Nightmare Classics ([a.k.a.: Shelley Duvall's Nightmare Classics], 1989)

"All that we see, or seem... is but a dream within a dream." 

Thus sayeth the redoubtable Shadout Mapes herself, Linda Hunt, speaking the very words of the Edgar, the Allan and the holy Poe.  Forever and ever.  Amen.

Amidst the myriad video tapes I owned as a child that contained something to the effect of a werewolf - for I was most obsessed as a youth with the transformation 'twixt human being and animal or monster - was, it may surprise some, the Cannon Video release of said dread studio of Golan and Globus' 1988 adaptation of Red Riding Hood.  In defence of my younger self, I'd picked up the tape having confused it with half-remembered memories of Neil Jordan's awesome 1984 cinematic take on Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves.  Anyway, this tape was watched once or twice in disappointment and eventually lost to the ravages of moving house and carrier bags full of old  and unloved books and videos going to charity shops.  It was years later, when trying to look up this artefact (did it really star Isabella Rosselini and Craig T. Nelson, or had I imagined it?) that some confusion led me to another 1980s string of fairy tale adaptations produced around the same time as Menahem and Yoram's efforts - this time spearheaded by the late Shelley Duvall (either the embattled Wendy Torrance of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, or Olive Oyl incarnate from Robert Altman's Popeye, depending on whichever 1980 production by a Hollywood maverick one might have in mind).

Henry James' masterful tale and enigmatic tale of psychological horror The Turn of the Screw had been adapted a number of times for the screen - both silver and small - by 1989, as well as a two-act chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten (which featured a young David Hemmings singing treble as young Miles, long before his roles in Antonioni's Blow-Up and Argento's Profondo Rosso).  In addition to Jack Clayton's astounding 1961 adaptation The Innocents - one of the best genre movies ever made, in my opinion - versions of, and variations on, the story that I have seen include Michael Winner's... erm... interesting 1971 prequel The Nightcomers, Dan Curtis' titular 1974 television adaptation with a screenplay by genre stalwart William F. Nolan (a pretty decent version despite things having to be toned down for the '70s US small screen, which has Megs Jenkins reprising her role as housekeeper Mrs Grose from The Innocents as well as featuring an all too brief appearance from the lovely Kathryn Leigh Scott as the spectral Miss Jessel), and a 2009 BBC production penned by Sandy Welch (Mrs Stephen Poliakoff) which I mainly remember for starring Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery and having some pretty steamy dream sequences to illustrate the governess' mounting sexual frustration.  Frankly, I found the prim and buttoned-up Deborah Kerr much sexier, but that's probably down to my fetish for Victorian female clothing.  I blame watching Jemma Redgrave in Bramwell during my teens.

Directed by Graeme Clifford and airing August 12 1989, the Nightmare Classics rendition of The Turn of the Screw stars Amy Irving as the anonymous governess who is retained by David Hemmings' (a nice piece of casting) louche and slightly dissolute -  not an acting stretch for Hemmings, one thinks - uncle, named Mr Harley in this version, to take charge of his young wards Flora (Irina Cashen) and Miles (Balthazar Getty, years before he banged Sienna Miller up the wrong 'un [I'm just jealous, probably - ah, but of whom, dear reader, of whom?]) during a luncheon meet bristling with innuendo as the unnamed minister's daughter-cum-aspiring duenna threads her serviette through the napkin ring very suggestively whilst claiming that "God is Presbyterian, and my father can prove it".

