“What’s The Knife Got To Do With Anything?” MOVIES! Sometimes My Questionable Taste In Movies Spans Several Decades!

I’ve not had time to write up any comics, but I have written up some movies. I didn’t do a proper intro either. See?All complaints to the management, pal.

Combs & Crampton in FROM BEYOND

Anyway, this…

THE YAKUZA (1974) Directed by Sydney Pollack Starring Robert Mitchum, Ken Takakura, Brian Keith, Herb Edelman, Keiko Kishi, Eiji Okada with Richard Jordan as “Dusty” Screenplay by Paul Schrader and Robert Towne, Story by Leonard Schrader Music by Dave Grusin

She said: “Robert Mitchum is always a good time.”

Richard Jordan! I know! Fellow elderly readers have just threatened the purity of their incontinence pants! Whatever happened to Richard Jordan? He seemed to be in every movie made for about five minutes back in the ‘70s. And then: nada. (See also: Michael Sarrazin) Anyway, like you care, with your youth and your lattes and your wild ecstatic dancing. So, yeah, Richard Jordan is in this as the young scamp supporting Robert “Bob” Mitchum as he glides through Japan on a vengeance tip like a ferocious rock on a Segway®. A super cool rock, mind. One that returns to Japan to re-spark a WW2 romance while extracting a pal out of a jam with the Yakuza. Violence and stifled erotic yearning ensue. Based on a Paul & Leonard Schrader (with some Robert Towne tinkering) script it’s directed by Sydney Pollack. Unfortunately Pollack seems a poor fit for something that would benefit from being punched up with some of the shabby insanity of, say, Paul Schrader’s ROLLING THUNDER (1977). But then that’s a perpetual problem with Pollack’s stuff, a glaring lack of last act whorehouse shootouts. Particularly so in TOOTSIE (1982). THE YAKUZA keeps trying to be classy, basically. Too classy for the neo-noir material really. If you can get past that (and a truly jarringly inept flashback sequence) this is a pretty fun time. Not only do you get to see Mitchum placidly fuck the Yakuza up, but as an added bonus the perpetually underappreciated Brian Keith is gallantly sporting a quite remarkable hairpiece. This was on TCM so the print was hardly spectacular but still worth a  watch, if only for the sight of Robert Mitchum bursting through paper walls and emptying his gun into Japanese gangsters with all the emotion of a fridge. If nothing else THE YAKUZA proves that paper walls are no defence against elderly enraged Gaijin on the vengeance trail. GOOD! 

CHILD’S PLAY (1988) Directed by Tom Holland Starring Catherine Hicks, Chris Sranadon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Dinah Manoff with Jack Colvin as “Dr. Ardmore” Screenplay by Don Mancini, John Lafia and Tom Holland Music by Joe Renzetti

She said: “It’s silly.”

She’s not wrong, but it’s meant to be silly; so that’s okay. I got this on Blu-Ray just t’other day, because My Lady of Perpetual Suffering got herself gussied up as Chucky for Hallowe’en, but had never seen the movie. I know! Talk about an impoverished upbringing! One of the great unacknowledged burdens of Modern Life is the seeming inability to directly address any of life’s glaring injustices. Seven pounds sterling and twenty four hours later and I had kicked the lack of Chucky movies in my loved one’s life to the curb.  Next week: John ends world poverty. In the meantime I’ll tell you about CHILD’S PLAY, mainly so that I can claim the seven pounds back as “Business Expenses”. Thankfully, Tom “FRIGHT NIGHT” Holland is clearly not pulling a Pollack here and smartly plays down to the premise’s nutty strengths. Which is a good idea, as here he’s dealing with Brad “WISEBLOOD” Dourif’s serial killer escaping death by possessing an overpriced kid’s toy and then offing a bunch of people, before trying the same soul swap trick on Catherine Hick’s resourceful single mom’s kid. Given the not entirely straightforward premise the script does a remarkable job of cramming exposition, character work, set pieces, horror and humour into its wiry 87 minutes. No one’s going to give CHILD’S PLAY an Oscar® (unlike TOOTSIE) but as low budget ‘80s horror movies about foul mouthed killer dolls go it’s a pretty fun time. The fact it’s Brad (EXORCIST III) Dourif hissing expletives out of the chubby plastic face doesn’t hurt, obviously. For the time and the money they do a remarkably good job on the Chucky stuff. Which is clearly important as he’s (it’s?) the star, no matter how much fun Chris (FRIGHT NIGHT) Sarandon has with his Bwanx! accent. But Sarandon gets the best scene where, in a spirited blend of horror and physical comedy, he has to fend off Chucky’s attacks while driving a speeding car. But all the kills are well staged being either silly (Mr McGee from the Hulk gets electro shock) or flinch-making (the voodoo bone breaking. OH!) or creepy (Chucky skittering around the apartment like a barely glimpsed homicidal, ginger wigged cockroach). It’s an ‘80s movie so there are scenes of hobos with shopping carts, hairspray, a “spunky” best mate ripe for a spectacular fall, an explosion caused by someone putting the gas oven on, smoking, and a niggling sense that there was a lot of ruby and violet lighting (even though there probably wasn’t). It’s not as good as FRIGHT NIGHT (1985) but CHILD’S PLAY is still GOOD!

