The Driller Killer (1979)

“You should let him stick it up your ass once. Use KY jelly. It won't hurt."

This is the original video nasty which, in this country at least, led to a nightmare of Thatcherite censorship for many, many years. So what's the fuss about? Well, the deaths are extremely violent with loads of blood, as one might expect, as our anti-hero Reno Miller (the artist as Travis Buckle, if you will) is driven mad by poverty and rejection of his art, But the young Abel Ferrara, directing and starring, gives us a far more arty and far more philosophical work than that may imply, although there's also plenty of black humour.

The first scene worried me a little. I saw Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant many, many years ago, in my pre-blog days and indeed very possibly in my pre-Internet days. I hated it. I couldn't stand the crude, didactic, overdone Catholic imagery that was being constantly fetishised by the camera. So the opening scene, with similar use of religious iconography, worried me a little. Fortunately there's no more of this, just some nicely done handheld camerawork, naturalistic acting, proper rotary telephones, and blood. Lots and lots of the latter. And a rather good punk band which reminds me very much of the Damned.

The killings themselves are graphic and violent, but take up relatively little screen time. Instead we mostly get a low budget but very nicely shot version of Taxi Driver where the protagonist is a struggling artist, and where the art criticism can be as violent as the killings. A surprisingly and genuinely good film.

I Clavdivs: A God in Colchester

"Copulation on a cosmic scale!"

This episode is, to a large extent, a continuation of the last one with even more sex- although we are of course told, not shown, of Messalina’s shagging competition with the magnificently brazen chief prostitute, much as we are told, not shown, of Herod’s ill-fated, blasphemous and hubristic downfall and death. This is, as ever, a very studio bound series of talking heads and studio sets, and there are times it’s very obvious, when visually spectacular events happen only in dialogue. We notice this, but we don’t care, because I, Clavdivs is awesome.

Again we have Claudius being successful in policy- he successfully masterminds the invasion of Britain and wins a triumph, and he successfully opens his longed for winter port at Ostia- but the domestic life almost succeeds in destroying him and, emotionally, arguably does so. Messalina’s sexual appetites, psychopathic personality and extreme lack of discretion is very over the top and Grand Guignol, and no doubt the sources exaggerate, but all this has the serious point of emphasising Claudius’ humiliation. Here he is, the most powerful man in the world (Chinese and Parthian emperors notwithstanding), and he had been blind to a terrible humiliation and threat. Worse, Messalina’s lover plots not only to overthrow him but to replace him with, irony of ironies, a republic. We see how many depend on an emperor, too- his two freedmen ((one of them John Carter, the boss cop from The Abominable Doctor Phibes) are loyal to him because they are likely to be killed should he be murdered. Politics is a dangerous game.

All this and poor Claudius’ best friend betrays him, leaving him old, heartbroken and utterly alone. The tears in his last scene are extraordinary. Still, at least he’s big in Essex.

I Clavdivs: Fool's Luck

"Congratulations, Caesar. You've just passed your first sentence of death. How many before the people grow tired and pass one on you?"

Here we are, then. A full three quarters of the way through the series and finally we move on from adapting  I, Claudius to its sequel Claudius the God, and everything feels understandably different, as the premise of the series has suddenly changed. No longer are we looking at the exploits of a man who survives decades of murder and backstabbing through being thought a fool but how he copes when absolute power is forced upon him. And forced it is- he begins as the very real prisoner of the Praetorian Guard, and it’s only when the ever-reliable Herod convinces him that refusing the purple would mean not only civil war but his own murder that he accepts his position. His splendid speech before the senate is at once eloquent, directly addressing his physical disabilities and very much acknowledging that it is 400 soldiers of the Praetorian Guard who are in charge here, wielding a power that the senate “so spinelessly them”.

And we find that Claudius is and is not a fool. In affairs of state he is anything but, seeing through the corrupt machinations of his civil servants on the matter of building a winter harbour in Ostia. Yet he is but the puppet of his manipulative wife Messalina, and the episode is nicely structured in how it slowly allows her wickedness to unwind. In the end she achieves nothing but the pointless death of the good man who was unlucky to be fancied by her, but she survives u suspected, no doubt to up the ante. And apparently this girl is only seventeen.

Claudius is making s good start as Emperor, but the seeds of his destruction are already there, in the private rather than public realm. Unused to being wanted by women, he is easily manipulated. And even Herod oozes foreboding when he warns Claudius to “trust no one”. An emperor must be alone and friendless; it’s just that Claudius does not yet know this. His closing words- “I’m tired”- foreshadow much.

This is very different to earlier episodes. But just as superlative.

Years and Years: Episode 2

"This is a different country to the one I left..."

First episodes of new dramas are always, to an extent, set up, introducing us not only to the premise and the setting but also to the cast. It’s the sign of a great writer that, after seeing the first episode once, I started this second episode with a firm grasp of who was who, and feel that I know all the characters. And that’s important; a high concept, somewhat dystopian tour through the near future would be very dry without real humanity and character. Fortunately RTD has never been faulted with either of those.

So we really feel for Stephen and Celeste in the final scenes as a bank collapse robs them of the money paid for their house, and they become homeless and forced into an awkward dependence on Gran. The bank run scenes are a masterful marriage of writing and direction, with the policeman keeping order joining in at the end, a nice touch. And yet the world isn’t unremittingly awful in spite of everything as there is still booze, love and laughter, even in a world with s President Pence and where Putin is dictator for life. Yet the horrors are real; the immigration nightmare for Daniel and Victor, happy in their life until Daniel’s wanker of an ex has Viktor ruthlessly reported to a place where he is far from safe. It’s about time that serious TV drama showed us the barbarism of May’s “hostile environment”.

Edith is back, and back properly, with her characterisation quite a clever piece of writing. She’s had a huge dose of radiation, and probably has ten years before the cancer gets her, leading her to say “sod this” to a life of activism and just enjoy herself. As she says, it’s too late to sort the climate crisis and the mass extinctions; we must now deal with the consequences and they are brutal. So carpe diem. Not only that; she reacts to a creepy hustings with Vivienne Rook with “smash the world!” She seems not to care any more. Oh, there are flashes, as when she says “don’t do that” as Rook appropriates a superficial feminism for her own ends, but this is a terrifying cynicism.