Taking up the position (steady there: I mean the job position of governess), our intrepid ingenue is escorted to the stately Bly manor to be greeted by friendly housekeeper Mrs Grose (mis-spelled 'Mrs Gross' in the credits, played by the not mis-spelled Micole Mercurio with a very odd accent; is she meant to be Irish?  South African?) and introduced to little Flora (Cashen) and the other household staff including John the gardener (Olaf Pooley, whose long life - he passed away in 2015 at the grand old age of 101 - and career included everything from Beastmaster III and Star Trek: Voyager [both postdating this] to 1948's Penny and the Pownall Case, but is best known to myself and perhaps others as Primord-producing Professor Stahlman in Doctor Who's 'Inferno').  Young Miles (Getty, the part - like in the 1974 Dan Curtis rendition - having been aged up slightly to a teenager presumably to slightly lessen the 'ick' factor of the lad's sexualised interactions with a grown woman and thereby in your correspondent's humble opinion missing the point that horror should make we the viewers feel uncomfortable) arrives home from school, immediately hitting on the governess with equine innuendo and other horse-based horseplay that gets her all of a fluster.  He is, of course, under the malign influence of the ghost of Peter Quint (played here by Michael Harris as a poncier looking version of Quint than that essayed by Peter Wyngarde or James Laurenson, his long hair giving him the appearance of a cross between Miles O' Keefe and Riff Raff) as Flora is possessed by the spectral Miss Jessel (Cameron Milzer, whose resume includes appearances in gems like Cherry 2000 and Troma's Chopper Chicks in Zombietown); these deceased previous household staffers (now, perhaps, household stiffers -both in that they're dead and in the sexual tension they're bringing from beyond the grave) puppeteering the precocious pubescents after being activated by their adolescent scent; the governess all the while spinning out of control as her barely-repressed neuroses come spurting to the surface.  

Irving gives us a good central performance (she's no Deborah Kerr, but who is?) and the locations, sets and costumes are up to snuff; my overall feeling is that if this is the only version of The Turn of the Screw you've seen it's absolutely fine, but certainly suffers if compared to other adaptations.  The most baffling part if when the lank-haired Quint's spectre appears to slide in and out of shot as though on wheels, like the thing behind the restaurant in Mulholland Drive.  Oh, and RIP David Lynch.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Sapphic vampiric classic Carmilla was first published in 1872, two and a half decades before Bram Stoker's Dracula - upon which is was undoubtedly a massive influence - and had seen numerous screen iterations including but not limited to Carl Dreyer's eerie 1932 meditation Vampyr, Roger Vadim's sumptuous 1960 Blood and Roses, Hammer's unabashedly exploitative 1970 romp The Vampire Lovers (and it's two follow-up continuations of the 'Karnstein Trilogy'), the innovative 2014-2016 Natasha Negovanlis-starring web series which clocked up 121 episodes and a 2017 spin-off movie, and the crushingly disappointing 2019 Emily Harris film starring Devrim Lingnau and Jessica Raine.

 

Helmed by Gabrielle Beaumont - a cousin of Daphne du Maurier and director of the 1980 chiller The Godsend (less auspiciously, she would go on to direct 1996's turgid trequel Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus, featuring her husband Olaf Pooley) - the Nightmare Classics adaptation of Carmilla aired on the 10th of September 1989.  Uprooting Le Fanu's tale from its mittel-European mise en scene of the Austrian duchy of Styria and transplanting it to the prairies of antebellum America, the screenplay by Jonathan Furst (his - ahem - 'furst' and only screen credit, which may or may not be a bad sign) gives us the story of the lonely, cossetted and closeted - in the sense that she's kept at home and away from the big wide world, as well as... look it's Carmilla, you know - Marie (Ione Skye, from mostly-forgotten but quite good as I dimly recall mediaeval drama Covington Cross, and Dream for an Insomniac) who lives in a big old house with her doting but perhaps overbearing father Leo (Roy Dotrice, real life father of Betty from Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and also Father from that TV Beauty and the Beast that starred Hellboy and Sarah Connor).  All alone in the word and friendless aside from her dad and the household servants including the faithful Miss Hodgett (Armelia McQueen) after her mother did an Albertine and went disparue, Marie's pretty but dull existence is injected with some blood - which, as we all know, is the life - when a carriage crashes near the homestead one dark night with a sole survivor.

The mysterious, pale, dark-eyed beauty Carmilla (the sorely underutilised Meg Tilly, the sister of the Bride of Chucky herself Jennifer) is taken in by the household to be nursed back to health and the initially frail young woman seems to suddenly begin recuperating after Marie experiences a night terror in which she imagines her black cat is crawling up her bed towards her only to awaken to find Carmilla hovering over her and a newly acquired gaping wound in her throat.  Hmmm... a cat, eh?  Surely 'pussy' wasn't the euphemism that we know and love now back in the 1870s, was it?  Am I overthinking the Sapphism here?  Is that even possible?  In any event, Marie and her new houseguest begin to become extremely close - almost inextricable, even.  All the while the local doctor (John Doolittle; appropriate name for a doctor whether he talks to the animals or not) and Inspector Amos (Peter Vincent, Vampire Killer himself Roddy McDowall ladies and gents) are concerned about the increasing number of local deaths, including that of a beggar boy who was sleeping on the property, found with similar throat wounds and drained of blood and blamed on a plague that has crawled from the South.

