Constantine: City of Demons - The Movie (Doug Murphy, 2018)

As an avid comic book reader between the ages of around six and sixteen (after that, oh what a falling off was there... I guess I just drifted away from the whole scene in the mid to late '90s; There was a lot of crap around at the time), one of the best things - in my humble opinion o' course - was the DC Vertigo imprint and it's late '80s precursors. Comics such as Swamp Thing, The Demon ("Etrigaaaan!"), Blue Devil, Neil Gaiman's feted The Sandman, Shade: The Changing Man and others piled up upon my adolescent-to-teen self's shelves alongside other favourites like Web of Spider-Man, Ghost Rider and The Incredible Hulk - but one of the firm faves in the firmament of Vertigo's vertiginous variations was Hellblazer. Created by comic book/graphic novel (delete as per snobbishness) doyen (I was going to attempt a "doyen of comics"/doyenne du comice joke, but I think i've been found guilty of more than enough misfiring gags over the years, so we'll leave that particular partridge in a pear tree alone) and full-time maniac Alan Moore during his legendary run on Swamp Thing, the character of John Constantine soon span-off into his own title: a daemonic noir saga of the trenchcoat-clad investigator transplanted to the rainswept concrete mise en scene of Thatcher's late Nineteen-Haties Britain and tackling less the standard gumshoe tropes of marital intrigue and petty murder and more the extrusions into our dimension of primal evil forces from the Outer realms. Which is pretty cool work if you can get it. With a litany of writers over the years including, but not limited to: Moore, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison and Neil Gaiman and artists numbering among them John Ridgway, Simon Bisley and Dave McKean, Hellblazer was a spellbinding and spell-casting monthly addiction for young me and quite possibly shaped my tastes/warped my fragile young mind (again, delete as per opinion). The character of Constantine - cool, shifty, and dangerous to know - was visually modelled upon Gordon Sumner aka Sting (of not very good songs and Dune's "I WILL KILL YOU!" fame) and his iconic spiked hair and long trenchcoat possibly contributed to my squee-ing when David Tennant was unveiled as the new Doctor Who in late 2005 and had opted to portray another fantasy hero of mine with spiked hair and a long trenchcoat. Shame that he opted to play it with an Estuary accent. If he had to forsake his native Paisley, why not a Scouse twang? It didn't go wrong for Paul McGann. Still, we have Matt Ryan these days, so all is right with the world. (No, of course Keanu Reeves doesn't count. Tilda Swinton ws the only thing even remotely of interest in that non-canon abortion of a film [which is almost exactly what I thought about the Suspiria remake, to a slightly less vehement and venomous extent. At least that film had the grace to do something interesting with its source material]). Oh, on a slight Doctor Who note: as a child it irritated me to look up the titles of previous Who stories and note that there were two stories titled 'The Seeds of Death' and 'The Seeds of Doom' respectively. The similar-but-different dissonance betwixt the twain irked me. Similarly, the redolence of the titles of Hellblazer and Clive Barker's horror franchise Hellraiser got on my nerves, especially when Marvel's Epic imprint began a series of Hellraiser comics that could be found right next to Hellblazer on the alphabetically-arranged shelves of comic stores. If anyone was ever in the Newcastle branch of Forbidden Planet circa 1992 and saw a twelve or thirteen year old boy standing with a comic book in each hand and a scowl upon his face, consider the conundrum of a couple of decades confirmed. Apologies: I can't help having always been an anal fan. By which I mean both a fan who is anal, and also a fan of... Anyway. Let's get on with the review, shall we?

When NBC commissioned the sadly short-lived (only thirteen episodes, we hardly got to know and love thee: though thirteen's a good occult number I suppose) Constantine TV series in 2014 starring Matt Ryan as the eldritch sleuth things seemed to be looking up only to be foiled by network cancellation. Our hero, however, transcended the axe of death and appeared in the CW's Arrow before becoming a fixture in the Arrowverse as a permanent crewmember of the Waverider in the delightfully unhinged Legends of Tomorrow, as well as transferring to animated form (still voiced by Ryan) firstly in Justice League Dark and then in the web series City of Demons, later re-edited into a full length feature. When Constantine is contacted by his old cab-driving pal Chas Chandler (Damien O'Hare taking on voicing duties of the character named after the bass player of Newcastle's own The Animals - my ma was asked out on a date by the real Chas, she reckons. That's my rock 'n' roll claim to fame) after many years with the news that his young daughter Trish has suddenly lapsed into an inexplicable coma - driving his marriage with wife Renee (Emily O'Brien) onto the rocks - John feels the need, weighted mostly by guilt, to try to help. Attending the hospital bedside of the insensate child he summons the aid ("I'm calling in a specialist") of the Nightmare Nurse Asa the Healer (Laura Bailey) - a demon who takes on the rather fetching form of an alluring fetish nurse replete with PVC uniform. Which is nice. (I now have Genesis' 'Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist' stuck in my head for reasons unknown - which is slightly less nice)

With their only lead being the address of '1247 Enstrom, L.A.' Johny and Chas leave Trish and Renee in the hands of Asa who vows to guard the soulless Trish from any malevolent spirits or demons who might try to inhabit her shell, and take the night flight to sunny California where they spot news headlines of a 'coma plague' spreading through Los Angeles as more and more people are being mysteriously stricken. Making their way to the address, they find a mansion wherat they are greeted at the door by a pig butler (I've always wanted a monkey butler myself) who quotes Dracula's "Enter freely of your own will" before amusedly chuntering "I've always wanted to say that". Entering the enchanted edifice, Constantine meets the demon Beroul (Jim Meskimen) - a hellspawn crossbreed of Sydney Greenstreet and Zero the Hutt who admits to being responsible for the wave of comas and taking the souls of its victims inclusing Trish, and seeks to make a deal with our Scouser warlock in exchange for the child's essence. Leaving Beroul's ghoulish pool - a literal swimming pool filled with dismembered body parts - they make their way through the house to the ballroom wherein the demon has arranged a musical soiree: humans being tortured and their essences torn from them to the sound of music played by a band straight from Pandaemonium itself. Some call it witchcore. Agreeing to the terms of the demon who he unflatteringly but accurately refers to as 'Mr Blobby' - that is, to eliminate five demons Beroul sees as rivals to his scheme of reaping the souls of the city - Constantine informs Chas that Trish and the other comatose patients' "souls are fuelling the engine of Beroul's magic, like batteries" and that the deal must be fulfilled quickly. This arrangement is, however, like many a devil's bargain not all as it seems: for 'Beroul' is but a skin suit ("a convenient mask") for the high demon Nergal - Constantine's nemesis who was summoned fifteen years prior in a Satanic ritual in the basement of Newcastle upon Tyne's Casanova Club. This Luciferian liturgy 'neath a Geardie goth den resulted in the young child Astra Logue being taken into the bowels of hell by the beasts of Nergal, an event which sent Constantine to an asylum in Ravenscar and set him on his path of magical warfare against the darkness. After being mysteriously guided to Guadalupe's Bar, John makes an intimate encounter with a seductive being named 'Angela' (Rachel Kimsey), the self-titled Queen of Angels and living embodiment of the psyche of the city itself who asks for his help against Nergal but has in fact made a pact with him and is willing to allow his schemes so long as the five competitor demons are slain. Constantine finds himself having to summon the aid of Mictlantecuhtli (Rick D. Wasserman), the Aztec death god, as part of a stratagem to wipe out the daemonic quintet before having to make a huge sacrifice in order to free Trish's soul from Nergal's clutches. I don't want to go too in depth with spoilers or anything - I highly recommend that anyone interested in the character and/or subject matter check it out themselves. For a comic company who've spent years floundering behind Marvel on the live action big screen, DC have been working absolute wonders in the animated medium. This is another good 'un. In summation - much better and far less disappointing than Penny Dreadful: City of Angels as far as franchise revisits go.

King of the Rocket Men, Chapters Ten to Twelve (Fred C. Brannon, 1949)

 Chapter Ten: The Deadly Fog

...and we get another turn by our old friend the reprise reprieve, as the recap shows us that as Rocket Man shuttles into Durken's decimator death trap, he regains his consciousness and footing enough to leap to safety between Durken taking a dive and the bomb-clock striking ten and taking the truck to bits.  I know it's a trope I need to deal with and get over, but grrrr.

Shrugging off his umpteenth near death experience, Jeff abandons pursuit of the three fugitives (say, that would make a good name for a movie!) and junior birdmans his way back to the cave lab, whereupon he's surprised mid-unmaking by Burt; the wary PR guru making a very gee-whiz "So you were the Rocket Man all the time!" exclamation upon discovering confirmation of the totally bleeding obvious.  Jeff decides to fill Winslow in, prompting a clip show flashback montage from previous chapters of the serial.  This is very much 'The One With The Backstory Of Rocket Man' in Friends parlance, King providing brief bits of narration over the older footage and prompting variations of "So that's what happened!" from Burt as he's gradually brought up to speed.  Practical and probably necessary as a glimpsed once to probably never be seen again part of a thirteen-week run in the pre-video age, but not the best episode to sit through when watching the serial in quicker succession.