Ah yes, the extraordinary Emma Thompson as Rook, propeller I to a by-election by a very RTD incident where the sitting MP gets decapacitated by a drone which is robotising Manchester’s workforce. Eat your heart out, William Huskisson. Her speech is utterly terrifying, as is her ignorance.

This episode has gone up a notch. This is more than “very good”.

The Old Dark House (1932)

"Even Welsh doesn't sound like that!"

I've been somewhat remiss in leaving it until now, when I'm forty-two years old, to see this excellent film (who cares about some dodgy attempts at British accents?) which is not at all the different-film-studio-but-pretty-much-Universal-horror type film I expected, in spite of he present of James Whale and Boris Karloff and a fair few chills. This is no horror film.

No; beyond the superficial genre tropes is a substantial script from J.B. Priestley himself, the famed Yorkshire intellectual of the early twentieth century, with fascinating characters and very real-sounding dialogue which now, eighty-seven years after the film was released, brings the past to life in a way few old films can. These people may be from a different age but they feel very real from the argument in the first scene onwards.

The cast is wonderful. Yes, Karloff is wasted as the mute butler in a role similar to last year's Frankenstein, but Ernest Thesiger delights as the extremely camp Horace and Charles Laughton shines as the rich but tragic, and very northern, Sir William. The cast is a collection of grotesques and sympathetic individuals, but it's the characters and cast, rather than the almost non-existent plot, that makes this film sing with atmosphere, pathos, danger and tension, in spite of the Charlotte Bronte madman in the attic. And at the centre of it all is the visionary and magnificent James Whale.

iZombie: Dot Zom

“The future will be obnoxious..."

Another clever episode, at its heart another whodunit of the week, but one through which the arc and its themes are rather interestingly explored- and where a new player unexpectedly emerges. This season so far is going splendidly.

The brain of the week is that of a Steve Jobs/ Mark Zuckerberg/ Elon Musk type dot com "genius", at once deeply fashionable and, while professing noble aims and sinking loads of money into a "bunker" to save a selected few from a vaguely upcoming armageddon, morally blink and unwittingly fomenting genocide. Rose McIver is, of course, superb as ever, but the moral is very much that such people are pretentious wankers.

There's a nice switch at the end; the zombie-hating racist is not, in fact the killer, but the spurned zombie ex-lover. Yet it is the red herring who is unmistakably the most evil, wishing to exterminate all zombies. And Liv's wider aims are thus not in sync with her sleuthing, a nicely made point.

Meanwhile, after a few hiccups, Peyton's and Ravi's sitcom is making progress, and Blaine (where has he been?) seems to have success in pulling a journalist, Al, who is interviewing him in a subplot which serves to illustrate the ongoing danger of the Dead Enders, who are gradually doxxing zombies to a world which hats and fears them. And there's an odd new baddie, in league with French Bloke, who has nebulous aims- and a mole in the camp of "Renegade". A surprising amount of arc stuff is being set up here. And, while yet again we have a top notch episode, it's all very ominous.

I, Clavdivs: Hail Who?

“Drusilla! I’m dying!”

So this is it; the big one. Claudius, amongst chaotic schemes, and while protesting that he wants a republic, is made emperor. And the whole thing, really, is played like a farce.

Caligula is still dangerously mad and capricious, of course, but the shock of all this most definitely peaked at the end of last episode. Not that we lack spectacle, or John Hurt being superb; on the contrary we get several minutes of Caligula in a dress performing as Dawn in a weird dance to Homer. But the focus has moved to Claudius. So the palace is a brothel at the start, but shown in relation to on Claudius, the butt of the joke but managing to save a couple of women from being raped. Caligula plays at being on campaign and makes war on Neptune, yes, and his booty is a load of shells, but the focus is on how court jester Claudius saves two messengers from death by beheading, and later saves the entire Senate by acting the fool. And on how the old and clumsy Claudius is married to the young and beautiful Messalina- as a joke.

Just as chaotic is the plot to murder Caligula- ultimately, and sbsurdly, caused by his silly habit of giving Cassius suggestive phrases to use as the watchword of the day. Nothing goes right, and the surviving Claudius is almost killed before he is declared emperor by a Praetorian Guard who want to keep the cushy life they have.

Less amusing, of course, and a brutal contrast, is the murder of Caligula's wife and baby daughter, a reminder that Cassius is no saint either. It is, as usual, a splendidly written and acted piece, although the range of settings- on camp near the Rhine, at the Gams- make it more than usually obvious how studio-bound it all is.

I, Clavdivs: Zeus, By Jove

"Don't go in there..."

In a sense this episode just goes to show an increasing sense of depravity in Julio-Claudia Rome, as Tiberius’ depravity and tyranny is followed by something even worse- a madman emperor who considers himself a god. Yet there’s a certain loss of the subtleties of character here as things go very Grand Guignol. The tone becomes less subtle and, although there are superbly written character moments such as Antonia’s commentary on all the depravities leading to her blunt, matter-of-fact suicide.

I’ve never read Suetonius but I understand Graves’ two novels were a toned down version of the garish details found in The Twelve Caesars. But I understand historians tend to view all this as much exaggerated, and there’s a view that Caligula may have been a bit of a troll, yes, but perfectly rational. That’s not what we see here. When he recovers from his coma he tells the sycophant who promised to give his life if Cæsar may be saved to carry out his promise. He openly cavorts with his sister Drusilla. He has his nephew be headed because of an annoying cough.He declares himself a god. And then, of course, there’s the shocking ending. It’s all very entertaining spectacle but compared to all the previous episodes it’s very one note, superlative though John Hurt is.