STAGE FRIGHT (1987) Directed by Michele Soavi Starring David Brandon, Barbara Cupisti, Robert Glogorov, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Clain Parker, Loredana Parrella, Martin Philips with James Sampson as “Willy” Screenplay by George Eastman and Sheila Goldberg Music by Guido Anelli, Simon Boswell and Stefano Mainetti

She said: “This is just fucking awful; I’m going to bed.”

My paramour having been pummelled into early retirement by a distressingly ‘80s dance sequence, I was left alone to savour this, a poorly dubbed Italian slasher flick in which a bunch of thesps rehearsing an awful musical are stalked by an escaped nutter wearing a massive owl mask. The dialogue and the acting are kind of terrible, but that’s not why we’re here. No, we are here to see an escaped nutter wearing a massive owl mask off some thesps in inventive, suspenseful and, hopefully, excessively gory ways.  Which is what happens, oddly enough. Since Aristotle first posited the notion of catharis, the belief has persisted that watching stuff like this is, uh, cathartic, stopping us from doing bad stuff by soaking up nasty urges. Since I have never heard of anyone donning a massive owl mask and offing a bunch of thesps, the evidence, anecdotal as it may be, is on Aristotle’s side. Who knows how many poorly dubbed thesps’ lives this movie has saved simply by existing? No one knows. Because it’s a stupid question. Putting aside the pretentious crowbarring in of ancient mega brains in an attempt to class this up Sydney Pollack-like, STAGE FRIGHT is a slasher flick and slasher flicks are all about the kills. Oh, there are some sweet “kills” in this one. Hurr. Kills. Hurr. I like the kills. Hoo! Hoo! See how they die! Hey, Aristotle said it’s good for me, so don’t you be judging me! For the more erudite cineaste there’s a brilliantly staged piece of suspense where the heroine has to retrieve a key from right by the killer’s feet by shimmying under the stage, all the while unaware of whether the killer’s caught on, because of the giant face occluding owl mask he’s wearing. The choppy and unpromising start can drive the more sensible viewer away, but if you can tolerate the initial stretch of almost hallucinatory poor, well, everything STAGE FRIGHT rewards you with some hectic homicidal mayhem. It gets a bit odd at the end, with a character repeating things like he’s suffered a brain injury and a “shocking reveal” that centres on the inability of the police to count. But, y’know, I came to see an escaped nutter wearing a massive owl mask slaughter a bunch of thesps and I got exactly that. So STAGE FRIGHT was OKAY!

TARNISHED ANGELS (1957) Directed by Douglas Sirk Starring Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Middleton with Jack Carson as “Jiggs” Screenplay by George Zuckerman Based on the novel 'Pylon' by William Faulkner Music by Frank Skinner

She said: “Everyone is having emotions!”

Here Douglas Sirk adapts William Faulkner’s 1935 novel ‘Pylon’, reportedly much to William Faulkner’s apparent 1957 displeasure. Lighten up, Billy Faulkner! I know, I know, TARNISHED ANGELS looks like one of those movies you watch with your elderly parents on a Sunday afternoon. That’s what it looks like, what with Rock (SECONDS) Hudson as a tipsy reporter in a hat, Robert (AIRPLANE!) Stack as a moody stunt flyer, Jack (MILDRED PIERCE) Carson as the cheeky mechanic, Dorothy (WINTER KILLS) Malone as the woman caught between them, and Chris Olsen as the tow headed child alternating between weepy and cheeky in the background. To top it all off Rock Hudson’s character is called Burke Devlin, a name so butch it’s got hair on its knuckles. And most names don’t even have knuckles. Unthreatening Sunday matinee material a-go-go then. Ah-ah-ah, not so fast! This is a Douglas Sirk movie, so for a start the emotions on display are so intense they almost exist independently of the actors expressing them. Being English and thus an emotional invert I find Douglas Sirk movies quite traumatic viewing. Where war movies have bullets and horror movies have monsters, Douglas Sirk movies have emotions. And in Douglas Sirk movies emotions wound like bullets and maul like monsters.  Some mock Sirk for being a kind of bland romantic, but TARNISHED ANGELS for one is one sleazy movie about really unhealthy relationships and horribly damaged people. It’s a movie which is only saved from being vilely unsavoury by the slight dilution afforded by the restraints of the time. Unfettered, I feel Douglas Sirk would have made movies that made REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000) look like TOOTSIE (1982). I mean, Christ, in one scene here we are cruelly forced to view a child trapped on a fairground plane ride hysterically freak out as he watches his dad’s fatal plane crash mere yards away. And if that pitilessly harrowing scene isn’t a perfect summation of the Sirk approach, it’s only because it isn’t soaked in sumptuous swathes of lush Techni-color. Alas, TARNISHED ANGELS is in B&W but otherwise it’s as SIrk as Sirk can be. EXCELLENT!

