The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Cardboard Box

 "Pushing women's work at me? You keep that to yourself!"

So this is it. The final episode, complete with a final philisophical and setimental coda about all the violence in the world as a parting gesture from Jeremy Brett's undoubtedly definitive Sherlock Holmes, much as health problems clearly led to much less physicality in his later years.

And the final episode is a good one, if not exactly standing comparison with the excellence that was routinely reached in earlier, better seasons. An adaptation of a fairly obscure Conan Doyle short story, it still suffers from the overly foregrounded attempts at narrative cleverness that have been too prominent of late: non-linear storytelling certainly has its place, but not here.

Nevertheless, this is a decent send off with a decent cast and a solid story, anchored by the conceit of two severed ears given as a birthday present. It is ulimately a tale of passion, social class, adultery and murder which is told well, much as the trope of the temptress who corrupts a simple man into ruin is worryingly present. This is also, however, a warning against the killjoy busybodies of the temperance movement, who could certainly all do with a drink.

So this is the end. No more Granada Sherlock Holmes. It's now clear that, despite high spots, the once superlative quality has not been so apparent as late, but the series- and the late, lamented Jeremy Brett- will be much missed.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 11- The Heiress

 "No, I have enough pets..."

Right, the Granada Sherlock Holmes has nearly finished, with one episode left (tomorrow), so it's time to alternate Sapphire & Steel with some other unfinished business and finish the promising second season of The Mandalorian. It's an impressive episode to return to, ad a reminder of how Jon Favreau has created an impressive piece of television, and quite conceivably a better space opera Western than Firefly.

Compared to last episode, which was essentially about getting from A to B with some excitement on the way, this episode is quite evantful. Yet the bare bones of the plot- Mando arrives on Trask (home of the Quarrens and Mon Calamari- it's great to finally see the planet, with its AT-AT cranes, dodgy mechanics, piracy and living squid soups) in search of other Mandalorians in order to get directions to a Jedi so he can take babby Yoda where it belongs- barely scratches the surface of what is going on here.

Those three other Mandalorians, led by the enigmatic and dangerous Bo-Katan are not as expected. It;s shocking to see them remove their helmets- but we now learn that most do; it's only the extreme "Chid of the Watch" faction, to which Mando belongs, that hold on to "the Way". This is quite a revelation and a superby done twist. Moreover, while Bo-Katan happens to be broadly aligned with the goodies, she is ambitious and power-hungry, and prepared to twist her promises. I wouldn't be surprised if she were to turn up one day as an antagonist. However, Mando now has a place to head for in order to meet a Jedi.

There's also plenty of action, plenty of humour and plenty of action, plus of course plenty of the usual Imperial dastardliness. I've really missed The Mandalorian and it's time to catch up completely.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Mazarin Stone

 "You know my methods...

What a very odd episode, which I uppose we could dub "Holmes-lite", given that Jeremy Brett hardly appears in his penultimate episode- was this perhaps forced upon the prosuction team by Brett's health?

It's also odd that this is a mash-up of two diparate Conan Doyle short stories- the less than classic The Mazarin Stone and the far more intriguing The Three Garridebs- with one allocated to Watson and the other allocated to a Mycroft Holmes who is drifting further and further from his Diogenes Club personality. It's good to see Charles Gray again, of course, but this simply doesn't work, especially as both stories are tied together at the end. This sort of thing is a far cry from the original mission statement of adapting all the stories.

There's also that syndrome again of directorial touches that are in practice meaningless and simply don't fit into an ITV detective show. This is an episode which simply fails. Without Brett, they should simply have made one less episode.

I really hope the final episode is a good one.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

 “Please don't despise me!"

This is not the film I was expecting to see.

Around the time of the film's release I recall the critics were mildly disparaging of what they saw as a film about titillation and in which Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman exhibited suspiciously little chemistry for a married couple.

...All of which is utter bollocks, and a quick glance shows me the ritcal consensus has thankdully shifted somewhat. This is perhaps the pinnacle of Stanley Kubrick's career, a film dense with subtext far beyond what is apparent to me on a first viewing, and a film which actually treats sex as a serious part of life as opposed to something to giggle at.

The first half of the film is a meditation on monogamy vs polygamy, as the naive Dr Bill is tempted by various opportunities for extra-marital action while Alice confesses to her own sexual fantasies. The pivotal scene, a stoned bedroom argument, sees them both being somewhat naive and unwittingly purotanical as they skirt around the old gendered ideas that sex is something men, being active, do to women, who are passive. This is, of course, nonsense: even if we look at heterosexual coupling only, desire is no different between the sexes, just society's expectations. 

And then Dr Bill, constantly awkward with women, moves into the world of the elite, into what looks like a cross between a ritualistic sacrifice, a BDSM club, a religious ceremony and a dodgy secret society. There is much coupling, but Dr Bill is excluded. He, a medical doctor, is successful and well-off- yet he exists on a different plane from the decadence of the elite. And the scene where he is found out by men in truly terrifying masks is truly terrifying, as is the sense of tension that follows. So is the implication that a girl whose life he saved dies so that he may live- although he is offered a comforting fiction to believe.

The cinematography and direction is sublime, with wonderful use of colours to contrast the world of the mundane with the dark ways of the elite, and much in the way of disorienting use of the camera at appropriate momnts. The score, and that repetitive piece in particular, is not only very good indeed but perfectly integrated with the visuals.

There's so much going on here- musings on monogamy; the objectification of women; the intersection of sex with money and power; so much more. This is cinema of the very first rank.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 6

 "We have no use for them..."

So that's it. Only in this final episode are the threads finally drawn together, with Rothwyn and Eldred finally interacting with Sapphire, Steel and Silver... and it's all over quickly. It's an anti-climax. And it turns out thos is all the result of cruel experiments on animals. I'm all for political subtext but this is bit crudely blatant didacticism.

There's a bit of fun with the fact time has been reversed and the unfortunateness of the last episode has been erased, and a bit of fun with how rude Steel is to the future couple versus Sapphire being at her most aloof and Silver blatantly flirting with Rothwyn. There's also horror, with that horrible brief glimpse of the doll baby, and the revelation that both other future households- children included- died by suicide in order to protect others. Brr.

Yet the conclusion is quick, anticlimctic, overly didactic and leaves us with a six parter which is oddly paced and, while it has some good ideas, just doesn't draw them together well enough to hang together by the time we reach the conclusion.

I shall plough on, but I'm not too impressed with Sapphire & Steel right now.

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

 "They were all evil, and remain evil after death."

I've seen and blogged a previous adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in the form of Crypt of the Vampire but this, Hammer's version, is fascinatingly different, and not only in the fact that it stars, sort of, Peter Cushing as opposed to Christopher Lee. 

This film, like its predecessor, is a fairly faithful adaptation. yet it is fascinatingly different, and not only because of the greater emphasis on the lesbian attraction between Carmilla and Emma which looms large over the entire film. To begin with, there is no red herring, or at least not for the audience; the characters may suspect Kate O'Mara's governess, but we know Carnilla is a vampire from an early stage as we are made aware of an earlier victim. This is far less of a straight character drama and far more of a sensationalist horror grand guignol with sex and violence as the selling points... and it works. This is a significantly better film.

It helps that the cast is so superb. Ingrid Pitt and Cushing excel as ever, but they are ably supported by a very young Kate O'Mara ad an almost unrecognisable George Cole. The direction and production similarly recreate the familiar Mittel-European setting (this time rural Austra in the 1780s) with real aplomb.And yes, of course there's a tavern full of suspicious locals.

Yes, this is the start of '70s Hammer horror, using sex and sensation to sell in a way they'd never so explicitly done before. It has to be said, though, that it bloody well works.