As the beguiling vampiress inveigles her way into the heaving bosom of the household, dispatching the suspicious servant Hodgett along the way, the Inspector calls her on her shit by recognising the telltale signs of the undead and devising a test by laying the staircase with dog roses that she is unable to pass (no shame, Cam, I don't like Hampshire either) but the trio of not so fearless wannabe vampire slayers are swiftly stymied by the enraptured Marie's insistence that her new found friend (or fiend) stay and remain unmolested - not that the same can be said for Marie during Carmilla's nocturnal nibbles.  The hand having been played and lost, the Inspector is found in the rays of early morn with the stake he intended for Ms Karnstein shoved up in his cranium and being insane in his brain, and both girls vanished from the house to the local graveyard to find a tomb with a view of their own.  When Leo breaks into the crypt intent on staking Carmilla and rescuing his daughter from her thrall, he finds in one coffin his vampirised absent wife (Ely Pouget, who would be in further wampyr trouble two years later when she took over the role of Maggie Evans in the rebooted '90s Dark Shadows, though with respect she's no Kathryn Leigh Scott), thus explaining Carmilla's intimate knowledge of their family, whom he has to stake.

The final coup de grace upon our anti-heroine, though, is dealt by Marie who impales her erstwhile lover-cum-parasite, who flashes negative before vanishing as though exterminated by a Dalek.  Poor Carmilla; all she wanted was a girlfriend who'd let her feast upon her heart's blood.  What is unreasonable about that proposal?

Next up on the roster on October the 29th of '89 was The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, yet another in the long line of incarnations of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 tale of the duality of man and the raging beast that dwells within even the most patrician of Victorian physicians - a couple of which we've touched on here - directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg from a script by future Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski.  Some anticipation-building hype going on for me there, as B5 is one of my top television shows of all time.  Let's hope we're in for a Varney-esque feast of blood, rather than a feast of anticipointment.  Yes, that's a word.

Anthony Andrews is our double-faced (well, not so much: this is one of those adaptations where they go for minimal make-up and rely on the acting to distinguish the two personas: personal preference I know, but some actors like Spencer Tracy can nail it it and some just... can't) lead, coming in as a bespectacled Jekyll brought to a high society party by his associate Utterson (Gregory Cooke) held by eminent royal physician Dr Laymon (George Murdock, the very voice of the 'God' of Sha-Ka-Ree in the superlative [don't laugh, I mean it] Star Trek V, and so every time he opened his mouth to speak I expected a "YOOOOOUUUUU!!!") where he shyly avoids the respectable advances of Laymon's lovely daughter Rebecca (Laura Dern, herself a scion of respectable family as well as being Ellie bloody Sattler; and to those of us who might have had an early  burst of masturbation to a certain scene in it the eponymous - nay titular - Rambling Rose).  Jekyll leaves the party after being goaded by the boorish Dr Morley (Nicholas Guest, brother of Spinal Tap and the House of Lords' Christopher Guest) who with his monocle I mistook for Mr Enfield at first, expecting characters from the actual story as I am foolishly wont to do.

Jekyll decides to carry out his experiment in separating the 'good' and 'evil' sides of human nature by testing his theoretical formula on himself of course, this time a suspicious fizzy purple concoction.  This particular Cheeky Vimto has a slightly more drastic effect than the usual, after the regulation collapse on the floor he gets up a very, very slightly different man and goes out on the prowl adopting the moniker of Edward Hyde.  The differentiation betwixt Jekyll and Hyde as 'achieved' by Andrews removing the glasses, adopting a rigid straight-backed posture pitching his voice up a bit.  This combined with his hair being darkened and plastered down and pallid make applied gives the presumably unintentionally comic effect of a ventriloquist's doll like Lord Charles possessed by Harry Lloyd's Baines/Son of Mine from Doctor Who's 'Human Nature' two-parter going out on the razz to whore and kick the shit out of people.  Accosting Utterson - who, ludicrously Lois Lane-like, doesn't recognise the man he works alongside every day without his glasses and with his hair a bit different - in a disreputable pub, Hyde indulges Jekyll's repressed desires by beating up the hated Morley and stealing his lady of the night.  He also goes round to Laymon's house in the middle of the night, knocking up the whole household and stating his intentions to knock up his daughter before taking up his cane and using the elderly gent as a pinata, making Laymon a sort of cross between Dr Lanyon and Sir Danvers Carew, I guess.