Also worth singling out is John Rhys Davis who, while being an utter wanker in real life, does an excellent job as Macro, an ambitious man who has gambled his own future on Caligula and worries about the nature of the horse he’s shackles himself to. And, of course, Margaret Tyzack owns the episode with her blunt words to Claudius just before her suicide. Claudius, as she says, survives everything.

I, Clavdivs: Reign of Terror

“Do you know him personally?”

“No, but I have slept with his wife several times.”

This time I, Clavdivs channels the Ben Jonson play Sejanus His Fall, and does it much better. This is telly of the very first rank, and a classic study in tyranny.

We begin with Sejanus’ control over Rome deepened and Tiberius, with his mother and son dead, utterly oblivious to his own manipulation. He is being pushed further and further to remove potential threats to Sejanus’ rise- Aggripina is banished to the island where Julia was exiled with a similar fate for her eldest son, and when she refuses Tiberius’ sexual advances she is flogged. Her second son is arrested and starved in his cell, with only his depravity and closeness to Tiberius saving her theirs son Caligula- shown as delightfully decadent throughout the episode- from a similar fate, and Sejanus has plans for him too. This, Livilla’s affair with Sejanus, and Claudius’ distance from his own wife, lead Antonia to decry the modern world in reactionary style- but she has a definite point.

Tiberius, though, forbids Sejanus from marrying Livilla, instead suggesting he marries her daughter Helen, to which Livilla reacts with predictable fury, driving a wedge between them. This is the first crack in Sejanus’ armour. His tyranny continues unabated but the cracks widen, and Antonia discovers more and more, including that Livilla is poisoning her own daughter out of jealousy. And it is Antonia who manages to warn Tiberius over in Capri, behind Sejanus’ back.

In a wonderfully perverse scene, it is Caligula who suggests to a suddenly frightened emperor that he can use the ambition of Sejanus’ deputy Macro to get rid of him, and talk of the ensuing purge becomes instantly horrifying. We aren’t shown much other than the bodies, but what we do see and hear is sickening. Senators quietly flee the senate as Sejanus is denounced. And when a soldier complains to Macro about killing Sejanus’ children, with the girl being a virgin, he is simply told to “Make sure she’s not a virgin when you kill her”. We see Sejanus’ fatal stabbing from his own POV in a nice piece of camera work, the last thing he hears being that his children are dead. He is a monster, yet he is human, and the script allows us to feel for him.

This is, once again, superlative, and I’m already running out of ways to say that. Interestingly, Claudius’ wife, Sejanus’ sister, begs Claudius to protect her and, although he is busy expressing his revulsion at what is happening, he refuses. She survives in the end, but we are reminded that Claudius, while saner than his relatives, is no saint.

I Clavdivs: Queen of Heaven

“He’s building a prison here, stone by stone.”

Damn all this current telly and it’s distracting me from the antics of those naughty Julio-Claudians. Now where were we?

Cleverness, that’s where. This episode is really all about plot, plot, plot but it does so with wit and gusto. The opening scene has to tell us that Tiberius’ reign has now reached its later point of extreme decadence and tyranny, but it does so by showing the hostess of an enjoyable dinner party, attended by characters we know such as Agrippina and Claudius himself and has the gracious hostess (Judith Caroon from The Quatermass Experiment) dramatically reveals the circumstances of her rape by Tiberius- and then stab herself. BBC2 In 1976 cannot show these depravities so it must simply tell- but it does so dramatically, and gives us some spectacle anyway.

It also develops how Sejanus is slowly assuming power from Tiberius, encouraging him with his treason trials for such things as “treasonous utterances” and already ruling Rome as a kind of proto-totalitarian state. And he is deeply ambitious- in a hilarious scene Claudius slowly walks across a room while Sejanus gradually gets him to divorce his estranged wife and agree to marry his own sister. He is also having an affair with Livia which, it is implied, consisted of some rather rough sex, and the two of them contrive to bump off Castor, who happens to be Tiberius’ son and likely successor. All this is done with humour and style, and in no way feels like exposition.

We also meet Caligula, or Suetonius’ version at any rate, played with absolute sublimity by the great John Hurt. Already utterly depraved, he bonds with Tiberius over porn and ends up as the likely next emperor simply because Tiberius wants his successor to be worse out of sheer vanity.

But the episode is about the death of Livia, aware of her many crimes and desperate for deification to save her from eternal torment, with another extraordinary performance from the great Sian Phillips. Interestingly, a lot of the meat of the episode revolves around Thrasyllus’ horoscopes, with a lot of very intelligent people believing in this woo woo. But, in an age before our present conception of science, astrology was not necessarily a stupid way to try and understand the world. Interestingly, though, the Sybilline prophecy, and that of Thrassylus, are shown to be true. Caligula and Claudius will indeed be the next to rule, and one who is going to die soon will indeed become the only God worshipped in the Roman Empire one day.

Bloody superlative stuff.

Years and Years: Episode 1

"Don't know if I could have a kid in a world like this."

RTD is back, after last year's superb A Very English Scandal, with the start of a new six-part drama which seems to have the critics wowed but is, well, very good (this is RTD) but not quite up there with The Second Coming.

We have four Lyons siblings- Rosie, Daniel, Stephen and the globe-trotting polemicist Edith, all glued together by their irascible, politically incorrect gran, and it is through them that we are to experience the next few decades, beginning here and now in 2019- so contemporary that a cleverly last mo ute piece of dialogue references the death of Doris Day. All of these characters immediately come to life as RTD gives them very real and very relatable dialogue, as always. Yet the constant backdrop of ominous news, and the little soliloquy of Daniel (the author’s representative?) makes it clear that this is a world where the future looks anything but bright- and yes, he’s not the only one who feels that something has been very wrong ever since the banks buggered things up in 2008. And through all this we see the slow rise of the blunt populist politician Vivienne Rook, played superbly by the great Emma Thompson.