FROM BEYOND (1986) Directed by Stuart Gordon Starring Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree with Ted Sorel as “Dr. Edward Pretorious” Screenplay by Dennis Paoli, Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon Based on the short story by H. P. Lovecraft Music by Richard Band

She said: “There’s just too many tits in ‘80s horror movies!”

And she wasn’t talking about Malcolm McDowell. BOOM! BOOM! Prudes beware; this is based on the H. P. Lovecraft short story ’From Beyond’ in the same delightfully vulgar way as the same team’s REANIMATOR is based on ol’ shovel chin’s ‘Herbert West: Reanimator’. Which is to say that if H. P. Lovecraft ever saw either one he’d probably expire forthwith, face empurpled and eyes agog. Because FROM BEYOND is Trashy McTrash, no doubt. But it’s unapologetically trashy; trash which winks because it’s smarter than you think.  No, for 21st Century citizens with their elevated tastes there’s just no getting around the fact that Barbara (YOU’RE NEXT) Crampton’s arse gets a good airing and her chest gets a good mauling by gooey claws, while Jeffrey (THE FRIGHTENERS) Combs slowly transforms into a giant phallus, and poor old Ken (DAWN OF THE DEAD) Foree’s good-natured cop can only try to keep spirits up with his dumplings and gravy. But why would you want to get around any of that? You should wallow in it, wallow, I say! Otherwise you’re watching the wrong movie. Try ****ing TOOTSIE (1982) if you want inoffensive claptrap. So, having built a “Resonator” (as one does) to stimulate pineal glands (!) Dr. Pretorius’ head brutally disappears leaving a babbling Crawford Tillinghast (Combs) and an upset neighbour in curlers in its wake. Eager to make a name for herself Crampton’s shrink (Dr Kate McMichaels; who must have started studying medicine at the stately age of 4) takes Tillinghast back to the scene of the weird science crime to find out what happened. Slightly concerned about the headless corpse and the fact that Tillinghast was the only suspect, the police insist Detective Bubba Brownlee (Foree) accompany them. (To be honest this might not be an entirely accurate reflection of police procedure.) McMichaels has the bright idea of repeating the experiment, and then things get a bit rudey-roo and gooey-goo as reality is invaded by creatures and impulses …from beyond! FROM BEYOND is unusually bawdy for a horror movie, but it’s got plenty of the old claret splashing and brain munching as well as some freaky creatures. Everyone acts like they are having a blast, and since most of the FX are physical it stands up to blu-ray pretty well; the blue screen stuff suffers, but since that’s minimal it’s hardly a deal breaker. Taken optically, FROM BEYOND provides your RDA of saucy horror tomfoolery. VERY GOOD!

WE ARE STILL HERE (2015) Directed by Ted Geoghan Starring Barbara Crampton, Andrew Sensenig, Lisa Marie, Larry Fessenden with Monte Markham as “Dave McCabe” Screenplay by Ted Geoghan Music by Wojciech Golczewski

She said: “That’s really shit me up, that has!”

This was an impulse view and, boy, this was a good one. You could almost smell my relief as I found that my aging impulses remain sound. Unhealthy, sure, but still sound. I didn’t know anything going in to WE ARE STILL HERE and it was all the better for it. Hence the brevity of this review, as I seek to replicate that experience for your good self. In essence though, Barbara (FROM BEYOND) Crampton and Andrew Sensenig play a couple still shell-shocked by grief for their recently deceased son, who move into a remote house in a snowy and bleak bit of ‘70s America. Creepiness ensues. It really would be a shame to spoil it, but the best thing was how it ended up crushing expectations like a still beating heart in a vengeful corpse’s fist. WE ARE STILL HERE starts off all elegantly measured and mournful, with brief glimpses of disquiet and then it lunges suddenly into, well, something else. Clearly the people involved all love horror movies and know how to make ‘em, but most impressive was the acting. Everyone’s acting is top notch, really , really top notch; everyone nails the characters just right. But even so, unsung screen vet Monte Markham stands out with his enormously entertaining affable bastardry. Damn, this was just such fun. You’ll probably never look at a sock the same way again. WE ARE STILL HERE is still VERY GOOD!

