Halloween (1978)

 “You can't kill the Boogeyman!"

At last I find a subtitled version. Hooray. It's about time.

This is, as I kept saying about the early Friday the 13th fims, an absolutely textbook slasher movie, and one of those films which played a big part in setting up the tropes we all know- sex, saying "I'll be right back" and smoking weed (while driving, tut tut) are all hazardous for one's life expectancy although, if you're over twenty, you'll probably be all right.

What separates Halloween from these films is, quite simply, it's much better directed by the splendid John Carpenter and, indeed, much better made. What's different here, as shown in the superb camerawork, music and use of the pumpkin motif, is that this is the first slasher since Psycho that isn't a B movie.It may be a straight-down-the-line slasher, but it's done really well, with the dialogue and acting a cut above what we's expect from the genre. It's slow, and the killing doesn't start until fairly late on, but there's excellent use of suspense, with Michael Myers being glimpsed everywhere.

A very young Jamie Lee Curtis heads a very young cast, while Donald Pleasance is a rather astute piece of casting for Dr Loomis. It's rather jolting seeing him play an American, though, and his accent lapses on occasion. It's interesting, too, to see the use, and meta-commentart, of the 1951 version of The Thing from Another World (must see that at some point) on the telly, given what Carpenter would proceed to shoot a couple of films down the line.

It's a textbook slasher, but it's the textbook slasher, impressing even someone so jaded with the genre as myself.

Melissa Auf Der Maur- Auf Der Maur (2004)

Hole are an awesome band, a seminal band of the '90s, but often  shunned, often frankly for misogynistic reasons. They made three good albums up to 1998 and, well, let's not talk about what happened after that. Courtney Love released an album in 2004 which had a handful of good songs, one of them awesome, but was mostly filler. But it was Melissa Auf Der Maur, the band's still fairly new bassist with a subsequent stint in the Smashing Pumpkins, who surprised us all in the same year with this magnificent record.

I see Auf Der Maur released a subsequent album, way back in 2010, which I simply must hear on the basis of this outstanding debut, which is the only experience I have of her songwriting. There simply isn't a dud on the album, and the style is wonderfully varied. Yes, there are the obvious hits like "Followed the Waves" and "Overpower Thee", but the whole damn thing is a masterpiece. Solo albums are a mixed bag, we all know, and often self-indulgent. But this is one you must hear.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 8- Dangling Man

 "One doesn't often get a chance to visit a former king. Former kings are usually dead."

An interesting episode here, one that simultaneously looks back to the legacy of the dying Edward VIII and forward to the expected reign of Charles, not less than fifty years in the future as this episode, alongside the new decade, begins. David will not see much of the 1970s.

It is an easy, yet valid criticism here that David's seemingly treasonous behaviour during the War is downplayed. But one cannot criticise the emotional beats, not the performance of Derek Jacobi which is outstanding as ever, as we chronicle the last couple of years of the self-indulgent old fool.

But David is not so much the focus of the episode as awarning of a possible future for Charles, who shows worrying signs of admiration for his great-uncle as well as similar tendencies to meddle, be opinionated, and fail to see the constitutional necessity of suppressing one's opinions- although we should again note that, should Charles not like the requirements of the job, he can always just not do it.

It's fascinating to see the, er, love square between Charles, Anne, and the recently split Camilla Shand and Andrew Parker-Bowles. Anne is delightful here in her chasing and, well, shagging of Parker-Bowles, wittily wrongfooting him into bed and adopting a traditionally male role in bedding a man she rather fancies. Charles, meanwhile, comes across as rather immature at this date with Camilla, at first appearing rather deep with his discussion of Saul Bellow and his line about the state of Prince of Wales being a "predicament" appearing to quote from Alan Bennett's not-yet-written The Madness of King George... only fr this all to be set up to a silly practical joke, That's clever writing, telling us a lot about the character. Josh O'Connor is excellent, and we are again left nervous about our future king.

Elsewhere, Ted Heath is now PM and he's determined to take us into the Eurpean Economic Community: happier times, times of hope, times when Britain looked outward with ambition rather than inwards with a smirk. Yet then, as now, the heir to the throne is a worry. This s good, thoughtful telly.

Roadkill: Episode 3

 "I love your turbulence. It makes people think."

I may, while admiring the craftsmanship of the script, have been a little on the lukewarm side about last episode. Fortunately, and pleasantly, this third episode was full of incident, drama, wit, subtle characterisation and, yes, relataile characters.

We begin with two contrasts. Charmian is, indeed, dead. But we move swiftly to scenes of Peter smoothly speechifying as he leaves hospital. It's then sraight home where an outraged Lily has called a family conference- including environmental activist and Peter's other daughter Susan- to discuss his infidelity. It's a fascinatingly subtle series of scenes. Susan is closer to Peter, yet her politics are so different. And Peter's wife Helen throws him out of the house not for his infidelity but for the damage to her dignity of it becoming known, and her becoming an object of pity. These scenes feel very real.

Then Peter returns to Madeleine (still a surprisingly small role for Sidse Babett Knudsen), and a parallel reckoning as she lets out her own rage at being the other woman, used, never allowed into his life. Peter's personal life has collapsed, and all because of his past action- even before another consequence materialises as his secret daughter Rose, in prison, wants to make contact.

But Peter's secrets are being uncovered, as the barrister slowly pieces things together, ending with possession of the tape containing Charmian's last interview from before she died. The walls are seemingly closing in for Peter. Yet there also seem to be walls closing around the prime minister, and we all know that Peter is in the frame.

The concluding episode looks as though it will certainly ne exciting, but this episode was good fun, full of great dialogue and pithy observations, such as that the UK pretty much only does arms manufacturing, pharma and financial services. This still isn't Edge of Darkness, but it's good telly.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 7- Moondust

 "Do I need to show symptoms of despair? Should I sigh and moan dramatically?"

The Crown doesn't do bad, of even average episodes: this is a rather well-crafted (and, I admit, performed) character piece for Prince Philip as the Moon landing- the most sublime human achievement ever- acts as the catalyst for a full examination of his mid-life crisis, which everything in this episode points towards.

And yet, while admiring this, I'll admit I find the episode difficult to love. Perhaps its the strong Christian context for Philip's existential angst; he eloquently describes at the end, during his rather effective concluding soloiloquy, how terrible a thing it can be to have faith in God, and lose it. I sympathise and respect that- this atheist is no Richard Dawkins- but, for those of us who were brought up without religion, and have never had any faith to lose, it's all rather abstract. 

