton stars in the curious British paranormal chilller The Medusa Touch from 1978. The chronologically jumbled narrative follows a detective’s investigation into the attempted murder of a man who’s witnessed a few too many tragedies but perhaps unsurprisingly a far darker truth is slowly revealed. This is a low budget curio which, despite some of it’s frippery, musters an effective brooding atmosphere that ticks along nicely towards a suitably grim finale and of course It does help to have Burton in the centre of the piece exuding a smouldering menace that far outweighs his screen time. Understated & underrated.

Shape shifting aliens, cannibalism & lesbians feature in Prey, another British horror from ‘78 that, although quite ridiculous, has a potent, dreamlike atmosphere that masks most of it’s shortcomings. On arrival to Earth the alien adopts human form and infiltrates a nearby mansion only to loaf about for days winding up the squabbling lovers that live there – so far so idiotic and though the script  is half baked and the acting, er, shit it somehow kind of works. There’s some nice directorial touches but I guess it was the sheer weight of all that strangeness that kept me watching to it’s baffling denouement. Probably just for aficionados of cult crap but there’s enough here to justify a remake,

Scant Cinematics

The Day is a gloomy lump of Canadian post apocalyptica that attempts to blend the bleakness of The Road with the action of Book of Eli but with little success. A gaggle of survivors drift aimlessly across a ravaged America trying to avoid strangers but after resting up in an abandoned farmhouse they become prey for a cannibal horde and a desperate siege ensues. The plot and script are uninspired and though there's a fair bit of action it's filmed in such a blurry, poorly lit way you can barely tell what's happening. Bog standard B-movie stuff.
Barry Levinson tries his hand at found footage horror with The Bay. A survivor recounts her experiences about a small town's 4th July celebrations that are somewhat dampened by a flesh eating parasite from the local estuary which cuts a bloody, grisly swathe through the inhabitants. Rather than focus on a single camera source the framing narrative allows Levinson to mix things up with cctv, mobile and police car footage and though it's admirably modest in it's ambitions it isn't scary and some of the key performances are unconvincing. Better than Day but not by much.

Classic Creations

Quatermass and the Pit was broadcast live for the Beeb in 1958 and it's a glorious slice of vintage speculation that reeks of it's era and has a wonderfully British sense of understatement. Professor Quatermass, stiff lipped maverick scientist, fresh from a row at the War Office, is dragged to a building site turned archaeological dig that's unearthed a mysterious craft in a 5 million year old strata with some curious alien corpses inside. Despite the amusingly dated styling and script there's plenty of vigour in the plot and a few wisps of genuine atmosphere as the well mannered team find themselves besieged by incomprehensible forces. This is brilliant stuff but something that's probably only going to appeal to fans of retro scifi.

Frankenstein: The True Story is a reasonable, if mis-titled, TV mini-series version of the classic horror. I was expecting some sort of psychological retelling of the man-made monster but it's quite plain interweaving of the original with the sequel The Bride of... . When the naive Dr assists a demented colleague and inherits his life giving experiments his first bash slowly turns into a disaster and he's offered a second go, this time with lady bits, but it quite unsurprisingly it all ends in tears. The production is decent and the talents of James Mason and David MacCallum assist with proceedings so although I was a little disappointed with the unimaginative retelling it was still an entertaining 3hrs of vintage scifi.

Cockamamie 70's

I was unaware that Bruce Lee had written a script shortly before his death but I'm pretty sure that Circle of Iron wasn't quite what the film he had in mind. The film opens with a martial arts contest with the competitors vying for the opportunity to read a book of wisdom hidden from the rest of the world. The loser of the final bout follows the victor on his travels to the books hiding place and takes on the quest when his chum carks it early on. The script and acting are painfully piss poor especially from the muscle bound lead, Jeff Cooper (who sports a 'do that scuppers any of attempts at profundity) and David Carradine's multiple turns aren't much better but worst of all the plot is a lumpy mish mash of Eastern thought that I'm sure doesn't reflect Lee's intention or ambitions. Only worth watching if you want to see something spectacularly bad.

Dr Black, Mr Hyde is a blaxploitation-era version of RLS's classic tale and despite it's obvious budget constraints manages a half decent job. Our protagonist is developing a cure for liver disease but under pressure for results takes a dose himself and finds the side effects of super strength and (amusingly unconvincing) honkeydom quite exhilarating and predictably chaos reigns as family, friends and colleagues feel the wrath of this changed man. Though the script and plot are decidedly of it's era Bernie Casey is surprisingly good and all in all I quite enjoyed it. Not exactly a classic but if you want something with a little period charm there's worse out there.