Westworld (1973)

" Doesn't anything work around here?"#

This surprisingly short film is rather good, unsurprisingly for a film with its reputation. It is, however, both predictable and unpredictable, in a way that works extremely well. This may not be quite up there with the greates, but it's bubbling under.

Michael Crichton writes and directs, and the strength of thefilm lies in his strong premise- realistic robots, "designed by computers", areused to create three realistic theme parks- Westworld, Medievalworld and Romanworld, the latter of which seems to be based on decadence and is therefore barely seen.

Interestingly, the plot needs no great twists as the premise is explored and the threat- the robots going wrong and killing people, is simply allowed to happen wthout too much focus either on why this is happening or the backstory behind it.

The whole thing is pretty much just played out straight. The premise is the premise, and that's that. Even though the technology level is implicitly futuristic the fashions, attitudes and even computers are completely and utterly 1973. Exposition may be obvious- we begin with a TV advert for the resort and we have a room of backroom technicians to act as chorus- but it works. Even our two protagonists are used to do plenty of obvious exposition, with John being a veteran and Peter new. Again, though, this works.

This is an example of a film which works by virtue of a superb premise, and has the confidence to simply let it be itself and play out. There's a certain amount of playing it safe here, but there's no doubt that the premise is bloody brilliant, and the film is very good indeed.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 5

 "I have impeccable origins."

This episode is no less full of padding- in essence it consists of Sapphire, with Steel, faffing around as they wonder what tricks in their armoury they can use to bring back Silver, who is their only ticket out of the capsule. This time, though, it's entertaining padding.

Partly it's that the ideas get some development- the mysterious creature behind all this seems close to omnipotent, and can prevent Sapphire reversing time a few minutes as she usually does. This sequence subtly allows our protagonists to review the story so far including the bits with Rothwyn and Eldred that they were not previously privy to. We also have an odd description of the creepy, nameless grown baby as the "Changeling" complete with a description of the folklore around the concept, which seems to have no bearing whatsoever.

It's weird but cool, too, to hear that Silver has been taken back to the "beginning". That's the thing about Sapphire & Steel; it doesn't half drag on a bit, but the concepts are frequently awesome. And we end on a high, even if again there's no real cliffhanger, as our protagonists finally meet a rather composed Rothwyn and a hilariously freaking out Eldred. It's nice how they used the baby as a loophole.

Let's hope the finale is good...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Red Circle

 "Please vanish, both of you!"

Two superb episodes in a row: that's more like it. It looks as though there's hope for this final series after all.

I fear I recall little of the short story, but this is a nice little stiry about a very thinly veiled Mafia which manages to handle the tension well and to generate real fear. Never has the Granada Sherlock Holmes felt so much like The Godfather, but this is well written, and extremely well shot too.

Not only that, though- the cast is extraordinary. John Hallam makes an excellent villain, but it's truly delightful to see the lovely and talented Betty Marsden, as well as Kenneth Connor, both in straight roles- although sadly, for Connor, a posthumous one.

Yes, I know I've been critical in the past of adaptations of stories which are not really whodunits, or end up as something else following the adaptation. Yet The Red Circle, while abandoning all pretence of being a whodunit halfway through, still contains a gnuine mystery, and the shift to more of a suspenseful action thriller is, for once, handled well.

It's a nicely subtle ending, too: for once Holmes can't override the law and prevent a man ho acted in self-defence from being arressted for murder, even if we know damn well he will be acquitted.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 4

 "There are no others..."

Here we have... a rather uneventful episode. There's some fascinatingy touchy-feely stuff between Sapphire and Silver hinting at a present or former romantic relationship, much to Steel's jealous annoyance. There's a bit of a revelation that Silver is "just a technician" whose forte is transportation and machines. Aside from this there's just a lot of vague exploration to fill the time in which our now reunited proagonists learn various things about the capsule(s) that the viewer already knows or has probably inferred.

The former baby is creepy though. And there's a fascinating debate about whether it's a baby or just a machine. But that's literally it.

At least we get a cliffhanger next time. But can some stuff actually happen next time, please?

Upstart Crow: The Play's the Thing

"Or must I pluck another from the chicken's arse?"

This second episode is every bit as good, and every bit as Blackadderish, as the first- and just as unashamedly geeky about Shakespeare lore. This is a sitcom which has the likes of Henry Condell and Robert Greene (the truly excellent Mark Heap) as characters and where the plot turns on factors such as the Stuart James VI of Scotand being the likely next king of England and how he is the son of Mary Queen of Scots.

Exhibit A for both of these points is the use of Christopher Marlowe here. On the one hand, by saying Shakespeare wrote all Kit's plays, the script is taking the mickey out of those nutters who for some reason think the Earl of Oxford (who died in 1604, before many of the most famous plays) wrote the whole Shakespeare canon. On the other hand they cheerfully show Kit as being a laddish "roisterer" who seems to love neither tobacco nor boys, and bears an uncanny and certainly deliberate resemblance to Lord Flashheart.

There are so many little in-jokes, too, which make this series particularly enjoyable for the Shakespeare geek. Roll on the next one... but first, several days of other stuff.

Upstart Crow: Star Crossed Lovers

 "But Kate, you know very well that ot's illegal for girls to do anything interesting."

Ok, now this isn't me making a habit of blogging sitcoms- there are all sorts of reasons why they don't lend themselves as well to a proper episodic blog post, at least for me. So this is just a few brief witterings per episode, rather less content than usual, but we'll see how it goes.

Essentially, this is bloody brilliant. Yes, it's basically the world of Shakespeare in the style of Black Adder II, with the lines very Blackadderish indeed and with Will Shakespeare (a perfectly cast David Mitchell) performing the same narrative function as good old Edmund. But this is by Ben Elton, someone who has every right to do this. There's something to be said for getting a writer to do what he's good at. Sometimes it's good to be in one's comfort zone.

The cast is superb, and the assortment of regular characters introduced here are at once redolent of Blackadder (aspiring actress Kate is quite deliberately based on "Bob") and based on Shakespeare's real family and regular actors- I love how Will Kemp is used to take the piss out of Ricky Gervais. This is roughly based on the young-ish Shakespeare of the 1590s, but let's not be too fixated on historical accuracy. Let's just say that, as someone who sees Romeo and Juliet being, in large part, the still young-ish Shakespeare, whose earlier work consisted of such violent crowd pleasers as Titus Andronicus and the Henry VI trilogy, taking the piss out of Italian romances by having a deliberately bathetic ending, I enjoyed this immensely.

Macbeth (2015)

"What's done cannot be undone..."

I consider myself a Shakespeare geek. I know all but a handful of his plays. I've read the sublime Macbeth several times, but have only ever seen it performed once: at Leicester in 1990 when I was far too young to appreciate what I was seeing. I was surprised, watching this film, that I know the play much better than I thought. Certainly enough to realise ths film is, well... underwhelming.

On paper it has a lot to recommend it. It's a fairly faithful adaptaton of one of Shakespeare's finest plays. It's a realistic evocation of 11th century Scotland (look, no kilts!) with authentic accents, a shockingly rare virtue which adds a lot and hides many faults elsewhere. It stars Michael Fassbender, a very good actor. The cinematography is bleakly artistic, with subdued colours and severely bleak locations.

And yet... this bleakness doesn't serve the play. Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are excellent but their performances seem to lack charisma here in ways they don't elsewhere- perhaps Justin Kurzel is not an actors' director? The gloriously poetical lines seem to be cancelled out at every turn by a crushing dullness that pervades everything.

The locations are haunting. The performances good and often excellent. The film beautifully shot almost if not wholly on location... yet I find myself yearning for a stagey old BBC 1970s style production with multiple cameras.This fim seems to please the critics, but it disappointed me.

