Ghostwatch

 "You don't know, do you?"

"..........No. I don't."

I haven't seen this since... well, 31st October, 1992, so reluctant was the BBC to admit to it until recent years. A drama that (despite the opening and closing making it clear that it is indeed such) apes Orson Welles' famed 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds and convinces much of the nation that this is in fact a real live broadcast, with actual, well-known presenters, was... well, bound to be controversial, and the BBC got cold feet very soon after broadcast.

All of which, of course, is an ironic consequence of just how bloody good it is. Yes, some criticise the early parts for being slow and meandering, but that's the point: if it's to convince as a real drama, it has to do precisely that, warts and all. And it does so well. Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene, in particular, are utterly convincing as themselves, which is not as easy a feat as it seems, both being absolutely convincing at moments that have to feel spontaneous. And Craig Charles, too, is not only convincing but rather a good sport in allowing himself to come across as a bit of an arse during scenes when he "thinks" he's off camera.

Yet the family themselves, none of them known faces for obvious reasons and including two child actors, are utterly convincing with, necessarily, very naturalistic acting. The whole thing progresses perfectly and the ending is utterly chilling. I'm surprised how dark the themes are, with hints of past child abuse and child murder, and the terrifying use of nursery rhymes.

Watching it in 2025, though, one is ruefully reminded that this is a bygone age of tape recorders, where deepfakes and AI were undreamt of, as I wish they had remained. And the one obvious hint that this isn't actually real is the merely token inclusion of a sceptic, made to be unlikeable, the BBC certainly not being likely to have dared to seem so biased in reality... at least back then. 

Still, this is not only one of the earliest examples of this kind of more metatextual take on horror, leading to genres such as "found footage" becoming more prevalent and therefore important to film history, but also one of the very best,

Trancers III (1992)

 "Only squids can be tranced!"

Oh yes. Not long after seeing the first two, I'm back, blogging the gloriously awful, straight-to-video, next instalment in the increasingly questionable adventures of Jack Deth.

Mind you, the first two films, while they were silly and they damn well knew it, wewre by no means bad films, quite the contraries. They were just B movies, and of the very best kind. 

But this one... well, Tim Thomerson is good, but it's just basically a slow paced yawn fest. On paper it seems ok- it's 1992, Jack is divorcing Lena so the studio can limit the appearances of the increasingly expensive Helen Hunt, and Jack finds himself in a future with humanity almost overwhelmed by trancers. His only hope is to hop back in time to 2005(!) and the trancers' origins as a creepy military drug injection programme.

Oh, and there's a very rubbish robot that looks sort of like a fish and really does look and sound terrible... but, this being low budget, it's not on screen much. Both cast and setting are visibly very cheap indeed. And, well, naff all happens.

There are bright spots. Andrew Robinson, as the villainous Colonel Mutha, chews the scenery with aplomb. Thomerson is always watchable. But, well... I may have watched one Trancers sequel too far.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

 I know: it's been a while since I blogged my last novel. And there's a reason for that, albeit slightly embarrassing... I neft the part finished novel in a guest house two hundred miles away, but the landlady kept it for me and even saved my page. Phew.

Anyway, I love a good novel of ideas, and this one throews ideas at you like few other novels. It's my first experience of Neil Stephenson, who I found to be devilishly clever in how he constructs his mindblowing conceits which include, among your usual post-William Gibson riffing on a Cyberpunk future, the concept of language itsewlf as a vrus, the same thing as both biological and computer viruses, with ideas themselves working as a kind of computer program.

You have to pay attention: the concepts are deliciously complex and ingenious, and we aren't spoon fed. The narrative is economical to the point that the novel seems to end rather abruptly, with part of me wishing for an epilogue but the greater of me appreciating the curt narrative structure.

While there's a certain line of absurdity that isn't crossed, the novel is dryly humorous and has a delightfully heretical view of religion as existing in relatiion to its viruses. It's a novel of ideas, not characters, but the book is chock full of entertaining grotesques and our heroes, YT and Hiro Protagonist(!) are nicely drawn.

It's worth awarning: there one icky scene where YT, aged fifteen, has sex with an older man. But, this aside, I enjoyed this very weird and very clever novel very much.

Army of Darkness (1992)

 "I may be bad, but I feel... good!"

It's October, so time for another suitably Halloween-ish film... although I seem to be in a rather silly mood. 

I'm aware that I'm part way through an enormous number of cinematic horror franchises, but in my defence there are rather a lot of them. Still, it feels good to finally complete Sam Raimi's superb Evil Dead trilogy. 