Similarly, I'm forty-three but, while I'll not deny life can be stressful working full time while looking after a five year old and caring for a chronically ill wife, there's no mid-life crisis in sight for me. I'll never walk on the moon, but I've worked hard to look after my family. That doesn't make me unusual, but it does mean that, while my achieements are ordinary, I feel unsatisfied with my life so far. It's tempting to see the mid-life ennui of a pampered royal (there's no evidence, of course, that Philip had any such thing) as a decadent indulgence. But, of course, mental health issues can affect anyone, and being privileged does not mean one does not suffer.

But it is, I think, at the end that we reach the underlying point. Philip has just lost his mother, a woman whose faith never wavers. He's an orphan. And that is not a pleasant thought to dwell on for a middle-aged man with parents in their seventies.

Roadkill: Episode 2

 "You think you're too popular to be sacked."

It's odd. There's a lot going on here, the plot is nice and intricate- very  State of Play, still- and there's some nice social commentary, if a bit broad brush, particularly into the Tory psyche. The cast is excellent. But something isn't quite clicking with me, and I'm unsure what.So much happens. Arch-privatiser Peter shows us the other side of his libertarianism with his very sensible thoughts on prison reform (and, privately, drug law reform), but the PM slaps him down. Sensible, humane criminal justice policy may be de rigueur in the rest of Europe but for some reason it's not how Tories, or perhaps even the British as a whole, roll.

We move on to a facinating scene in which Margaret hands some documents to Peter's former barrister- an alternative way of the truth coming out if, as seems possible, Charmian is either dead or incapacitated after being hit by a van following a very interesting and revealing evening in Washington DC. This nicely parallel's Peter's crash at the end when Duncan tells him (having done a swtcheroo of DNA, interestingly) that the myserious young woman in pison is indeed his daughter. Meanwhile, Peter's acknowledged daughter manages to uncover the fact he has a girlfriend and is delightfully pragmatic about the way she handles it.

And there are lots of other little revelations and, indeed, character moments. On the surface it all seems very good, and Hugh Laurie in particular is superb. And yet I'm not sure I feel invested in any of the characters. It's a clever script, but seems more about ideas than people. I'm not sure that should necessarily matter enormously in a political drama, but this seems to be structured, with dramatic beats, as though it should.

Let's see how this goes.

Crypt of Horror (1964)

 "In some houses death is a tenant."

This is, so to speak, a spaghetti horror, with Christopher Lee being a kind of Clint Eastwood here (not a phrase I ever thought I'd write) as the star and only native English speaker amongst a largely Italian cast in L'Aquila. It's reasonably straightforward sdaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla with a few names changed but the plot largely left intact, and will be interesting to compare with Hammer's The Vampire Lovers when I inevitably get there.

And it's the plot that makes this film surpisingly good. Lee is, as ever, superb, and well-cast as a Count Karstein who worries that his ill daughter may have been possessd by the spirit of a powerful witch of an ancestor- a true gothic situation with an evil from the distant past threatening a castle and deserted village. The historical Italian setting really emphasises this sense of an ever-present past threatening the present.

This film is, perhaps, a collection of all the usual '60s horror film tropes with all the above plus more. But what makes it special is the unusally intricate plot, with twist and turns throughout and a rather effective whodunit element towards the end. It's weird that all the dialogue except Lee's is dubbed, but the script is surprisingly strong and the film well-directed, and done as straight horror with no ttempt at high camp whatsoever- a dangerous thing to mattempt with this sort of film but just about pulled off successfully.

Overall, this is surprisingly good, and deserves an audience beyond the usual Christopher Lee completists.

Deserter's Songs (1998)

 The late ‘90s were not, in hindsight, the best of times for music. Of course, you can’t say things like that without caveats; I suspect at any time the ratio of good music to crap remains constant, more or less, at least from around 1965 onwards. But what gets into the zeitgeist is curated by the record companies and the media, so what is prominent at any given time. And, for me, the late ‘90s were a time where Britpop had burst into mainly inane dad rick, metal had continued Nu-Metal to a point beyond interesting while things seemed to be stagnating a bit, and it had become clear that manufactured pop, an institution of unfettered evil, was back.

But of course there was so much more going on under the surface, and my personal soundtrack to the late ‘90s bears no relation to those trends. One reason for this is Mercury Rev and this album, which I went out and bought the moment I first heard “Goddess on a Hiway”. Weird, ethereal, sounding like gossamer with theremins while still somehow sounding a bit like the Flaming Lips, I fell for this album hard, as did many for this breakthrough album. It’s extraordinary, and it’s quite ironic that this is the sound of the band giving up on mainstream success and just doing what they want.

Still don’t like how they spell “hiway” or “tonite”, mind.

Jon Pertwee 1982 Interview

 Here's the link to a fully copyrighted YouTube video of a 1982 interview with Jon Pertwee. It's a rather interesting little curiosity,: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWmi1BZeh_0

The whole thing is possible the most 1982 thing ever, from the opening titles with that font to the young interviewer's oh-so John Craven's Newsround hair and suit. It's nice that it takes place in the Pert's dressing room with him in full costume and make-up as Worzel Gummidge, which makes it an even nicer little artifact.

Much of the interview consists of the Pert's usual talking points over its eighteen minute length, but there are some fascinating little nuggets. The Pert seems to take slight umbrage at the suggestion he was known as a comedy actor before Doctor Who (he was), pointing to a handful of obscure '50s film roles to prove his point. But it's odd to think that such a young-looking interviewer would, in 1982, remember him taking over from Patrick Troughton. It's also striking that this interview dates from a time before it was possible to watch old stories. The interviewer, seemingly a fan, can't remember The Dæmons.

Most amusing of all it the subtle criticism of the humour of his successor- when facing an alien threat, "you don't fall over a scarf"...

Interestingly, the Pert comes across as the consummate professional interviewee on the surface, with a stream of polished anecdotes and opinions- but they're mostly the same talking points again and again. He's playing a part, as always. The real Pert is only seen in a slight prickliness just beneath the surface...

Creepshow 2 (1987)

 "I feel the need, the need for weed!"

It's getting close to Halloween which, I think, is as good an excuse to watch only fun, cheesy horror films for the rest of October. This is a particularly fine example, with three nice little Stephen King stories (he gets an amusing cameo) adapted, but not directed, by George A. Romero in another entertaining little '80s Hollywood version of those old Amicus anthologies. It's nice to see that the cast, while short of star wattage, is full of character actors with familiar faces who are getting prominent roles and nailing them.