The duo do though come to the conclusion that Dr Vulcan is definitely a choice between Professor Bryant (I. Stanford Jolley) and Dr Graffner (Marshall Bradford), and that the villain has been seated at their conference table alongside them the whole time, being part of all their top secret discussions and planning.  Realising that either of their eminent suspects is more than capable of shielding the thromium waves of the decimator and therefore making it impossible to track, they know that time is of the essence in capturing the real Vulcan before he can utilise the device.  Meanwhile, the sinister Vulcan plots in the shadows and informs Durken that he plans to deal with Jeff King once and for all and has to this end arranged for King to take a trip into town on a decoy rendezvous.  As King takes a taxi for his appointment at the Oasis Hotel with Professor Moore on"a matter of vital importance" the cab driver henchman leaps from the moving vehicle, leaving King locked inside as Vulcan taunts him via the radio speaker that he is guiding the car via remote control - as the car fills with clouds of gas - on Jeff's "last ride" and that "even the Rocket Man cannot help you now"...

Chapter Eleven: Secret of Dr Vulcan

...and the reprise reprieve strikes yet again, as we are shown this time how after Jeff had turned down an offer from Glenda and Burt to drive him to his destination Ms Thomas had glanced back to see the cab driver's dive and the pair raced back to their car to take off in hot pursuit of the hackney cab of death.  As the fumes consume Jeff to his doom, Glenda pulls her car alongside the taxi long enough for burly Burt to take the leap between moving vehicles, gain access to the driver's seat and pull over.  As the gasping and coughing King is pulled from the "gas chamber on wheels" as Glenda so colourfully puts it, the consternated Vulcan and Durken watch on as Jeff asserts that their cunning opponent may have finally overplayed his hand - he recognised the smell of the gas as Fuminol: a rocket fuel that will lead them to whomever placed an order for the substance and thus trace Dr Vulcan.  Durken is duly dispatched by his dire director to the Hunter Chemicals factory in order to get there before the heroic trio and destroy all records of the Fuminol purchase order.

As Jeff, Glenda and Burt arrive at the Hunter plant, they are just in the nick of time to catch Durken and a confederate about to leave - leading to the regulation two-fisted punch up that quickly becomes a gunfight.  In the yards of a chemical plant, firing bullets from behind and towards various crates and canisters.  man, these guys really are harbouring a wish for self-immolation.  Good thing Glenda decided to stay in the safety of her car.

Realising that they can't make it back to their own getaway car, Durken and his henchdude decide to hijack the nearest truck and make a break for it with an uninvited passenger as Burt makes his second heroic traffic leap of the day and boards the back of the lorry as the villains pull away and leaving Jeff and Glenda to resort to a vehicular pursuit.  As they race to catch up, though, Burt is swiftly overpowered and Durken lights the incriminating purchase papers on fire before untrussing the canvas roof of the truck so that it flies off in the window and blows onto the windscreen of Glenda's car - blinding her and King and causing the car to veer over the side of the road and into the river below...

...and just when I'm about to sigh and moan about yet another cliffhanger followed by a "but you didn't see this!" resolution, that isn't the end of the episode, and we see King and Ms Thomas swimming to the surface and safety.  Elsewhere, Vulcan receives the glad tidings that the papers have been disposed of, but also the news that his lackeys have Burt Winslow captive.  Spurning the request that Burt be dispatched, Vulcan seems delighted and remarks that he could be of great use as live bait for King, and contacts Jeff with the offer of a meeting if he values his friend's life.  Placing the hog-tied and gagged Burt in a room, the door of which his been rigged with machinery to deliver a massive volt shocking surprise to anyone who enters via that portal, Vulcan and his goons await King's arrival.  But Jeff has donned the rocket suit in order to jet to the assignation early, and enters in through the window (intruder window!) to be confronted by the villain face to face.  As Bryant gloats that he took the name of Vulcan to symbolise his dreams of conquest through "the power of steel" he forces our hero at gunpoint back towards the electrified entrance... 

Last Chapter: Wave of Disaster

...and just as he is about to step between the electrical arc machines, Burt manages to use his freed feet to kick the unnamed (his shirt may even be red for the all the monochrome film tells me) co-henchmen straight past him into the sparks of death, allowing him to leap to safety.  Untying Burt as Vulcan and Durken flee the scene, Jeff determines to alert the authorities as to Bryant's identity and get them to put out a dragnet (Dunn-de-dun-dun - just the facts, ma'am) and Burt informs him that he overheard their plans to utilise the decimator in some fantastical supervillain extortion plot involving the city of New York.  Ransacking the place, they find a receipt for a plane ticket bought by Bryant direct to the city that never sleeps and fear that they may already be too late.

Repairing to Science Associates' administration building, the pair along with Glenda discover that the diabolical duo took off in a small plane heading for the Big Apple, and determine that the authorities there must be warned, and that they might just make it there ahead of the villains using an airliner.  Soaring into NYC, they convince the chairman of the civil defence committee to heed their dire warnings about a weapon that can reduce mountains of stone into running rivers of molten lava just as Dr Vulcan's ransom demand over the city for one beellion dollars (honestly, post-Austin Powers, is there any other way to be able to hear a line like that?) arrives.  Refusing to give in to the blackmail demands of a madman, the councilman determines to wield the entire police force to discover Vulcan's lair.

Landing on his secret hideaway on Fisherman's Island, 300 miles out from New York harbour, Bryant/Vulcan trains the decimator upon the undersea geological faultline between the island and the city, ready to unleash the molten fury of the ocean bed if his demand is not met by 2 P.M.  As time ticks, the police sweep of the city has failed to find any trace and - his ransom unpaid - Vulcan fires the device.  As the resultant underwater earthquake sends a tsunami rolling inland, the panicking authorities order an emergency evacuation of the city, directing the fleeing inhabitants to head to the Westchester hills.  As the incoming wave of destruction causes first the shoreline and then the city's mighty skyscrapers to buckle and fall in an impressive model effects sequence*, Jeff determines Vulcan's likely location upon the island and dons the rocket pack to jet there ahead of the fleet of bomber planes dispatched in a last-ditch attempt to destroy the decimating device.  Taking out first the villains and then the machine (with his trusty ray gun), King takes off again just in time as Vulcan's lair is blown to smithereens and flies from the exploding wreckage back towards the major city whose shoreline and skyline has, like the sky that Ben E. King looked upon, crumbled and fallen into the sea.  Which is a bit bleak, really. 

*A note on the NYC destruction sequences: this was footage originally filmed back in 1933 for the Pre-Code RKO disaster film Deluge.  Republic had purchased the footage (not the entire movie, just the model effects sequences) for use in their own works, and the scenes were incorporated into the self-explanatory 1939 movie S.O.S. Tidal Wave as well as the 1941 serial Dick Tracy vs Crime Inc and eventually this serial.  Not many years later, Deluge was considered a lost film and these effects sequences were all that remained.  Happily though for those of us who mourn the very existence of the concept of lost films, an Italian-dubbed print of the picture was discovered in the 1980s in the basement of a house belonging to Italian exploitation film director Luigi Cozzi.  The subsequent subtitled re-release would have been marvel enough, but as recently as 2016 a nitrate negative of the film with its original English language soundtrack was located in France and the movie was fully restored and released the following year.  Now there's a happy ending. 

The Fantastic Four (Oley Sassone, 1994)

Marty Langford's Doomed!: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four is a fascinating documentary that gives a glimpse into the behind the scenes shenanigans and Machiavellian escapades that can bury a motion picture - much to the understandable chagrin of all the people (both cast and crew) who put the hard work and time into creating a film that would be sabotaged by higher-ups sucking on the schlong of Mammon.

When German producer Bernd Eichinger, head of New Constantin Films, acquired the rights from marvel Comics to make a movie of The Fantastic Four, he had until the end of 1992 to begin physical production before his option on the property lapsed.  Hurriedly shopping the project around some of the cheaper/lower-end studios such as Lloyd Kaufman's Troma (Kaufman ultimately balking at the thought of the fan uproar at anything they'd be able to put out for the stipulated co-production budget of $1 million) before reaching a deal with the legendarily able to put out a film with a weekend and some spare change Roger Corman of Concorde/New Horizons.  A similar situation was simultaneously unfurling across the pond, where Peter Litten and George Dugdale were frantically trying to get production started on their long-gestating Doctor Who film (their production house going through various name changes from Coast-to-Coast to Green Light to God knows what between 1988 and 1994) before the rights reverted to the BBC.  Unlike Litten & Dugdale, who were unable to make the prescribed start of filming date, Corman's low budget powerhouse managed to get a draft script written, undertake a frantic casting process and assemble a crew by cut-off point of December 1992; the main shoot would be over before the end of January 1993 with only a very brief break for Christmas.

Director Oley Sassone had previously shot music videos for acts such as Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Juice Newton, Wang Chung and Mr Mister (including the classic [sic] 'Broken Wings') before helming his debut feature with 1992's Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight starring kickboxing champ Don 'The Dragon' Wilson and Shaft himself Richard Roundtree.