The film is, of course, hilarious. We know what we're getting- slapstick humour and the parody that the horror genre, with its innate artificiality, so naturally attracts. Once again, Bruce Campbell's performance utterly nails the comedy. Quite rightly historical accuracy is cheerfully ignored in favour of a vague Hollywood version of the Middle Ages. And everything just looks great.

There are so many highlights, not the least of which is the magnificent rudeness of Ash himself. But there are so many set pieces. The evil little mini-mes. The magic words being a nod to The Day the Earth Stood Still. Bad Ash. The three Necronomicons. The gloriously evil ending, riffing on Planet of the Apes... why didn't Ash just stay in 1300? He could have been a somebody!

But yes, the final battle, with all those Harryhausen style stop motion skeletons... that was exquisite. And so was the film, and indeed the whole trilogy.

R.E.M.- Automatic for the People

I first discovered R.E.M. via this album, and I know that immediately marks me out, potentially, as a fashion conscious wanker. Let me, then, assure you that i was genuinely seventeen, exploring music, and pointed towards this by no less than Kurt Cobain.

With any band that makes it big, there's a critical consensus on the best album. For R.E.M., it's this. It's uncool to say this is their best album, but... it is. I challenge you to name any filler within this album, single or no.

No? Well then. This is an album where the deep cuts are Ignoreland and Try Not to Breathe, not singles only by mere chance. Like every damned song on the album.

The album, while awrsome throughout, steps up a gear, incredibly, with the ending duopoly of Nightswimming and Find the River. Two sublime examples of songwriting.

This album, more so even than its excellent predecessor, exalted R.E.M. from the unfderground to the mainstream. I'm not so sure that was a good thing. Yet the band deserves success. Such was the tension of ethics back then. Yet R.E.M. will never belong to them. Always to us. They are real.

Braindead (1992)

 "I kick arse for the Lord!"

I utterly adore this film with all my heart. It is, of course, absolutely nothing like a cerain trilogy Peter Jackson would later helm. Said film may evoke the New Zealand landscape spectactularly but, well... the cast is as follows: the Hobbits consist of two Americans, an Irishman and a Scotsman. Aragorn is Norwegian. I could go on. 

But this film is very New Zealand.

This film is gory in exactly the way non-gore fans like myself prefer: comedically. And it fulfils the comedy enormously Yes, we end with a splendid, extended, zombie set piece, as we may well espect and want. But this film is New Zealand genius.

The zombies, including the zombie baby (it's a nuce sequence), look superb. No CGI here: it's 1992.  Have sime stop motion instead.plus the verbal wit is superb. Really superb.

The acting is sublime. Let us mention in dispatches Timothy Balme, whom I know not from anything else. The kung fu priest is hilarious, but there are so mmy genius linres. The '50s setting wasn't necessarily essential, but it adds depth: it works. The script ks comedy genius. The gore is... and I choose the adjective with care... hilarious. This superb New Zealand fim has a serious claim to being the greatest zombie film ever made.7

The Master Blackmailer (1992 TV Film)

 "Give us a kiss."

"I don't know how..."

It is hardly novel to make the assertion that is an overly padded out version of Charles Augustus Milverton, a rather anonymous Doyle short story. Nor is is original to point out that it is directed in a pointlessly and pretentiously artistic manner, something wich has occasionally threaened to happen before but it is here that the line is crossed. Indeed, the film seems to break the fourth wall to concede both of these points in a scene where Holmes and Watson visit some snakes at a zoo or some such place for the sole seeming purpose of comparing them to Milverton as an overly laboured and clumsy metaphor. Even Watson asks Holmes whether they really have nothing better to do.

And yet, if only one film-length episode is to be made in 1992, this story is as good a choice as any. There are two full novels by Conan Doyle yet to be adapted, yes, but both A Study in Scarlet (assuming we ignore the fact it is the story where Holmes and Watson meet, something made impossible by the ages of the actors) and The Valley of Fear feature extended flashbacks in the United States, which would be problematic for many reasons.

Indeed, if we acccept that The Master Blackmailer has its obvious flaws, there are good things to be found here. This is a broadly faithful, albeit embellished, adaptation, and the excellence we typically expect from both Brett and Hardwicke is joined by a deliciously slimy performance from the great Robert Hardy as Milverton. The film also delves more deeply into Holmes' morally dodgy behaviour in becoming engaged to Milverton's maid, who genuinely likes him, while posing as a plumber. This is bastardly behaviour, and the film makes this clear in a way the short story does not.