The first segment, uncharcteristically, happens in some western state that isn't Maine, which is very un-Stephen King. It's a simple tale of a kindly old couple who are nice to the local native tribe and try to support their dying community, only to be cruelly murdered by a young psychopathic thug and his underlings, who are all then slain in increasingly fun ways by a wooden carving of a Native American  chief. It is, I suppose, vaguely racist in its stereotypes, but the killings are clever and fun. The axe in the back, in shadow but with a splattering of blood, is nicely done in particular.

The second segment, about four teenagers on a raft being menaced and killed off one by one by some kind of sentient oil slick, is superb. The straightforward plot doesn't really reflect the cleverness of how events play out for maimum tension. I love how all but one of the kids smoke some weed, making one expect a "drugs are bad, m'kay" undercurrent with the one girl surviving... but they are all doomed regardless. I love how the slick is inexorable and can't be outrun. There's no logic or reason to cling to, only fear and death.

The third and final segment is outstanding, as a very rich woman leaves the home of an expensive male prostitute(!), is late, and in her panic fatally runs over a hitchhiker who pursues her inexorably to her death after she drives off and tries to avoid the consequences. The horror and tension are nicely juxtaposed with her musings on the guilt she feels. On a mundane note, I smiled at the beginning when the digital alarm clock failed to go off and flashed "12:00" after a power cut. That exact situation made me late a couple of times back in the days before we all just used our phones...

This film isn't big, it doesn't claim to be clever, but it's enormous fun and gave me quite a feeling of warmth.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 6- Tywysog Cymru

 "Fancy being the heir?"

"Not if it means going to Wales..."

This is yet another outstanding episode, our first to focus on Charles as a young man rather than a child- Josh O'Connor plays him with aplomb, safely negotiating a path between acting and impersonation. But the script (with James Graham co-writing) is magnificent.

It's horrifying to see Charles at 20, clearly having been denied much of a childhood, being denied a youth too. It's awful so see him trying to reach out to a room of fellow students in Aberystwyth but have the door slammed on him by youths with hair and clothes appropriate for students in 1969, while he stands there in his ever-present suit. He can never belong, and even his family (though his rapport with Anne is lovely) are very cold fishes, as we shall see.

For much of the episode it seems as though the theme is going to be Welsh nationalism, Certainly we, through Charles, learn much of the Welsh viewpoint and it's interesting to see Charles relationship evolve with his republican, nationalist tutor Edward Millward (not a very Welsh name!) from insulting ignorance to true mutual respect as he slips some sympathetic sentiments into his speech which, well, may not have actually been said in his real investiture as Prince of Wales, but are a nice bit of artistic licence.

But all this is undermined at the end, after the warm parting with Millward and his "You did well". The Queen finally receives a translation of the speech and immediately sees through it... his sentiment about Wales being ignored, not listened to, are all about himself. He's exploited the Welsh no less than many of his forebears. And we end with an argument about how a monarch can never be seen to express an opinion lest the whole edifice collapse. At the same time, this is an impossible thing to expect of someone. I 'm sure this theme will recur.

The solution, of course, if one is not a republican (and I, remember, am St Augustine's republican- "Lord, grant me a republic, but not yet"), is that it's only right to allow senior royals to decline the succession and retire into private life if they find this an overly onerous requirement. The gilded cage of royalty must carry the hope of parole. The lack of this sensible reform will, I suspect, lead to much further angst in future episodes...

Butthole Surfers- Independent Worm Saloon (1993)

 

The splendidly monikered Butthole Surfers are nowhere near as well known as they should be. This is a crying shame. At their best they’re the finest band in the world, Gibby Haynes is a genius and if there were any justice they’d be a household name. I absolutely love them.

This isn’t my favourite Butthole Surfers album- we shall come to that- but it’s near the top of my mental list and a delightful example of both how very weird and how very Texan they are- for some reason they sound more Texan here than usual- and a collection of killer songs which may be utterly bonkers but are also quite addictive, particularly “Goofy’s Concern”. The guitar sound, the production, the insanity- it’s all peak Butthole Surfers. 

This is their major label debut and, bizarrely, produced by John Paul Jones and made with lots of hard work in the studio and righteous amounts of alcohol. It didn’t quite get them mainstream success but, well, these are the Butthole Surfers. The mainstream doesn’t deserve them.

Roadkill: Episode 1

 "Voters think of me as a character..."

So, alternating with the crown, I'll be blogging this very current political thriller from David Hare, starring Hugh Laurie as exactly the sort of morally dodgy character he's been playing of late. First impressions are extremely promising: an intricate yet clear plot that reminds me of State of Play while being very much of our time.

We first meet ambitious Tory transport minister Peter Laurence immediately after he's won a libel case and makes a speech on the steps which has to have been intended to echo Jonathan Aitken, bavk in the Major years back in that innocent era when Toty misisters would actually resign for misdeeds and the concept of absolute truth was rather more fashionable than it is now. But, well, he's essentially Boris Johnson, isn't he? A shagger, a "character", a man with no pirnciples.... although, it seems, Peter is at once more criminal and much more competent than Boris.

It says a lot for Hare's script that there are lots of characters and many moving parts here, but things are never hard to follow. The cast is superb. The hero is clearly Sarah Greene's investigative journalist Charmian,humanised as a recovering alcoholic, but also impressive are Helen McRory as a delightfully machiavellian prime minister and Pip Torrens as a cynical newspaper editor. The direction is excellent yet unobtrusive, and it's nice to see a variety of locations from a prison to a club where young people dance to The Fall's "Totally Wired". Where were these places when I was their age?

A very promising start. Early days, but this could prove to be something special.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 5- Coup

 "I am protecting the Prime Minister. I am protecting the Constitution. I am protecting Democracy."

We have another fine episode here, again mixing excellent character stuff with thought-provoking constitutional issues. I suspect, due to the largely political subject matter, this episode won't be quite as popular as others this season, but to devote space to the supposed coup against Wilson is probably the right thing to do.

It is, of course, not necessarily a hard fact that any such coup was planned, despite decades of rumours. Sources (Hugh Cudlipp, the highly questionable Peter Wright) give some indication that Lord Mountbatten was approached, but it's not widely believed that things went any further. Dramatic licence aside, however, the events are well dramatised here, with Mountbatten's presentation to Cecil King and co on the practicalities of a coup are like something out of a Frederick Forsyth novel. Charles Dance, recast as a necessarily harder-edged Mountbatten, is outstanding as the charismatic old military leader looking for purpose in retirement. His speech to the Burma veterans, including the full recital of Kipling's "Road to Mandalay", is dripping with charisma. Mountbatten comes across as complex here, and not unsympathetic, quite an achievement,

Cecil King is odd, though. Proprietor of the Daily Mirror, friend of Hugh Cudlipp, yet fomenting a right-wing coup against a fairly standard Labour government?