We then go through the next six or seven years, through Trump’s re-election, through a new king, through nuclear tensions between China and the USA, and through a refugee crisis caused by an, er, Soviet (what???!!) invasion of Ukraine. We also see such things as Snapchat filters moving to the real world and Stephen’s daughter coming out as “trans”- by which she means “transhuman”; she wants to go to a Swiss clinic, destroy her flesh and upload herself to live forever as data. Wow. This would, of course, be literal death; the data uploaded would just be a copy. You would be gone. But I’m sure there will be those who think this way and it’s a clever thing to include. And this helps us get to know bewildered father Stephen and his very middle class wife Celeste.

We also see the gradual collapse of Daniel’s marriage to his stupid husband Ralph, who embraces silly internet conspiracy theories and decries those who won’t consider that the Flat Earthers, 9/11 triggers or Moon landing deniers “could be right” as closed minded. This kind of stupidity is, it can’t be denied, the main bad thing about the internet. And these people vote, usually for populist bullshit. This sort of thing isn’t harmless. We also see some staggering ignorance about Ukrainian refugees- “I voted Leave.” Grr.

And then there comes a siren, nuclear war between China and the USA, chaos, family recriminations and Edith dying in Vietnam with a big mushroom cloud. And fade to black. This is very good stuff indeed, it’s just that RTD can do much better than “very good”.

Scream and Scream Again! (1970)

“That bloody chicken wasn’t killed- it died of old age!”

 This is an odd film, not at all what the marketing, title and poster lead us to expect, but unexpectedly a rather good one.

The film's selling point is, of course, that it can boast the holy horror trinity of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the same horror film. But instead we get an utterly bonkers science fiction conspiracy thriller in which Cushing has but a brief cameo and the other two are not exactly in starring roles.

This is a gritty, realistic police procedural with slickly gritty direction, naturalistic acting and a basis in the more down-to-Earth end of science fiction. The plot may be utterly mad but pays off well, with the two apparently unrelated subplots- people being kidnapped and having their limbs surgically removed, while a sinister man with apparent superpowers commits a series of murders to climb up the greasy pole in a dodgy, unnamed, military dictatorship.

This all works rather well, as does the "A" plot of the pursuit of a serial killer with vampire-like attributes who kills girls whom he meets in nightclubs, which takes up an awful lot of the film. The film is, I suppose, rather disjointed, but it doesn't feel like it and is all drawn together in an effective climax. The overall effect is of a film which defies expectations in hat type of film it turns out to be, but in fact turns out to be surprisingly good.

iZombie: Five, Six, Seven, Ate

“Nobody puts Ravi in a corner!”

Another bloody strong episode here that continues to set up plot threads for the final season while still managing to function as the season’s first murder of the week.

Said murder is fairly banal if seen simply as a whodunnit, perhaps, but it’s based on a competitive samba dancing telly programme and has Liv on dancer brain. Even better, it has Liv and Ravi going undercover as new contestants on the show, at one point spending a lot of time on a rather hilarious sequence as Ravi very slowly learns to dance by the most efficient means possible- montage. It’s an utterly hilarious sequence and one which both highlights how great Rahul Kohli is at physical comedy and shows how the programme still knows how to balance humour with the darkness.

And darkness there is- Dolly Durkins May not appear but her baleful attempt continues as a school identifies and isolates its zombie pupils, causing yet more intra-community friction, and threatening to drive a wedge between Peyton and Major. On a more personal note we learn that not only is Dale pregnant with Clive’s baby but Michelle, whom he dumped last season, is also pregnant with a baby who may be his.

We end on a note of hope, though, as Liv, as Renegade, agrees to adopt the late Jordan’s two orphaned brothers, and they start to learn that humans among the gang can be wonderful people. Unlike last week’s very dark episode this one is full of humour, and ends positively. But I still think this season will take a turn for the Hobbesian.

Inhumans: Something Inhuman This Way Comes

"This is my office!"

So we begin with an amusingly post-coital Karnak, somewhat confused as to the feelings he has for Jen. The connection between them only deepens as Jen’s friends turn on her and they have to fight and flee for their lives, consoled at least by the deaths of the other two blokes until their replacements turn out to be bigger and even nastier fish. This subplot, at least, is somewhat entertaining.

Meanwhile Louise is acting as chauffeur to the royal couple, with Locus in the boot. There’s a presumably foreshadowing remote chat between Medusa and Maximus in which she relays the fact that Black Bolt threatens to have “a few words”, but these scenes revolve mainly around dialogue skirting around the hot topic of just how legitimate royal rule is, and the caste system which it supports and which Maximus, even accounting for his motives and tyrannical behaviour, is abolishing. One is reminded that even Caligula’s tyranny to the ruling classes didn’t prevent him being a popular and successful ruler for the masses. Black Bolt and Medusa are decidedly ambiguous figures and, if only Maximus twirled his moustache a little less, he’d be the goodie. Still, one can’t help thinking that a better script would have explored this more.

Crystal, with Lockjaw healed, has a bit of a holiday this episode as she frolics in the beach with the laid back Dave, presumably a love interest who will, ahem, teach her about humanity, bring her out of her shell and teach her an Important Lesson which she will apply back home. It’s clear that both she and Medusa are set to question their rejection of their parents’ radicalism, annoying though Medusa May be about it.

Gorgon rescues the captured Karnak and Jen and is surprised to see his cousin has become somewhat less arrogant, a reaction somewhat crudely set up by a series of flashbacks. We end up with the two of them reunited with Black Bolt and Medusa, although for some reason Jen has to bugger off. Meanwhile, on Attila, rebellion erupts...

Sigh. This is all very by the numbers. Still, as Magnus Magnusson used to say, I’ve started so I’ll finish.

Slender Man (2018)

"Once you see him, you can't unsee him."

This is certainly a contender for one of the worst films I've ever blogged. It's shockingly poor.

Slender Man is one of those computer game characters that the kids find utterly terrifying in spite of the character being but a decade or so old and whom I, at 42, am far too old to know anything about. The concept and appearance of the character seems quite terrifying, however, and you'd think it would make a good basis for a horror film, although perhaps not best released so soon after the well-known murder by two American schoolgirls of their classmate supposedly inspired by the character.