La Jetee (1962)

 "The victors stood guard over a kingdom of rats..."

I watched this film tonight because I watched Twelve Monkeys a few days ago, as this film is cited as a strong influence- and, of course, it's one of the most admired short films ever made, with good reason..

The word "inspiration" is a considerable understatement, I think: I'm in two minds myself over whether or not Twelve Monkeys ought to be considered a remake. Yet the film is a masterpiece in its own rights regardless. The still photographs, and the masterful ways they bleed into one another, perfectly encapsulate the theme of both the emotions and subjectivity of memory, dependent as it is on still, lingering images.

The narration is extraordinary, too. I'll confess to being less than quite fluent in French, although I can speak the language up to a point, but the prose was beautiful in translation and even more poetic in the original French.

This is, I suppose, at once very French and very Atomic Age science fiction, with its mushroom cloud and post-apocalyptic dystopia, yet both the time travel romance (the couple's relationship reminds me of The Time Traveller's Wife) and the future weirdness are brilliant. And the twist at the denoument is done with such admirable elegance.

If you haven't seen it, it's less than half an hour long, and easy to find.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Golden Pince-Nez

 "May I shake your hand, Sir?"

"What? If you must."

Now that's more like it. This is the first solid episode in ages from the once-dependable Granada Sherlock Holmes. After a few episodes that were, essentially, not whodunits, at last we get an adaptation of a solid Conan Doyle murder mystery with a genuinely surprising and unpredictable twist. This may not be a highlight of the series, but it's an enormous relief to encounter an episode like this. Let's hope it represents an overdue return to form for the final stretch.

This is a broadly faithful adaptation, with the changes making sense with the casting- and the cast is truly excellent. The episode is notably missing Edward Hardwicke as Watson, of course, but it just about works having the superb but noticeably older Charles Gray return as Mycroft. The interplay between the two brothers is fascinating- Holmes archly notes that it os "ironic" that their late father left his magnifying glass to the sedentary Mycroft, although there's just about enough sleight of hand to excuse his not being so sedentary here.

There's a nice little red herring with Suffragettes too, and some wry social commentary on Edwardian attitudes to female suffrage, which Mycrofy is very much seen to share. The opening and concluding scenes with nihilists in Russia in the 1880s are well done, too- shades of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

Please let this not be the last good episode...

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 3

 "They wouldn't have gone back without us, would they?"

There's  not really anything like plausible deniability to the charge that this episode is blatant padding. Sapphire and Silver seem about to get entry to the capsule at the very end- fully halfway through the story as a whole. And the neat-total absence of Sapphire, after last episode's arresting cliffhanger, feels as though it may be influenced by non-diegetic factors.

Obviously, Sapphire being absent, we get to meet Steel, a charismatic, mysterious and rather camp individual. He and Sapphire flirt outrageously, amusingly causing annoyance to a jealous Steel, but he also supplies some exposition, confirming to Steel that the members of the other two expeditions from the future are dead.

The main event is, of course, where Rothwyn recognises the rather creepy young man walking towards her as "the Child", in a rathef effectively creepy scene. This is the suff of nightmares as the "Child" reaches out to Rothwyn, only for a terrifying voice to insist he use the other hand.. and something happens. Brr.

This one scene od pretty much worth the padding. But the padding really is outrageous.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Dying Detective

 "Mr Holmes, you are the very worst tenant in London!"

Sigh. This second episode is better than the first. Jeremy Brett is, of course, superb as the strangely indifferent and, eventually, ill Holmes- or seemingly so. The cast is unusually strong, even if a very young Hugh Bonneville is going by "Richard" here. Roy Hudd is delightful as a ne'er-do-well. It all looks very good. And yet... it's all fundamentally misconceived.

The Dying Detective works well as a short story, but the short stoty works only because it essentially consists of what we see as the final scenes here, as Holmes pretends to be dying so the gullible Culverton Smith can, like a Bond villain, confess. To fit a fifty minute episode we need to have a long, awkward, preambe to establish the context. This is unfortunate, and not only because the denoument becomes rather obvious if we understand what has led up to it. Holmes behaviour, too, in refusing to suspect Culverton Smith (until he does) feels awkward and too blatantly plot driven. It's odd, too, that he would take up the case of yet another opium addict husband; the apparent encouragement of hs cousin would not make the case sufficiently interesting.

As a result, the episode may be well-made but fundamentally doesn't work. The short story needs to be a short vignette in order to work. Expanding it to a full fifty minute episode simply doesn't work.

Still, I'm glad they kept in Homes' apparent fear of oysters...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Three Gables

 "Is murder a woman’s secret...?”

Oh dear. After the mainly not very good overlong specials I was hoping for a return to the good stuff now that we're back to the proper length episodes. Alas, on the evidence of this episode, I have every reason to be concerned about what the rest of the series may bring. This really is the most appallingly muddled and messy script I've ever seen from the Granada Sherlock Holmes. 

There's only really one plus point- the splendid performance of the then ninety-six year old Mary Ellis in her final acting role before her death... aged 105. Otherwise, this is dross. Admittedly the original Conan Doyle short story was hardly one of the best (this is one of those stories described as "drivel" by Nicholas Meyer in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Yet the changes made here, and the padding out to include a wasted Peter Wyngarde as a pointless gossip-monger, are pointless, yet the treatment of the character of Steve Dixie faithfully translates the casual racism of the original, reminding us that Conan Doyle, while progressive on racial matters in The Yellow Face, was nevertheless a man of his time. I'm less inclined to excuse the use of the character here, though, in 1994, with no thought seemingly given to the issue.

Essentially, this episode is a mess, incoherent and giving very little for Brett to do. Please let the rest of the series not be like this.

The Brood (1979)

 "It has no teeth, but you'd get a pretty nasty bite from these beak-like gums..."

Nasty divorces and unpleasant custody battles happen, sadly, even to auteur film directors. And, if said auteur happens to be David Cronenberg, this will naturally lead to a film all about how evil his ex is and why he should have custody of his daughter, all through the medium of extreme body horror.

Thing is, though, it may well be blatant that this is what he's doing, but none of that stops this film being a masterfully helmed wotk of genius. This film really ought to feel self-indulgent, but it's just too good for that.

It helps that we have a just-sober-enough Oliver Reed as a gloriously weird red herring of a creepily unorthodox psychiatrist (his book looks like a kind of very '70s yet also very Cronenberg tome: Erich Von Daniken with body horror) who is there as a very prominent piece of misdirection, but the real killers are, it seems, a gang of homonculuses (none of this Latinate "homonculi" nonsense; loan words don't get to bring their own syntax with them even if they are from swanky old Latin) which are birthed by, let's face it, a character representing Cronenberg's ex, in gloriously horrific ways as seen in the extraordinarily long and wonderfully effective final scene.

As ever with Cronenberg we have exquisite direction with the most banal of locations made to look creepily beautiful. We have eccentric minor characters and his usual themes of memory, family, bodily squelchiness and medical madness. This film is superb.

Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

 "I don't care how you do it. You MUST sink the Bismarck."

This is not the kind of war film I was expected, with a surprising amount of focus on strategic planning and reactions in the Admiralty as opposed to action. Yet, while this is perhaps not one of the very best war films, its focus on the backroom planning aspects is certainly a strength. This is a nicely structured- and, within reason, historically accurate-account of both the damage done by the Bismarck and the pursuit of it by the Royal Navy in that anxious spring of 1941.

Admittedly, my own experience of the stock footage, opening the film, of Hitler launching the Bismarck was shaped by some rather hilarious automatic English subtitles of the German dialogue, but this was the only laughable moment. Every other moment was gripping and tension-filled as the full might of the Royal Navy- including the Home Fleet- wrestled with the difficult gambles and ten dimensional chess-playing that was necessary to sink the premier asset of the German navy.