Starring Alex Hyde-White (the time travelling star of the 1986 classic Biggles: Adventures in Time) as Reed Richards, Rebecca Staab (who has a long list of credits, but who I best know as the ill-fated Daphne Collins in the early '90s re-version of Dan Curtis' goth opera Dark Shadows [on the subject of which: RIP Barnabas Mk II Ben Cross; you were also great as Other Sarek in the 2009 Star Trek and Other Running Bloke in Chariots of Fire) as Susan Storm, Jay Underwood (the titular Boy Who Could Fly from the '80s) as Johnny "Flame On!" Storm and Michael Bailey Smith (who would inherit the role of the cannibalistic Pluto from pop-eyed icon Michael Berryman for the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes) as Ben Grimm, the film charts the youthful university-set exploits of science boffin Richards and his best frenemy and rival Victor von Doom (Joseph Culp, son of veteran thesp Robert Culp) as they strive to capture and harness the energy of a spacial phenomenon known as Colossus ("A radioactive comet-like energy source travelling in ten-year orbits", as their professor played by George Gaynes - Police Academy's Commandant Lassard himself - puts it).

When the attempt goes haywire causing Victor to absorb a ..uh... colossal amount of mysterious space radiation that also burns him into a human cinder and his 'remains' go missing from the hospital morgue - spirited away by his Latverian henchmen and rebuilt inside a metallic armoured suit as the throne-dwelling supervillain Doctor Doom - Reed devotes the next decade to re-enacting the experiment and getting it right in the name of the friend he believes to have perished.  Deciding this time to go to Colossus rather than trying to siphon its energies Earthward, Richards takes his three-man, one-woman crew on a shuttle ride into orbit where all four of them find themselves bathed in the strange radiation.  Reed becomes the super-elasticated Mr Fantastic, Sue the Invisible Woman with the abilities to vanish and generate unseen force fields, Johnny the pyrokinetic propensity to become a twisted firestarter and turn into an anthropomorphic flame named the Human Torch, and Ben is transformed into the monstrous craggy rock hominid the Thing (Carl Ciarfalio in an animatronic suit that's not half bad for the era and budget - it's features are certainly expressive and it's actually a physical presence rather than today's CGI).

Using their new-found powers, the team must stay together in order to battle not only the megalomaniac plots of Doom (Culp giving a splendidly melodramatic performance that projects to the back row through the inexpressive metal mask) but also the mole man-like Jeweler (Ian Trigger, like a stunted cross betwixt Leprechaun and Freddy Krueger) and his abduction designs upon Ben's blind sculptress girlfriend Alicia Masters (Kat Green).  Let's say it all together: "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!"

Indeed.

The hard work was to be undone by Marvel movie honcho Avi Arad and executive producer Bernd Eichinger, who made a deal over the heads of the production team to cease and desist all publicity and bury the flick in favour of doing multi-million bucks business with Twentieth Century Fox and Chris Columbus.  The cast, led by Hyde-White, had been doing rounds of publicity on the convention circuits on their own dime when the edict came down from above to stop and the anticipated premiere at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota was promptly cancelled.  The finished prints of the film - which had only been completed by Sassone and editor Glenn Garland sneakily completing the editing themselves whilst working on a subsequent project - were seized (Sassone and Garlnd's illicit night time torchlit prowl around the production facility to try and grab the reels before they vanished being too late and finding them already gone) and presumably languish somewhere deep in the Fox vault, Wicker Man-reminiscent rumours of the cans being buried somewhere in Kentucky persisting.

Their devious deal done, Fox and Eichinger would take just over a decade to put out their preferred version of the film, that thing with Jessica Alba as Sue and the bloke from Nip/Tuck as Doom that cost a hundred times more and is a tenth as enjoyable, and after the sequel to that effort the property would be rebooted once again in the absolutely disastrous 2015 omnifuckery hallucinated by Josh Trank.

It may be a low bar to vault, but of the four (to date) Fantastic Four movies, the early '90s flick is by far the most enjoyable and the one most faithful to the spirit of the Lee and Kirby comics.  For my money, anyway.  Hopefully one day some coke-addled exec will see a flash of sense and get the negatives dusted down and cleaned up.  With luck, they can involve the still-enthusiastic Sassone and maybe spruce up the edits, effects and vocal dubs to the standard that they always should have been.  Get it out there.  It's doing nobody any good mouldering in a vault.  I can buy the Reb Brown Captain America films and the Peter Hooten Dr Strange, why can't I see this?

Sod Tim Story, and definitely sod Trank.

#ReleaseTheSassoneCut

Werewolf (David Hemmings, 1987)

"There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe in flying saucers, and those who don't."

The video age of the 1980s and early '90s was a great time to grow up as a fan of horror, fantasy, and science fiction movies.  The ongoing sagas of the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Howling and Hellraiser series were a constant stream of fear and thrills for one thing, and now and then another thing would pop up unexpectedly (and I don't just mean my private parts whilst on public transport, though I did have to carry my rucksack in front of me a lot in my early hormonal teens).  Way back in the hazy mists of the late Nineteen Haties, I embarked upon my usual crusade to the video shop (how arcane!) and espied a cover entitled merely Werewolf.  As one of my favourite films as a child was John Landis' An American Werewolf in London (my parents had a strange attitude towards what constituted appropriate viewing for a five year old), and i'd seen Joe Dante's The Howling as well as stuff like the Stephen King adaptation Silver Bullet, another lycanthropic legend seemed logical.  Also, the fact that the font in which the title was emblazoned on the cover was quite like the recently-released (we're talking 1990, here, I was only ten or eleven) Patrick Swayze vehicle Ghost made me think that perhaps this was part of a franchise - maybe there would be a movie next year called Vampire with similarly elongated lettering upon it's frontage.

I had no idea that I was watching anything other than a movie, rather than the pilot episode of a TV series - helmed by David Hemmings, former star of Antonioni's Blow Up (1966) and Argento's Profundo Rosso / Deep Red (1975), turned director of many a television piece from Follyfoot (1973) to Quantum Leap (1989-1993) - but it worked in of itself, much like the pilot movie of the Bill Bixby The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982), and it would appear on first glance the subsequent series would share many similarities.

Created and written by the rather appropriately-named Frank Lupo (ex of The A-Team),  our story begins in the very Eighties locale of the Fantasia nightclub wherein the big haired and rolled-up sleeves clientele are boogieing the night away to 'Silent Running' by Mike and the Mechanics when an even scarier presence is wending its way between them.  From a subjective tracking camera P.O.V. shot we see the killer as he eyes up his prospective victims, as it flashes between normal vision and a sort of werewolf-vision; less the thick red filter of Legend of the Werewolf's werewolf-cam and closer to a hazy heat-seeking Predator.  As the unseen lycanthrope scopes out the bar, we are treated to our first sighting of his hand - the palm cross-crossed with scar tissue in the form of a five-pointed star, a pentagram which quickly begins to bleed (don't pick at your scabs, kids).  Outside in the car park at midnight (that should be the title of something), a yuppie couple wend their loved-up way to their overpriced rollerskate of a vehicle to head back home for some doubtless coke-fuelled lovin' when our wolfman, now transformed and in the mood for some carnivorous lunar activities, decided to make three a crowd and tears both them and their car asunder.

The next morning, we flash to the lifestyles of the rich and idle as we are introduced to our protagonist Eric Cord (U.S. soap opera veteran John J. York a.k.a. Mac Scorpio), who since being orphaned at a young age has been living with the well to do Nichols family and spends most of his free time lounging in their swimming pool and pursuing the lovely Kelly (Michelle Johnson, who would soon after star in Anthony Hickox' 1988 Waxwork, and go on to co-star in Dr Giggles and Death Becomes Her), sister of his best friend and also sort of semi-adopted sister.  Incest for the wincest!  Not eager to inform Mr Nichols that he's knocking boots with his precious daughter, Eric ducks out of staying for dinner to head off to the flat he now shares with Kelly's brother Ted (keep it in the family, yeah?) and heads there in his roll-top convertible as evening falls listening to Timbuk 3's '(The Future's So Bright) I Gotta Wear Shades'.  Because it is the 1980s.  Arriving to find all the lights off in the apartment and Ted (a brilliantly nervous and twitchy performance from Raphael Sbarge) sitting in the darkness loading a revolver, Eric is understandably a bit worried and perplexed.  Begging his friend to tie his to a chair and keep him from leaving before midnight, Ted explains that the gun contains silver bullets and that not only is he a werewolf and responsible for the recent spate of killings in town, but that he wants Eric to kill him - something that he insists to his incredulous pal that he will be willing to do once he sees what he becomes.

As time ticks past, the restrained Ted tells his tale: that when working a summer job on a trawler for a Captain Janos Skorzeny (a nice reference there for the genre conversant - that being the name of the vampire villain of the 1972 Kolchak pilot movie The Night Stalker) he was attacked by a strange animal when heading homeward at night through the docks: 

"I'm seeing these eyes - these yellow... demon eyes."