Regardless, the Queen gives all this short shrift here. If she did, in reality, do this, she deserves much praise for doing the most important job of a modern constitutional monarch in defending democracy, for being Juan Carlos in 1981 rather than Vittorio Emmanuele in 1922. Interestingly, this episode contrasts this by showing the Queen spending weeks on end travelling to pursue her horse racing hobby, at the expense of her job. One can hardly begrudge her a holiday, however; Trump and his golf this ain't. And there's a superbly written moment between her and old friend Porchey as she discusses how she would have much preferred the life of a racing horse owner to that of a monarch. These few weeks are a poignant glimpse into the life she could have had, if her Uncle David hadn't forced her, and her reluctant monarch, into the life she now leads.

We end on a note of hope, as the duly chastened Mountbatten reconnects with his sister Princess Alice, reminding us of the complexities of the family trees of the royal houses of Europe. "We Battenbergs have no country" says the old and relaxed Alice to her patriotic brother, both scions of a universal monarchical class floating over the various nations of Europe which at some point borrowed some German princeling to be their king.

We alo have a nice scene with Elizabeth and Philip at the end. The personal stuff, the characterisation, is always perfectly written and performed, and seems to mesh seamlessly with the more phiosophical stuff. This is bloody good telly.

British Sea Power- The Decline of British Sea Power (2003)

 There was a bit of a renaissance in indie music starting roughly with the Strokes in 2001 and eventually petering out to landfill indie pointlessness after about five years. But those few years packed in an extraordinary profusion of diverse and interesting bands, mostly ploughing some interesting post-punk furrow or other, but the concept of post-punk can cover all sorts of stuff. Of course, eventually you reach the point where new bands are no longer influenced by Wire and Gang of Four but by the bands they in turn influence, diminishing returns happen, and these kinds of bands lose out to the ever-present godawful Coldplay clones.

It was good while it lasted, though, and the splendidly weird British Sea Power were always one of the more interesting bands of the lot. This, their wonderful debut album shows why. They sound a bit like Joy Division on the surface, but there's a onderfully playful obtuseness to the lyrics and an equally playful whimsicality to the whole album, making what could have been a rather po-faced album into something else entirely. And I love these Brighton-based Cumbrian musicians' insistence on lyrics that are as un-rock 'n' roll as possible. That's the quintessence of punk.

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 8

 "You make that sound like a bad thing..."

This is, of course, a superb and hard-hitting season finale, resolving the mystery of what happened to Sam's father. It's also, interestingly, an episode that eschews the usual commentary on social mores and between 1973 and 2006 in favour of what we Doctor Who fans call timey-wimeyness. It's a superb character piece, a pretty good whodunit with a twist, and a good bit of, yes, time travel science fiction.

John Simm is superb as Sam slowly unravels the truth about why his dad walked out on his family at a family wedding in 1973. Sam's wilful refusal to see Vic as anything other than a good bloke helps to cleverly misdirect us from the fact that Vic himself is the big bad, who commits two murders under our noses.

Also clever is that we learn the reason for the hallucination of the woods, which we've seen all series- it's Vic kicking Annie in a repressed childhood memory- would she have been killed without Sam there? And is his dad why Sam has gone back to 1973 in particular?

I think it's also becoming clear- especially following last episode- that Gene Hunt is a more nuanced and (whisper it) character behind the hard nut facade, like many a Western hero. He even forgives Sam for pulling a gun on him, but he clearly likes and respects Sam more than he will ever admit. 

This is an exeptional end to a fine first season. I've been alternating Life on Mars with The Crown, and will continue to do so, but I'll blog something short and very current over just a few days before I see you again for Series Two...

Culture- Two Sevens Clash (1977)

 I’m one of those people who got into ‘70s reggae and dub via ‘70s punk and, perhaps more specifically,  via the sort of stuff Don Letts used to play in the Roxy, and then kindly sort of reproduced in a compilation. album several decades later. This l d to me buying and enjoying a number of reggae albums from that era.

That era, and not beyond, of course;  I don’t really have a roadmap beyond the punk connection and have no clue about reggae music after about 1980. It feels like a very different culture (part of the attraction) in a way that Black American music doesn’t, even though it originates from the same West African diaspora of the descendants of people kidnapped into North American slavery.

A few songs from this album are tightly well known, and the title song has a special meaning for those of us born in the year of no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones. But the whole album is a treat to listen to.

Cat People (1942)

 "I like the dark It's friendly."

I can't quite put my finger on why, but this film- as with many directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton- doesn't quite do it for me. It doesn't seem to cohere.

It gets a lot of things right. It manages to be pacey as well as having very strong characterisation for a horror film- fantasy elements and dodgy Serbian history aside, this is a film that could be about real people, and has an actual subtext of the wildness of female sexuality, kept repressed in what they would not, in 1942, have referred to as our patriarchal world.

The horror is well done, with suggestion and direction rather than spectacle as something seems to follow Alice- the footsteps and bus scene, and the swimming pool scene, are both very well done. Kent Smith is a little bland, but the rest of the case is superb.

And yet, there's an unevenness of tone. It doesn't become a horror film until the last part of the film, instead the story of a woman's fear of the harm she can do with her sexuality, causing her to remain repressed until she meets the nice but dull Oliver. There's a bit of a vague love triangle with Alice, who comes across as very real. Then there's the Doc, who probably isnt intended to come across quite as creepy as he seems in 2020. And the threat is, perhaps, undersold and left overly vague.

Nevertheless, this is a good and interesting little film.

Catwoman (2004)

 "I'm a woman. I'm used to doing things I don't want to do.

This film has, well, not the best of reputations, but I was determined to go in with an open mind. Can this film really be as bad as it's cracked up to be?

Er, yes.

Why? Firstly there's the horrible music video direction and cinematography, with the horrible dated use of green light everywhere. Secondly there's the bizarre decision to completely ignore the comic book background. Some varitation is inevitable, even a lot of variation if justified, but this is barely based on Selina Kyle at all. It certainly doesn't use her name. The CGI is awful. Sharon Stone is even worse, although Halle Berry is not actually bad at all. And the early scenes about replacing the "face" of a cosmetics company remind me of The Wasp Woman, a much better film.