The whole piece is very decently made with nice period sets and costumes, and most of the cast - even those gamely struggling with English accents - are fine, but alas it's all let down by the performance of Andrews himself who I can't decide is just hopelessly miscast or taking the piss with an intentionally ludicrous performance.  Perhaps both.  The best thing in it is probably Laura Dern who deserves more screen time than she gets, even if her vocal performance eerily reminded me of Winona Ryder in Coppola's Dracula; it's the American actress doing prim Victorian English I suppose, but when the stand-out of the piece is constantly reminding me of a film I enjoyed vastly more (and that film is far from my favourite Dracula - it's certainly more Coppola's than Bram Stoker's) that's not a high recommendation.  It's far from terrible, but there are much better Jekyll & Hydes out there.  

Based on the 1897 short story by the mysteriously vanishing author Ambrose Bierce - originator of both Hastur and the city of Carcosa, batons that were taken up and run with by Robert W. Chambers (and in the case of Hastur the Unspeakable, elevated into the pantheon of the Great Old Ones by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth) - The Eyes of the Panther was directed by Noel Black and scripted by Art Wallace and aired November 26th 1989.   Wallace not only was the original writer and uncredited co-creator of one of my other favourite TV series of all time, the Gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows, but wrote two great (IMO, obvs.) episodes of Classic Star Trek in 'Obsession' and 'Assignment: Earth'.  Seriously, I am somewhat obsessed with the latter (I know, it would be a nicer symmetry to have an 'Obsession' obsession, but there we go) as I've always seen it as what a '60s American version of Doctor Who would look like: we have our mysterious lead with unknown outer space origins (Gary Seven) on a crusade to help ensure humanity's future in spite of itself with the aid of his wits, his curiously sonic screwdriver-esque device and his perky contemporary Earthgirl assistant.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.  We kick off our proceedings in the Old West - or rather the Midwest, which I suppose was the Westernmost reaches of the United States before further expansion and the assumed divine right of Manifest Destiny led to it stabbing westward - where we meet an elderly homesteader named Jenner Brading (the Soul Man himself C. Thomas Howell - formerly Jim Halsey in Eric Red's 1986 classic The Hitcher, latterly slumming in stuff like Torchwood's worst season and the Asylum's 2005 mockbuster version of The War of the Worlds - in old age prosthtics that cause him to resemble Salieri from Amadeus's Scooby-Dum style hayseed Hicksville cousin) who takes in harried traveller Malcolm Barrington (John Stockwell, of '80s genre classics Christine and My Science Project).  Barrington has been pursued by a panther - an actual Africa black panther, which seems odd for the American prairies; surely a puma would have been more fitting (alas Daphne Zuniga was too young at this point to warrant a 'cougar' joke but I'm noting the intent here anyway) - and claims to have glimpsed a beautiful dark-haired lacy pleading for help.  The grouchy Jenner is prompted, like Heathcliff talking to Lockwood (being a Brontesaurus, I just had to get a reference in there), to relate the story of his lost love - replete with scratching at windows.

