A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

I don't, personally, know a lot about drugs. Yes, and without commenting on whether I ever indulged or not, like every forty-something I've been in circles where hash and weed were a thing, but beyond that I've never knowingly interacted with actual drug culture beyond, well, popular culture. I've read some William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson, I've read and seen Trainspotting, that sort of thing.

But, well, I drink, so at least I have that experience of altered states of conscience as recreation. I consume caffeine too. Beyond that I cannot go, because that way potentially lies madness, death or worse, and I want to live a long and happy life. But such experiences are fascinating to read about, this extraordinary novel especially.

This novel really shows the lived reality of a junkie, the hopelessness, the squalor, yet also the philosophical musings. It shows the fickle and double-crossing nature of human relations in a world always defined by one's next fix. It's a truly compelling glimpse into a fascinating nightmare. 

Yet this is also a novel of ideas... and of irony. The irony of the novel's final twist, and the irony of protagonist Bob Arctor's situation: a narc who is forced by the circumstances of his job to himself become an addict. The result is tragedy, yet perhaps with an ambiguous note of hope. But this novel will linger in the mind for a good while. Philip K. Dick, whose own life was blighted and no doubt shortened by addiction, poured his soul into it. More so even than Infinite Jest, this is one of the truly great novels about addiction.

Silver Blaze

"That was the curious incident..."

This thirty minute curiosity is a one-off, produced in November 1977 under the auspices of an anthology programme, The Sunday Drama. It's an adaptation of what, I believe, is considered to be one of the more cleverly plotted of Conan Doyle's short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes.

I won't discuss the plot here- either it will be familiar to you, or I'll risk spoilers. I'll confine myself to saying that this is a very faithful, straightforward version, and very well done indeed, with some nice visual touches- the exposition at the start is done with an admirable economy, in particular. It's an excellent version of the tale.

Thorley Walters is a perfectly good Watson, if a little traditional. But the real standout is Christopher Plummer as Holmes. I've seen his only other attempt at the role, in the slightly later film Murder by Decree. But, unlike that film, this is a faithfully and straightforwardly written version of the character, and allows Plummer to show what he can truly do with the part. He doesn't disappoint, showing us a playful yet focused Holmes.

I had to roll my eyes at the predictable pipe and deerstalker, but I enjoyed this little curiosity very much.

The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as We Know It

 "The unexpected but accurate bisecting of the Belgian foreign minister; the Royal College of Needlework massacre; the strange affair of the seven boiled bishops; and the man-eating poodle of Lambeth Palace enigma?"

This is, shall we say, somewhat obscure. A one-off ITV comedy thing, co-scripted by and starring John Cleese, and with his signature absurdist verbal humour all over it. It's not available anywhere officially, as far as I know, and will certainly never be seen on television again- it was 1977, and there's a little light racism on show here. But let's just say that YouTube happens to exist, shall we?

But damn, this is funny. Don't get me wrong, it's uneven, and it would be absurd to expect the plot to make sense. But there are some delightfully clever touches and, despite the fact it all looks extremely cheap, the performances are excellent. Atrthur Lowe steals the show as the most bumbling Watson ever, but Connie Booth is also hilarious as Mrs Hudson. And Denholm Elliott is, of course, his usual superb self.

It's also illuminating as to the world of 1977- the Chinese delegate to the Police of Five Continents meeting has Mao's Little Red Book; there's a hilarious spoof of both Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford; and there's a rather funny scene with a very 1970s computer. Oh, and there's a nicely casual skewering of all sorts of pop culture detectives.

This is not, by any means, one of the best things John Cleese has ever done. Some bits are funnier than others. But this is just so much fun to watch.

Stigma

 "It's the old religion. I read about it in a book."

Hmm. It has its moments but... I'm not sure about this one.

It's 1977. The year I was born. Up to now the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas strand had focused on adaptations of old ghost stories, chiefly those of M.R. James. This time, we get a contemporary take.

It's eerie that the first contemporary ghost story should showcase the year of my birth so powerfully.The cars, the fashions, the sound of an old rotary phone ringing, news of the Voyager missions on the radio... and, of course, contemporary 1970s horror tropes- folk horror, complete with stone circle, and the poltergeist trope, complete with creepy teenage girl.

It'a very simple, straighforward half hour, with few twists and turns until the very end, and even that could be predicted. Yes, the atmosphere is there- it's Lawrence Gordon Clark, after all- and the relatively unknown case is very good, Kate Binchy in particular. But it's all a bit... by the numbers, if well made.