Cashing In & Out

Ridley Scott's much anticipated return to science fiction and the Alien universe with Prometheus turns out to be a revealingly awful hodge podge of previous tropes and slabs of cheese. A couple of archaeologists uncover evidence of our extraterrestrial origins and jaunt through the stars on a billionaire's dime in an effort to meet the parents but it all rather inevitably ends up in a sticky mess. It looks lovely but the plot is so muddled, so riddled with plot holes and idiotic characters that any enjoyment is short lived and I ended up feeling a little sorry for the talented actors involved but few of them made much effort anyway and I'm not sure if it's worth making any to watch it either and I'm sadly left wondering whether Scott is a decent director at all and not just a glossy hack like his brother.

Rebooting Spiderman so soon after the successful trilogy was always going to be a tricky, if not redundant, exercise but The Amazing Spiderman turns out to be mildly entertaining superhero fluff that will no doubt rake in the cash. Managing to cram the always tedious origin portion into a tidy 20 mins it gets to the action swiftly as Parker finds himself battling with a mad scientist turned Croc monster. There's nothing at all here that justifies the reboot but at least it's competent film making with an occasionally wry script, some decent effects and two solid performances from Rhys Ifans and Andrew Garfield.

Wordsmith Protagonisms

John Cusack grumbles and stumbles around as the famous author and drunkard Edgar Allan Poe in serial killer thriller The Raven. When a couple of corpses turn up murdered in circumstances similar to Poe's stories the police reluctantly recruit him to help solve the case and he finds himself and his paramour in grave danger. Cusack is decent enough as the lead but his Poe is more convivial drunk that incurable souse and there's not much life in the script nor much ambition in the plotting so it all plays out as a fairly bog standard thriller. A shame that an author of such grisly, macabre horrors should receive such timid and unimaginative treatment.

H.G. Wells gets a shot as a hero in the romantic thriller Time After Time when one of his chums escapes to the 1970's after being exposed as Jack the Ripper. Acclimatising themselves to their new temporal surroundings both men indulge in their proclivities, ie free love and knifey slaughter, before continuing their clash of wit and will. Malcolm McDowell and David Warner add some heft to the charming script and though most of the film is spent on Wells' romancing of a bank clerk there's some genuine menace to the cold calculating Ripper which evens it all out nicely.

Looping WW2

Despite the cumbersome title, Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea is an amusing, light footed Czech scifi comedy from 1977. A bunch of aging, wistful Nazis decide to hijack a time travel tour and gift Adolf a suitcase nuke so he can win the war but their plans are stymied by the unfortunate death of the pilot and the whims of his twin brother who decides to take his place. This is low budget stuff but there's a decent plot with some nice paradoxes, a smorgasboard of satire, slapstick and farce and a brilliant performance from the lead who handles his double role with aplomb. It's not going to entertain everyone and isn't as accomplished as Kin Dza Dza but it's definitely worth a look.


The second World War provides the backdrop to another low budget time travelling tale, Enter Nowhere. Events bring an apparently disparate group of people together to a remote shack in the woods and as they figure out a way to continue their journeys a curious connection arises between them. It's a modest little mystery so the titchy budget doesn't matter matter much but the acting is a bit sub par with none of the 3 particularly convincing, still it has quite an interesting premise and that was enough to keep me watching.

Adapted Selves

It's been a long time since I read H G Wells' The Invisible Man but the 1984 BBC adaptation seems faithful to a fault. Obsessed with optics the antihero almost ruins himself in his pursuit of a technique to induce invisibility but his irascible nature drifts into murderous megalomania after he succeeds in his experiments. Though the characters and setting seem amusingly quaint by today's standards the menace and tremulous rage of Pip Donaghy's performance as Griffin provide the dark heart to this production. Originally shown as 6 25 min episodes I was happy to gulp the whole lot down in one go but be warned if you're unfamiliar with the original novel you'll probably be surprised by the decidedly modest, almost low key adventuring.

Herman Hesse's beautiful, lyrical novel Siddhartha got the big screen treatment back in 1972 and like Invisible Man it's a remarkably faithful version but inevitably fails to muster the same spiritual potency of the original. A young brahmin leaves his luxurious home to wander the forest with some rishis and during his spiritual journey encounters the traditional obstacles to the path of enlightenment. It's well acted and has a musing Indian score but somehow it feels a little rushed and the cinematography is surprisingly humdrum. A good film but with a little more care this could have been something special.

Sloppy Seconds

Sequels are always tricky and seldom successful but given my fondness for the original anime I was quite looking forward to the second Gantz film, Perfect Answer. If you haven't seen the first film there's a mysterious black ball that's resurrecting citizens of Toyko to battle aliens in gory, tech assisted, head popping combat, some die and some survive but no-one's really sure what's actually going on. The sequel rejoins the squad as they endeavour to cash in their accumulated points to bring their chums back to life and although it still looks great and the acting is reasonable enough the insane fight scenes have been toned down and most of the (overlong) film is frittered away on exposition and explanation. Maybe if they'd decided on a trilogy of live action films they could've done the source material justice rather than cram the remaining plot into this uneven, fumbled finale.