This is, to put it far too mildly, not that film. It's not just that the film is boring and talky, that we never get to know about the characters, or that the plot is simplistic and drawn out. No; the direction is so poor, even if you forgive the overly dark lighting in which you can't bloody see anything, that it fails to clearly tell the story and it's far from clear what's going on. Even if this were not the case, though, the film is shockingly dull, Mrs Llamastrangler fell asleep. Even the CGI sequences where Slender Man actually bloody appears are not worth waiting for. Avoid.

Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

"Why do you think Twitter and Facebook are free?"

Yes, I know; I use the above two social media platforms to plug this very blog. The irony is not lost on me although, unlike AJ, I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories; Facebook and Twitter are free because your personal info is the product, and advertisers are the customer, not you. All conspiracy theories are dangerous bollocks that leads to the election of dodgy demagogue. Vaccinate your kids. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. There is no Illuminati. The real world cannot be boiled down to such simplistic fantasies.

Anyway, this isn't a sequel in any meaningful sense. It doesn't feature any of the same characters and is made by different people. What it is, though, is another very clever example of the rather fresh and welcome new horror genre initiated by the first film, where all we see is one person's screen as something supernatural or weird unfolds and everybody dies. It's a fresh and, indeed, superior take on the found footage genre as the possibilities are much wider.

In this case the added ingredient is the current fashion for dark web boxes, more conspiracy theorist bollocks but great material for films like this. The conceit of Matias, through whose screen we see everything, having stolen the laptop through we see everything from a criminal network named after Greek underworld mythology which kidnaps and tortures young women while manipulating others into taking the blame, is deliciously evil and utterly gripping.

It's also good to see, for once, a serious attempt at a deaf character. It's well-written and structured and the characters are compelling. This is a superb and underrated film, and I for one prefer it to its predecessor.

The Ghoul (1975)

”She never came out. None of them ever do.”

This is the second film I’ve blogged by Tyburn Films, an abortive successor to Hammer which uses much the same crew to make similar types of films but sadly didn’t last long. This film, alas, is rather perfunctory and forgettable, in spite of being shot well and a fine performance from Cushing as a man who, like himself, had lost his wife and missed her terribly. It’s chiefly of interest as a novelty, for Cushing’s performance, for a young John Hurt being excellent as a lecherous henchman, and for looking very suspiciously as though a certain Doctor Who story owes a lot to it.

Non-Who fans, please indulge the next couple of sentences, but Black Orchid, I’m looking at you. 1920s setting? Yep. Big country house? Yep. Son kept locked up in a room, having been turned into a crazed killer while in an exotic faraway place? Yep. There’s even a policeman. And a fairly big role for Professor Cliff from The Green Death.

There’s a lot of promise here, especially with the setting of a country house surrounded by mist and marshland, but the plot is clumsy and loses momentum as soon as the major character gets killed halfway through. The film never quite recovers from this and feels somewhat disjointed. Ultimately the problem is the script, and more specifically the awkward plotting, which feels at times like a first draft. There are also some opinions expressed about the Hindu religion, presented as a dark pagan cult, which certainly raise eyebrows. But ultimately it’s a shame that such splendid acting and direction are wasted on a half-hearted script like this.

iZombie: Dead Lift

”You ever feel like you’re an unwitting tool of the prison industrial complex?”

It’s still all about the arc as we start the episode with last week’s supposed murder victim instead having a druggy affair with “Glenn from accounting”, the three kids being smuggled dodge arrest, and Major continues to receive flak for his hearts and minds approach from hardliners at Chase Graves. But he has a point- they NEED humans to be on side or New Seattle will collapse into anarchy. And, this being the final season, that happening is a very real possibility.

Of course, there’s a lighter sign. Liv on fitness guru brain gives us a splendid example of the usual humour, and if anything the script is even wittier than usual. But there’s a very real sense of doom as Dolly Durkins’ Dead Enders foment outrage for immigrants... er, zombies among the human majority. It turns out that her lot have fakes the viral video of the woman being murdered by zombies but, after a drive-by shooting in a Dead Ender hangout by zombies affiliated by Chase Graves, Major allows fake footage of their “execution” to go viral. Both sides are using fake news already. This feels very much like Trump’s America, complete with the moral dilemmas on how hard to punch a fascist, whether one should act with integrity when the enemy has none.

Peyton is trying to run Seattle in spite of bureaucratic inertia but Ravi provides not only great sex but also a great idea: an online comedy called “Hi, Zombie” to try and improve relations. It’s such a good idea that Peyton commits fraud in order to fund it, something which again muddies the waters and will in no way come back to haunt her. You can see not only the threads but the themes developing.

Of course, all this pales in awesomeness next to the sublime D&D scene. But this season has got off to a very strong start.

Inhumans: Make Way for... Medusa

"Well, how did you guys get here?"

"My sister's teleporting dog."

So this is the episode where Medusa “heroically” manages to rescue Black Bolt and his mate from the new scientific prison in which he finds himself and we are, I think, supposed to see her as a hero. But she isn’t, is she? She speeds up and jumps a red light, thereby attracting totally unnecessary attention from the police, and she needlessly alienates Louise, whom she needs. Her people skills are crap and she’s completely charmless and unlikeable.

I wouldn’t go so far as to describe this episode as that, but there’s a sense that, plot-wise, characters are just being moved around the board for no good purpose and simply killing time until the inevitable showdown in Attilan. Yes, Gorgon gets close to his human friend’s and considers them “brothers”. Yes, the overly logical Karnak gets to learn about romance and have sex, but there’s no real depth to any of this, no wit or heart, and there’s no suggestion the Inhumans are learning anything here. The subplot with Crystal, the vet and her ex-lover, and the injured Lockjaw feels particularly like treading water.

Meanwhile, on Attilan, Maximus twiddles his moustache and disbands the Generics Council. This, at least, is interesting; his motives may be selfish, but undermining a genetics-based caste system has to be a progressive move. Thing is, if Black Bolt and co support this system, are they the good guys? Medusa especially cones across as a total bitch for rubbishing her parents’ idealism.