On the other hand, the fact that Milverton's chief victims are two aristocratic engaged coulples is shown near the beginning by an absurd scene of them all cavorting in the garden of a stately home which reminded me of the late Monty Python "anyone for tennis" sketch.

In short, this is a flawed piece of work, and the criticisms often made of it are fair. And yet there are good things ro find in here too, and it could likely have been edited into a decent sixty minute drama. I wonder if the two films to follow will fare as well. I shall do them as quickly as I can but ther length will restrict when I can blog them.

Oh, and it seems this episode, and not the last one, is Lestrade's last. Oops.

Pet Semetary II (1992)

"You bury your own."

This film is supposed to be awful. It is, or so I e found, perfectly adequate as a serviceable sequel to a quite good film which deals well with the fact that no actors recur from the first film by simply depicting further shenanigans with that Native American cemetery. It’s a perfectly ok film, and an interesting early starring role for an immediately post-Terminator 2: Judgement Day Edward Furlong.

If that sounds like faint praise then it sort of is, but the film is genuinely adequate rather than bad. I liked the bait and switch film-within-a-film opening, and the plot works well at least until the point where people start being resurrected, where things go a bit mad and we end up with a full three resurrected people. Still, it’s an entertaining watch, with Gus the sheriff being an entertaining cartoon baddie in a solid performance by character actor Clancy Brown, a familiar face from so many character roles.

It’s solid, but not really scary. There’s a nice little electrocution scene at the start (“Oh yummy, beef jerky” said Mrs Llamastrangler. She’s a somewhat twisted individual, but that’s why I married her.) but not much else in the way of set pieces, and perhaps a lot of that is down to the solid, competent but unexceptional directorial style. It’s a film that neither sparkles nor stinks, the epitome of averageness.

Batman Returns (1992)

"I'm tired of wearing masks."

I haven't seen this since 1992, at the old Cannon cinema in Hinckley. I don't much remember what I thought of it then, but I like it a lot now. It doesn't quite beat its predecessor for me (sorry, Nick!)- it doesn't quite have the depth, visual elegance or Batman screentime- but Tim Burton leaves the franchise with two superb films under his utility belt.

Batman’s lack of screen time here is a surprise- Batman and Bruce Wayne are little more than a plot function here, with Michael Keaton not given much interesting stuff to do, especially as compared with the first film. But then we must remember that this isn’t primarily a franchise film but a Tim Burton film; the film is about the Penguin and Catwoman.

Interestingly, though, neither of the two traditional villains are wholly evil; that accolade goes to the splendidly named Max Shrek, a corrupt and morally depraved businessman whose Nosferatu-inspired name fits well with the film’s aesthetic for Gotham. He’s the catalyst for Catwoman. Selina Kyle, a downtrodden and humiliated secretary, single, alone and browbeaten by all and sundry, finds out stuff she shouldn’t and is thrown out of a high window, losing the first of her nine lives, and something snaps. At first it looks as though there’s a bit of a feminist message here, especially as Catwoman’s first outing is to rescue a woman from a man in a dark alley, but this doesn’t go anywhere. Still, Michelle Pfeiffer is pretty good and the kinky latex costume and whip looks cool- although it sort of takes over from the whole cat thing. Still, an impressive treatment of the character.

The treatment of Danny DeVito’s Penguin is much more radical; this Oswald Cobblepot grew up in the sewers, abandoned, and the only cigarette holder to be seen is that of his father, glimpsed early on. The umbrellas and monocle are present and correct, but this is a much more feral Penguin, no angel but genuinely vulnerable, and bordering even on likeable if he were not so lecherous.

These characters are fascinating, and what the film  is about, much more so than Batman or even Gotham. This is notably much more of a Tim Burton film and less of a Batman film than its predecessor, and the respective values you place on those two categories will probably decide which of the two you prefer. Personally, I may like this one less but it is nonetheless superb.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

“Somebody's shoved a red hot poker up our ass, and I want to know whose name is on the handle."

 This is where it all began for Quentin Tarantino, and the first of his films I watched, rented from a video store in Barwell, Leicestershire in about '94ish. I enjoyed it just as much now, but the passing of a couple of decades has added quite a bit of context.