After recovering from the creature's assault, Ted has slowly come to understand what he now is and - having failed to trace the wolf that bit him, the originator of the lycanthropic bloodline - has resorted to ending it all.  Eric obviously doesn't believe a word of this, but round midnight (Miles Davis title drop!) something comes over brother Theodore and a startling metamorphosis occurs.  Splitting out of his clothing Hulk-style and easily shredding the ties that bind him, Ted his now a huge bear-sized bipedal wolf that attacks his roommate and Eric, after sustaining a gnawing lovebite on the shoulder, gives in to  the dying wish for suicide by friend (as opposed to cop) and uses the silver bullets.  When the commotion brings the neighbours from the adjoining apartments inquiring, the sight of a bloodstained Eric holding a gun and his naked deceased flatmate sprawled on the floor are obviously grounds for suspicion and the injured party finds himself under arrest for murder.  

After suffering some American Werewolf-style hallucinatory nightmares in his hospital bed, Cord is convinced that he is now the bearer of the curse.  Even though his slaying of her brother has obviously damaged the already awkward relationship with Kelly and her father, she comes to Eric - who has managed to secure bail thanks to an aggravatingly quippy bondsman played by Ethan Phillips (Star Trek's very own Jar-Jar Binks Neelix) - with an audio cassette Ted mailed to her before his death confessing his story to her and his plan to get Eric to kill him.  I wonder what's on the other side of the tape?  Probably 'Somewhere In My Heart' by Aztec Camera or Prefab Sprout's 'King of Rock 'n' Roll'.  Anyway, this is enough for Kelly to decide to try and help Eric and they leave town to track down Captain Skorzeny (looming 6'5'' Western star Chuck Connors) whom they have determined to be the O.G. progenitor werewolf.  However, this entails skipping bail and missing a court date and so bounty hunter Alamo Joe Rogan (Lance LeGault), rather non-politically correctly referred to as "the Indian" despite only being part Native American, is dispatched on their trail. 

When the pair manage to locate the creepy one-eyed Skorzeny, the realisation that it is going to be the night of transformation (the changes in this mythos not being predicated on the cycle of the full moon, but more random) causes Eric and Kelly to head to the nearest Big Six Motel where she ties him up in the bathtub (kinky stuff again) only for the predatory Skorzeny to swoop in and snatch her before the powerless Eric's eyes - whisking her away to his nearby forest cabin-cum-lunchplace, decorated with the skulls and remains of his previous victims.  Alamo Joe appears just as night falls and failing to listen to his helpless and hog-tied bounty's protestations about a kidnapped girl throws Cord into his van to take back to town where a cell's waiting for him.  However, the change overcomes Eric and as the beast within emerges he breaks his bonds and tears his way out of the hunter's truck to head off to rescue his mate and take on the evil alpha male.  Arriving just as Skorzeny too transforms before the traumatised valley princess - a truly creepy transition involving tearing away his own skin a la Neil Jordan's Company of Wolves - the pair of canis lupus sapiens duke it out in a duel of tooth and claw which ends only when an upturned lantern sets the cabin ablaze.

Waking in the morning amidst the wrecking, Eric determines that both Kelly is safe (if shellshocked by her recent ordeals) and that Skorzeny has got away - paving the way for a future in which he hunts his own One-Armed Man in the form of a one-eyes werewolf whilst a fugitive from the law himself, with a relentless lawman (his very own Sam Gerard) on his tail.  Setting up a sadly short-lived (a further 28 half-hour episodes followed this full length pilot) Fugitive-cum-Incredible Hulk TV series, this is a decent little werewolf film in its own right.  Passing by breezily at under 90 minutes its good recommended fun for any connoisseur of those things that walk (whether on two legs or four) when the wolfbane blooms and the moon is full and bright.  Or, you know, whenever you get a pentagonal scar on your hand that starts bleeding.  That works too.

King of the Rocket Men, Chapters Seven to Nine (Fred C. Brannon, 1949)

 Chapter Seven: Molten Menace

...and yet, in another of those "well, you just didn't see this last time" twists that I so know and love (like a mutant stepchild kept in the attic), we see that Jeff recovered from the gunshot long enough to leap from the truck inside the warehouse just before the driverless vehicle caroomed - yes, that's a word - to its doom.  Happy that at least Vulcan didn't manage to get his hands on the device which now languishes at the bottom of the river, Jeff and Prof. Millard head back to the cave where after laughing that Dirken must now be convinced that King is not the Rocket Man (maybe that was the title of Tristram Coffin's first volume of autobiography, a la Leonard Nimoy's I Am Not Spock) Millard bemoans that it's the superior intellect of the malignant Vulcan that is keeping him languishing in this subterranean haven and that finding Vulcan's weakness must be their priority.  As Millard has finally completed his work of the experimental sonic decimator - which he demonstrates by utilising its beam of 'thromium waves' to melt a thick bar of manganese steel, "One of the hardest metals we know" - they decide that the time will soon be right to try and draw Vulcan out using the machine as bait.  But first, suggests Jeff, the time has come to take Burt and Glenda into their confidence.

Jeff tells his friends the truth and arranges for them to take his completed X-22 launcher to the Rocket Cave (which, we discover, is located "near Hermit Mountain") while he, anticipating being tailed by Dirken and his hoods, will head in the opposite direction.  However, the wily Vulcan intercepts a radio transmission from King's car transceiver to Millard and orders his goons to turn around and trace the cave.  As Winslow and Ms Thomas arrive with the firing mechanism, Millard has scarcely just incorporated it into the decimator when Dirken and his men arrive to seize what is now "one of the most deadly machines ever devised".  As Jeff busts the rocket suit out from the boot of the car and jets to the cave, a struggle with the villains results in the decimator being activated and the haywire machine causing the inner walls of the cavern to begin melting into running lava...

Chapter Eight: Suicide Flight

...and as Millard struggles valiantly with the out of control device, Jeff rescues Burt and Glenda from their bonds and they flee down the cavern corridors pursued by the molten magma flow.  Spotting an open air shaft in the side of the mountain (what is this, a pyramid or something?), Rocket Man ushers his charges through the tunnel and they break on through to the other side into the open air as the bubbling lava stream sweeps through the caves.

 Back at Science Associates Administration, Jeff confesses to the rest of the board that yes, he knew that Millard has survived the initial attempt on his life by Dr Vulcan and that he had kept his secret while he worked underground (quite literally) to complete his life's work.  His fellows show understanding, but comment that it was all for nought as the decimator has now been destroyed - to which King declares that as he had worked alongside Millard in the artefact's development he may be able to recreate it.  This gets his fellow members to stand to attention (that gag will never get old, because I will never grow up), and many of them offer and assistance and expertise that he may require in making the machine.  Thanking the group, he says that he will be in contact should he require anything and as the meeting breaks up moves to place the designs for the decimator in the office safe.  When Burt comes over and asks whether he thinks it wise to leave the plans here, King declares that it's the safest place that he can think of loud enough for any and all of the departing experts to overhear.

When later that evening a shadowy behatted figure makes its way into the room, opens the safe (constantly muttering the combination as if 'twere an incantation) and removes the plans, Jeff and Burt pounce on him to find that it is Dr Von Strum.  As they begin to interrogate the suspected villain, they begin to realise that the terrified Teuton is under the influence of a malign mesmerism and has no idea why he was there or what had befallen him beforehand.  Jeff resolves to pursue the only clue that they have: Von Strum's only memory is to deliver the papers to an address at Mink Shoals (Or: considering the whole enemy destroying a country from within angle - Moseley Shoals?  Eh?  Eh?  Amirite?  Tell me why does the river run red?).

Leaving the recovering Von Strum at Glenda's apartment to recuperate and recover his wits in the care of Glenda and Burt, King locates the assigned address and finds a house on a lonely road wherein Durkin dwells.  Disappointed to find the monkey rather than the organ grinder himself, Jeff gets into one of his regulation two-fisted dust-ups but comes off second best as Durkin flees with the information that Von Strum lives and that Dr Vulcan is compromised.  Tracing the errant professor to Ms Thomas' building, Vulcan decrees that Von Strum must be destroyed before his memory returns and he can finger the Vulcan (if you're having bad thoughts about T'Pol right now, you're a very naughty nerd).

Bursting into the apartment and overpowering Burt, Durkin and his co-conspirators prepare to execute the inhabitants when a roaring of engines alerts them to Rocket Man's rapid approach.  As the airborne ace jets towards the windows, the gunmen level their weapons at the approaching target and open fire...

Chapter Nine: Ten Seconds to Live

...yet somehow our hero manages to outmanoeuvre the oncoming hail of bullets and lands on Glenda's balcony.  Realising that the jig is up, Durkin and his men hare out through the apartment door pausing only to pump a couple of slugs into the prone Professor Von Strum.  As Rocket Man makes his entrance onto the scene of the crime Bury is already checking the fallen scientist's vitals and pronounces him dead.

"I'm sorry," says our tardy hero flatly over the corpse.  "If I could only have gotten here sooner, I might have prevented this."

Oh, you think?!?