Four episodes in, and I’m worried that we may already have witnessed a leap over a fish of the genus carcharias.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)

“People don't realise that there are killers among them"

 This is, to put it mildly, a controversial film, in spite of the way its execution (er, no pun intended) seems to be widely praised. In the wake of, I think, #MeToo, our culture is currently rethinking the practice of using fictionalised biopics of serial killers, who are invariably killers of women, as entertainment. And there is, I think, a point there. Not that we should in any way ban or censor the use of this naturally dramatic subject matter, of course; it intrinsically says a lot about the human condition, and specifically male violence. Exploring this sort of thing is precisely what art is for.

All the same, though, we should be wary of how we treat the subject, where a straightforwardly lurid approach can show the male gaze at its most problematic. This biopic of Ted Bundy tries a different approach, framing the narrative from the point of view of his fiancee Liz, from the time they met in a bar (did Bundy at first mean to kill her, and relent only upon discovering her baby?) until his final admission of his guilt on the eve of his execution. We spend much of the film, unless we already know the facts, doubting Bundy's guilt. Only at the end do we unequivocally learn of his guilt. His persuasive charm allows Bundy to gaslight us the way he did to Liz, to Carol and to all those women who rooted for him during his trial. That's clever. It's also a treatment that doesn't need to focus on the spectacle of the murders themselves. We are also reminded, too, that those complicit in the use of capital punishment, from the judge to the bloodthirsty sheriff, are every bit as evil as Bundy himself.

The film is superbly structured, and everything looks very convincingly of the '70s. There's a smallish role for scarcely recognisable James Hetfield too, appropriate for a film shot by the director of Some Kind of Monster. Jim Parsons also valiantly struggles against his typecasting as the Florida prosecutor as The Big Bang Theory winds to a close. But it' is, in the end, al about the extraordinary performances of Lily Collins and a swiftly maturing Zac Efron. Highly impressive.

Ed Wood (1994)

"Nobody cares! These movies are terrible!"

That Tim Burton would make a biopic of Ed Wood is delicious. That it should be so bloody good is even more so. Monochrome, stylised and deeply evocative of both 1950s Hollywood and the schlock genres, this is a well-structured, good-natured and fun look at one of Hollywood’s more eccentric “talents” with an extraordinary performance of Johnny Depp at the centre of it all.

The opening titles, with the parade of ‘50s genre tropes and the glorious theremins, are wonderful, and set the mood perfectly. Then we move to setting up who Ed is, his transvestism, and the story of Glen or Glenda, complete with lots of 1950s trans people including the aristocratic but delightfully camp “Bunny” Breckinridge, played to perfection by Bill Murray. We then follow Ed’s, er, career right through to Plan 9 from Outer Space and see him happily married to a fellow geek- and then we stop, before we get any hint of his decline, alcoholism and early death.

Instead we see the tragedy of the great Bela Lugosi’s final years, forgotten by Hollywood to the point of appearing in Ed’s films, alone, homesick for a Hungary to which he can never return, behind an Iron Curtain. Martin Landau plays him with skill and much pathos, but also not without humour (“Karloff does not deserve to smell my shit!”).

We also see Juliet Landau (nepotism; fun for all the family), bizarrely using her native accent, and a superb cameo by Vincent D’Onofrio as the great Orson Welles. But this film belongs to Depp, and to Burton, who has conjured up perhaps his finest cinematic world.

iZombie: Thug Death

"This is the spot where lazy murderers who don't want to fight traffic dump their victims.""

So it's the fifth and final season and we're a few months into the new status quo- Peyton is, effectively mayor and Major is the new commander of Fillmore Graves. But lonely is the head that wears a crown and Major is already feeling the tension between his principles and what is likely to help him maintain his position. Meanwhile Liv and Ravi are doing the same job as ever while Liv continues to moonlight as Renegade, and "real" brains are becoming scarce- for all except Blaine, who is incredibly rich from the brain business and has a fridge full of the bloody things.

This episode has two main strands. The first is that this time it's Ravi, not Liv, who's on the brain of a thug, and bloody hilarious, showing us that Rahul Kohli is every bit as good at this sort of thing. But the other strand is, of course, that the zombies of New Seattle rely entirely on the goodwill of humans, and things are precarious beneath the surface. One viral video of a woman being ripped the shreds by a zombie has led to the end of the brain supply and, while Blaine can solve this problem with threats, the potential remains. Worse, we have a new anti-zombie demagogue, Dolly Durkins(!), who is also running an anti-zombie suicide bomber network which is sure to keep Major stressed. And, as we find out, her first volunteer is the eviscerated woman's husband.

Elsewhere we have Clive being as deadpan witty as ever, a new scientist character in Dr Collier who, to Ravi's relief, turns out to have ethics, and three abused ill kids who Liv's network are trying to smuggle in. Already there are a lot of balls in the air and the fact that this is the final season suggests to me that this feeling of precariousness will grow and grow. But this pisode on its own is as fun and witty as ever. More please.

I, Clavdivs: Some Justice

"That child is a monster!"

This episode takes what is perhaps an unexpected turn as a courtroom drama unfolds. This courtroom drama has wider implications, though, and acts as an ingenious frame around which to explore Tiberius' early rule- he is bitter, resentful but not yet depraved or tyrannical in spite of the baleful presence of Sejanus. However, the elderly Claudius' narration at the beginning (a rare bit of narrative clumsiness) makes clear that this is to change after Germanicus' death.