What makes this film stand out from all of Tarantino's other films is the fact that he made it before he had a reputation; it's much cheaper, with an obviously limited number of sets and locations, shorter (definitely a big difference!) and Tarantino himself, while his direction is superb, is not able to show his flashier directorial side with such a low budget film. He excels, much more obviously, with the phenomenal script, filled with all the joyously cool pop culture-related dialogue of his early period, yes, but also masterfully plotted and structured. Famously a heist movie that doesn't show the actual heist, it actually feels an awful lot like a stage play, not something you could often say for a Tarantino film. But there are masterful directorial touches in that we are shown the plot with the minimum of exposition.

The plot is simple, elegant and, while non-linear, has a clarity that belies its complexity- a sign of very good writing. We're left guessing as to the identity of the traitor right up to the unexpected reveal, the violence is cool and stylish, and the cast is perfect. Not even that annoying song from Stealer's Wheel (featuring the late Gerry Rafferty, who would later inflict on us the AOR awfulness of "Baker Street") can spoil it. The first of many Tarantino classics.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

"See the amazing cinematograph- the wonder of modern civilisation."

Francis Ford Coppola gives us a lush, gorgeous Dracula. While the film doesn't entirely work- it's bloated and over-detailed- I'd actually blame the source material rather than this excellently made film which, in spite of what is often said and in spite of some obvious and welcome homages to James Whale's 1931 film, is if anything a little too faithful to the novel.

The casting is full of big names, although an oddity is that very few of the big names are using their own native accents in one way or another. Gary Oldman is a splendid Dracula, while Winona Ryder- who, it being the early '90s, had to appear in this film- is well cast as the sexually repressed and innocent Mina, whose repressed desires are soon teased out. Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker is, as ever, Ted, while Anthony Hopkins is a convincing and amusing Van Helsing.

The film makes explicit what is implicit in the novel: it's all a metaphor for sex and sexuality, as numerous scenes make clear with vampirism always portrayed in an obviously sexualised manner. Another nice touch is that all narration us epistolary in nature, paralleling the firm and structure of Stoker's novel. But Coppola also adds a prologue in which Vlad the Impaler turns against God and (in a process not entirely clear) towards vampirism after the Juliet-like suicide of his wife, who thought him dead. In lesser hands this would have been corny and embarrassing, but Coppola makes it work.

The direction is beautiful: I love the change in texture and camerawork during the cinematograph scenes. The only real criticism I can find is Richard E. grant phoning in his performance; the film is beautifully made and bloated only because Coppola is clearly such a huge Dracula fanboy, something I'm well prepared to indulge.

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

"Virtual reality will grow and grow."

Er... no it won't.

it's an odd beast in hindsight, this film. On the on e hand there's more than a smidgen of Flowers for Algernon in it, putting it in the tradition of Twentieth Century science fiction. On the other hand, well, virtual reality is the most 1992 thing ever. Has anything ever dated as much as virtual reality? I'm reminded of Tomorrow's World and a certain episode of Red Dwarf.

Still, it's quite a good film. Adaptations of Stephen King stories usually are.It isn't just the virtual reality that dates the film, though; it'd (just) recent enough to have CGI, but the hero smokes and the phones look charmingly antique from a 2014 perspective. Still, Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan are quite good, and it's nice to see a Hollywood film with a left-of-centre message, in this case opposition to corporate manipulation of science.

The film is seen from the perspective of Dr. Lawrence Angelo, our viewpoint character and also, interestingly, the moral centre of the film, thus putting the audience in that position too. Jobe is a mentally subnormal and much-bullied man, much like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, whose intelligence is artificially boosted. But so is his hubris. It's a solid script, thematically, and it helps that we first see Jobe as such a sympathetic figure and never quite forget those first impressions with his descent into megalomania.

We also have an abusive father and a manipulative and sadistic priest carrying more than a wisp of Opus Dei about him, both of whom get their respective comeuppances: this is not a film likely to gain Papal approval. And it's interesting seeing the portrayal of Jobe's sexuality; like Lenny in the aforementioned novella, he combines a child's mind with an adult's sexual desires, something which seems fated to end badly. His augmented intelligence averts this fate, however, giving him a sexual awakening which really has to be symbolic both of his ceasing, in a sense, to be a child and of the new world that's been opened to him.

Sadly, corporate greed corrupts him, and leads him to insist that the treatments continue far beyond a level that is wise. Eventually he goes all mad and telekinetic and that, and the film builds to an exciting conclusion, the special effects for which would have looked pretty good at the time, I'm sure. It's a good film, small scale and, by the looks of things, not big budget, but with big, big ideas that really work.