More glossy action festoons Wrath of the Titans the follow up to the mediocre Clash. The wooden Worthington returns as Perseus who has to rescue Neeson's Zeus from the clutches of his demented brother Hades and his own snotty son Aries. Like before the shiny sfx and monster bashing action are supposed to distract from the papery plot and the by-the-numbers script but it's so crushingly formulaic and just plain dull I had to try hard to get the end. Given the richness of Greek myths it's quite depressing that instead of continuing Perseus' story post Kraken or even adapting the story of another hero like Bellerophon or Cadmus they thought they'd should cobble something together.

Growth & Decay

Murakami's Norwegian Wood is a delicate reminiscence of the life and loves of a young man, Toro, in late Sixties Tokyo and, despite not being autobiographical, is devoid of the author's trademark peculiarity. While at University after Toro's friend commits suicide a tentative romance blossoms with his girlfriend Naoko but events and their fledgling adulthood causes much confusion. As you'd expect from Murakami it's beautifully written but the two main characters are so fragile and melancholic I struggled to relate to them and without the usual fantastical elements the whole thing seemed a little insubstantial. It seems harsh to criticise such a wonderfully written novel and it is an achingly poignant vista of the pressures of maturation but I think I prefer Murakami's wilder side.

No Blade of Grass is a quirky slice of British post apocalyptic cinema and I was lucky enough to be lent a copy of the original novel The Death of Grass by a friend. Written in 1956 there's a grass chomping virus spreading across the globe and gaggle of suburbanites take the initiative and head for the hills, just not quick enough to avoid the expected social disintegration; roaming rapey gangs, looters and lunatics. It's a nicely drawn examination of middle class sensibility and it's weak points as the journey takes it's psychological as well as physical toll and although the plot seems hackneyed it's worth keeping in mind it's over 50 years old. John Christopher went on to write scifi mainly for adolescents, most memorably The Tripods, but I might dig around and see if I can find something as bleak and kitchen sink as this.

A Futurological Congress

Nacho Vilagondo's first film, Timecrimes, was an excellent, darkly comic, time-travel thriller and with his sophomore feature, Extraterrestrial, he provides another entertaining, low fi spin on a classic scifi trope, this time with an alien invasion. Waking up after a wild night, a couple who can't remember each other's names, awkwardly shuffle about before it dawns on them that the city has been emptied, all communications are down and there's a ginormous UFO parked in the sky above. As the pair try and survive amidst the confusion, suspicion and idiocy of their fellow survivors a gentle, tentative romance blossoms and things get a little complicated. The sharp, witty script fosters some brilliant, dead pan performances from the small cast and there's plenty of laughs throughout, more of a scifi-flavoured bedroom farce than anything else but still one of the most enjoyable films I've seen in a while.

Luc Besson's latest foray into scifi sees Guy Pearce channel Snake Pliskin in a rescue the presidents daughter from orbital prison romp called Lockout. Pearce does an reasonable job as the one liner spewing action hero who, after being framed for killing his boss, is given the choice of 20 years in stasis or infiltrating a space station stuffed with criminals under the command of some Scottish bampots. There's a tonne of action and some natty sfx that kinda offset the plethora of plot holes and the hackneyed set up but it never manages to distinguish itself as anything other than a fairly average B-movie. With modest expectations it'll still keep you entertained for it's 90 mins.

Three Threats Within

Northern Delights

Norwegian Ninja is a very odd alt-history dramatisation of the life of a Norwegian politician/spy, Arne Treholt, who was convicted of treason for selling secrets to the KGB. In this whimsical, highly silly retelling of his story however he's a spiritually gifted leader of an anti-terrorist squad of Ninja warriors who'll fight anyone threatening the Norwegian way of life. Playing out like a cross between a Wes Anderson film and some sub par 80's actioner like No Retreat all festooned with some ironically bad special effects and retro stylings. It's quite an entertaining 80 mins, sure I probably only got 50% of the jokes and had never heard of the main character but if you're looking for something quirky and offbeat you could do a lot worse than this.

Kin Dza Dza! sees a mismatched pair of Moscovites get catapulted to the far side of the universe by a homeless man they tried to help one morning and struggle through a baffling series of adventures searching for a way home. The acting is pretty good and it's a surprisingly effective scifi comedy mash that manages to mix in plenty of satirical pokes at class and conformity all topped with a silly yet dry sense of humour. Like Ninja above there was a few laughs that were beyond me but it's a very funny, charming Soviet scifi.