And the death of the dutiful, popular, republican Germanicus shapes everything here, from the raging desire for revenge of his widow Aggripina on the parts of Piso and Plancina who, as we shall see, are guilty of persecution but not murder, and were acting on Tiberius' orders in any case. Unknown to all, the real killer is the infant Caligula, who horribly terrorised and murdered his father by poisoning and a superstition which the genuinely clever and civilised Romans simply accept, to the incredulity of Herod, speaking for our own culturally Judaeo-Christian worldview. Nevertheless, Aggripina want revenge and the crowd id with her, and it becomes slowly clear that the appearance of justice is only a figleaf for what is politically convenient. Piso must die to save Tiberius, and he becomes increasingly doomed as the episode progresses. Deliciously, Plancina manages to do a deal with Livia, still at the centre of the web, to save herself and her children, and ends up "assisting" her father's suicide. This is delightfully, entertaining cynical. And we Doctor Who fans get the added thrill of Lady Peinforte wanting Monarch dead.

We also see how, thankfully, Claudius now has friends in Aggripina, Castor, Herod and others and, while hardly a confidant of the Emperor, has a degree of respect. Antonia, of course, despises him as much as ever, wishing he had died instead of Germanicus. So does Livia, who is increasingly exasperating her son with her antics and whose scene with fellow poisoner Martina (Nursie from Black Adder II) is a hoot.

This episode essentially sets the scene for the new reign, then. Hugely enjoyable though it is, it hints at much depravity to come. Utterly superb, as though that needed saying.

I, Clavdivs: Poison Is Queen

"Don't touch the figs..."

Well, even by the high standards of this rightly praised drama, that was exceptional. And this, more than anything, proves that the great Brian Blessed was an actor of incredible depth and subtlety, if not necessarily softly spoken while doing so, and it's such a great shame that he very shortly after became typecast as shouty barbarians.

So Germanicus returns to a warm and brotherly reunion with an unhappily married Claudius, and at last hears and believes the news about Postumus' framing for rape and Livia's misdeeds- although, I'm glad to see, not without a very #MeToo nod to the fact that actual rapists use such excuses all the time.

In the very next scene Augustus clearly knows everything, and is very cagey about Livia. Rightly so; his eyes may now be open, but will soon be closed forever. His secret reunion with Postumus is deeply emotional for both men, yes, although Augustus' tears are self-indulgent as ever, but they must tread with care and it is, in truth, far too late. Livia is running rings round them throughout, whether secretly getting access to Augustus' altered will, ensuring the despairing Tiberius is not far away, or finally managing to poison the rightfully paranoid Augustus to death. Too late. poison is queen, and Postumus is doomed, although in the process we meet the ruthless Sejanus, played with icy steel by a young and only very slightly balding Patrick Stewart. It's all moving towards an inevitable conclusion, but you can't take your eyes off it even if the whole thing looks absurdly studio-bound at times.

But Livia, blinded by her cruel dismissal of Claudius. never suspects his part in revealing the truth, and she constantly humiliates him throughout, culminating in that final scene where a somewhat pissed Livia, having achieved what she wanted, mocks Claudius while telling him too much. Sian Phillips is one of the great villains of television history. And what an episode.What writing. What acting. 

Mamma Mia! (2008)

“Nurse! Donkey testicles, quickly!"

Ok, I suppose after the last few years I can't quite say I don't like musicals. No, I'll never be a huge fan of show tunes, but the genre is much broader than that. But anyone who knows me will know that, open-minded to all sorts of delightfully weird music that I am, I have pretty much zero tolerance for chart pop, which is cynical, depressing, exploitative, unlistenable and vile. So why do I like Abba?

Well, Abba are the poster girls and boys of a more innocent time, when "pop" encompassed a broader range than today's horrible world of girl bands and boy bands, wankers like Cowell and his fellow amoral svengalis, and horribly compressed, autotuned, incredibly narrow "music" that no longer appeals to ordinary people. But Abba? They wrote their on songs, played their own instruments, hurt no one. It was a very different world.

Hence the joyous stage show, and this rather fun film with its inexplicable number of stars. I mean, Meryl Streep? She's incredibly classy, garlanded with Oscars, appears only in the most serious films, is pretty much America's answer to Dame Maggie Smith... yet she deigns to appear in a bit of fun like this. And no, she most certainly cannot sing. But, frankly, who cares? She's giving it a go, as is Pierce Brosnan, whose singing looks good only next to hers.

The plot, bizarrely, with its farcical moments and rigid structure, only needs a bit of crossdressing to look suspiciously like a Shakespeare comedy. But this kind of structure works, and the plot is very cleverly woven around the songs and, while there is conflict and drama, things always remain suitably light and fluffy. A delight.

Bonding: Season One

This is a new (last month) series from Netflix, but it’s seven episodes long with each episode being only sixteen or seventeen minutes. This means the whole season is about as long as a film, split into a series for pacing and structural reasons although, naturally, Mrs Llamastrangler and I binged it. The point is, though, I’m not blogging individual episodes as I otherwise always do with series because that would be silly. Here’s the whole thing...

Old Friends, New Names

“I don’t want any connection with your bum hole, Frank.”

So Tiff is a dominatrix under the name of “Mistress May” and her gay best friend Pete, an aspiring but nervous stand-up comedian, signs up as her assistant. This is the premise, and one with plenty of scope for humour and indeed seven episodes of exploring these two characters, their pasts, their relationship with each other and others. And right away, in spite of the first episode need to set things up, it’s hugely entertaining. We have a bloke with “Barney Rubble” as his safe word, and a bloke who gets off from Pete mocking his tiny penis.

Most refreshing, though, is that we can have a comedy treating the full range of sexuality as healthy and normal, something which, even ten years ago, would have been unthinkable.


Pete Shy

“I made your soul jizz.”

More character development here as Pete chickens out of a comedy gig, yet accidentally pulls Josh in a urinal, and we get a sense of the texture and depth of Tiff and Pete’s thirteen year friendship. Most interesting, though, is Tiff’s discourse on how the patriarchy oppressed everyone- “masculinity is inherently constricting” and what she does as a dominatrix helps to free men from the constraints of their gender roles. We also get hints about an oppressively religious background.

We end with Pete peeing on a client, in a scene shot like a Rammstein video..



The Past Is Not Always Behind

“It takes two to tangle genitals...”