Alien³ (1992)

“You’re gonna die too…”

Well, I suppose they can’t all be good. The first two films in this franchise are both superb, but this one… isn’t. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. For one thing, the other two films were both shot by A-list directors, but I’d never heard of David Fincher until I Googled him just now. I certainly should have done, I grant you, but he's no Ridley Scott or James Cameron.

Having said that, though, the film is serviceable. It isn’t awful. It’s just that it’s totally lacking in suspense and moments which make you jump, and has absolutely no sense of the unity of style and content which made the first two films so slickly gorgeous in their very different ways.

There isn’t the same sense of threat, either. After a film with hordes of the buggers we’re now back to just one Alien, which just doesn’t seem as nasty as the one in the first film. Without the constant emphasis on its toughness and its acid blood it’s suddenly a lot closer to being just another monster, albeit a rather cool looking one. And killing Newt and Hicks before the start of the film, while showing us how nasty the alien is, gives us a rather alienating sense of discontinuity. And why do we have to be told that it’s “Ellen” Ripley? First names have no place in this franchise! It might be nitpicky, but I don’t like the fact that Bishop is referred to as a “droid”, either.

It’s a bit jolting, and inconsistent with what’s gone before, that such a large proportion of the supporting cast should be British (complete with phrases like “rubbish tip” and even the pronunciation of “lieutenant”, which really surprised me!). It’s always a joy to see the great Brian Glover, possibly the world’s greatest Yorkshireman, but even Charles Dance can’t hide the fact that Clemens is such a deeply dull character who really drags the film down by taking up so much screen time. Even the revelation of his supposedly great secret is such a massive anti-climax that you’re quite relieved to see him being immediately impaled and killed by the alien.

Charles S. Dutton is magnificent, mind- such charisma. It’s just that he looks out-of-place among such a bunch of wide boys. And the whole concept- a bunch of scum-of-the-Earth criminals who have found fundamentalist religion- is a bit random, to say the least. Nothing much is done with this concept, so why have it at all?

Even the foreshadowing of Ripley’s death is not handled well. There’s a certain neatness in Bishop asking to be killed early on, just as Ripley will later, and the scene of the Alien next to Ripley is nicely iconic. But the inevitability of Ripley’s dying soon, one way or another, actually takes away tension rather than adding to it, and there’s precious little of it to start with.

Lack of tension aside, the general look of the film is certainly competent. But there’s no flair or sense of ownership of the film’s aesthetic. Everything just looks like generic, contemporary science fiction. The aesthetics of the first two films were so much more than that.

Just one Alien film to go, then. I hope it’s better than this one.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

“I’m the Chosen One. And I choose to go shopping.”

OK, I know. This is four horror films in a row, sort of. It’ll be something very different next time, I promise.

I’m saying nothing about how soon I’ll be reviewing Buffy and Angel on TV for this blog(!), but suffice to say that I’ve seen every episode before, although a few years have passed. And that makes this film a very odd experience indeed. And I’m not just talking about the presence of an absurdly young Hilary Swank and David Arquette.

For a start, there’s the absence of that theme tune. This is film, not TV, so exposition needs to be over with quickly; hence the flashback at the start. We quickly move to the present day, though (well, the early ‘90s) and to Southern California, although not Sunnydale.

I’m sure that for most Americans reading this blog, the institution on the American High School was a formative experience in your life. But to me, a foreigner, it’s something defined entirely by popular culture, and a huge chunk of it Buffy-related. All the tropes of the American high school- cheerleaders, strange sports of which I know nothing, those strange jackets, jocks, nerds, stoners, senior proms, homecoming queens (whatever they are) are just that: tropes from film and TV.

And we start right in the middle of this sort of thing, with a bunch of cheerleaders and some teenage boys playing basketball. Even in the early lines in these scenes it’s apparent that we’re going to get a very witty script indeed, which should come as no surprise as the writer is Joss Whedon. In fact, I’d argue that the script is pretty much entirely brilliant, and the film’s many shortcomings are due to other factors, but more of that later.

Anyway, Buffy and her friends are, like, totally a bunch of Valley Girls, with dialogue which sounds like it could have come straight from that Frank Zappa song (which is, as if it needed saying, my soundtrack to writing this!). I could listen to them talking all day.

It all looks a bit cheap, though, and there’s little focus to the succession of scenes we get; vampires, Rutger Hauer as “The Master” (that gets re-used!), Pike and Ben. In fact, we’re introduced to so many different similarly-aged characters that it takes some time to get used to who’s who.