And then there's the script. Frustratingly, the plot could have been made to work with a little more doctoring, but we have what we have. I'm as big a cat lover as they come- we have four cats and I cuddle them all every day- but would I walk out on to the ledge of a window on the umpteenthh floor to rescue a cat? Er, no. The whole bit about Patience realising her employer is up to something and getting killed for it is like a crapper version of Batman Returns. The resurrection is silly, and the CGI cats don't look or move like real cats. Oh, and why would Tom be assigned to interview the suspect he was on a date with the previous night as opposed to a colleague with no conflict of interest? It's all very silly.

Much as I'd like to be contrary... yeah, this is rubbish.

The Stranglers- Rattus Norvegicus (1977)

 

The Stranglers are a bit of an odd band, in hindsight. They’re usually lumped in broadly with the punk scene despite not being part of it: they feel more like a kind of keyboard-driven pub rock, which makes sense given that they’d already been together since 1974. Their sound, fully-formed on this debut album, owes a lot to the Doors, who in turn don’t really sound like their own era, except with laddish vocals. Sometimes very laddish vocals, as we shall see.

This album is astounding, and must have been even more so at the time when it must have sounded incredibly fresh. It’s not just “Hanging Around” or “Get a Grip (on Yourself”, both justifiably well-loved songs although I personally hate the 70s rock fashion for brackets in song titles. No; every song is superb, with killer keyboard riffs and menacing vocals. It’s a classic, and arguably underrated.

It’s just a shame about “Peaches”. Such a great song, such unambiguously and nastily misogynistic lyrics. Then there’s “I can think of a lot worse places to be/ like down in the streets/ or down in the sewer/ or even on the end of a skewer”, which... yeah. But this album, if you pretend it’s 1977, is astounding.

Therapy?- Troublegum (1994)

Therapy? have made several albums over the years, most of them very good indeed. It's worth taking a look at their wider discography, and I'll be blogging all of their albums in the months and years to come. But this is clearly and undoubtedly their masterpiece. Sometimes things come together for a band and they produce something extraordinary as a one-off sublime achievement that will never be topped. This is one of those times, and it's only the second of many excellent albums.

Troublegum is one of the true greats, a sublime achievement marrying punk and indie rock with glorious heaviness and dark, twisted lyrics. "Stop It You're Killing Me", "Die Laughing" and "Screamager" may stand out, perhaps, but there's no filler here.

It's curious, though, how this album- absolutely huge and ubiquitous at the time- isn't generally remembered as part of the '90s nostalgia industry, perhaps overshadowed by Britpop while not quite being a metal album either. It's an example, perhaps, of the perils of allowing mainstream popular culture to curate our nostalgia. But there's no denying the wonderfully addictive pleasure of listenng to these songs, all of them,  again and again.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 4- Bubbikins

 "Bubbikins...?"

 This is, again, a cleverly constructed episode, dealing with two seemingly separate- and thematically contrasting- threads, and drawing them together very neatly at the end. It's also the episode where Princess Anne appears for the first time as a more-or-less adult, and where I perhaps begin to warm a little to Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip. He's no Matt Smith though.

On the one hand, Prince Philip is whingeing about real terms cuts to the Civil List. He, husband to the richest woman in the world, may be forced to sell a palace or two or even give up polo. This is contrasted with his mother, Princess Alice, a humble nun in Athens, casually selling her priceless jewellery so she can continue her charity work. These themes interwtwine throughout. Philip tries to savage his public relations faux pas with a documentary on the royals so we can see how they're good value for money, and it goes so badly that the Queen orders it buried after a single broadcast. Meanwhile, the fascist coup of the colonels in Greece exiles Princess Alice to London... and Philip just avoids his mother, as an embarrassment and, worse, a mother who abandoned him.

The threads are drawn together where it is the publicity from Princess Alice, and her hard life of suffering and service, that gives the royals some positive publicity- and leads Philip finally to reconnect with his mother before it is too late.

Most importantly, perhaps, we are shown that Philip's mother didn't abandon him out of callousness, but of genuine and serious mental health issues, for which she suffered barbaric tortures and, just as bad, Freudian psychiatry. Mental health is an issue that can affect us all, eincluding royalty.

This doesn't, of course, stand comparison with its exceptional predecessor, but shows nevertheless the high watermark of this series. Good stuff.

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 7

 "I left a weak man in charge..."

I saw this episode on its original broadcast but, as this was several months before Torchwood debuted, I had no idea who Chris Chibnall was- not the case the following season, where I distinctly recall discussing his episode of Life on Mars in the pub-so it's a surprise to see his name on the credits. This is interesting, because this episode is superb, certainly the finest so far. Chibnall may be a divisive figure in Doctor Who fandom, but he's certainly good at writing serious drama on the evidence of this, whatever you may thing of his family-oriented science fantasy.

There's a simple concept here- a death in the cells, for which everyone on the team bears some degree of responsibility. This simple premise leads to a wonderfully layered and complex script in which every character gets some development but John Simm really gets o shine as the white-hat wearing Sam. The end- where, after much agonising, Sam hands the tape to the superintendent who simply destroys it and covers up the whole thing- is a powerful reminder of how things were in 1973. 

It's nice, too, how the initial rush towards a cover-up by Gene is later shown to have been something more nuanced. And at least Ray faces some kind of consequence for his actions. Inevitably, we have to finish the episode with a reset button- Ray's demotion notwithstanding- but the fact this works without looking like a massive cop out shows us just how good this script is.

More Chibnall please. On the evidence of this he's better than the showrunners.

R.E.M- Life's Rich Pageant (1986)

R.E.M. when recording this album were in the middle of a sort of metamorphosis- this was their last indie record, and the last to go with their original lo-fi production sound which they would never sound like again. Yet it's a strong album, with a much rockier sound and a wider potential appeal than before. You can see why they went major label than it did.

I'm always banging on about production- I like lo-fi, and tend to be of the school of thought that most music should be produced by clones of Steve Albini. Yet I'll admit that for Life's Rich Pageant, even more so than for earlier R.E.M. albums, this production style doesnt't really suit their sound.

Nevertheless, this album, on the cusp of much bigger success, reminds us of R.E.M.'s roots not of the stadium rock beast they would become (except, you know, without the general crapness of stadium rock), but of their very indie roots.

Oh, and the extra songs at the end of the special edition are interesting, especially the cover of the Everly Brothers' "All I Have to Do Is Dream".

New Order- Technique (1989)

 I like New Order. Oddly enough though, this is an album I can admire, and accept as good, but I've never really got on with it. I've just relistened to it and have only a few disjointed thoughts as to why.