Three episodes in and time for some revelations about backstory. And, er, Pete fingering his flatmate’s butt. Interestingly, Tiff’s fellow postgrad Psychology student Doug gives a presentation about his past that reveals an unexpected sensitivity and self-awareness about how the conventions of masculinity have constricted and emotionally repressed him, echoing Tiff’s thoughts from last episode and hinting that he may not be the arse we have so far been casually encouraged to believe him to be. We also meet Chelsea, an old school “friend” of Tiff and Pete who is outwardly successful, with a job in advertising, yet who spends her evenings drinking alone, trapped in twentysomething ennui.

Eventually Pete makes Tiff and himself don masks so they can symbolically speak of their shared past with a kind of anonymity- and they had sex, many years ago. It was bad sex. And there is nothing so arse-clenchingly, soul-destroyingly embarrassing as bad sex.

Let’s Get Physical

“Well, here we are, looking at dicks with coffees.”

Speaking of embarrassment, stereotypical housewife Daphne’s has invited Tiff and Pete to her house, as a birthday treat for her husband... to mercilessly tickle him. This is something Daphne can’t do herself because she’s disturbed by all things non-vanilla, and damagingly repressed.We can certainly see the themes developing here.

Daphne is, naturally, incredibly jealous as things unfold, far more so than she had naively expected. So much so, in fact, that a very considerate Pete allows her to vent her frustration by punching him in the face. Which is, er, nice.

Pete, meanwhile, has a date with Josh, besides whom he is himself the repressed one. This whole subplot is extremely sweet. Significantly less so is where Tiff catches her professor when he's just about to sexually abuse her friend Kate. But just when one man turns out unexpectedly not to be a dick, there's the nice and self-effacing Doug, who gets Tiff to agree to a date. This is, unexpectedly, rather subtle character drama.


Double Date

"I'm sorry I fingered your boyfriend."

We begin with a big row between Pete and a still-upset Tiff, understandably outraged at her male professor's behaviour and the patriarchal structures which lie behind it, so much so that she says some uncomfortable things which dismiss the experience of growing up gay in society so being female. It's a bitter parting, and Kate carries her mood to her initially disastrous date with Doug. But he' essentially by being nice, ensures she has a good time. And that's it, really; we live in a world full of patriarcgal structures and we are all part of it- but men are still free to choose not to be dicks.

All this is, of course, juxtaposed with a much less awkward date between Pete and Josh, who continue to be sweet together. It's clear that the Tiff plot has had more thought, with Pete being a character whose existence is somewhat tied to hers, but this is impressively written.


Penguins

"You look like Wonder Woman at a funeral."

I shouldn't mock people for their harmless fetishes but, well penguins...?

Anyway, after an establishing shot of a blissfully post-coital Pete- in contrast to Tiff masturbating but being unable to cum- it's back to, er, work. But this is an episode of healing, as Tiff opens up to Doug while they, ere, sit on public toilets, while Pete is now able to use his experiences as assistant to a dominatrix to perform a rather good comedy set. We then move to Tiff's postgrad class- where she gets the lecherous prof reported... and opens up to everyone, climaxing by tying Doug to a chair. Wow.


Into the Woods

"Oh shit..."

So, with all good again, complete with a quadruple date including both Josh and Doug, and with Tiff and Pete best friends again, where is there to go for the season finale? Well, there's a flashback to prom night, and that bad sex, in a cramped car, ending with both of them running into the woods to escape the police- separately. In the present day, after a comical second meeting with Daphne and her put-upon husband, they find themselves trapped in the home of a rich psychopath, forced to fight their way out, and again pursued by cops- and who will be believed, the rich, white, straight male or two sex workers? Satisfyingly, though, they now run into the woods together. They are best friends whatever happens.


This falls a little short of the very best drama, perhaps, with the two leads not quite getting equal treatment. But it's well-written and thoughtful in how it treats its characters and themes, and it's good to see this kind of subject matter treated with respect, but with humour. More please.

I Clavdivs: What Shall We Do About Claudius?

“Are you sure this girl will marry him?”

“What’s it to do with her?”

In a sense, I suppose, you could say that this episode’s plot is largely a continuation of previous episodes in that Livia is still scheming to get rid of all rivals to her sullen son Tiberius so he can succeed Augustus- in this case Postumus, played here by a frighteningly young version of the baddie from RoboCop 3.

But it’s not about the mere plot, of course, entertaining though the scheming may be. No; it’s about the people, the acting, the clever scripting. It’s about the way Livia traps the charmingly thick Livilla (a young Patricia Quinn just after Rocky Horror) into betraying her lover Postumus, running rings around her. It’s about how Postumus blurts out Livia’s entire catalogue of murders to Augustus just before his exile to a tiny island, to the Emperor’s scorn- but manages to reveal all to Claudius first. This smells very much of foreshadowing.

It’s just as much about little moments, too. Augustus appreciating Horace but disparaging Ovid for “smut”. Augustus shouting “Quinctilius Varus, where are my eagles?” as three legions are massacred in the Teutoberg Forest; it’s 9AD, and Augustus is an old man with a lot on his shoulders. Livia’s hilariously psychopath is speech to the gladiators- “These games are being degraded by the use of professional tricks to stay alive, and I won’t have it!”, along with the entire imperial family being perfectly fine with the gruesome spectacle, in scenes more obviously set in a small studio than most. At the Games, we are so very obviously looking at a theatre set with a camera pointed at it, but we are far too engrossed to mind.

But the main purpose is to introduce the young adult Claudius, with Derek Jacobi appearing for the first time without prosthetics in an extraordinary performance. Humiliated, belittled, despiser by his own mother and an embarrassment to all, he causes laughter at his wedding to a woman who dwarfs him . But he is an intelligent and principled young man, as devoted to the republic as his father. And the historian Pollio encourages him to play up his infirmities in order to outlive those who threaten him. It’s an artfully constructed episode, building up Claudius within the flashback narrative alongside plenty of wit and black humour, while moving Livia’s plotting to a point where next episode has to give us some kind of climax.