Oh, and if you're scared of blood... give this one a miss. You couldn't make this today.

Martin (1977)

 "I shouldn't have friends, even for the sexy stuff."

This is a relatively obscure little curiosity from Geotrge A Romero, with no stars and little budget. No zombies either: this is a vampire film, sort of. And yet, as ever with Romero, it's really about the subtext.

Because there's nothing supernatural about Martin, whatever his elderly cousin, mind addled by religious conservatism and obsession with the supposed family history of vampirism. And yet... this is a self fulfilling prophecy. The disturbed Martin thinks he's a vampire, so he is.

His attacks are horrifying to watch. He doesn't wish to kill his victims, only to drink some blood, but his frenzies have the visual grammar of sexual assault. And the whole look and texture of the film adds to the sense of the disturbed. Low budget, hand held camerawork, naturalistic acting- for what is ostensibly a horror film this is full of realism.... except those monochrome dream sequences from the point of view of Martin's mind,which play with vampite iconography in clever ways.

Of course, the film ends in tragedy. Martin finds human connection in the form of sex, but the lady in question is depressed. She slits her wrists in the bath, and Martin's own elderly cousin blames and kills him. Martin may be disturbed, but is he not a victim too? A victim of backward superstition? And is his elderly cousin, and the old stupidities he represents, the true monster?

A cheap film, yes, but an engrossing and important one. Note to self: watch more Romero...

Shock Waves (1977)

 "Why, some say they're more afraid of the water than little old ladies are of the dark..."

This is, let us be clear, a B movie. It glories in being so. It is also, I think, the progenitor of the Nazi zombie genre. It is what it is, but in both categories this movie is actually bloody good. And Peter Cushing is simply superb, despite his limited screen time for a top billed star villain.

And I'm disappointed. I wanted a so-bad-it's-good bit of silliness thart would be fun to blog. Instead I get an excellent, tautly directed thriller that plays it straight and, wisely, relires on suspense, so much cheaper than spectacle.

it's a tautly plotted, quietly good film here. And... may I say something? We Birits, with our population of 60 million, have a fairly limited number of character actors, whom we love to spot in production after production. The USA, all things being equal with its much larger population of 300 million, will have six times as many character actors, but, alas, these actors will never achieve the relative fame that they would in relatively smaller countries.

Let us just say here that the entire cast is unusually magnificent, as is the direction, treating a B movie with respect. They deserve to be knoewn, if not as stars, as resprected character actors.

Incidentally, Nazi zombies emerging from the sea in the wake of a rotting ship... non-Doctor Who fans, please indulge me. But could Ian Briggs have seen this prior to writing The Curse of Fenric?

The Incredible Hulk (1977 TV Movie)

 "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

There is, of course, no guarantee that I'll blog this whole series, and not only because only the extended length pilot is free on Netflix. Despite my childhood memories, I'm conscxious that thius is an American network TV show with a reset button as part of the format.

I admit, too, that after seeing interviews with Kenneth Johnson I'd assumed he was one of those people who despise comics and seeks to arrogantly change anything. Yet, despite the gratuitous changing of Bruce to David Banner (not even "Bob")... this origin story is probably as faithful as ot needs to be. Gamma radiation is involved, and a silly communist spy would not have fit the zeitgeist in 1977, a splendid year, certainly for those of us born in it.

The premise, the direction, the acting of Bill Bixby and Susan Sullivan are all superb. This is better telly than I'd expected. The origin has had so much thought given to ot, Banner's bereavement, his close conection with the brilliant Eleana, thegenuinely intriguing scientific mystery. Jack Colvin is a superb villain- a tabloid journalist, truly a soulless creature.

The connection between David and Eleana is central, and the chemistry is absolutely there. The script is thoughtful, full of concept and character, yet simple. There is an overarching theme of superhuman strength found in adversity. There's a lovely tribute to the first Universal Frankenstein film, for obvious reasons.

Shall I watch more? We shall see.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

 "Do you always try to stop trespassers by hanging yourself?"

Wow. This is the first of Wes Craven's films not involving Freddy Krueger that I've ever seen, and it's extraordinary. It's one of the seminal slasher films of the '70s, the decade that truly explored the genre creatively before the following decade dissolved into cliche, but it's more than that. It's the progenitor (as far as I can tell) of the trope of the inbred, cannibalistic family in the wild, very flyover parts of the USA. Although, rather diplomatically, the state in question is not named. There is, perhaps, a debt to Tobe Hooper's Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but this is easily the superior film.