THE NAKED ISLAND (1960) Directed by Kaneto Shindô Screenplay by Kaneto Shindô Starring Nobuko Otowa, Taiji Tonoyama, Shinji Tanaka, Masanori Horimoto Music by Hikaru Hayashi

She said: “That was sad. Good, but sad.”

This is a Japanese movie about a family of four whose hard scrabble life is dominated by the farming of a harsh lump of an island in the Setonaikai archipelago . Most of each day is taken up with rowing to the neighbouring island to draw the water essential for life and agriculture. For part of the day the two children attend school. The school together with the water bearing and trips to sell crops are their only links with the wider society. The movie is minimal and realistic; Shindô and his cast and crew lived on the island throughout the filming. No words are spoken for the first half hour, and for the most part the movie just follows the family’s bleak, repetitive existence, creating a soothing rhythm until the inevitable occurs, and the lack of things we take for granted takes a terrible toll. Then life resumes and then life goes on. With THE NAKED ISLAND Shindô is as quiet as Sirk is loud but to no lesser emotional effect. THE NAKED ISLAND is the kind of deceptively artless movie which seems to be doing nothing but is quietly doing everything. Unlike ***ing TOOTSIE. Whatever, THE NAKED ISLAND is EXCELLENT!

NEXT TIME: Oh, go on then – COMICS!!!

“You're Catching On, Buster!" COMICS! Sometimes I Don’t Want To Ruffle Any Feathers But I Do Have To Say That Nazis Seem Like Really Quite The Most Awful People!

I read a 1960s DC war comic. It was pretty neat. Don’t worry, it’s inevitable that we’ll hit some real shockers soon, but not this week.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

Anyway, this…
OUR ARMY AT WAR #160
“What Is The Color Of Your Blood?”
Art by Joe Kubert
Written by Robert Kanigher
Sgt Rock created by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher
DC Comics, $0.12 (1965)

This yellowing and elderly comic clutched in my yellowing and elderly hands is remarkable for a number of reasons. The most amusing of those reasons is Robert Kanigher’s lovably hyperbolic reaction to a letter criticising his work on WONDER WOMAN: “What is one more scar to a walking battlefield?” This being OUR ARMY AT WAR and not WONDER WOMAN the precise criticism is irrelevant so Kanigher doesn’t print it. Kanigher’s steely indifference in the face of such criticism is, however, important so he does share that with us. “What is one more scar to a walking battlefield?” Fantastic stuff. Due to its relevance Kanigher is however able to share with us the rest of the letter which, fortuitously, is praise, this time for the Enemy Ace strip. Yes, as you’ve probably gathered from previous entries in the appallingly persistent “Old Man! Old Comics!” things I do, one of the very special pleasures of reading an old comic is the dip into the psyche of the Comics Scene Past it allows via the letters page. Usually, because I err towards old war comics, this is an exciting peek into the minds of readers who were inclined to address their excitable letters to fictional characters (“Hi, Sgt Rock! Remember when you shot that Jerry in the face? How did his brains taste?”) and correct mistakes regarding weaponry (“…the Koch-Wobbler sub-machine gun was in fact useless in prolonged firefights due to its tendency to overheat and loudly question why everyone couldn’t just get along.” ) The thrilling fusion of imagination and pedantry on display is an entertainment in itself, and an important indicator of how seriously the audience took this stuff. Well, some of the audience. Admittedly most of the audience neglected to write in and probably forgot these books as soon as they finished them, but, still, someone out there was listening. In recognition of this DC’s war comics would occasionally try to say something worth listening to. OUR ARMY AT WAR #160 is one such issue.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

OUR ARMY AT WAR#160 is a Message Issue and, no, the message isn’t that you can’t hurt Robert Kanigher’s feelings with your WONDER WOMAN criticisms but rather that everyone should knock that racist shit off. From my privileged view point (white, male, one cat, no hair) it’s easy to think such a message is like telling everyone not to wash their hair in lava ,or not to keep tigers under the bed, and yet rumour has it that racism persists. Sure there’s a black President in The Americas but there was also all that pretty racist stuff about him being a Hawaiian muslim or something. (Those damn Hawaiians! Always causing a fuss! I don’t want to sound anti-Hawaiian here but…etc.) Things are by no means sorted on the racial equality front in 2015 and terrible, terrible things still happen to remind us of that. But things are… better (said the complacent middle aged white man) in 2015 so the clumsy but heartfelt sentiments on show here might seem a tad toothless. But not all times are these times. And this comic didn’t come out in 2015; it came out in 1965. That may well have been ten years after Rosa Parks changed everything by not going to the back of a bus but those ten years of Civil rights progress had been filled with tear gas, violence and death. In 1965 there may well have been the Voting Rights Act but there were also the Watts Riots (Aug 11-17, 1965) and the assassination of Malcolm X (21 Feb 1965). Offering up a plea for racial equality in a comical periodical might not exactly have been literary gunpowder, but in 1965 it was still far from empty gum flapping.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