Eventually Buffy meets her Watcher, Merrick, played by Donald Sutherland, whose accent seems all over the place. Is he trying to sound British or something? Is he even attempting the same accent in every scene? It doesn’t feel like it. He’s certainly phoning in his performance, which is a shame; like everyone else in this film, he gets great dialogue. Kristy Swanson, on the other hand, is actually quite good, but her performance it pitched too far towards pure broad comedy. But that’s the main problem with this film; Joss Whedon’s scripts are invariably funny, but they’re more effective if played mostly straight.

Merrick exposits at Buffy until she’s convinced, and tells her of Lothos, the “Master” we met earlier. He shows her some real vampires and she stakes them. This being a low budget film, though, they don’t disintegrate. They just fall down rather unconvincingly.

Ben is vamped, and calls on his friend Pike. Fortunately for Pike, he doesn’t invite his former friend in, because he’s acting weird. By floating in mid-air, for one thing, although this apparent ability of vampires is never referred to again.

We get the usual sort of plot for this sort of movie, really; protagonist gets called from humdrum life to do Great Things; protagonist refuses but is persuaded to continue; protagonist meets Big Bad and gets arse whupped; mentor figure gets killed; protagonist gets big final showpiece battle. But here, the fact that we pretty much expect all this to happen means the emphasis can go on witty dialogue such as “All I want to do is graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater and die.” It’s a shame the characters feel so wooden, and I don’t think that reflects any fault in the script.

Merrick persuades Buffy to continue by showing her that she has superhuman strength and reflexes, something which she’s unaccountably failed to notice until now. We then get an unintentionally hilarious montage scene, complete with rubbish music, which goes on for aaaaages.

At last she gets a proper vampire fight, or at least the nearest we’re ever going to get in this terribly directed movie in which all the fight scenes are slow, ponderous, entirely lacking in oomph and full of characters standing around talking mid-fight. Here she discovers that “My secret weapon is PMS!”, and Merrick discovers that Buffy can’t even make a decent cup of tea.

Buffy then rescues Pike, who by this point is obviously going to be the love interest. After pausing to see Rutger Hauer about to eat a little kitten (awww!), we then get shown how alienated Buffy is becoming from her rather shallow friends. Still, that night, she chooses cheerleading over slaying. I think my favourite character in the film is the team coach (“Assert your personhood! Actualise! Actualise!”), the most stereotypical Southern Californian ever.

Soon a vamp comes on to the pitch, or court, or whatever it is that basketball gets played on, and Buffy gives chase, with motorbikes and everything. Here she meets loads of vampires and the Master himself, but for some bizarre reason they don’t actually want to kill her as she’s “not ready”. How very sporting of them.

Merrick, who has suddenly turned up, gets suddenly killed and, in a rather bathetic scene, dies in Buffy’s arms, telling her with his last words to keep doing it “wrong”. It’s such a shame this doesn’t really work. Yes, it’s badly directed, like the whole damn film, but there never was any chemistry between the two of them.

After this, Buffy has a crisis of confidence, and gets a bit of a pep talk from Pike. It’s a nice reversal of the usual gender roles from Whedon’s avowedly feminist script but, again. It would be nice if there was some semblance of chemistry between the two of them.

It’s obvious that the school dance is going to be the scene of the final confrontation, and it’s a scene that could have only taken place in 1992 and no other year. Even the DJ looks like he should be a member of Faith No More. Buffy’s not happy; her boyfriend has humiliated her by publicly dumping her in from of her smug and mocking friends, but Pike has gatecrashed the party. She’s glad to see him, they dance together, and they kiss. Inevitably, this is when the vampires attack- and I notice this is the exact point where the music suddenly changes to the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Halford. If this is the effect that vampires have on music being played on dancefloors, then frankly I think there should be more of them.

Fortunately, Pike has remembered to take all Buffy’s stuff, and we get a series of long, talky and uninvolving fight scenes. The Master suddenly turns up playing a violin, which makes me momentarily feel that we’re about to segue into the music video for Come on Eileen. This is a very silly scene for something that’s meant to be a climax; the annoying vamp’s slow and “ironically” badly-acted death is just embarrassing, and for someone who’s supposed to be the Big Bad the Master poses absolutely no sense of threat whatsoever. He even dies with an “oops”.

This film is entertaining enough, but this is entirely due to the excellent script. Not only is this badly shot, you get the sense, from the fact that many of the actors here are perfectly good elsewhere, that the big problem with this movie is a director who simply can’t give direction to actors. A sadly wasted opportunity. Fortunately, though, there was to be another chance…