Back at S.A. H.Q. (which in my head is pronounced exactly the way that the CPU says "SARK!" in Tron), King also has to face the quite correct accusations of the board when the coroner's verdict of homicide comes in and his co-workers opine that had he let some of them in on his plans Dr Vulcan may not have made such a gambit and Von Strum might still be alive.  Acquiescing, Jeff states that in future he will report any and all further progress with regards to the decimator - adding as an aside to Burt after the meeting breaks up that they might be surprised just how soon that may be.

At the new Rocket Cave (the original having been destroyed by magma), Jeff shows Burt the completed decimator but seems unsure as to whether it can be safely tested without devising some kind of shielding - as the thromium may be detectable even beneath the ground.  Meanwhile, Dr Vulcan is unveiling his own device to Durkin (tee hee): a machine that can track the thromium waves from a distance.  He gives the tracer to Durkin and instructs him to locate the secret hideout and the decimator.  When Durkin's mooching around the entrance sets of a proximity alarm, Jeff and Burt make their way outside just in time to see one of Durkin's confederates zooming away on a motorcycle.  Falling for the decoy they hop in the car and head off in hot pursuit, tailing the biker around the mountain road until King gets off a well-aimed gunshot that propels the fleeing felon over the side of the cliff to his certain doom.  Our hero once again, ladies and gentlemen.

As Killer King and his accomplice return to the cave, they realise they've been had when they find the decimator predictably gone.  Checking the secret camera hidden outside, they get a good look at the getaway van that the villains have mounted the errant device inside and Jeff changes into the rocket suit to head heavenward to give chase.  Reaching their rendezvous with another of Vulcan's goons, Durkin and his pal load the machine from the van into another car before setting a bomb with a ten-second fuse in the van.  As Rocket Man arrives and enters the truck hoping to find his invention, the vehicle is blown to smithereens...

Cannibal Apocalypse ([a.ka. Apocalypse Domani] Antonio Margheriti, 1980)

RIP John Saxon

The world of genre cinema lost a legend recently with the sad passing of John Saxon's shade beyond the veil.  Though he'll be forever remembered for the role of Nancy's dad in Wes Craven's seminal frightfest A  Nightmare on Elm Street and Bob Clark's pioneering slasher Black Christmas - alongside early appearances in horror/sci-fi flicks like John Gilling's 1965 The Night Caller (a.k.a. Night Caller from Outer Space) and Curtis Harrington's Martian vampire tale Queen of Blood the following year - the artist formerly known as Carmine Orrico graced many Italian exploitation movies with his presence, working with greats such as Mario Bava (The Girl Who Knew Too Much, a.k.a. The Evil Eye, 1963) and Dario Argento (Tenebrae, 1982).

Betwixt these twain, Saxon worked with spaghetti splatter maestro Antonio Margheriti (who was operating under his usual nom de guerre of Anthony Dawson - not to be mistaken for the Dr. No-serving British character actor of the same name) on the notorious Cannibal Apocalypse (alias Apocalypse Domani: literally Apocalypse Tomorrow, in an amusing Coppola-baiting move; alias Cannibals in the Streets; alias Invasion of the Flesh Hunters), one of the DPP's infamous "Video Nasties" rounded up by the likes of professional God-bothering busybody Mary Whitehouse and idiotic Tory Graham Bright.  Now, since I were but a wee youth i've been fascinated with horror movies, and the Nasties in particular: it's the sweet tang of the forbidden, combined with a natural inclination toward the contrary which has always made me want to do anything The Authorities tell me not to.  Which explains all the killings, probably.  Anyway, over the years i've managed to see quite a few films on the DPP's famous list - many of them now freely available and uncut, and leaving wondering what all the panic from the 'moral' minority was about in the first place - and the only one that I definitely don't want to see again is Ruggero Deodato's infamous 1980 real animal slaughter fest Cannibal Holocaust.  Seen it once, never want to see it again.  We've all got a line we've got to draw somewhere, right?

So it was with a slight bit of trepidation that I approached its fellow Italian cannibal stablemate Cannibal Apocalypse.  

The screenplay, by reliable Italian splatter stalwart Dardano Sachetti, begins back in the 'Nam a green beret Captain Norman Hopper (Saxon) braves hails of bullets and shards of spiced-in stock footage (the grainy 16mm film of helicopters sticking out like much more of a sore thumb on a cleaned-up Blu-Ray than it would have done on an original grittier grindhouse print in 1980) on his mission to rescue two of his fellow soldiers who've been captured by the Viet Cong.  Fighting his way through explosions and insurgents, Hopper locates his home town boys - Tom Thompson, played by Tony King, and the amusingly-named Charlie Bukowski played by one of sleaze cinema's all time heroes Giovanni Lombardo Radice under his John Morghen pseudonym.  Bukowski and Thompson have been held down a bamboo-barred pit, an oubliette of starvation wherein they have been left without food for a tortuous amount of time.  When during the raid-cum-jailbreak one of the female Vietnamese plunges into the prison pit (on fire), the starving men eagerly pounce upon her and feast upon her flesh.  Nothing like having a cooked meal delivered to you, I guess.  As Hooper reaches down into the hole to rescue the men, Thompson sinks his teeth into the Captain's arm - 

- only for Hooper to awaken in his own bed alongside his wife Jane (Elizabeth Turner) years later, still haunted by the nightmares of his wartime trauma, the scars on his arm a constant and indelible reminder.  When Bukowski, on finally being released from the Hospital for Nervous Disorders onto the streets of Atlanta, gets in touch with his old war buddy and reaches out to meet up with each other Hopper demurs - the sound of Charlie's voice triggering him with flashbacks and giving him strange carnal urgings for the flesh of his teenage neighbour Mary (Cinzia De Carolis, credited as the more Anglophonic Cindy Hamilton) and not in a sexy way.  Or maybe in a sexy way, if longpig is what strums your strings.  The dejected Bukowski, looking more and more like a cadaverous Travis Bickle, seeks haven in a cinema but the young couple getting frisky in the row in front of him provokes more than an annoyed tut: his suppressed cannibalistic desires suddenly overwhelm him and he takes a bite out of the girl's throat.

Fleeing the shocked theatre, Bukowski is pursued by an enraged mob of bikers and holes himself up in a grimy strip mall raiding the huntin' 'n' fishin' section to arm himself and get involved in a shootout that culminates in police siege.  As his ex C.O., Hopper volunteers to go in and negotiate a de-escalation of tensions and finally convinces Charlie to give himself up, but not before he gnaws into the hand of one of the police officers as he's bundled into the wagon ("GET IN THE BACK OF THE VAN!").  Taken off to be incarcerated in the nearest psych ward, Bukowski makes eye contact and implied psychic contact with a fellow inmate: his ex-pitmate Thompson.  When Thompson bites May Heatherly's Nurse Helen as he's strapped down to a gurney, the contagious and transmittable nature of the cannibal transmission becomes clear when she bites out the tongue of her co-worker (though she doesn't bite off his penis as per the original screenplay, the actress asking for the scene to be scaled back a wee bit) and sets Thompson and Bukowski free.

As the cannibal plague spreads, the police station also becomes a scene of gore when the bitten cop goes rabid and tears off the breast of a female officer and eats it before being dispatched by a bullet to the head.  When Hopper too finally gives in to his long suppressed hunger for human, he joins his war buddies and the nurse to go on the run.  After a communal bonding feast together on a garage mechanic who Bukowski gleefully carves for dinner with a power saw, the group (what's the collective term for cannibals?  A cluster?  A chowdown?) head down into the sewer system beneath the contaminated city.  Hooper's command authority enables him to somewhat rein in and marshal his 'troops' as they revert to their wartime mentality to survive - a cadre of veterans against the outside world, their perverse killer instincts brought back from the killing fields to the urban jungle marking them out as outsiders that the authorities must ultimately destroy.  Obviously I don't want to delve right into the climax for those who have yet too experience the movie, but caught like hungry rats amongst the actual hungry rats and cornered by the cops, this does not end well.

In summation, Cannibal Apocalypse is a much better film (better acted, better directed, better budgeted) than i'd expected.  I suppose the real grime is to come when I finally subject myself to stuff like Cannibal Ferox.  I'll get round to that one day, probably.  But here we have something approaching a meditation (albeit a deliciously exploitative one) on the after effects of war, post-traumatic stress and the outsider in society wrapped in a bow of celluloid stitched together from Cronenberg's Rabid, Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Cimino's The Deer Hunter.

Plus, y' know, blood and guts and stuff.

Don't take as long as I did to actually get around to watching it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Episode One 'Second Contact' (Barry J. Kelly, 2020)

Obviously, ahead may well lie spoilers for anyone who's not seen it yet...

After the long dark drought of any televisual Trek in the great Ginnungagap between Enterprise's end in 2005 and the DISCO getting started in 2017 (the big screen JJverse trilogy [which looks not to be expanding further than the three, sadly, in their perverse I: good, II: shit, III: good reversal of the commonly accepted ranking of ST movies] notwithstanding) now comes the deluge.  We've had two - soon to be three - seasons of Discovery, the second of which set up the forthcoming Pike-centric Strange New Worlds, the first season of Picard, a brace of the anthological minisodes (oh that word, what have you done to my brain, fandom?) Short Treks, a prospective Section 31 show covering the darker sides of Federation espionage and now the animated series Lower Decks.