Throughout I’m treating this comic as a Kubert & Kanigher collaboration because comics are (ideally) a collaborative art form and Kubert & Kanigher worked closely together on the Rock comics. The storytelling with its in media res opening, repetitive reinforcement of key points, flash-backs, direct to the point of bluntness dialogue, use of quotes to highlight simple metaphors and the general ability to impart something quite rickety with the illusion of solidity is Kanigher at the top of his “get it done” game. Kubert’s art has an extra level of commitment here, with that lively looseness of line bolstered by the blunt impact of his blacks to smooth the eye through.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

As I’ve said in the past I think Joe Kubert was quite keen on his comics being edifying so I can quite see the whole message thing originating from him, Kanigher giving the thing shape, and then the two batting it back and forth until time ran out and they just had to go with what they’d got. The result is not exactly buffed to a high gloss, but for all the slips into silliness and end runs past realism “What is The Color of Your Blood?” works well as a four colour punchy polemic.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

As is traditional Sgt Rock headlines OUR ARMY AT WAR but for much of this blockbuster battle yarn Jackie Johnson takes centre stage. Because you aren’t old and daft you probably don’t read a lot of DC war comics so it’s maybe worth pointing out that Jackie Johnson is the black member of Easy Co. From my intensive researches (i.e. reading Codename: Gravedigger in MEN OF WAR) I can tell you that this is unrealistic as blacks and whites were segregated during WW2, with black soldiers relegated to menial and unpleasant tasks while the white soldiers did the fighting. However, due to further research (i.e. reading SGT ROCK comics) I can assure you that Sgt Rock stories are not supposed to be documentaries so, yes, there’s a black soldier in Easy Co. In 1965 America was still firmly impaled on the Punji sticks of the Vietnam War and soldiers (back before they were allowed porn vids) were notorious for reading comics. Sometimes people wonder how DC’s war comics lasted as long as they did and, simplistically, I think it’s because even though they were (mostly) about WW2 they allowed America to acknowledge and deal with the wars that came after. Anyway, racial segregation in the US Army had ended in 1948 so by 1965 black soldiers could die with white soldiers, which just goes to show equality isn’t all pony rides and ice cream. It also shows why Easy Co. anachronistically included a black soldier - it was an attempt to reflect the diversity of the armed forces audience of the time.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

The exact individuals whom Jackie Johnson is supposed to be an amalgamation of varies according to who you ask, as this story revolves around boxing I’m going to stick with Jackie Johnson being a combination of Jack Johnson & Joe Louis, who were both boxers. They also both play directly into the ideas and themes Kubert & Kanigher are utilising. Man, that’s a chalk and elbow patches sentence right there. Before we get to that dusty stuff I have to tell you about the dust up it’s attached to. In essence then, Rock, Wild Man (he of the eerily prescient hipster beard) and Jackie Johnson are captured by Nazis, amongst whose number a familiar face is found. Fate (as if working against a really tight deadline with little room for such niceties as plausibility) has conspired to bring Jackie face to face with, one Uhlan who is not only a German boxer, but the very same German boxer to whom Jackie had memorably lost the heavyweight boxing championship prior to WW2 (!) Memorably for Jackie that is, not you because it didn’t really happen so how would you remember it? Turns out Jackie remembers it enough for everyone as we see in a series of flashbacks in which Jackie saves Easy Co. via a succession of typically Kanigher-esque acts awesomely entertaining in their unfeasibility, but then looks all sad and Sgt Rock stands near him and does one of his little monologues which explain Jackie’s sadness in a manly way. Basically, Jackie has really taken his Stateside loss at the hands of a Nazi, and the later use of his defeat as Propaganda, really badly. He needs to toughen up a bit; what if someone did something really awful like criticise his work on WONDER WOMAN?