Using Ed Morrow as a kind of chorus was clever; he's an identification figure for any Americans watching as well as being a handy means of exposition. It's also a solid decision to base the film around two fictionalised figures- the cold Captain Shepard who is secretly covering up emotional vulnerability and the coolly competent yet emotionally inteligent Anne Davies- as well as a more cartoonish Nazi in Lutyens than was perhaps the case historically. Those who served as officers for Nazi Germany were enemies of humanity, and attempts to protect Jewish people under their command do not change this. He and those like him thught to defend evil. 

This may not be a great film, but is an impressive one, and both Kenneth More and Dana Winter deserve a great deal of credit.

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

 "All I see are dead people."

I've seen this film before, but in another century. I remembered nothing of it, and this second viewing brought back no memories of this strange beast- a '90s sci-fi action film, starring A list Hollywood action stars, directed by Terry Gilliam of all people. That's somewhat disappointing, as unreliable and vague memories are a huge theme here, but never mind.

The film is not, perhaps, quite in the very first rank or as good as Gilliam's own Brazil (of which the style of the future scenes, with its panel of eccentric scientists). Yet it is, nevertheless, a superb little meditation on time travel, circulat time travel paradoxes, and the subjectivity of memory. It is also, inevitably for a plot based on time paradoxes, a meditation on fate and the idea that, as we do not have much agency in our lives, we may as well enjoy the ride. The influence of La Jetee was, I'm told, important: I must see that film some time.

It's also a triumpant performance from Bruce Willis, who always has been a much better actor than his usual action film roles may imply. But there's also a solid performance from Madeleine Stowe, and a gloriously unhinged one from Brad Pitt. It's also good to see a prominent part for an older Frank Gorshin, the Riddler himself.

More than anything, though, this is anothef splendid film from the unique mind and aesthetic of Terry Gilliam, establishing himself firmly as a proper Hollywood auteur. The old Monty Python animator done good.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 2

 "We might just lose this one."

This, unexpectedly, turns out to be a superb episode, fizzling with big ideas, and utterly gripping. Despite the fact that Sapphire and Steel are still not inside the capsule by the end of the episode there's plenty to stimulate the viewer.

It's interestng to ponder what a daring piece of television this is from a modern perspective: absolutely none of the four key characters are at all fit to be audience identification figures, none of them hailing from anything close to twentieth century Earth. All of them, too, are somewhat alienating personalities. Sapphire is at her most otherwordly here; Rothwyn is positively scary; Eldred is entitled arrogance personified; and Steel is... well, Steel. That wouldn't get past the script editors these days. Plus it's most odd to see something so cool and conceptual being directed so flatly with multiple cameras.

And yet it's riveting television, and it's riveting television because of the ideas. Steel's reaction at the start shows how much we should fear these alienating "invaders" and the ineffable power of time itself. The pillow is also a swan. Rothwyn is suddenly much weirder. There's some glowing thing in the wall- possibly the "crystal" of time that bought the couple back fifteen hundred years... and the baby grows to adulthood within mere minutes.

After all this weirdness we turn to a fairly normal ending, as Steel again urges Sapphire to poke a stick at the threat and see what happens- and it isn't good, as Sapphire promptly vanishes while talking of eternal pain. Lovely.

This is bloody good, and utterly of its time.

The Eligible Bachelor (1993 TV Film)

 "Dull, dull, dull!

Well, at least this isn't as bad as The Last Vampyre. But it's pretty bad, nevertheless. I'm well and truly glad to have put these three long, pretentious specials behind me.

There are some redeeming features, I suppose. I'm not sure departures from Conan Doyle are quite the thing for a series originally predicated on doing no such thing, and the plot twsts don't exactly arrive through deduction, but the departures from Conan Doyle's The Noble Bachelor (with a pinch of The Veiled Lodger) are clever and well thought-out, Simon Williams is excellent as Lord St Simon and it works well to have the character ultimately revealed to be a bounder and a cad, who had his first (rich) wife killed and his second declared insane. It's a shocking revelation, and his confrontational scenes with Hetty cleverly reveal him as an abuser, charming but frighteningly good at gaslighting, asking "What have you made me do?" as he tries to throttle her.

Yet that isn't enough. This film is interminably long, with Lord St Simon not even engaging Holmes on the case until we're forty minutes in. And the direction, while arty and well done, is meaningless and pointless as the artistry isn't really saying anything. It's good to see Holmes in one of his depressive, drug-addled phases (bipolar?), but it's dwelt on far too long, with the trippiness just a retread of the far less pretentious The Devil's Foot and the nonsense about precognitive dreams being utterly unsuitable for both the character and the series.

I really hope the final six, proper length, episodes are better than this.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 1

 "The attack has started!"

It's the second season and the third Assignment- and you can certainly tell that it's the very early '80s with that charmingly period baby monitor, the suddenly very different cut of Steel's suit (Sapphire is very... strikingly dressed) and of the pastel shades in which all the walls are painted.

It's also an intriguing premise- a couple with a baby from fifteen centuries in the future have been living in the twentieth century for twenty-seven days as some kind of experiment, although it's amusing to note that, future or not, it's still the female of the two, Rothwyn, who is in charge of all the domestic stuff while Eldred seems to spend his time having lie-ins and mansplaining.

All is not well, though- they've lst contact with their own time, and some kind of mind-affecting polergeit thingy is in there that does worrying things with pillows. Sapphire and Steel are kept separate from them in order to make this a predictably exploratory first episode, which works reasonably well as we realise the couple live in an invisible and apparently impregnable apartment on the roof. We can also get a bit of useful exposition about how meddling with time (unless it's them doing it!) is bad and wrong.

It's an intriguing premise and holds my attention. For a moment, though, it looks as though the poltergeist thing is about to smother the baby, which seems a rather disturbing thing to show. But the pillow then moves to attack Steel which is, er, fine...

The Last Vampyre (1993 TV Film)

 "Are we to give serious attention to such things? It's pure lunacy."

This is the second of the three Granada TV films based on short stories before we return to six proper episodes for the final stretch. It was... challenging to watch.

I found The Master Blackmailer, while by no means great, not to be as bad as its reputation. I can make no such claim for this turgid nonsense.

It's instructive, however, to take a look at why. There is, indeed, a bit of allusion to the supernatural here but there's a more or less rational explanation for everything; this episode is essentially no more supernatural than The Hound of the Baskervilles. Also, while I would have preferred a shorter and more faithful adaptation of Conan Doyle's The Sussex Vampire, the changes work well enough on their own terms and could have worked. This isn't bad because it's overlong: it's just bad television.The introduction of the character of Stockton as a red herring and extra sub-plot could have worked, but fails to do so through sheer dullness, and the scenes in the ruined house are just silly..

Fundamentally this is style over substance, except the directorial fanciness isn't actually as good as it thinks it is. Also, despite the rather good location filming, the guest cast, Maurice Denham aside, is just rubbish and dull- Keith Barron, in particular, is terrible. And the script is just formulaic. Yes, it's good that we get the "Giant Rat of Sumatra" line from the original short story for Sherlockian fanboys, and even a reference to the Gloria Scott. But this is a sad and limp piece of television that is no better now than when I saw it aged fifteen on its original broadcast.

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.

 

 

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

 "This ain't that kind of movie, bruv."

This, in spite of being from pretty much the same creative team as the rather good Kick-Ass and ultimately, indeed, the creation of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, is a film I've somehow avoided seeing for seven years. I'm glad thise years are now over; ths doesn't pretend to be anything other than a gloriously violent and stylish blockbuster, but it does this very well indeed, and with a great deal of visual flair.