As only the second animated venture into the Great Bird's galaxy after '73-'74's (there's almost a Connells song in there, but not quite) explanatorily-titled Star Trek: the Animated Series, and the first to have input from a writer best known for comedy rather than drama - the show's creator being Mike McMahan of Rick & Morty - I suspect that I wasn't the only one looking slightly askance at this when it was first announced.  I dig Rick & Morty myself, but knowing that there are a lot of reactionary and conservative members of fandom (witness some of the online rage at aspects of Discovery and Picard over the last few years) it was always going to be... interesting, so say the least.

Speaking of Connells - we've got one here, namely Jerry O'Connell of Sliders fame (or Joe's Apartment fame.  Or Kangaroo Jack fame if you really must) alongside other names I recognised such as Jack ('son of Dennis') Quaid off of The Boys and veteran voice actor Fred Tatasciore.  With animation from Titmouse studios (of The Venture Bros., among others) very much in the style of Rick & Morty, the episode opens with the starship USS Cerritos docked at Douglas Station which bears a great resemblance to Spacedock of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock - as well as Starbase 74 of the TNG instalment '11001001' - earning the episode its first "Squee!" from me.  Here we are introduced to our Lower Decks protagonists: the stickling and command hungry Brad Boimler (Quaid) and the can't-be-arsed fun times lovin' Beckett Marriner (Tawny Newsome, whom I was previously unaware of, but on the basis of such a fun performance i'll have to rectify that) who appear on first impression to be the Rimmer and Lister respectively of this craft - the bottom of the power ziggurat, doing the menial work that keeps the spaceship running, to the disinterest and non-recognition of the main crew.

After Marriner, drunk on Romulan ale ("You'd think it would be green - but it's BLUE!"), finishes her bout of roundly mocking Boimler for wanting to reach the echelons of command that she's been busted down from by accident stabbing him with a bat'leth belonging to a one-eyed Klingon general (Martok?!?) the pair make the acquaintance of new crew member D'Vana Tendi (Noel Wells)  an eager beaver ensign of the green-hued Orion race.  Sadly, she's wearing full uniform.  Darn. We're also introduced to our other main character, engineering ensign Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) who is adjusting to his newly-installed cybernetic head implant (like a cross between DISCO's Kayla Detmer and the full Airiam) which keeps fritzing into a Vulcan-like logic over emotion state and jeopardising his upcoming date with a sexy Trill coworker.

As these are our main characters, the main crew of the ship including Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) - who is [SPOILER ALERT!) Marriner's mother and constantly frustrated by her wayward rule-breaking daughter, butch Will Riker-alike First Officer Jack Ransom (O'Connell) and Chief Medical Officer T'Ana (Gillian Vigman) - who is of the feline Caitian race as a nod to TAS's Lt M'Ress, are very much in the background making the big decisions and causing the havoc that our lower decks guys have to deal with. This includes making Second Contact - the form-filling, box-ticking bureaucratic also-ran to the prestigious First Contact - with a race that i'm sure were called the Caladonians.  I may have misheard.  They certainly didn't look very Caledonian: i've met many inhabitants of Bonnie Scotland and none of them looked like these misshapen purple betusked characters.  The again, i've still never been tae Fintry.

While Ransom and other members of the command crew unwittingly bring a mutagenic pathogen aboard the Cerritos that leads to outbursts of murderous violence and attempted cannibalism, Boimler has to try and follow the captain's instruction to keep an eye on Marriner and make sure she doesn't deviate from Starfleet protocol as the pair are pursued through the alien jungle by an immense creature.  Meanwhile, Tendi is co-opted by Dr T'Ana to assist with the medical emergency, having to palpate the exposed heart of her immediate superior whilst a virtual zombie apocalypse of black bile-spewing infected occurs around her, and Rutherford's Dax-y date culminates in a spacewalk across the ship's outer hull to reach safety.  Chaotic and hilarious, Lower Decks had me alternating between squeeing at such fannish stuff as equipment designs and title fonts and cackling at the rapid-fire gags.  Quick-paced and full of character and humour, i'm sure stick in the mud devotees of such staid and beige stuff as Voyager will hate it.

Which, from me, is a big recommendation.

King of the Rocket Men, Chapters Four to Six (Fred C. Brannon, 1949)

Time for more Rocket Man!

Chapter Four: High Peril

...and Jeff returns to the realm of the senses just in time to get up off the floor and dodge outside, just before the chemist's shack goes up in a ball of flame, causing more harmacy than your usual pharmacy.

Back at the Science associates Administration building, Jeff and Burt Winslow discuss how the crooks gained entry - Jeff pointing out that they definitely had an inside man who gave them access.  Burt concurs, saying that "If Dr Millard were still alive" (which we, dear watchers, of course know that he is) he would say the same thing, as he was convinced that Dr Vulcan was a member of the board.  As they mull over which of professors Conway, Bryant, Graffner or Von Strum are the most likely candidate, the devious Dr Vulcan is listening in by hacking the radio in the boardroom.  I don't think even Hardison from Leverage could manage that level of techno-botch.

Via the power of flashback, Jeff recalls catching a glimpse of the hand of the inside operator and that he was wearing a distinctive signet ring.  Figuring that a criminal mastermind is unable to perform the fairly simple task of removing an item of jewellery from his person, he puts all his eggs in the basket case of using the ring to identify the culprit.  At the next day's S.A. general meeting, King asks his fellows to place their hands on the table so that he can inspect them - a somewhat strange request with which they comply.  Spotting the ring on the hand of Professor Conway, Jeff fingers him as the traitor; an accusation to which Conway responds by producing a pistol from under his hat (said titfer is resting on the table, so sadly it's not as ludicrous a scene as that may sound) and yells that Jeff is determined to pin Vulcan's misdeeds on anybody and that he isn't about to be made the scapegoat.  

Conway flees in his car, and King dons the Rocket Man suit to soar into the big blue in search of the errant academic only to lose track of him - as flyboy scans the rocky roads (not to be confused with pornographic performer Rocki Roads, nee Mary Ann Bradley, whom I have visually scanned a few times) the prof eludes him via the fairly simple method of parking 'neath a tree.  When the rocket recon proves a bust and he flies, off Conway heads to the nearest phone box and calls the shadowy Vulcan for help, being directed to the Hotel Mesa.  Here he meets with the man he was told will help him: Durken, who forces him at gunpoint to write and sign a confession taking the blame for all of Dr Vulcan's crimes.  When Rocket Man arrives through the tenth storey window and disarms Durken, Conway begins to spill the beans - telling him that the ring he wears is a marker of a scientific fraternity and that one other member of S.A. has one.  Just as he is about to confess Vulcan's secret identity, Durken knifes him in the back and knocks King out the window, sending him spiralling towards the pavement far below...

Chapter Five: Fatal Dive

...but his death dive past the rear projection screen is swiftly halted by igniting the rocket pack to re-orient himself and fly off as Durken has already fled from the scene of his crime.  Back at the Rocket Cave (i'm going to keep calling it that.  I am determined to make it A Thing), he consults with Millard and they come to the conclusion that the late patsy Conway (doesn't that sound like a dead Country and Western singer?  "The late Patsy Conway") was persuaded by the real Dr Vulcan to wear the ring to the meeting in order to take the fall.  Jeff realises that the only person at Science Associates with whom he's shared any of his intel is Burt Winslow, and begins to grow suspicious of the genial PR man.

Meanwhile, Burt and Glenda are listening to a radio bulletin which informs all that the police have accepted the confession found in the same apartment as Conway's corpse as genuine and are closing the books on the matter with the dead man painted as an agent in the employ of an unfriendly power.  Maybe he worked for Huawei or something (TOPICAL REFERENCE ALERT).  Glenda is adamant that Conway was the fall guy - and now I have that theme tune stuck in my head: "I'm the unknown stuntman..." - and reckons that Jeff King is the most likely suspect to be the genuine article, much to Burt's disbelief.

Back at S.A. HQ, Jeff locates the concealed transceiver in the boardroom's wireless and stages a phone call for the benefit of the listening-in villain to the effect that he is going to illicitly sell one of his own inventions - an experimental firing tube - at the old Barnes ranch at 4 PM that afternoon.  Also overhearing are Glenda and Burt, who have headed to the lab in order to ascertain Jeff's guilt or innocence and now think him at the very least a traitor in a misunderstanding of sitcom proportions.  Following him to the ranch with the intention of foiling King's un-American activity of selling his own property, the confused twosome wreck the plan to hand Durken a package containing not a firing tube but a homing device that would have made Jeff able to trace Vulcan's secret lair.  As the misguided Burt engages our hero in a dust-up in the barn, Glenda jumps into Durken's getaway plane with him as he takes off.  When Vulcan announces that he's detecting radio transmissions from the aircraft, Durken ditches the parcel out of the plane and attempts to make Glenda follow suit.  As Jeff, having finally managed to get a word in edgeways and persuade the punch happy Burt that he's a good guy, rockets to her aid, Durken grabs a parachute and bails out leaving the roving reporter and the airborne adventurer in a plane hurtling towards the rocks...