And there's a lot going on here; the father of this twisted family is himself the son of a kindly old man to whom we are introduced at the start. This film articulates a profoundly conservative anxiety, and one particular to those of the World War Two generation towards their baby boomer progeny, with their long hair and drugs and free sex and loud music.

There is hope, though. Ruby may be savage, but she's not completely evil. We younger generations, though depraved, may not be entirely beyond redemption, however smelly we may be.

I'll not be surprised if none of this subtext, which may be entirely from my rather pretentious imagination, was in Wes Craven's mind as he wrote and directed this film, doomed to be underappreciated by the mere fact of its genre.

This is a very human, very real, very likeable and very conservative American family, in love with the twin vices of guns and religion. The characterisation is strong, which really matters in the slasher genre. The direction is superlative. If it wasn't for Nightmare on Elm Street, I'd call this a masterpiece.

The Uncanny (1977)

 "I thought I saw a pussy cat? I did! I did!"

This is a film, a portmanteau horror produced by Milton Subotsky of the sort that had become somewhat unfashionable in the UK by 1977 and so produced in a late 1970s Montreal which can't help feeling a bit David Cronenberg, about how cats are evil. Cat lovers, like myself (we are owned by four, and they are indeed our rulers), may not quite agree that cats are evil- we love them and they love us; they are not so aloof as popular myth dictates, they're just introverts- but, well, they can be little bastards at times.

This film may be full of animatronic cats and dated effects, and it may be the very epitome of the '70s; it may, indeed, suffer from too much a focus on cats as its means of horrifying the audience... but, damn, it does so bloody effectively. Peter Cushing is superb in the framing sequence, but the portmanteau structure allows for a pleasing mix of British character actors in period roles and canadian actors in the modern day. Donald Pleasence hams it up disgracefully, one is forced to admit, but this doesn't fail to add to this little film's considerable charms.

This could, I suppose, be seen as a tired and lesser version ogf the earlier Amicus portmanteau horror films, especially with its restrictive theme. It seems to have flopped at the box office, a fact which I attribute to fashion as much as anything. But the cast, the Canadian element in the late '70s when David Cronenberg was making Anglo Quebec a nucleus of cinematic horror genius. This film may be a relic from a sligfhtly earlier era, but it surfs that wave with aplomb.

Rabid (1977)

 “I don't want to become the Colonel Sanders of plastic surgery..."

Well. I've always said until now that I've seen an awful lot of David Cronenberg films (I may do an index for the blog after this if I remember. Maybe David Lynch too.), but I've somehow contrived to focus on the ones with the least emphasis on his signatute body horror- although his later films are indeed very good.

This one goes a long way towards redressing the balance, in being the Canadian auteur's second film- low budget, and a  glimpse at a talented young man rather than an established director- and having body horror coming out of its armpit, by means of a suspiciously phallic-looking bloodsucking proboscis, which makes it interesting that the affected protagonist, Rosie, is a woman. Perhaps this film is inspired by sex during a period, but... moving swiftly on.

Basically, this is a low budget film with no stars and few extras that nevertheless achieves brilliance necause it's directed by an enfant terrible. Cronenberg's pacing, signature camerawork and visual style are already present and correct as a B movie plot- a girl has a motorbike crash and has to have emergency surgery by an unconventional plastic surgeon (called Dr Keloid!), leading to said body horror and a rabies-type plague on a suspiciously Anglophone Montreal where only a random exposition-spouting cop happens to be from the French-speaking majority- is raised to something much greater by sheer style. The locations, the lighting, even the mid-twentieth century architecture are made to look stunning.

It can be a fascinating experience to see a cinematic genius at work in their early, unheralded, years, where the creativity relies not on Hollywood visual tricks but on making something wonderful out of nothing. This is one of them.

 

 

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

“What happened to them?"

"They became too civilised and destroyed each other."

I suppose I should start by noting the recycling of plot elements from previous Sinbad films produced by Charles H. Schneer and with effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen- the malevolent spell cast on a Caliph (let us not pry as the historical accuracy of the use of that title) whose kinswomen is a love interest for Sinbad; the two stop motion monsters at the end; pretty much the entire plot. But I don't care. This film is wonderful.

Nor do I insist on po-faced criticism of Muslims drinking wine (the history of that religion is not so uniformly Puritan as commonly supposed; I'm happy to raise a glass with any Muslim, as did the Ottomnn Sultans to Hajj pilgrims), or on the historical absurditu of Melanthius, a Greek pagan who was supposedly friendly with Archimedes interacting with Muslims from several centuries afterwards.