The premise- a private secret service operated as a second venture of a posh Savile Row tailors- is intriguing although, unlike Eggsy, I'd be inclined to be concerned about the acountability of such a private organisation. I don't think we should read too much into the class subtext as chav Eggsy goes through a rite of passage to become an agent, but it's fun to see him succeed. Colin Firth, too, is superb as his effortlessly awesome mentor, and inevitably there's a cool role for Michael Caine. We also have Mark Hamill playing against type as a British professor, but the most stellar perfrmance by far is that of Samuel L. Jackson, as the Bond villain he was born to play, rather intriguingly pointing out that the Chinese secret service is rather worrying as it has no particular name..

The film works superbly as a straightforward Bond-Style action film, but with the added little touch of lots of nods at the fourth wall, from the verbal sparring between Harry and Valentine on old Bond film tropes to the moment where the latter seems about to tell the former all his plans before putting him in an elaborate death trap, but shoots him instead. 

This film may not have much to say about the world, but it entertained me an awful lot. One of the better class of modern Bond pastiches.

Hands of the Ripper (1971)

 "It's the Ripper!"

I love Hammer Horror. Not all of the films are good, although most are, but most at least provide some cheesy fun. This one, however, does not really do even that. It's a rare dud.

I suppose there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept- the daughter of Jack the Ripper (a married, unnamed aristocrat who murders his wife after escaping a torch-wielding mob) grows up to have blackouts triggered by a certain thing that cause her to kill, much as her father. This is centred around a very Henry Higgins relationship between Dr Pritchard (Eric Potrter, still very good here even while obviously phoning it in) and Anna herself (an excellent Angharad Rees.

There's some good subtext here- one example of which is the debate between Pritchard and Dysart about judicial killing, rightfully reminding us of the barbarity of the practice: after all, how many killers have had abusive childhoods, even if not necessarily watching one's father stab one's mother to death? There also an amusing equivalence, intended or not, between seances, mediums and all that and Freudian psychoanalysis- both kinds of quackery are, of course, nonsense.

There are also enjoyable appearances from both the great Dora Bryan and the always wonderful Lynda Baron, both having enrmous fun with their roles. However, the film never really catches fire and, despite the charasma of the two leads, is rather formulaic without being silly enough to be quite enough fun, isolated scenes aside.

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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.

Catweazle: Season 1, Episode 13- The Trickery Lantern

 "Well, one can't desert a brother when he's put a fork through his foot."

So that's it, certainly for this season. This has bee a decent little quirky kids' farcical comedy, but I can't say it's more than quite good, or is particularly worth watching for those, like myself, with no particular nostalgic memories of the programme. It is, at this point, by no means certain that I will eventually blog the second series. It's more Sapphire and Steel first.

This final episode is different from the various farces that preceded it in that this is the episode where Catweazle- suddenly, after a much underexplained epiphany at the end of next episode- knows how to get back to the th century just like that. It feels very much as though he's doing this just because the series is ending, which he literally is. But at least we finally have an episode where the reset button won't just be pushed at the end.

It's also nice, and unexpected, to see a young-looking Nana Moon from EastEnders as Flo, George's ghost-obsessed sister, who seems to recognise Catweazle as a ghost from her childhood- it's a shame the episode doesn't end with Catweazle travelling back only forty years to meet her as a little girl.

So thar's it. I'm almost as shocked as Carrot to see Catweazle go. I assume the next series doesn't have quite the same premise?

Go on then. I'll watch the next season if anyone can persuade me it's worth my while!

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Creeping Man

 "Always carry a firearm east of Aldgate, Watson."

Oh dear. It has to be emphasised that Granada can hardly be blamed for the fact that this is one of Conan Doyle's less well-regarded short stories (Nicholas Meyer goes so far as to have Watson describe it as fake "drivel" in his excellent novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution), but they chose to adapt it where many other options were available- and this is a tale about a professor who chooses to inject himself with the essence of a primate in order to rejuvenate him ahead of a marriage to a girl about a third of his age.

Worse, the adaptation- while generally well-made and written- chooses to lean into the sci-fi silliness of its premise by adding a subplot of primates stolen from zoos, and features both a man in a gorilla suit, which makes one wince to see, and Charles Kay in a tree whooping like a gorilla. It's embarrassing to watch, and Watson's instincts at he beginning of the episode are quite correct..

There are redeeming features in pretty much everything other than the above. Brett and Hardwicke are never less than superb, and Charles Kay is excellent as the Professor, undignified though his final scene may be. The script, quite rightly, emphasises the ickiness of the Professor's  proposed marriage to a girl he calls "my dear child". It's also good to see Colin Jeavons for the last time as probably the definitive Lestrade. Nevertheess, this episode is hardly the series' finest hour.

Catweazle: Season 1, Episode 12- The Wisdom of Solomon

 "My mum's cousin had a horse that looked like that once. We had to shoot it."

This penultimate episode of the series is the best we've had in a while. Patricia Hayes is splendidly awful as the vile Mrs Skinner, whom George has hired as a housekeeper along with her equally loathsome son Arthur who goes to school with Carrot (their uniforms have caps.which dates the episode just as much as the reference to ten bob), and threatens to ruin and expose everything. They are by far the modt effectively evil baddies we've had so far, and the theatrically passive-aggressive Mrs Skinner is a masterful creation.

Their nastiness makes their inevitable comeuppance at Catweazle's hands all the more enjoyable.

This all even leads to permanent changes- Castle Saburac is no longer available, while Catweazle has an idea, involving water. I somehow suspect he won't be arund much longer, and I'll be able to replace Catweazle with the second series of Sapphire & Steel...

Catweazle: Season 1, Episode 11- The Flying Broomsticks

"I shall not be so easily gulled by false magic!"

This episode is pretty much a farce, as they all are, but it's above the usual standard. We even get some minor arc progression as Catweazle finally exhausts Rapkyn's spell book. Never mind the fact that Sam starts out back in Geirge's employ again, as though nothing at all had happened between them.

This time the foil is a new police sergeant, a city boy who knows not of country ways. So, when he ses broomsticks being nicked and burned (Catweazle's doing, of course), he assumes some kind of satanic ceremony. And a series of comical misunderstandings puts Sam in potential trouble although his only actual offence is to be late renewing his car insurance.

The farce is well done, and the ending is both funnier and goes further than expected. There's even a nice little subtext in how the town copper is too quick to stereotype country people. Nevertheless, even a good episode of this is not quite enough to make me anything other than relieved there are only two episodes to go.

Monsters (2010)

 "Amigos? These guys have guns!"

This low-budget debut from director Gareth Edwards, a native of my neighbouring town of Nuneaton, is quitely brilliant, leveraging its tiny budget to combine horror via suspense with arthouse, bordering on arthouse, techniques. The scenes feel semi-improvised, which improvs the effectveness enormously, This is a film which manages to be superb by aiming relatvely low yet hitting the target.

Critics have, er, criticised the core performances of Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, which I find bewildering. Both Andrew and Sam feel like real people and not Hollywood cyphers, and are all the more compelling for it. It also very much shows, not only in the camerawork, but also in the line delivery, that the scenes and dialogue are semi-improvised. This is enormously effective and removes the arificiality of scripted acting that we so often overlook. The characters feel real ro the extent that Andrew really is a bit of a creep, especially in a post-#MeToo context.

Thie whole premise- a NASA probe falling to Earh and releasing alien life into northern Mexico which is swidtly quarantined- is an obvious metaphor for refugees, particularly with the presence of a wall on the US southern border before Trump had even thought of such a very stupid idea. There's a nice little scene where out American protagonists are repped off by traffickers.