From the vantage point of 2020 this album was made at an interesting time. New Order are band with obvious  roots, via Joy Division, in the whole punk and post-punk world and are, just about, still a kind of rock band. Yet they've always dabbled in Electronica as the various '80s dance scene evolved and cross-fertilised with and around them. 

It's too simplistic to point at acid house and the album being recorded in Ibiza; this is 1989, just after the second summer of love and Blue Monday, and the height of that Madchester thing which, for me, has always been a curate's egg. New Order are, of course, the centre of the Manchester scene at this point and, of course, on Factory records, just like the Happy Mondays, who I'm not that keen on. 

You can sort of hear all that in the record, yes. And it's all very good. But for me it's a hard record to get a handle on, or to like, as many of their other albums- no less electronic- have done. Perhaps it's as simple as that it's too Madchester. But I suspect it's more complicated than that.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 3- Aberfan

 "Put on a show? The Crown doesn't do that?"

This is, it's fair to say, not at all a typical episode. It is also, I suspect, the one with the least dialogue. The Aberfan tragedy in all its visceral yet man-made horror is made fully manifest to us, from the early scenes of ordinary family life in this South Wales pit village, as the slag hill looms threateningly above, to the scenes of the devastation and its human cost that makes up much of the episode. We see, and hear, the reactions of Lord Snowdon, Prince Philip and finally the Queen, but the unspeakable horror is there for us to see- although, as a father, I found Tony's reaction the most quietly devastating. 

But this episode, as well as being entirely about the tragedy and respectfully allowing the people of Aberfan to take centre stage. Cynically, yet inevitably, there's the potential political fallout, as Harold Wilson swiftly sees. Safety standards were blatantly failed, and had been for years. So was this the fault of the current Labour ministry or the previos Conservative one? The political blame game is as inevitable as it is tasteless. Marcia Williams (I suspect we shall see more of her) is all for sticking it to the Tories, and the Queen too if there's political advantage in doing so. Yet, while this can be seen as cynicism, it is born of a passionate belief in the Labour "movement" and its ability to do good.

And then there's Elizabeth, who spends a week refusing increasingly strong entreaties to visit, insisting that is not the role of the Crown. She is only shamed into doing so by the danger of forces within Labour attacking her seeming heartlessness in public- and has to pretend to wipe away a non-existent tear.

Her concluding scene with Wilson- supposedly the prime minister whom, in reality, the Queen had the best rapport- is superb, as the admits her inability to cry, and her undemonstrative nature. It is, rightly, left unsaid (as it would be in 1966) whether we are supposed to see her as being on the neurodiversity spectrum but, as it is a spectrum, aren't we all? And Wilson's response is brilliant: we need calmness from a head of state, not hysteria. And we all have parts to play, not least the privileged, cigar smoking former Oxford don playing the part of a man of the people.

This is genuinely sublime, and on quite another level. Jason Watkins is excellent but Olivia Colman is truly incredible.

Machine Head- Burn My Eyes (1994)

 Machine Head are probably the latest of what I consider the "classic" thrash bands. They've been around a while, and their style has wobbled around a lot, not least with their late '90s nu-metal phase. But they can always be relied upon, when not pursuing ill-advised directions, to produce the goods. And this debut album is a stonker.

I'm forty-three and beginning to get a bit curmudgeonly with new music. Thrash bands from more recent years often sound quite good, but the thrash sound hasn't progressed much over the last thirty years and any new thrash band just sounds like constant variations of an old formula.

Machine Head, in 1994, were juuuust early enough for this not to be an issue, despite the guitars on this album sounding suspiciously like Dimebag Darrell at times. And I can wax all nostalgic about the well-judged production. My preferred production style (Steve Albini, basically) doesn't really work with thrash, which needs a cleaner, more Andy Wallace sound- but not too clean. This album isn't too clean, but it's one of the last real classics of that era of production, not that we knew at the time...

Machine Head's first. And best. A nostalgic listen.

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 6

 "I'm the negotiator."

"I'll make you a hat."

Ok, the premise behind this episode may be somewhat trite- Sam’s life support machine is to be switched off at 2pm, and in 1973 there’s a parallel hostage situation where a hostage is to be killed at 2pm. It’s a little near, and this episode isn’t one of the ones that will stand out. But it’s a strong hour of telly nonetheless.

The hostage situation is full of excellent tension and drama, with an interesting villain whose motive is interesting, nuanced and nicely ambiguous with a bit of misdirection. It’s a nice touch that the hostages are local journalists, one of whom has lambasted Gene in the past. It’s a premise that would work even without the time travel conceit but, despite this, relies as ever on the contrasting methods of Sam and Gene.

Sam is well-versed in hostage negotiation tactics. Gene just wants to turn up the heating so the hostage taker can open a window and get shot. This provides most of the fun throughout the whole thing, although by now it’s clear the two of them have a grudging mutual respect.

It’s a good if not stand-out bit of telly, raised to a higher level, as ever, by John Simm.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 2- Margaretology

 "There was a young lady from Dallas, who used a dynamite stick as a phallus. They found her vagina in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace."

It’s surprising, I suppose, that The Crown has focused so relatively heavily on Margaret. And yet it can’t be denied that they keep finding new and interesting angles to take on Bertie’s second born. This episode manages to be fascinating as a study not only of Margaret but of the contrast and rivalry between the two sisters.

Importantly, the episode begins and ends with a coda, a flashback in 1943, where Tommy Lascelles starts to prepare young Elizabeth for a role for which the more outgoing Margaret would seem to be more suited. Yet Elizabeth is very firmly told, in spite of the fact that both sisters are happy for Margaret to be queen, that that’s not how it works.

In the present day, we are introduced to a fun little turn from an excellent Clancy Brown, who may not resemble LBJ but manages to be damned convincing as the old Texan arm-twister. And the whole episode centres on the UK being in the desperate position of needing an economic ball out from the USA-but we are not LBJ’s favourite country because Wilson won’t touch Vietnam, quite rightly, with a bargepole.

Enter Margaret, to save the day with charm, emotional intelligence, bawdiness and limericks. Helena Bonham Carter is superb here, as Margaret achieves things the Queen could never achieve, in an episode constantly seething with sibling rivalry.

We also see the cracks in Margaret’s marriage getting deeper, and Elizabeth getting fonder of Wilson. But it all ends, nicely, with Philip channelling a theory of Lascelles from when they got drunk together last season- there are the dull Windsor’s and the dazzling ones, and they always come in pairs. For every Bertie there’s a David, for every Elizabeth, a Margaret.

It’s a masterfully crafted and paced piece of telly. I’m not sure it’s particularly deep but the craftsmanship is superb.