No; what matters is the sheer fun of the film. It may run to a time-honoured formula, but it works. One would have thought that, in that Star Wars watershed year of 1977, this kind of stop motion film would be thought old fashioned. Yet this is still the age of Doug McClure, and not yet the age of computer effects... much.

Most effusively, beyond the wonderful Harryhausen himself, the cast is superb.John Wayne's lad is perfectly fine but he is, I'm afraid, utterly blown away and usurped by the wily alchemist played by the great Patrick Troughton, patron saint of character actors. Troughton, in Doctor Who, is compelling whole being deliberately restrained, playing an intelligent but modest hero who allows others to shine. Here, Troughton utterly owns his every scene, showing that this was an acting choice.

This is, quite blatantly, the best of these three Sinbad films.

The Island of Dr Moreau (1977)

"Are we not men...?"

...We are Devo. Sorry, although I'm told the film was an influence on said Ohio geniuses.

Anyway, It's a long time since I read H.G. Wells' novella and I remember nothing of it; let's just say that I'm forty-two and the copy I read belonged to the school library. So I'm unaware, after all these years, how faithful the film- made, after all, in 1977, thirty plus years after the dodginess of eugenics was very clearly shown- is to the novel. But it seems, on the face of it, to be a fascinating little look at the ethics of science, of eugenics, of reactions to the idea of evolution, which reminds one that the original novella was published but thirteen years after The Origin of Species.

There's a small main cast. The fairly elderly Burt Lancaster has real presence as the charismatic and chippy scientist, exiled from the academy to an island where he is boss and there are no ethical naysayers- certainly not the drunken and cynical mercenary Montgomery, or the mysterious and trophy-like Maria, who seems very much the token female. Into this comes the young Michael York, more D'Artagnan than Basil, shipwrecked and stuck on this island and acting as the eyes, ears and conscience of the audience- and yet, fascinatingly, when we first see him he performs his own ethically dodgy act in pushing a dying fellow survivor from a boat into the sea. That's a fascinating writing choice.

We gradually discover what Moreau is up to, undisturbed by Harvard's prying eyes- injecting animals and turning them into semi-human beast men in a quest to find ways to cure human ailments- what no one in 1896 would have called genetic experimentation. Such ethical areas, while not quite so dramatic, are an increasing part of life today and it's fascinating to see such ideas discussed by Wells so soon after natural selection was promulgated- although here it's assumed that, rather simply being the fact of the best random mutations passing on advantages, which over geological time causes differentiation of species, there is some kind of directional purpose to evolution, with humans at the top of the scale. This is, of course, not necessarily true, and nor is there any kind of barrier between humans and other animals- when Moreau turns Braddock into an animal towards the end he's not imparting any quality that he didn't already possess.

Nevertheless, this is an excellent and thought-provoking drama of ideas- not only of the above but of laws and justice-, with excellent acting and script, including the splendid line "You've been drinking for two days, Montgomery. I suggest you continue". A quietly superb film if you like yur science fiction to be about ideas as well as explosions.

Jabberwocky (1977)

“Rat on a stick!"

 This is a very funny film, make no mistake about that. But it's also an interestingly placed one- Terry Gilliam's first non-Python film, or not, depending on your point of view, and moreover its use of so many well-known character actors in a comedy echoes Ripping Yarns. It can't really be seen in isolation, especially not if one happens to be a massive Monty Python geek.

All of which is to say that it's all very Python in its humour, and in a good way; this is no Yellowbeard. And it's wonderful to see the likes of John Le Mesurier and Harry H. Corbett getting to work with this kind of material. It’s also a treasure trove for the actor spotter, with a young Annette Badland as Griselda and a huge number of cameos.

But Michael Palin, as always, puts in a superb comic performance as our innocent and gloriously boring hero, a cooper’s apprentice turned hero who should have been a management consultant. Max Wall and John Le Mesurier are also superb, but it all hangs upon the brilliant Palin, whose working relationship with his fellow Python Terry Gilliam would of course go on to further great things. And it’s fascinating to see this as Gilliam’s first solo directorial credit for a full length film.

Python-connected films are always worth watching. But few are as brilliant as this one.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

"Just keeping the British end up, Sir..."

Ah, 1977. The year of my birth. No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones. The two sevens clash. And any number of punk allusions you'd care to make. It's also the absolute nadir of men's fashions: every single bloke in this film looks absolutely awful. It's difficult to understand why men bothered to wear suits at all in 1977 because they all, without exception, look shit. You can see how punk was so very necessary, for fashion as much as music.