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

Having won once the Nazi reckons twice can’t hurt and so elects to do so in an impromptu rematch. The idea here is to have a bit of fun during a rare spot of down time to demonstrate to his cackling pals the racial superiority of the white race. (Why, I do the same myself when running long macros at work!) Of course it’s implicit that once Jackie even starts to look as though he’s winning the Nazis will kill Rock, Wildman & Jackie because, well, Nazis are big jerks. So, at this point of suspense I naturally change the subject and start going on about Jack Johnson: Jack Johnson (1878-1946) was the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion. His landmark 1908 win followed several years of doggedly pursuing the chance to fight for the title, and then fourteen rounds of hitting the Canadian Tommy Burns in the face. What’s important here isn’t his title but the fact that his victory was seen as a bit of an affront to believers in the self-same superiority of the white race which the Nazi in this story is so keen to prove. Unfortunately for Jack Johnson that was quite a lot of people in his own country at that point in history. Mind you, in their defence none of them were Nazis. This led to a string of white opponents being thrown at Johnson and the creation of the horrible term “Great White Hope”, because the hope was that the white man would put this uppity, um, fellow in his place. The white man repeatedly failed to do so until April 5 1915 when Johnson lost his title to Jess Willard. It’s this “Great White Hope” thing which is informing Kubert & Kanigher’s work here. The reference to the whole ugly deal of a white guy knocking a black guy down and thus proving the superiority of an entire race in one victorious act of thuggish brutality is inescapable. In Jack Johnson’s day apparently it all seemed pretty reasonable, but by 1965, thankfully, it’s a view presented as the childishly delusional nonsense it clearly is.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

Joe Louis (1914-1981) has an even more direct connection to the narrative at hand. Joe Louis was also black and also a boxer, but following wise advice had played it safe and played it quiet in direct contrast to Jack Johnson whose flamboyance had really upset certain folk (white folks, I’m talking about whites folks there). Canny management had built Joe Louis up as a respectable and honourable sporting figure in the public eye. People were okay supporting Joe Louis. Which was good because Joe Louis would take on a symbolic aspect he probably could have done without. Jackie Johnson’s first loss to Uhlan echoes Joe Louis’ 1936 defeat at the gloves of Max Schmeling (1905-2005), a white German boxer. The state of things in Germany were frankly distressing at that time and so this victory was seized upon as proof positive of the Aryan superiority preached by the kind of people who think putting skulls on uniforms is an adult fashion decision. In 1938 a rematch occurred, and things with the Nazis were getting so bad so quickly the world was having trouble ignoring it. War was coming. The rematch was no longer only about black vs white, but also about Fascism vs Democracy. And so two men hitting each other for money took on a ridiculously potent symbolism. Records show that on the night of June 22, 1938 the myth of Aryan supremacy got in the ring with an athletic black man and lasted two minutes and four seconds. No, Joe Louis did not fall that night.   Despite his failure Schmeling, surprisingly, wasn’t stuck in an oven or shot but served his country as a paratrooper in WW2. The boxer Jackie faces is also a paratrooper. So, no, see, all these connections aren’t simply in my head. Now, I would like to tell you that following the fight Nazi Germany admitted it was wrong, apologised to everyone, rethought its philosophy and became a socialist utopia where men and women of all colours joyfully worked together to achieve the goal of peaceful space colonisation, but I would be lying. In fact Nazi Germany carried on merrily turning the world to fiery dung as though nothing had happened. Because apparently settling the whole racial superiority in the ring thing only counts if the white guy wins.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

Where there’s boxing there’s blood, and that together with its colour is crucial in the racial power play on these pages. The Nazis were big on blood and not just the spilling of that of others, but the (supposed) purity of their own. While he’s being smacked about Jackie is constantly taunted as to the colour of his blood by the Nazi. Now, the Nazi obviously doesn’t believe Jackie’s blood is black, that would be ridiculous, it’s just the whole bending another to your will thing beloved of bullies everywhere. Because he believes the others’ lives are at stake Jackie won’t fight back, but equally he won’t give the Nazi the satisfaction of saying what he wants to hear. Luckily (cough) Rock and Wild Man break free and are beaten to the ground which allows the narrative to fudge the next bit nicely. Rock tells Jackie to take the guy’s face off and maybe Jackie hears him or maybe Jackie doesn’t, either way Jackie starts swinging and Jackie starts winning.

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

Seeing Uhlan guy in trouble the Nazis immediately fire on both of them to erase the mistake they have made, which is less than sporting of them. Wild Man and Rock now take out the Nazis without any trouble because (cough) Easy Company jump out of a bush and because it’s time for the big finish. Jackie and NAME are wounded but a transfusion could just save the Nazi’s life..! Sorry, no prize today for guessing what happens next.

Look, as inelegantly arrived at as it may be there is still a power in the final scenes where Jackie’s blood saves the Nazi’s life and the dude immediately recants his vicious idiocy. Yeah, turns out that there are actually two messages in this book - one is to knock that racist shit off, and the other is that people can change. As bumpy a narrative ride as it may be OUR ARMY AT WAR#160 turns out to be both right thinking and remarkably generous of spirit, and you know that can’t ever be less than VERY GOOD!

OUR ARMY AT WAR by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

What's the only kind of dynamite that can stop a war? COMICS!!!! They are "Top-Special"!

"If This Was Dinner...I Can't Wait For The Cabaret!" MOVIES! Sometimes...The Year Must Die!