Red Planet Blues

TV mini series adaptations of fiction classics should be a sure thing - reasonable production standards twinned with the time to explicate the plot rather than have it scrunched into the usual 90 mins. I've always been a little naive though and it turns out The Martian Chronicles is a cheap and cheesy rendition of a Ray Bradbury novel following over the exploration and colonisation of the Red Planet and the inevitable discovery of it's comically cliched inhabitants. Rock Hudson leads the cast with a empty eyed, hammy performance and over the ensuing 6 hours the script and acting never lifts above the am-dram and the sfx tragic but somehow it kept me watching, It does have a wispy, dreamlike atmosphere and the ghost planet motif is nicely done but I guess that's down to Bradbury's original anyways it's definitely one that's for just the nerds & nostalgists.

Edgar Rice Burrough's aging Martian adventure, John Carter, got a polish from Disney but a kicking by the critics and sure, it's big budget fluff. but it's not nearly as bad as some of the guff I've sat through. It doesn't make much sense, is stuffed to the gills with cheese and the main actor, Taylor Kitsch, can't act for toffee but that hardly distinguishes it from the majority of Hollywood's offerings. The titular hero gets zapped from the South into the middle of a Martian civil war and discovers his new found abilities might hold the key to ending the conflict and finding his way home blah blah blah. Given the amount of cash they spent on the snazzy sfx it's just a shame they never though of making something more than the average dumb blockbuster better film.

Country Chillers

Low budget high strangeness is the order of the day in The Corridor a horror/scifi about a bunch of chums who take a trip to snowbound hills to scatter Mom's ashes. Not long after they arrive they discover a strange force field that appears to augment their perceptions and might explain Mom's unusual death. There's some middling acting and the script is perfunctory but it's commitment and the weird, unusual premise keeps things entertaining, kinda made me think of The Signal. A odd little film that's worth a look.

Harry Potter star Radcliffe leads Hammer's adaptation of classic ghost story The Woman in Black and it's actually not bad. Playing a widowed accountant Radcliffe is sent to a country estate to wind up some paperwork only to find himself besieged by creeping apparitions and superstitious locals. The acting is reasonable enough and the production is nicely detailed but it's strength lies in the excellent sound production which elevates the fairly predictable haunting into something a little more special. Another solid effort from the reborn Hammer studio.

Conventional Boxes

Trapped in a bunker after a nuclear strike, a bunch of NYC residents find it hard to maintain their sanity in The Divide, directed by Xavier Gens. Michael Biehn initially leads the survivors as they come to terms with what's happened but as the days pass tensions erupt and the safety they sought evaporates. The acting is not bad and it's got a suitably grim atmosphere with some nice patches of dread here and there but it's way too predictable and as the events unfold it swiflty limps into pretty typical B-movie fare.

Stephen Dorff plays a secret agent, kidnapped, locked in a trunk and tortured for the President's location in the preposterous Brake. Presumably some bigwig greenlit this project after the success of Buried as they're essentially the same film, man in a box for 90 mins with slightly different accoutrement, in this case Dorff gets a CB radio, torch & telephone to play with and I suppose his performance is reasonable but it's so ridiculous I found it distracting and like Divide suffers from a distinct lack of imagination. If you're looking for some fairly brainless entertainment I'd go with The Divide if I were you.

Uncommon Romancing

Ryan Gosling deadpans his way through Lars and the Real Girl, a Canadian comedy about a socially retarded loner who buys a sex doll and introduces her to family ands friends as Bianca, his Brazillian girfriend. With Emily Mortimer's subtle performance as Lars' sister in law matching Gosling's straight faced efforts and a funny yet sensitive script this little comedy strikes a surprsingly mature tone.

Ewan Macgregor and Eva Green fall in love during a peculiar sensory apocalypse in the low budget, Glasgow shot, Perfect Sense. A chance encounter between epidemiologist Green and chef Macgregor coincides with the outbreak of an unsual pathogen which is slowly stripping the world of it's senses one by one. As chaos and despair smoulder in the background, our pair of protagonists spend more and more time together and their relationship deepens while their own lives crumble. Despite it's odd conceit and low-fi delivery, the two leads work well together and it's an endearing little scifi romance with some big ideas.

Disorderly Minds

China Mieville's Embassytown follows the story of a deep space pilot who becomes enmeshed in political and social upheaval in her home city, a community of ambassadors on a nexus world with a linguistically unique indigenous population. Mieville creates a vivid, rich milieu for his characters to play in and, though it takes a while to get going, it snowballs into a thrilling and surprisingly emotive read. Mieville continues his golden streak.

The Psychopath Test sees Jon Ronson investigate, in his usual idiosyncratic fashion, the business of diagnosing and treating psychopaths. With a cast including Broadmoor prisoners, proselytising practitioners, activist Scientologists and borderline CEO's Ronson packs in the giggles as he uncovers the murky world of the DSM and the challenges inherent in assessing someone else's sanity. Due to Ronson's scattergun approach this is closer to Them than Stare at Goats but it's a effective, charming primer about the business of noggin doctoring.