He relates a tale of some seventy years previous, when Charlie Marlowe (Jeb Brown) and his wife Sarah (Ruth De Sosa, Indiana Jones's mother Anna opposite latter-day Elendil Lloyd Owen's Henry Jones Sr.) were scratching out a living from the Ohio land when the heavily pregnant Sarah is startled by a black panther appearing at her bedroom window one night, leading to her clutching her infant son so tightly that the mite expires.  After giving birth to a baby daughter, the severely traumatised woman can only mutter about the eyes of the panther before eventually expiring, leaving her widower - I've always found that an odd word, "widower"; it sounds like they've done it deliberately - alone to raise young Irene who was born in tragic, nay cursed, circumstances.  Skipping ahead in time, the wandering Charlie and his now all grown up girl (the lovely Daphne Zuniga, who in such films as The Fly II, Spaceballs and especially Last Rites informed my youth [I'm not going to say first wank, as that was either Susanna Hoffs or Kylie Minogue, or maybe Smurfette, but definitely an early one]) arrive in the township of Ellswood (wasn't he a Blues brother?) where the young Jenner (Howell sans make-up) quite understandably falls head over heels for the beguiling Irene.  Befuddled by the passionate (like Masefield's Sylvia Daisy she's a pouncer) young woman's professions of reciprocal love but steadfast refusal to marry on the grounds that she's insane, as well as her doting father's practice of keeping her locked up at night, Jenner soon discovers his beloved's carnivorous feline proclivities due to some sort of transmigration of the soul - perhaps inspired by Rudyard Kipling's 'The Mark of the Beast', written seven years before Bierce's tale - from the big feline into her little foetus.

Bierce's story was the inspiration for writer and film producer Val Lewton's 1930 short story 'The Bagheeta' (not to be confused with Rudyard Kipling's Bagheera), which Lewton would draw on twelve years later for his seminal movie Cat People - note the similarity of the names Irene and Irena, two beautiful but doomed were-panthers hoping for redemption through the love of a puny human male.  In addition to the Nightmare Classics version, the story would be adapted once again in 2007 as a twenty-three minute short directed by Michael Barton and starring Melissa Collins as Irene; these remain as of the time of writing the only screen versions of the story, as opposed to the multifarious adaptations of the others in the series.

Altogether, Nightmare Classics stands as a sadly short-lived series (certainly shorter than Duvall's more successful previous anthologised adaptations with Faerie Tale Theatre running to 27 instalments and the more folklore-based Tall Tales & Legends going for nine) but certainly an interesting one that hopefully exposed audiences to less adapted genre fare - certainly 'Eyes of the Panther' qualifies in that department - as well as the more familiar such as Jekyll and Hyde.  If, like the Classic Collection Horror Stories book I got for Christmas as a child (I can still picture the rather cool illustration of Dracula on its purple hardback cover), it bewitched and entranced its audience enough to entice them to further explore the genre then it's a job well done and the four episodes can stand for themselves as adaptations of some of the classics of horror.

New Wave Hookers (Gregory Dark, 1985) [NSFW]

"Got to play that New Wave music - then they'll fuck you all day!"

Gregory Dark - that's a hell of a name, isn't it?  Like a cool counter-culture Antipope, if underground punk and goth scenes had happened in the Middle Ages.  Alas, the only kind of Goth you were likely to encounter in Gregorian times would either ransack and pillage you or knock up an impressively-architected (that's a word, right?  Fairly sure it is.  It is now, anyway) cathedral with carving in a now-obsolete East Germanic language.

This particular dark Gregory however has inspired a different kind of ransacking -  the ransacking of one's dignity (especially if a parent were, say, to walk into the room whilst watching one of his works... my early teens were indeed traumatic, yes).  By which I mean, of course, the ransacking of one's balls.  The emptying of one's sack - perhaps into a sock.  Look, we're talking wank material here.  Again.

And pretty controversial wank material it is.  I don't know how many people reading this are especially au fait with the early career of Traci Lords, but long before she sang with the Manic Street Preachers ('Little Baby Nothing' is actually a favourite of mine and despite being written in the hope of snagging Kylie Minogue, as they eventually would when she was in her slightly indie Impossible Princess phase, I far prefer the recording with Lords' vocals) and starred in more mainstream movies like Not Of This Earth, Cry Baby and A Princess of Mars she was a very naughty girl.