Chapter Six: Mystery of the Rocket Man

...but the quick-thinking hero manages to get Glenda strapped into the spare parachute and bundles her out of the aircraft before jetting towards Terra Firma himself, leaving the empty plane to sunder on the terrain below.

After ensuring our plucky gal reporter's safe landing and making sure he can make her way back to town, he returns to the Rocket Cave and commiserates with Millard that were it not for Burt's well-meaning but bullish interference they would know the identity of the dastardly Dr Vulcan by now.  Millard's pining to see the outside world including the sun and the moon, once again is tempered when King points out that until Vulcan is stopped knowledge of Millard's survival and of his work on the sonic decimator (now there's a coo, name for a sonic device - put that in your screwdriver and smoke it, Doctor!) must remain secret.

Durken's next communique to Dr Vulcan opens with the rueful henchman vowing revenge on Jeff King, to which the wily Vulcan replies by determining that King and the Rocket Man are one and the same (SPOILER: so are Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), and that they can deal with two birds with one stone.  Meanwhile, the board at S.A. are discussing the fact that the boardroom had been bugged by a confederate of Vulcan, causing the members to stir uneasily (heh) since an experimental drone is due to be transported from their Eastern laboratory - a drone that would be valuable to any foreign power.  Citing King's good record thus far as Head of Security, Jeff is put in charge of oversight of the weapon's conveyance.

Waylaid by kidnappers outside his apartment building, Jeff struggles valiantly against them but even n appearance by Burt (who had arranged to meet Jeff to discuss the transportation), who is as per usual more than willing to wade into a punch-up, proves futile as Winslow is knocked to the pavement and King is bundled at gunpoint into his own waiting vehicle to be whisked off.  Struggling to his feet and cradling his jaw, Burt heads for his car and attempts to give chase only to be shaken off when the kidnap car jumps a railroad crossing in front of an oncoming express train which cuts Winslow off until they're out of sight. Prisoner in his own car, King offers his captor a cigarette as a pretext to activating the modified car lighter - now a secret radio transmitter which relays their conversation back to Dr Millard.  Overhearing the information that the new weapon is about to fall into the hands of Vulcan, Millard dons the rocket suit himself and jets in the direction of the Eastern Electronics warehouse where Jeff is being forced to sign over the truck containing the drone to Durken.  Surprised and undelighted at seeing the arriving Rocket Man and Jeff King in the same place, Durken and his goons begin a gunfight inside the warehouse culminating in King commandeering the truck only to be shot through the windscreen by one of the goons and the lorry crashing out of the building and into the river below...

The Legend of King Arthur (Rodney Bennett, 1979)

"Bright Caliope, come from Helicon[...]  Tell, Caliope, so that I might tell again as you relate; (whence the Britons came, what the origin of their name was, whence noble Britain had its kings); who Arthur was, what his deeds were, what his end - and how an unlucky nation lost its kingdom."
 - William of Rennes, Gesta Regum Britanniae (The Deeds of the Kings of Britain), c. 1236

I think, looking backward into the deep dark abysm of time, that my fascination with Arthuriana began when I was ten years old.  1989's 26th season of the BBC's Doctor Who opened with the story 'Battlefield', which was a tale of knights from a parallel dimension led by the witch queen Morgaine (a delightfully evil turn from the great Jean Marsh) and my youthful self was entranced with words and phrases like "the Forest of Celyddon" redolent of some kind of ancient mysticism - much as I would be later that same season with 'The Curse of Fenric' and its lexicon that included "the Well of Hvergelmir" that sparked my equal preoccupation with Norse mythology.  Seriously, that year's run of Who led to lots of trips to the library and much poring over of tomes.  Educational as well as entertaining, indeed.  Positively Reithian, dear boy.

I soon found myself pretty much wearing out an off-air VHS recording of John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur through repeated viewings, under the spell of Nicol Williamson's enigmatic Merlin and Helen Mirren's seductively evil Morgan, and over the years have accrued an Arthurian library encompassing everything from Thomas Malory to T.H. White to Chretien de Troyes and large (and expensive!) volumes of the mediaeval Vulgate Cycle.  Oh how my bookshelves yawn and creak like the ancient oak tree of some grove-dwelling Druid.  Obviously, i've also seen a great many filmic and televisual versions of the tales, from the high fantasy of Excalibur and Knights of the Round Table (Richard Thorpe, 1953 - notable mainly for Ava Gardner's Guinevere and Gabriel Woolf - "Neil before the might of Sutekh" himself! - as Percival) to the mud-soaked post-Roman grit of the 1972 HTV series Arthur of the Britons (recommended to any fans of archive telly) and Antoine Fuqua's 2004 Clive Owen vehicle King Arthur (disappointing).  I haven't watched Guy Ritchie's 2017 King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, because it looks and sounds rubbish.  You've burned me too many times, Ritchie.  Beep, beep.

Anyway, one TV adaptation that until now i'd never seen (but long wanted to, ever since I read about it in Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of King Arthur, which is well worth the purchase price) is the 1979 BBC eight-part series The Legend of King Arthur.  Like the coming of the rex quondam, rexque futurus himself - the time is finally at hand!

Adapted in serial fashion (rather than the episodic 'adventure of the week' format of Arthur of the Britons) in eight parts by none other than Mr Adaptation himself Andrew Davies - long before he was spinning Machiavellian webs with Francis Urquhart or bestowing us with the vision of a wet Darcy (though, personally, i'll most remember [and never forgive] him for Badger Girl) - the story follows all of the main story beats of Le Morte d'Arthur.  Filmed in the '70s BBC standard format of videotape for interiors and film for exterior shooting, the production nevertheless does not look cheap, being a co-production betwixt Auntie Beeb, Time-Life Television and the ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Commission, as opposed to either the American Broadcasting Company or the old Associated British Corporation).

Eschewing the mediaeval knights in anachronistic shining plate armour aesthetic of so many other Arthurian productions,  this is rooted firmly in a post-Roman Dark Ages waste land of broadsword-wielding Brythonic barbarians in bearskins and breeches; a realm where chieftains rule from timbered longhouses rather than faerie kings and queens reigning from dreaming-spired castellations.  Opening with the brutish warlord Uther Pendragon (Brian Coburn) demanding ownership of the lady Igrayne (Anne Kidd) from her husband Gorlois of Cornwall (the late genre veteran - and father of the next generation's genre veteran Mark - W. Morgan Sheppard) and triggering civil war, the stage is set for the tale to come.  After Gorlois is slain by Uther in battle, the ire of the young Morgan (a spirited performance from an eleven year old Patsy Kensit) is raised against both her new stepfather and Uther's spawn: her baby half-brother Arthur.  Pledging herself to the ways of magic under the wary tutelage of Merlin (a well cast Robert Eddison, who would ten years later play the aged Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), Morgan le Fay grows into a red-maned witch clad in the robes of a nun (Doctor Who veteran Maureen O'Brien) with her sights still obsessively fixed upon her semi-sibling's ruination.  

When Arthur (Andrew Burt, memorable as Valgard in Doctor Who's 'Terminus' and lamentable as Jarvik in Blake's 7's cringe fest 'The Harvest of Kairos') reaches maturity as king, riding into battle against the rebellious chieftains fighting  under the banner of Jon Croft's Lot of Orkney whilst wearing a battle helmet strikingly similar in design to the famous Sutton Hoo helm, Morgan sets to work along with her dwarf minion Branic (Peter Burroughs) and the embittered knight Accolon of Gaul (Anthony Dutton) to destroy the incipient Order of the Round Table.  As the story follows the outline of the Malory tale, Arthur and Bors (Godfrey James) are slanted and enchanted by the witch in the woods and Excalibur stolen away and given to the treacherous Accolon who then challenges the king to a duel - with the recreant traitor wielding the blessed blade.  Though the trap is overcame and Accolon defeated, the Queen of Air and Darkness remains steadfast in her desire for Arthur's death and continues to weave her web of traps - including exploiting the love of the steadfast Lancelot (David Robb) for the fair Queen Guinevere (Felicity Dean) and turning the minds of Agravain (Niall Padden) and Mordred (Steve Hodson), brash and reckless younger sons of Lot, against the champion and his perceived infidelity.  When the fellowship of Camelot is sundered by warfare and Lancelot's dalliance with Eleanor of Escalot (Amanda Wissler) the lovesick and half sick of shadows Lady of Shalott which leads to her grief-stricken suicide, Morgan's plots comes to their fruition as Mordred frames the queen for murder and turns all the court against one another in a strife that leads inexorably to the carnage of the Battle of Camlann and the twilight of the Arthurian world.

A triumph of 1970s BBC television ingenuity and a valiant attempt to compress Malory's sprawling collation of tales into eight half hour episodes, The Legend of King Arthur surpasses - for my money, anyway - Boorman's Excalibur as the finest example of the Matter of Britain on film (and videotape, natch).

Now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to climb into my coracle and sail across the sundering sea to the misty vales of Avalon.