The film rather cleverly uses its low budget to its advantage, using television broadcasts and signs to build context to the world we see as Sam and Andrew make their way through the Infected Zone. The alien monsters are glimpsed only briefly until the end, using the devastation they leave in their wake to evoke their destructiveness. Only at the end do we see them as fully realised Lovecraftian horrors.

An excellent film. Not bad for a Codder.

Easy Rider (1969)

 "I'd like to try Porky Pig."

If I'd seen this in my late teens I'd have devoured it in the same way I devoured all that old "counterculture" literature back then- Kerouac, William S. Burroughs,  Hunter S. Davies- so uncritically. Anything counterculture was cool to me back then, and I vaguely assumed to to be progressive, free thinking, an unalloyed good thing.

But I didn't. I saw the film tonight, at forty-three, much more ambivalent about a hippy movement that owed as much to right wing rugged individualism as it did to socially progressive causes. Billy and Wyatt may seem like free spirits, but their money comes from a cocaine deal, and Wyatt expresses admiration for both a poor Arizona farmer and a commune for their self-reliance in living off the land, and they end the film in a brothel before dying. Yes, the bigoted, corrupt and racist South that taunt and eventually kills them is much worse morally than they are, but these two men could easily have voted for Reagan or even for Trump if they'd lived.

Poor George (you can see why Jack Nicholson's surprisingly small but incredible performance elevated him from prominent actor to movie star overnight) is simultaneously much more intelligent (he has a clearer idea of freedom) and more naive than either of them, and probably too innocent to live.

This is a beautifuly directed film, obviously looking ahead to the Hollywood auteur films of the next decade. Surprisingly, much of it is just pocaresque rod movie stuff with as much music as dialogue. It's superbly shot, though- there's a particularly good panning shot of the peole of the commune- and the film deals with a great deal of themes- the ambivalent nature of the counterculture and the uneconsruced nature of the Deep South among them. This is a unique film, but a sublime one.  It reminds me of the literary works I mentioned above but, unlike On the Road or Fear and Loathing, it still has an appeal to this forty-three year old with long hair.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Illustrious Client

 "You go your way. Let me go mine."

This is one of those rare Sherlock Holmes stories which are not whodunits at all. A fairly late short story, it is perhaps surprising that Granada should have adapted this most unusual tale ahead of others. But here we are.

This is a well-made piece of television with some strong performances. It's just odd that the plot concerns an attempt to prevent a naive young lasy from marrying one Baron Gruner- a bounder, a cad and a foreigner to boot- who has numerous crimes, including murder, in his past, and "collects" women to abuse. He's a deeply disturbing and loathsome individual, and t's instructive to hear Conan Doyle's dialogue explaining gaslighting before the term was coined.

This is a thriller, not a murder mystery, and feels intended as an adaptation of a piece of classic literature to a greater extent than is usually the case even with Granada. Nevertheless, it works, and gives the ever-sublime Jeremy Brett the chance to play different angles as Holmes while Anthony Valentine twirls his moustache with aplomb. Surprisingly decent, but I wouldn't hope to see too much more in this vein.

Catweazle: Season 1, Episode 10- The House of the Sorcerer

 "Canst thou wind me back?"

It's still all farce... but this is a better episode. Yes, it concerns an an eccentric wildlife obsessive, a nice little guest part for Bernard Hepton, who is mistaken, inevitably, for a wizard by Catweazle, with predictable farcical hijinks ensuing. But there's also an amusing little scene where Sam quits, and both he and George dissolve into childish argument in what is a rather good little bit of character comedy. Will he get his old job back after the end?

The best bit, of course, is a glimpse at life in 1970, hence the hijinks with tape- and, with some jealously, how easy it seems to be to casually quit a job and start a new one. Overall, though, there's not much going on here.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Boscombe Valley Mystery

 "Watson, all this fresh air will kill me."

It's odd, at this late stage and after sdaptations of so many of Conan Doyle's later stories, that now should appear an adaptation of one of his earliest, first published in The Strand in 1891. It's an excellent episode, though, probably this series' best at this point. It helps that a strong cast is led by a young Hames Purefoy, and both Leslie Schofield and Peter Vaughan appear in short but powerfu scenes. Genial Harry Grout, in particular, gives a spellbinding performance.

The story is, sensibly, relocated to Cheshire to be closer to the Granada studios, and the rural location enhances the episode enormously. There are some nice little character moments between Holmes and Watson- I love the nuances of Jeremy Brett's mannerisms as he tries to persuade Watson to interrupt his fishing holiday for the case.

It's odd, perhaps, to see such an early short story made so late in the Granada series' run, with Brett not, sadly, looking well at all, but I'm very glad we have this.

Catweazle: Season 1, Episode 9- The Demi Devil

 "No more monkey business!"

In a sense, this is yet another straightahead farce, in this case based aroung the idea of Catweazle thinking he's turned Carrot into a monkey, and later getting blotto on posh wine. I realise farces are complex and take skill to write well, but I'm struggling wth this series and may not watch the second series. That's no reflection on the cast, but I personally cannot subsist on a diet of farce alone.

Geoffrey Bayldon is nevertheless superb, as ever, but the character he's playing is now starting to seem a bit one-note. It's also extremely cool, mere weeks after the casting coup of Hattie Jacques, to get another Carry On star in Peter Butterworth to play the Colonel, although he's blatantly too good for the part.

Otherwise, I'm just hoping- probably in vain- that the last four episodes of this series give us something a bit different.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: Shoscombe Old Place

 "You're not the only one that likes a plunge on the horses from time to time, Doctor."

This is an interesting episode, based on the last ever Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Conan Doyle on the one hand (penned in 1927, three years before he died) on the one hand, and featuring a very young Jude Law on the other, long before his days of Hollywood stardom.

It's a decent story, faithfully and expertly told. Yet the episode fails to catch fire, in spite of the satisfying conclusion where we learn of the nature of Sir Robert's deception, his debts and the troublesome moneylender being but a massive red herring. Perhaps it's because it's a little too obvious that the lady in the carriage is keeping "her" face hidden and may not be Lady Beatrice, but this was always going to be difficult to hide in any translation of this story from print to screen. No: I think it's simply that the guest cast, while never committing any acting sins, simply lacks presence and charisma. We can't depend on young Jude for that; he's probably still in sixth form.

Jeremy Brett, it must be said, is as excellent here as ever, but he seems to look older, frailer and, may I say, podgier with every passing episode. If it was, indeed, the part of Holmes that was to kill him, the process of this happening may already be quite visible.

The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

 "Made by grapes trampled by the feet of a peasant..."

Another Hammer. Why not? 

This isn't a well-known film, particularly. It has no stars, and makes do with Edward de Souza as leading man. It is essentially a collection of set pieces based around predictable horror film tropes which gradually reveas itself as a neighbourhood which exists to trap visting couples into surrendering the female of the pair, as a kind of droit de seigneur siruation, to the local lord, who happens to be a sexually magnetic vampire in the mould of Dracula- an aspect many films miss.

The tropes come thick and fast- the coupe, in their charming Edwardian roadster, break down in a sinister rutal area where the only buildings are sinister-looking edifices. The only local hoteliers are extremely sinister and mysterious. A bearded figure warns them to leave the area and ask no questions. This is a great film for horror film tropes bingo.

The twist is clever, though; the whole set-up is a cuning trap, and I love the scene where Gerald is gaslighted into believing, or nearly believing, that there never was a fancy dress ball (another trope), and that he came alone, without his wife. Gerald, an Englishman finding his wife seduced by some dastardly Mittel European foreigner, is fortunate to find that the bearded bloke is a kind of Van Helsing archetype, so they're able to defeat the vampire lord and his comical cult- with a chalk circle and vampire bats, naturally.

This film is delightfully bonkers.

Highlander (1986)

 "There can be only one!"