The Searchers (1956)

 "Fella could mistake you for a half-breed."

When accusing a film of racism one needs to be wary of nuance, historical context and all sorts of factors. Past ages were far less sensitive to racist tropes and assumptions, and while that may not prevent racism being racism it must be taken into account. Past filmmakers can be forgiven, up to a point, for growing up in times where being non-racist took a far greater perceptiveness and strength of character than it does today.

Nevertheless, there are times a film is just racist by any standards, and it’s a shame that it has to be this one. The film is gorgeously shot by John Ford, with achingly epic vistas of Arizona standing in for Texas. The script is extraordinarily acute its psychology. And John Wayne gives a superlative performance.

And yet the protagonist, Ethan, is both a colossal racist and a total dick, a bully possessing not an ounce of charm or decent principle. Not long after we first meet him he utters the extraordinary line quoted above to Marty, who is fated to spend much of the film as his sidekick. He remains, three years after the end of the American Civil War, loyal to the Confrderacy, an ideal based entirely on race-based slavery, whatever Southern apologists may have spend much of the twentieth century trying to gaslight us with. He is therefore stubborn in his beliefs but with absolutely zero ethical foundation.

Lots of Westerns are not overtly racist as they don’t centre on the opposition between “whites” and the Native Americans whom said “whites” are in the process of slowly exterminating. It’s I arguable that the story of the American West is a story of genocide, but it would be pointless to dismiss much of a whole genre because of this. The American West was full of people born there just trying to live their often very hard lives and survive and, although they were all complicit in this genocide, well, I’m sure you and I have both worn clothes made by slave labour, and are complicit in the climate catastrophe. We are all born into the societies we are, and few of us are so virtuous as to not share some of that society’s guilt.

All of which is to say that I do not condemn the Western genre on the grounds of this genocide, not even necessarily where Native Americans are portrayed as an antagonist. But The Searchers absolutely leans into this. The central plot is when a bunch of Comanche destroy a home and murder its inhabitants, taking little Debbie to raise as their own. Yet everyone in the film, barring Marty, seems to be of the opinion that she is now tainted, made “not white any more” by her adoption of another culture, and should therefore be killed. This is not a film about Ethan the racist; it is a racist film.

And yes, the film ends with Ethan relenting, and generously allowing that a white girl who sleeps with a non-white man and adopts elements of non-white culture may not, perhaps, deserve to be slaughtered. So miscegenation is bad and so is non-white culture, but perhaps it shouldn’t quite be a capital offence. That seems to be the message here.

The Searchers is a very good film, perhaps even an excellent one. Unfortunately, it’s also incredibly racist.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

 "She is not who you think she is..."

So we finally reach the end of the trilogy- if not, I suspect, of Star Wars movies- and we have a perfctly enteraining bockbuster movie that hits all the right beats and tugs at the heartstrings, quite rightly allwing the ounger generation of heroes to shine while still wallwing in some nostalgia in roughly the right balance.

So why am I, if not disappointed in a film that does exactly what one expects of a franchise blockbuster, perhaps just a little underwhelmed?

I think, perhaps, with J.J. Abrams returning to the helm, this film follows on awkwardly from The Last Jedi, which rather cleverly plays with our expectations in killing off Snoke and revealing that Rey isn't in fact the child of anyone we know (such as Luke) as we might have thought.

This film is far more predictable. Palpatine is back- a rather obvious thing to do. And Rey, er, actually is the child of someone we know, after all- Palpatine himself. This undermines the previous film somewhat, to put it mildly. And the way she uses the power of past Jedi to win, and sort of becomes a Skywalker at the end, is sort of meh. This isn't playing with our expectations; its's confirming them, and erasing the metatextual subtext of the previous and much more interesting film.. 

That's not to say the film is bad; it's well made and entertaining. It's just a shame the previous film aspired to say something beyond the usual Joseph Campbell plotting and relentless fan service. Fun though it is to see Lando, and Ewoks, and a very old-looking Han, well, this is just Star Wars by numbers, even if it's very good Star Wars by numbers.

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 5

 "What if me uncle had tits? Would he be me auntie?"

This episode is all about football, and the romanticisation of its fandom in the era before hooliganism, which we see emerging here. It says a lot about this episode that, since the 2010 World Cup, I’ve had zero interest in football, but this episode had me gripped.

Again, the weirdness and time travel isn’t foregrounded here except as a means to examine 1973 from a modern perspective, although the Test Card Girl again has a nice little cameo. And again we see Sam bond further with Gene and the rest of the gang who aren’t Ray. We seem to have almost hit on a formula where Sam, with his methodical approach, has a theory and Gene has his own more old-school approach, and there’s a jovial rivalry between them until Sam is proved right. It works well, especially as the episode works very well indeed as a whodunit.

Sam finally gets the caution right when arresting someone- at last. Someone gets arrested for cattle rustling. And it is, of course, fun to see the gang running a pub, although I’m reminded very much of why I try to avoid football pubs even today. 

The final angry speech Sam makes to the killer, who thinks football is all about violence (“You know nothing about football!”) is superb, and his relationship with the sin of the murdered man is a nice touch, as are the scenes of City and United fans walking to the match together. It’s a nicely crafted hour of telly even if, again, a little less deep and mysterious these days than it was at the time

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 1- Olding

 “What you see is what you get..."

A new season and... well, let’s face the elephant in the room, a new cast. I like the opening, introducing us to Olivia Colman’s new Queen and I must admit, although Claire Foy was magnificent, that she’s won me over. Helena Bonham Carter is superb as Margaret, of course. But Tobias Menzies, as a suddenly charisma-free Prince Philip, is certainly no Matt Smith, and on the face of this episode the character is set to become a lot less nuanced.

Fortunately we have a nicely nuanced performance from Jason Watkins as the deceptively straightforward Harold Wilson, alongside a superb turn from Samuel West as the vile traitor Anthony Blunt. And through the episode runs a lice line of misdirection. It’s out with the old, as the Tories are out and Elizabeth faces the first Labour Government of her reign just as the much-missed Winston Churchill (still the wonderful John Lithgow) is dying... and we hear constant rumours that Wilson is a Soviet spy until we discover the true culprit, who ends the episode threatening to blackmail Philip. I loved the Queen’s double-edged speech with Blunt, who seems to go unpunished.

And yet... this episode doesn’t have the depths of earlier seasons, in spite of its clever conceit. Perhaps it’s just the need to introduce a new status quo and a new cast. I hope so. Let’s hope that turns out to be the case.

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 4

“Others have tried to wear the white hat. And all have failed."