King of the Rocket Men, Chapters One to Three (Fred C. Brannon, 1949)

Time for another olde-time serial chapter play again kids.  Let's party like it's 1949 matinee mornings, after the Pathe newsreel and cartoon but before the main feature.  Having already tackled this serial's semi-sequel (try spraying that with a lisp) Radar Men from the Moon it seems high time to go back, back to the beginning to check out the onlie begetter of the Rocket man's jetpacked adventures, King of the Rocket Men.  Yes, to my fannish brain it seems crazy not to have done things in chronological order, but here we find ourselves.  I had at least partially seen this story a long, low time ago (when people talked to me) when it ran on weekday mornings on UK TV - either Channel 4 or BBC2, memory fails - and so lucked out on being ill for a week or so.  If i'd been at school i'd have remained oblivious of the joy of serials for years.

Directed, like the three sequel chapterplays, by veteran Republic serial helmer Fred Brannon it stars Tristram Coffin (replacing Kirk Alyn, who had incarnated the first live action Superman the previous year [and yes, i'll get round to covering that one too]) as the titular Jeff King - the first man to strap on the jetpack and helmet of the iconic Rocket Man.  And so here we go with the Secret Origin of the Rocketeer...

Chapter One: Dr. Vulcan - Traitor!

When a series of mysterious "accidents" - including a plane crash claiming the life of noted chemist Paul Kenyon and an explosion which wrecks an experimental nuclear fission laboratory - occur in rapid succession, the brains trust Science Associates (a clique of the top minds in various fields such as metallurgist Prof Bryant, atomic boffin Martin Conway, aerodynamics wizard Dr Graftner and Teutonic physicist Gunther Von Strum) begin to worry.  The grip of fear on the egg-headed backroom boys tightens when Associate member and cyclotron expert Dr Drake finds himself locked inside his own car and spoken to by a sinister voice over the car vehicle - a disembodied presence identifying itself as Dr Vulcan - and his car driven by remote control over a cliff edge in another manufactured tragedy.  When Professor Millard (James Craven) is also contacted by the mocking voice of the invisible menace whilst working in his lab just before a blast wrecks the building neither any trace of he nor any of his secret experimental work can be found in the wreckage.

Investigative reporter Glenda Thomas (Mae Clarke - Elizabeth from James Whale's classic 1931 Frankenstein of course, but she's perhaps less well known as Myra in the same director's pre-Code version of Waterloo Bridge earlier that same year; a role portrayed by Vivien Leigh in the better known [though less good, in my own opinion] 1940 remake) of Science Data Magazine is hot on the case, having her inquiries as to whether an outside party could have engineered these incidents fended off by Science Associates' PR man Burt Winslow (House Peters, Jr.) when she meets rocket propulsion expert Jeff King (the moustachioed and splendidly-monikered Tristram Coffin) who has been nominated by his peers to supervise the safe and secret transportation of a rocket for the group's next guided missile test.

When the unseen Dr Vulcan contacts his chief henchman Durken (Don Haggerty), he commands him to break into the files of Dr King (not that one - though this one does have a dream, too) and search for any notes that may have been passed on by Professor Millard - who is still though to have passed on.  However, they find nothing more than King himself who is happy disprove the scoffing assertions that "these scientist guys are all brain and no brawn" by engaging them in a two-fisted punch-up before they flee the scene with tails betwixt legs.  Next morning, King makes his way to the secret cavern where the not-so-late Millard has set up his new laboratory to report on his unwelcome uninvited guests.  Millard is eager to get out there, confident that he can unmask the true identity of the villain, but Jeff persuades him that for his own safety he must remain securely "dead" for the time being.  

Millard announces that he has finally completed work on the experimental rocket suit on which the pair had been working ("to change men into human rockets"), consisting of an atomic-powered jet pack attached to a leather coat and an aerodynamically-designed helmet.  Jeff takes the suit, vowing to test it himself out in the open, and stows it in the trunk of his car as he sets off for the top secret warehouse where the secret missile is being stored.  Or, rather, not that top secret, as he arrives just as Vulcan's goons hijack the truck carrying the rocket.  Swiftly donning the untested suit, Jeff takes to the skies in hot pursuit (he truly is King, of the Rocket Men, see?).  Manipulating the "nipple, nipple, tweak, tweak" chest-mounted controls, he shoots into the back of the van and brawls with a pair of thugs; yet a shove into the back of the missile's tripod mounting results in an unexpected launch.

"If that torpedo" says King, bizarrely not understanding what a torpedo is, "lands in a populated area, you'll be guilty of mass murder!"  He then blasts off in hot pursuit of the buzz-bomb as it hurtles towards the city, taking it out with a blast from the laser gun tucked into his belt - but the resulting explosion sends him falling to the ground far below...

Chapter Two: Plunging Death

...but just in the nick of time he tweaks the controls and fires up the rocket pack, righting his trajectory and flying off into the skies.  Returning to the safe haven of Dr Millard's cave lab, Jeff and the Prof listen to a radio bulletin about his saving the city from the so-called "aerial torpedo" wherein he is dubbed 'the Rocket Man' (and also described as a "strange human-like object" and speculated to be a visitor from another planet).  They discuss how only the members of Scientific Associates knew of the transportation of the missile, and arrive at the conclusion that the villainous Dr Vulcan must be one of the group.  Fearing that Jeff's life is in danger should Vulcan suspect him to be Rocket Man, Millard advises him to be circumspect at any board meetings.

King goes about this be arriving at the next meeting and immediately asking if anyone suspects him of being the Rocket Man.  Way to not draw attention to yourself, dude.  However any inklings are interrupted by Winslow arriving with news that lady reporter Ms Thomas managed to get a snap of the junior birdman in flight.  King advises that he will personally inspect her negative (I bet he will, the mucky sod) before granting permission for publication.

While Jeff and Burt head off to meet Ms Thomas, the shadowy Vulcan contacts Durken and grasses the address of Glenda's gaff so that he can get to her Piedmont pied-a-terre before them and grab the negative.  As the goons rifle through her stuff, they have to duck into an adjoining room as Glenda arrives with Winslow and they wait for the tardy Jeff.  Coming up with a bright idea, Durken grabs a telephone and gives the operator the address, asking to test whether the phone's ringer is broken.  When the unwitting operator complies and the phone in the living room rings, Durken is connected and atests to being King, unavoidably detained, and asks that Glenda bring the negative to the S.A. lab.  As she retrieves it from her hollowed-out book hiding place, the goons burst out and assail them.  When Burt goes down with a chair smashed over his head, Durken grabs the film and dashes for it with the dogged Glenda in hot pursuit.  

When the dallying real King arrives, Burt informs him of the situation and that Glenda is after Durken and the film in her car.  Grabbing the jet suit from his own auto, he dashes into a nearby alley for a quick change and soars skywards.  As Glenda burns rubber to catch up with the thief, the all-seeing Dr Vulcan (who is watching on his monitor that he can tune to focus on anything, anywhere, because SCIENCE) manipulates his magic remote control machine and causes her car to crash out of control.  As Rocket Man land son the roof of the vehicle and climbs inside to valiantly wrestle with the steering wheel the car careens over a precipice to crash and burn in the valley below...

Chapter Three: Dangerous Evidence

...only to survive via the method of pulling that hoary old trick that enraged me as a child - the footage that we didn't see last time of him yelling "Jump!" and the two of them bundling out of the car just before it soars Thelma and Louise-style over the edge.

Still feels like a cheat all these years on.  The flame of ire still burns brightly.

When Glenda follows thanking her saviour with an interview request she is swiftly spurned - Rocket Man informing her that in his quest to rid the world of the menace that endangers the nation he needs zero publicity.  He then informs her than the inter city bus runs along the road on which they stand and that one should be along shortly, before shooting off.  Back at the Rocket Cave, King and Millard muse that the villains cannot be allowed to enlarge and inspect the photograph - for even though the masked Jeff can't be recognised the rocket suit will be identifiable by all as the same prototype that they had been working on.  Since this will either finger Jeff or reveal that Millard is not as dead is everyone currently thinks, Jeff resolves to come up with a scheme to prevent Team Vulcan from blowing up that pic.

When Durken reports back to Vulcan that he is finding it impossible to find a supplier willing to sell the specialist type of film needed to develop the negative, the unseen menace replies that Science Associates has a small amount in stock and that he can arrange an inside job; Durken should get to the premises at 9.00 PM where he will find the gate unlocked.  The stooge and another man of hench slip in through the shadows easily, getting their grubby mitts on the coveted Micro-Film 247.  Confronted by an armed King who demands to know who allowed their entrance, the pair manage to catch him unawares and get away with their prize.

Blasting off after them, King follows their tracks to a remote cabin where Durken has a lab-coated science guy to process the photo.  Landing in the woods and for some reason deciding to strip off the Rocket Man outfit and stash it in the shrubbery, he approaches the hideout as his usual civilian self (and hold on a minute - it's weird enough that he he wears the whole tight leather coat over his business suit, but where the hell was he keeping his hat?).  Confronting Durken and taking on both him and the lab goon in a fist fight that quickly reduces the place to rubble, Jeff is knocked unconscious and left in the burning shack as a shattered jar of acid ignites a crate marked CHLOROMITE: DANGER - EXPLOSIVE...