Still, The Spy Who Loved Me is another triumph. I'm a little puzzled as to why The Man with the Golden Gun was so no pulse with both critics and public- I rather liked it- but I'll not argue with the consensus here. The taut plot, the awesome action sequences, the wittiest script yet, all of this makes for one of the finest Bond films yet, even if Roger Moore is perhaps, in only his third film, beginning to look just a little too old for the part.

Neither Moore nor Barbara Bach )Mrs. Ringi Starr!) will ever win any Oscars, but they somehow work perfectly together. Curd Jurgens, taking a break from playing 75% of all Nazi officers in the history of cinema, is the finest Bond villain yet. He has it all; the underwater lair, the hare-brained scheme to bike the world so humanity can start a new life under the sea(!); and the sharks beneath a trapdoor to eat treacherous underlings. 

Meanwhile Caroline Munro is there to look sexy, and Richard Kiel is a splendid if mute presence as Jaws, suspiciously soon after a film after the same name, also featuring a shark. Hmm. There's also a staggering number of British characters on display- George Baker, Edward de Souza, Vernon Dobtcheff, Nadim Sawalha and Cyril Chaps. The American submarine commander is played, inevitably, by Shane Rimmer. It could never have been otherwise.

The film is full of brilliant, stylish action sequences from the opening ski chase (love the parachute) to Bond's best car yet. By this point we know all the tropes and the film can have real fun with them.

The double entendres ("Well, tell him to pull out immediately") are superb. There's even a moment of wit for the incidental music: the familiar refrain from Lawrence of Arabia is heard as Bond and Anya traverse the desert.

The locations- Cairo, the pyramids and Karnak- are the best possible. Carly Simon's theme tune is the best yet and surely unsurpassable. Can this be the best Bond yet?

Star Wars (1977)

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

I’ve seen this film so, so many times, but not since 1997, when I saw the restored version at the cinema. And that event is a bit of a watershed, isn’t it? Before then, George Lucas was widely regarded as a genius whereas nowadays he… isn’t. A case in point: I saw this on Disc Two of the DVD, as an extra. It hadn’t been cleaned up and the sound was awful. There’s no denying it, though- it really is as good as we all remember.

The thing about Star Wars (or, to give its full and official title, Star Wars) is that, for all that it famously revolutionised what would be expected of sci-fi special effects, it doesn’t actually look very flashy, Kurosawa-style directorial touches aside. It looks thoroughly convincing, yes, but the parade of monsters in Mos Eisley, for example, isn’t anything like as much of a spectacle as the scenes in Jabba’s palace from Return of the Jedi. None of this does any harm, though; the effects are all the stronger for trying to convince rather than to amaze.

It’s also notable that, much as Alien gets the credit for creating the trope of the dirty, lived-in, space opera environment, there’s an element of that here, too. But none of that takes away from the real, deliberate, fairytale quality, or to the clearly intended nods to the movie serials of many decades earlier. The opening text is an example of both, I think.

For the first time, we open on a bit of spaceship porn, as per all of these movies. The opening blurb handily allows us to start halfway through the story, as Princess Leia’s shop is attacked by Imperial troops desperate to retrieve the McGuffin she has in her possession. Interestingly, though, we see most of this through the, er, eyes of two “’droids”, C-3PO and R2-D2. Being low status characters, these two can instantly play a role in the narrative familiar from, again, Kurosawa, but also stretching way back through the history of the “comedy peasant” trope. It helps that they’re both so endearing, and Artoo is so cute. Their rapport is wonderful, which is critical, as they are more-or-less the heart of the first half-hour of the film.

So, our two droids are dispatched to Tattooine on a secret mission, pursued by the troops of the fantastic Darth Vader. Darth must be the most brilliant looking baddie ever, and James Earl Jones has the perfect voice for him. Here they’re both captured by Jawas, and this leads to something about the Star Wars films that has always troubled me. Because Threepio and Artoo are portrayed as sentient beings with personalities and feelings, yet they are the “property” of others, slaves in fact. Indeed, we see Luke Skywalker, the hero of the trilogy, buying them both from these slave traders along with his Uncle Owen. If the hero is allowed to do this, does this mean the film is ok with slavery?  There’s certainly no indication of any characters having any ethical qualms.