Everybody has really big films they haven't seen, even those of us who have blogged over five hundred. For me, Highlander was one of them until tonight, despite the fact that the '80s were the decade of my childhood.

It's extraordinarily good, of course; really well made with lavish production values but, far more importantly, a masterfully paced and structured script that takes a simple idea (superpowered immortals who duel for the "Prize") and executes it well in a more than usually thoughtful blockbuster. Oddly, it matters not that Lambert doesn't really shine as MacLeod; he's as good as he needs to be. He's outshined, of course, by genuine Scotsman Sean Connery who plays... a Spaniard, or an Egyptian, but certainly not a native of Caledonia. Yet Connery is perfect as Ramirez, Roxanne Clark is excellent as leading lady Brenda (still a young woman's name in 1986, apparently) and it's awesome to see Alan Police Squad North as a detective inspector, or whatever they're called in America.

There's some thoughtful meditation on what it must be like to be immortal, and see your loved ones age and die, but there's a deeper subtext to this that is perhaps not intended. Like Flash Gordon, this film is splendidly soundtracked by Queen, and the use of the song "Who Wants To Live Forever" these days evokes the AIDS pandemic of the time, especially as I saw this film in the wake of It's a Sin.

There is, I understand, much more fiction set in the intriguing world of this film. It is, however, satisfying as a whole. A superb '80s classic that I should have watched well before my forties.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Two- The Railway Station, Part 8

 "We'll jump off at eleven..."

After eight episodes, it all finally comes to an end- with an episode that feels awkward and, ironically, rushed. Seven episodes of too much padding and so much happens in this episode.

I can see what Hammond was going for, and there's some good stuff here. All the timey-wimeyness is shown very effectively with camera trickery rather than expensive effects. Sapphire's dark eyes- and Joanna Lumley's performance- give us a terrifying Darkness... to whom Steel, of course, is as rude as ever.

There's even a horrifying twist in Steel's betrayal of Tully, which appals even Sapphire, and Tully's trust and need for approval are heartbreaking. Yet the deal doesn't really make any sense from the Darkness' perspective, and Sam Pearce, who thinks (rightly) that Steel is a total bastard, agrees to stop being a ghost very suddenly, and appears to speak for all the other ghosts.

It doesn't work, despite the emtional kick of what happens to poor Tully; the plot holes are too big in a finale that relies on ideas rather than character drama and so can't get away with plot holes.

This serial is based on sound ideas, and there's a good (albeit much shorter) serial in here. But it's not just overly long; it's poorly paced throughout with an ending that doesn't work We end Sapphire & Steel's first season with a disappointing serial which, unfortunately, covers more than half of the season as a whole. Unfortunately the season as a whole, after a promising start, is dragged down.

Surely things get better?

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Problem of Thor Bridge

 "I'm falling into your involved habit of telling a story backward."

This is, surprisingly, one of the finest episodes of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series to date. Surrising, I suppose, partly because the popular Conan Doyle stories have all been done and that now, in the '90s and after a gap, and with a visibly frailer Jeremy Brett (significantly more pronounced in this episode, I would say, than in the previous one) we are left with the less well-known short stories from His Last Bow and the Case-Book; this episode is the first adaptation from the latter.

Yet I'd forgotten how good these later stories, written by Conan Doyle in the 1920s, could be. Here we have an ingenious whodunit which begins, on the face of it, with damning evidence of Miss Dunbar's guilt yet, through devilish clever plotting, has Holmes reveal a very different and ingenious truth- and the gold magnate Neil Gibson is a nuanced and not altogether pleasant figure. He may be rich and powerful, but he has an acknowledged history of domestic abuse; is Miss Dunbar truly so fortunate as Holmes and Watson assume?

This is a superbly made episode, with excellent guest performances from Daniel Massey and Catherine Russell. The setting of Miss Dunbar's cell as she awaits trial and potentially the gallows is suitably chilling- and this is, I believe, the first episode to feature a car. This series promises to be better than I perhaps expected.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Two- The Railway Station, Part 7

 "My faith has taken a knock..."

Well, that's certainly a change of direction, and a welcome one. In some senses this feels, in spite of being a penultimate episode, that it's the first part of a two-parter at the end of the wider serial.

It takes a few minutes for Sapphire and Steel to work out that they've been moved forward twelve days in time, but these are a quality few minutes as our two protagonists work through what has happened and why.We, and they, are getting used to the status quo; the Darkness and the ghosts appear to  be gone, although Tully mentions that several new ones arrive.

And Tully is at the centre here- such a well-rounded and realistic character. He's come to experence real spitits, something he's yearned for all his life- and he's bloody terrified. The very thing that has given his life meaning proves to be something he cannot handle, and this lonely man will have to find something else to occupy his remaining years. He's a decent man, if comewhat small "c" conservative, and doesn't deserve such a devastating experience. This experience may have ruined his chances of happiness.

And yet all is not over, as Syeel wishes to make a deal with the Darkness. This serial is getting good again.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax

 "I've failed".

Granada's Sherlock Holmes, after a couple of yars' absence, is back for the '90s, a new decade and a new title. It's interesting that we begin with an adaptation of a later short story, written in 1911, and one clearly set after the the turn of the century- Suffragettes are mentioned, and the Boer War has ended, so it can be no earlier than 1902. Holmes and Watson are middle-aged, and it is no longer obviouly trues that Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke are really too old to play their characters, wh would both have been aroung fiftyish.

There's also a hint that Holmes' faculties may be declining with age; he solves the case- and prevents poor Lady Frances from being buried alive- soon enough to save her life but too late to prevent what appears to be severe PTSD. His sense of failure and guilt is very much played up by the direction and the excellent performance of a mildly frailer-looking Brett.

The filming in the Lake District is breathtaking, and the early scenes, with Watson on holiday writing to Holmes. Lady Frances' delightful eccentricity in these scenes is in horrible contrast to the tragedy that is to befall her- and Michael Jayston's superb performance as her aristocratic brother reminds us that, privileged though she may be, Lady Frances exists at the whims of men who control the purse strings.

The air of religiosity around the earlier scenes feels most odd in a Sherlock Holmes story but it is, of course, a clever piece of misdirection: it is the saintly missionary who turns out to be not only a confidence trickster but a murderer.

This is a strong opening, but possibly one that may herald an older and less confident Holmes?

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Two- The Railway Station, Part 6

"We shouldn't be here on this particular assignment."

The upsurge in quality continues this episode, as we get some excellent character moments with all three of our main characters. This is there from the start as a curiously subdued and even contrite Steel is almost polite to Tully.

Sapphire is still in a coma, psychically "lost" after the impromptu end to the seance, yet apparently also on the paltform as a ghost with the others. This leads to two parallel scenes- Tully talks to the comatose Sapphire about himself, his life and, poignantly, his wish to reach an old age we know he will never reach, having less than five years to live. Steel has a curioussly awkward talk with Sapphire, whom he admits he "loves", with their usual mutual ease and affection curiously absent as she tries to persuade him the ghosts are harmless. It doesn't work, of course, but this is a rare and fascinating character moment.

We also learn more of the airman, desparate to find any mission other than the one he has as his last one before leave. I'm sure we will see more of him, but we end with the best cliffhanger yet- Steel wounded, on barbed wire, waiting to be shelled...

Black Sabbath (1963)

 "I do hope you haven't come alone..."

What is this that stands before me? Figure in black that points at me? Well, no, it's Mario Bava's most famous film, a highlight of Boris Karloff's career and, of course, famously seen at the cinema by one Geezer Butler.