So, I didn't get near any comics this Holiday but I am always writing nevertheless. In my head mostly. So, although I haven't got anything about comics I have got a head full of dumb words about some Peter Cushing films I watched this year. Usually I just dump this head written stuff into the ether but I felt like posting something and this was all I had. So I dumped it on you. Attractive, non? Anway; an old man, some old movies and a spatter of tired old jokes. What better way to see the New Year in. Have a drink, it'll read better that way. Everything's better when you're insensate with drink. That's what it's for. Oh yeah, Happy New Year everybody!

Oh yeah, none of these are Oscar(C) winners in waiting but they are all fun so they are all GOOD!

All images taken from Wikipedia.

TWINS OF EVIL Directed by John Hough Screenplay by Tudor Gates (Based on characters created by Sheridan Le Fanu(?!?)) Music by Harry Robertson (Hammer, 1971)

Yes, there is a joke there isn’t there? One about breasts; but I won’t be making it. Knock yourselves out though by all means. Then try and look your mother in the eyes, pal. In this movie, the quality of which is indicated early by the choice of Hot Electric Pink for the titles, Peter Cushing plays Gustav Veil whose surname is not only an anagram of “evil” but is pronounced “vile” and that’s about as restrained as this one gets. Seriously, there’s a bit where a lady is enjoying the physical attentions of a gentleman and the camera zooms in to show her hand lightly gliding up and down the shaft of a candle. Y’know, like a penis. Keep up. Anyway, Peter Cushing, equipped with a buckled hat, blithely classes this silly exercise up in his role as a Puritan who roams about at night with his Puritan pals burning single young women as witches. Cush & Co. average one a night which suggests that there is a preternaturally large population of single young women in and around his village or someone is bussing them in so Cush’n’chums can have their fiery fun. It’s testament to Cushing’s performance that when someone says Vile “means well” despite there being nothing in the script which indicates he is anything other than a murderous misogynist you do actually think, oh, maybe he’s just a tad, a smidgen perhaps, overzealous. So anyway, his twin nieces, or what have you, come to stay and one’s a bit of a scamp and is lured into depravity by the sleazy Lord of the manor who has been en-vamped. Unfortunately he’s played in a way that’s about as threatening as a doily. After a few creepy scenes of young women leading old men on (“What would your Uncle say?” Urrrggghhhh. No thanks, 1970s.) and flashes of flesh it’s all boiled down to The Cush vs the fanged doily man for the souls of his flock! There’s some mileage in that; the bloke who was seeing Evil everywhere where there was none now has to deal with real Evil right in his own home. But, basically, this movie prefers to find excuses to chuck some knockers up on the screen.

THE BEAST MUST DIE Directed by Paul Annett Screenplay by Michael Winder (From the short story by James Blish) Music by Douglas Gamley (Amicus,1974)

This mangy but loveable cur of a movie has a spectacularly inappropriate theme tune. Oh, It’s really good, don’t get me wrong but it’s the kind of swinging up-tempo floor shaker more suited to a title sequence in which Oliver Reed checks out ‘birds’ from his Union Jack mini as he tootles down Carnaby Street. Here it sits oddly atop a movie about a bunch of weird people lured to an island retreat by a big game hunter who believes one of them to be a werewolf. The most dangerous game of all just got dangerouserererer! I can’t lie; it’s a bit dull beyond the campiness but it does perk up whenever Peter Cushing uses his fantastic accent, someone dies or when everyone has to fondle a silver bullet in a game of Pass The Death Sentence. Oh, and there’s an exciting bit where our superfly hero hounds the werewolf in his helicopter and tries to machine gun it. Mind you, that last bit now looks like nothing more than a man shooting at a very large German Shepherd and inadvertently ruining someone’s potting shed in the process; I can assure you that was very thrilling when you were 10. But then so is hopscotch. Near the end a ticking clock fills the screen and you have to guess who the werewolf is. I don’t know how the movie knows what you’ve guessed but every time I watch it it’s (SPOILER!). I’m not saying the movie struggles to fill its screen time but it will find a favourable reaction amongst people fond of watching Michael Gambon driving about in a jeep.

AND FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN Directed by Terence Fisher Screenplay by John Elder (Anthony Hinds) Music by James Bernard (Hammer, 1967)

In which Frankenstein doesn’t but what he does do is trap the soul of a wrongly executed man in the body of the guy’s disfigured girlfriend; she having drowned herself on seeing his execution. Together with Thorley Walters (played by Eddie Izzard) Peter “The Cush” Cushing as Baron Frankenstein fixes her face (and her hair; Blonde Contretemps by Boots) and everything turns out just dandy, thanks. No, no it doesn’t, you fool! See, the soul of her boyfriend makes her hunt down the three fops who not only teased her about her face but , worse even, murdered her father and left her beau to take the rap. Some people probably say that the scenes where a man in a woman’s body seduces then murders his/her victims are ripe with trans gender subtext. Well, they might if they weren’t distracted by the fact that the victims are all dressed like Willly fucking Wonka. Anyway, if The Baron had fixed her face in the first place all that unpleasantness could have been avoided. So, basically, it’s a movie about getting your priorities right.

FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL Directed by Terence Fisher Screenplay by John Elder Music by James Bernard (Hammer, 1974)

This is the one in which Peter Cushing plays Baron Frankenstein one final time. It isn’t the best send-off but Peter Cushing doesn’t flag and nor does he falter. So, The Baron is now covertly running an asylum he’s supposed to be banged up in because he’s got the goods on the pervy dude in charge. He’s landed on his feet but his hands are giving him grief. His burned mitts are hampering his quest to stitch together the mentally unhygienic into a perfect man. Good thing then that Shane Briant (played by Twiggy) gets locked up in his gaff. And it is lucky because not only is Shane a surgeon in training he is also The Baron’s biggest fan. What are the odds? They are good, my friend. Anyway these two knock up a makeshift man who looks like a shaved ape and has a penchant for sticking broken glass in people’s faces. Shane Briant is also feeling moral pangs about The Baron passive aggressively badgering the inmates into committing suicide so he can play pick’n’mix with their parts. Oh, Madeline Smith wafts about the place as well giving the place a woman’s touch and some pathos; a bit anyway. Anyway, everything goes tits up pretty quickly. It’s possible to read the film as an indictment of the parlous state of the care of the vulnerable and how, without regulation, the gaolers become worse than the gaoled; but, basically, it’s a movie about how if you’ve got Peter Cushing in a top hat you’re sorted for 80 minutes and change. Cush Fact: the feathery wig sported by the great man himself is the exact same toupee which adorned his magnificent bonce in And Now The Screaming Starts… which, ah, here it is now…

AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS..! Directed by Roy Ward Baker Screenplay by Roger Marshall (David Case) Music by Douglas Gamley (Amicus,1973)

For about 40 minutes this enjoyable but not exactly good period set horror film consists of scenes of Ian "The Saint" Ogilvy and Stephanie “Powders” Beacham reacting badly to odd events in a stately home. A severed hand, a slashed portrait, something going bump in Stephanie Beacham’s night, a Richard Harris impersonator and hushed references to something terrible bad in the past combined to leave me clawing for clarity and wondering if I was suffering another dry drunk or what. Thankfully at that point Peter Cushing sauntered into the movie and delivered a performance which managed to make the whole thing watchable at least, and this is despite his sporting the aforementioned alarmingly feathery wig. Actually I spent a lot of time looking at this unsettling hairpiece so I could have missed some nuance or subtlety in what followed. It’s doubtful though as what followed not only had Patrick Magee pretending to be strangled by an invisible severed hand but also featured Herbert Lom as a not entirely convincing example of the landed English gentry who lets things get out of hand; sparking all the unpleasantness off with a poorly considered decision to reinstall the droit de seigneur tradition. From then on Cushing attempts to combat superstition and supernatural vengeance with the new-fangled Science Of The Mind! It ends badly for everyone involved. Where is your science now, Peter Cushing!?!

THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR Directed by Vernon Sewell Screenplay by Peter Bryan (Trigon, 1968)

This is the one with the lady who seduces men, turns into a big moth and kills ‘em. I see no subtext. Probably because there isn’t one; the script has it all on trying to make sense. Which it doesn’t but when did that ever matter; just entertain me, you mad fools! Peter Cushing is on record as claiming this is the worst film he ever made. Steady on, old boy; that’s a bit harsh. I mean even I haven’t seen every film Peter Cushing ever made but I think maybe the proximity of filming to his wife’s death coloured his judgement. Don’t get me wrong it’s quite, quite terrible but it is not without its charms. There’s Roy Hudd popping up to give the 1970s version of an amusing cameo(i.e. it isn’t; amusing that is); Cushing’s fellow plod is played by Dave the barman from Minder; some good performances convincingly delivered in spite of everything; an electrifyingly perfunctory climax in which Peter Cushing and Dave from Minder set fire to some piled up leaves, which the moth cannot resist and so meets its fiery end. And then the credits whizz up the screen. One of the things I never noticed about these movies until this re-watch is how tight they all are with film. No sooner has the final line slipped into silence than BANG! THE END! CREDITS ROLL! They might as well have someone shout "That’s yer lot! Ain’t ya got homes to go to! Fawk off home! G’wan! Whaddya want, Jam on it? Home! Now! Go!"

Speaking of which…THE END.

Happy New Year!