Luke is established as young, in his teens, suffering a rather humdrum home life on a farm, and being denied his rather more glamorous destiny by his boring old uncle. It’s not hard to see why a large portion of the audience would identify with this. Sure enough, Luke is soon introduced to a bigger and more exciting world by hermit Obi-Wan Kenobi, one for which he was destined. Much of the film’s audience must have been hoping for a similar fate. It’s no accident that fairytales are full of narratives like this.

Obi-Wan tells us that he’s a Jedi Knight, he fought in the “Clone Wars”, and that he’s a friend of Luke’s late father, also a Jedi Knight. The Jedi Knights were, apparently, great heroes in the “Old Republic”, before the coming of the empire, after which they were hunted down by Darth Vader, a Jedi turned bad. We’re told explicitly that Vader killed Luke’s father. This is fairytale stuff and, interestingly, in its political elements is clearly inspired by the Roman Republic and its slide into empire.

The Jedi are basically good wizards, like Gandalf and his mates, and the Force is simply magic. For all its sci-fi trappings, this is unmistakably a work of fairytale fantasy.

Luke’s uncle and aunt are conveniently killed by Imperial Stormtroopers, which handily allows him to accompany Obi-Wan on his mission to Alderaan. But first they need a pilot, and this brings them to Mos Eisley. Here we meet smuggler Han Solo (who definitely shoots Greedo first), who agrees to take four passengers to Alderaan for oodles of cash, mainly because he owes several more oodles of cash to someone called Jabba the Hutt.

I have to pause here to praise Alec Guinness. George Lucas doesn’t, as Harrison Ford has famously said, write the best dialogue, and Obi-Wan gets some of the worst lines, many of which look cringe-inducingly bad on paper: see the quote up there at the top. And yet Guinness makes even these lines seem acceptable. That’s bloody good acting.

Incidentally, I adore the interaction between Han and Obi-wan when Luke is being trained in the ways of the Force, blinded. Obi-Wan is a character who belongs in a fantasy film, as shown most blatantly in his comments about a lightsabre being better than a blaster. Han, on the other hand, is a character who belongs in a sci-fi film, and so of course he is sceptical about magic and can see that a sword, even a fancy one made of light, is obviously no good against a blaster! This is fantastic metatextual fin, winking at the audience and alerting us to the clash of genres through their respective spokesmen.

Interesting, is it not, that the Millennium Falcon has a navigation computer which takes ages to make the calculations needed before they can “jump to lightspeed”? This may be a world of magic powers and casual interstellar travel, but their state-of-the-art computers are well behind my iPhone.

I seem to be reviewing a lot of films with Peter Cushing in, and here he is again as the Grand Moff Tarkin, and deliciously evil he is too. It’s he who informs us that the Imperial Senate has been dissolved by the emperor, and that the Empire is now to become a fully-fledged totalitarian state. It’s also he who sentences Leia to death, and who cruelly vaporises her home planet of Alderaan even after she’s told him the location of the rebel base. The dastardly swine. Good job she lied.

Our heroes are drawn to the Death Star by its tractor beam, like flies to a web, and we now get to the most fun bit of the film, as our heroes set out to disable the tractor beam and rescue Leia. Carrie Fisher is great as the princess, subverting all the stereotype of the passive damsel in distress by kicking whatever ass she ever happens to come across. These sequences are also crucial in that we get to know and like Han Solo, who is established as cynical, but also funny, brave and with a heart of gold underneath. This is still very movie serial, of course; the bit in the garbage compactor is the most movie serial thing ever. That is, until we get to Luke, Leia and the missing bridge…

Our heroes escape, but not without an exciting dogfight, and not before Obi-Wan, mysteriously and calmly, simply stops fighting and allows himself to be slain by Vader. But their ship has a tracer hidden aboard, and the crew of the Death Star now know the location of the rebel base. Fortunately, though, the plans to the Death Star just happen to rather conveniently reveal a massive and rather implausible weakness. Can the rebels destroy the Death Star before it destroys them?

Luke volunteers to take part in the assault, and seems to be given a rather senior role for someone who’s only been in the Rebel Alliance for five minutes. We know the goodies are going to win, of course; Tarkin tempts fate by refusing an evacuation, and Vader, who we know isn’t going to die, leaves the Death Star to fight Luke in a ship of his own. But the rebels have an uphill struggle, and can’t count on any help from Han, who has buggered off with his money.

Of course, it’s all right in the end, as Han makes a heroic return and Luke uses the force to destroy the Death Star. Our fairytale has a fairytale ending, but the story has only just begun…