It's also an extraordinarily shot film, wit studio and location made to look creepily effective by means of camera framing, movement and a thoughtful deployment of a colour palette based around magenta and green. This is a film that plays around, and has fun with, the concept of what is a horror B movie and what is a more serious film, and deliberately blurs the distinction. It's a portmanteau film based on short stories by such names as Chekhov, Tolstoy and Maupassant, yet the script cheerfully diverges from the source material in the pursuit of the grand guignol, artistically depicted.

The three tales are each very different, with effective twists, but all have in common the very effective use of tension- as well as the use of the camera to make elements that may look cheap or ineffective in the hands of a lesser director look terrifying. The first tale has overtones of male violence against women, yet is told from a female perspective (and gaze), while the second tale, with Karloff truly oustanding, is a clever take on the vampire myth, moving it to a creepy rutal Russia of Czernobog gloom. The third tale may be the slightest, but it perfectly illustrates how much Bava can do, even with relatively basic material, to wring the maximum amount of effectively paced and creepily shot horror out of whatever he's given with.

An impressive film but although, yes, Karloff is ecelent, essentially this is an example of a film raised from the ordinary to the extraordinary by superb direction. Bava is magnificent.

Blade II (2002)

 "Lock up your daughters, boys and girls. The dark knight returns."

This film is bloody good, possibly better than the first. Partly it's the direction- Guillermo del Toro in Hollywood superhero blockbuster mode, as in Hellboy as well as here, is almost a sub-genre within his own oevre, given the very strong sense of visual and narraive style between the Blade and Hellboy films.Partly it's the strong cast. And partly it's the strong script by David S. Goyer.

What's odd here, perhaps, is that the large gang of rather cool characters as compared to the previous film may make one assume the film takes a lot from the comics- yet the only Marvel character here is Blade himself, although I understand the original plan was to use Morbius, who would have to wait a decade or two. Everyone else is a new character, and even the vampire mythology (a virus rather than mystical) seems to owe very little to my possibly dated understanding of Marvel lore.

What can't be doubted is that Wesley Snipes is again charismatic and effective, if not necessarily subtle, while Kris Kristofferson is extraordinary and Norman Reedus is fun. It's particularly good, though, as a Red Dwarf fan, for me to see Danny John Jules in a fairly meaty serious role.

The film is shot superbly, as you'd expect, and is essentially a series of extremely well-done set pieces in the "house" style. Yet the plot, with its series of double crosses and opaque agendas, is also strong. A quietly impressive Marvel blockbuster.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1988 Film)

 "Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

And so we end the 1980s for Granada's Sherlock Holmes adaptations- they will next resume, after a gap, with The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in 1991, a new decade, unless one happens to be gulping them all up thirty years later. Nevertheless, The Hound of the Baskervilles- the most famous, most often adapted, and most familiar story that Conan Doyle ever wrote- is a fitting coda to the decade.

It is, of course, only right that Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke should get their own Hound, and this does not disappoint. Yes, the budget is clearly lower than with the previous year's The Sign of Four- some of the mire scenes are fairly obviously done in the studio- but the programme hardly looks cheap and, above all, the story (as ever with Hound) and performances, barring a few dodgy Mummerset accents, make this a quality production nevertheless, although perhaps the ending is a little rushed. And the much-maligned hound itself looks pretty decent, I think. It's hardly B movie stuff, and I should know.

Ronald Pickup impresses with a nuanced performance as Barrymore, and it's a delight to see good old Bernard Horsfall as Frankland. But it's James Faulkner (looking just a little older than he was in I, Clavdivs) who stands out as that rotter Stapleton, and never mind that the emphasis on Stapleton in this production makes it perhaps a little too clear that he's the killer.

Overall, though, this is an enjoyable version of the story, much better than its reputation.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes: The Bruce Partington Plans

 "All the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men cannot avail us in this matter."

This is the final episode in the guise of The Return of Sherlock Holmes; sees the return of Charles Gray as Mycroft; and is one of the finest episodes thus far, after a couple that were perhaps a little below par. It's a fitting end to the eighties for the regular episodes.

Brett and Hardwicke are very much on form, with plenty of character moments, and the deduction in this episode is first class- the way Holmes sees the significance of the points, and what they mean for Cadogan West's place of death, is an extraordinary sequence. We also have some superb guest actors, not least of which is Catweazle himself.

It's also exciting, especally at the end, so see Sherlock Holmes straying into spy territory. It's also interesting to see how Mycroft is far more important within the Civil Service than we had previously been told, beng a kind of proto-Cabinet Secretary. This is an appalingly small Civil Service, too, with "clerks" being given what seem like senior responsibilities. On the other hand, "junior clerk" Cadogan West appears to be paid rather well, so some Victorian values are certainly worth emulating. It's also instructive that MI5 does not yet exist, so Inspector Bradstreet is called in.

Diversions aside, though, this is a truly fine episode.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Two- The Railway Station, Part 5

 "I don't want to talk to you!"

At last- an episode with lots of exposition and lots of answers.

The episode may consist mostly of the seance continuing (Joanna Lumley is outstanding, spending most of the episode as Edwardian village schoolteacher Eeanor), but we learn so very much. The soldier was Sam Pearce. He was in a relationship with his old teacher, twelve years his senior. He was a sweet boy, who loved nature... and he was killed eleven minutes after the armistice on 11th November 1918. That's his grievance; it's not just that he was killed in a war, but the deep unfairness of being killed after the war was over.

There's more, of course. There are hints about the "Darkness. Steel continues to alienate everyone by being such a rude git, and seems to struggle without Sapphire being there to handle the diplomacy. And we see the airman being sent out on his final mission, presumably to be elaborated on later.

I enjoyed this episode. It's amazing what a difference it makes when stuff actually happens. There's a good story here, it's just padded out over a ridiculous number of episodes.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes: Wisteria Lodge

 "We must not confuse the unlikely with the impossible."

This episode is... well, not bad, but disposable. It's well made, produced, shot and (mostly) acted, but this is not one of my favourite Conan Doyle short stories. The initial premise- a house guest (splendidly dressed in Victorian pyjames and one of those pointy hats for sleeping in) wakes to find himself alone in the house- is intriguing, but the resolution (the machinations of a deposed former Central American dictator) seem to owe little to the beginning.

Still, any episode of this programme is bound to be entertaining, and both Brett and Hardwicke are, as ever, outstanding. Freddie Jones gives a bizarrely mannered performance as this episode's inspector- are we supposed to admire his skill, as per the short story, or patronise him? It's an odd way to portray Inspector Baynes, the only police detective to have ever matched Holmes. Yet the Victorian locations are superbly shot and done, as ever, with plenty of period detail.

There's also a piece of period dialogue that jars ("negroid features, mulatto-like"). Otherwise, this is hardly an episode that stands out. Still, we shouldn't expect that, and the episode is decent enough.

Catweazle: Season 1, Episode 8- The Power of Adamcos

 "I am doomed!"

"Here, have some more brandy."

Now that's much better. This whole episode is pretty much just a farce about Caweazle losing his dagger, Adamcos, and the hilarious goings-on in retrieving it, but it's amusing enough, and Geoffrey Bayldon carries the whole thing as ever.

The comedy has some nicely done moments too- Catweazle trying to use the "telling bone" from last episode, and Mr Milton fainting as a figure rises from the sarcophagus. And of course it's fun to see Catweazle running from "Normans", however contrived the explanation.

What really stands out, though, and reminds you that this is 1970, is the fact that George is so casually unbothered about Carrot being off somewhere and not panicking as a parent would today. Also there's the casually unbothered attitude towards knives (they're for whittling, not stabbing!) and the incredibly camp, very Julian and Sandy antiques dealer played by Aubrey Morris at a time where being camp was fine but actual gay sex had been illegal just three years previously. As ever with Catweazle, what really fascinates is the social mores of fifty years ago.

And yes, I am offended by the fact that 1970 was fifty-one years ago...