This is a frustrating episode- a well-crafted, well-acted hour of telly that examines, rather successfully, the ethics of police taking bribes and allowing Kray-like big men to hold sway over a community in return for an orderly neighbourhood. And yet there's one big, fatal flaw that stops me from saying this is the best episode so far and, indeed, leaves a rather nasty taste in the mouth.

The use of Sam's mother- in both time zones- and the peek into his childhood is a very nice touch here. Again, the weirdness, and the mystery of what's going on, is kept in the background and mainly part of an involuntary LSD trip. The Test Card Girl only gets a brief appearance. And I love the '70s pop culture nods, with Marc Bolan and a very '70s club.

There's some nice character development, as Sam and Annie are established as platonic while Gene begins to develop a little more respect for Sam as the reason for bringing down Stephen Warren; the "I thought you's never ask" conversation is well done, almost working as sleight of hand to hide the suddenness of Gene's conversion. Sam's essential white knight nature is established, a kind of Mancunian Philip Marlowe who always acts with integrity in a bad world, even if he needs loads of alcohol to do it.

It's all very neatly plotted, with the situation being established, the honey trap, the murder of Joni, and the resolution, all focused on Sam's ethical beliefs. The script does a good job of allowing Gene to be just complicit enough but decent enough to redeem himself; the bit of his backstoty we hear is a very nice touch, even if the stream of homophobic epithets he uses to describe Warren, even if meant to contrast then and now, probably wouldn't fly in 2020 as easily as in 2006. The whole episode is admirably done. Except for one thing.

Joni rapes Sam.

At no point does the script (or perormances) accept that this is what happens, yet she literally drugs him and has sex with him after he's explicitly told her he doesn't consent. The fact that she's a woman and he's a man are irrelevant. It's rape, so it's uncomfortable to see it played for laughs, or Annie blaming him. Of course, this all takes place in a wider context of deep misogyny, and Joni probably has little choice here, indirectly being sexually abused by Warren. But she rapes him, and there's nothing feminist whatsoever in acting as though any person can't rape any other person.

The way the script completely fails to acknowledge that Sam has been raped leaves a very nasty scar on what would otherwise have been an excellent episode. It's a shame.

The Jam- Sound Affects (1980)

I'll get round to them all eventually, so it's probably unwise to make my favourite Jam album my first one to blog. I can't resist, though. I know the album well; for some reason, alongside PiL's Metal Box this has been my go-to album when cooking something from scratch ever since my early 20s. It makes me think of chopping onions, playing with spices in the wok and suddenly remembering I need to actually put the rice on.

As an aside, "Pretty Green" gave me an epiphany that British people used to have the same cultural association as Americans do with money being thought of as green until the pound note, which was tinted green, was withdrawn from circulation in 1984. That's alsp probably why Douglas Adams wrote about the human obsession with "green pieces of paper".

In my defence, I was only seven in 1984.

Anyway, this is probably the best Jam album simply because it's a splendid collection of songs but, interestingy, I think it sounds less obviously "mod" than the earlier albums, which simultaneously makes it both less and more reminiscent of the Kinks. But, ultimately, it's a strong album allthe way through- nit just "Start" and "That's Entertainment".

Casablanca (1942)

"Here's looking at you, kid."

Casablanca is, of course, a bit like Citizen Kane in that its reputation should be a yoke around its neck. How can any film be as good as Casablanca is said to be? The film's enormous reputation means it can, surely, only disappoint.

Well, actually, no. I don't care if I recognise the famous lines from seeing them spoofed on, of all things, Red Dwarf- this film really is superlative. It is, I suppose, a romance and it is, I suppose, centred around a love triangle. Yet the characters, in a wonderful marriage of script and performers (Bogart and Bergman are extraordinary, but so is the entire cast), have all the emotional realism and complexity of characters in a literary novel. There's no melodrama here, only nuance- I love how Victor is well aware of what happened in Paris, but is not so crass as to confront Ilsa, or to doubt her love for him. And Ilsa is torn between love for two human but genuinely good men, both of whom, in their way, face a harsh and brutal world with integrity.

Like today, this is an era- the opening narration calls it the Second World War, already, in 1942- where the jackboots of far right extremism, with its contempt for humanity, for checks and balances, for integrity. All three of the characters in the triangle have had their lives deeply damaged by said jackboots, and all three perceive the world with a certain weary cynicism. Yet all three of them, ultimately, believe in something better and make sacrifices in that noble aim. One can live in a cruel world, blighted by tyranny, and be a flawed human being within that world, with conflicting feelings and loyalties- and still behave with integrity. Rick sacrifices not just his happiness but, it seems, his ife.

Yet just as fascinating are Yvonne, who sleeps with the jackbooted enemy only to be dumped, and realise where her loyalties truly lie during the extraordinary Marseillaise scene, which made this Englishman shed tears for la Republique, and of course Louis- the cynical, corrupt police chief who seems to flirt with collaboration throughout but redeems himself at the end.

This is a great, great film, but it's no forbidding and formidable edifice; it's grippingly watchable simply because of its characters, with the subtext very much arising from them. Let's not call it the greatest film ever made; it's far too good for such shallow concepts.

The Stranger: Summoned by Shadows

"I misunderstood the nature of the universe..."

This is, and is not, a Doctor Who spin-off- indeed, it riffs and perhaps relies on that very ambiguity. Please bear with me, non-Doctor Who fans; this is, I fear, something of a niche little short film, made in 1991 during that long hiatus of 1989 to 2005 where, one failed American TV pilot aside, Doctor Who had been cancelled by the BBC, perhaps forever, and it fell to fandom to fill the space with various amateur and, indeed, not so amateur material.

This is the first of several straight-to-video productions by Bill Baggs, and it's a fascinating artifact, very much of its time. The music, the hair, the cinematography, the camera angles- it all screams 1991. Although obviously cheap, the whole thing manages to look good, partly through cleverly relying on intrigue and atmosphere over spectacle. While it stars Colin Baker, the overall mood and effect is strongly evocative of the McCoy years, and of Andrew Cartmel's vision far more than Eric Saward.

It's rather good for what it is- watching it today, the plot feels very much like a New Adventures novel, but such was the zeitgeist. Colin Baker, in particular, is superb as a perhaps later version of hs Doctor, world-weary and far more self-aware. Michael Wisher, always a joy to see, is similarly excellent as the villain.  But this is very much of its time, very much aimed at a telefantasy audience with none of the mass appeal through character drama that RTD would one day bring.

Its a promising and entertaining watch, though, especially for what it is, and very much worthwhile to the Doctor Who completist.