Very, very naughty indeed.  Appropriate, then, that she should be enacting the role of a sexy devil (perhaps the most so until Old Nick got his old chap out for Saddam Hussein in the South Park movie) in this skin flick of sin.  I say "appropriate", but of course it was very inappropriate for Ms Lords to lie about her date of birth in order to get into the industry and cause every adult movie she ever made apart from 1987's Traci, I Love You - filmed after she had turned 18 - to either be withdrawn from distribution in the US or have her scenes either removed or re-shot with different performers.  Not in Europe, however, where - apparently - the lower age of consent (16 rather than 18) meant that the films in question remained on sale.  Cultural differences between American and European approaches I guess; whether this points to European nations having a more nuanced view or sexuality or being wanton and decadent will of course very much depend on one's point of view.  Does make one feel a little bit Prince Andrew-y in retrospect, mind.  Like the time I busted a nut watching one of those 'audition goes porn-y' videos (you know the ones I mean: the gonzo style vids with the aspiring actress coming in all naive and the casting taking a sexy turn) featuring the model Marine Michaels only to Google her afterwards and find that the video in question wasn't as fake and set-up as I assumed.  Felt awful afterwards and could barely watch it again.

Anyway...

Dark established his name - his actual name being Gregory Hippolyte Brown, the middle name no doubt marking his parents as either mythology geeks or Wonder Woman fans so probably the latter given her creator William 'Charles' Moulton's inspirations being Bettie Page and the bondage scene as well as he and his wife's polyamorous life partner Olive Byrne - as one of the founders of the alt-porn genre with the film in question, and would go on to helm mainstream fare such as music videos for the likes of sludge-grunge mainstays the Melvins and even Snoop Dogg's 'Undercover Funk' (featuring Doogie Howser and Celestial Toymaker Neil Patrick Harris) as well as a series of erotic thriller B-movies featuring stars of the genre like Shannon Whirry that were praised by none other than the BFI's journal Sight and Sound as groundbreaking staples.  As much as Skinemax fodder can be, I guess.  Not that I've got room to be snooty, snotty or sniffy and elitist about film genres: look what I'm reviewing here for fuck's sake.  Dark also directed 2006 mainstream horror flick See No Evil, starring WWE wrestler Kane, but not the sequel which according to the internets was directed by the Soska sisters and stars Danielle Harris and  Katherine Isabelle and why the hell am I not watching that film instead? 

One thing at a time.

So we begin with an absolutely fucking rocking soundtrack courtesy of Mexican-American band the Plugz and their banging track (in more ways than one!) 'Electrify Me'.  Honestly, with a tune like that playing over an opening shot (in more ways than one!) of Gina Carrera bending over and parting her pussy lips, we're off to a great start.  Quickly followed in sexy succession by a parade of our lovely leading ladies, including Traci (credited as 'Tracy Lords' - Penthouse's September 1984 centrefold) in red devil horns, a garter and thigh high leather boots and earning the movie it's alternative title of Le diable par le queue or The Devil by the Tail, spreading and splaying as the titles introduce them - with an actual 'introducing' for Gina Carrera - the proceedings begin with Jimmy (porn legend and actually quite good Count Dracula - I really should get round to revisiting Dracula Sucks one of these days - Jamie Gillis) and his pal Jamal Lincoln Bubba Washington (Jack Baker) lounging around their apartment watching porn on the TV and discussing the tennis-playing habits of pimps.  This everyday scene soon takes a turn for the weird(er) when Jimmy brings up the concept of new wave hookers: "chicks programmed to fuck by music" who are "nasty bitches" who'll "do anything". Proclaiming that they could "really lay some pipe" on said bitches if they ran a new wave brothel, the eager Jamal conjures up a scenario in which the pair are the proprietors of such a property - although Jimmy is now inexplicably employing a cod-Asian accent and insisting that he's Japanese.  It's a nice enough office, replete with human Dog (Steve Powers) who barks in lieu of the phone actually ringing, but it's hardly UK Vice Girls.

Into this imaginary environ skates perky blonde proto-Rollergirl Candy (Desiree Lane) who's looking for a job and proves her valid credentials by being a big fan of new wave music and immediately producing a shiny silver dildo which she eagerly uses on herself whilst listening to said music on her headphones.  If lace-up roller boots and big '80s headphones are a fetish, then I think I may now have it just as Jimmy must have a piece of that hairy snatch - bending her over on the couch and ploughing her doggy while the Dog and Jamal bark and shout encouragement before the Dog gets involved him/itself by fucking her in her greedy mouth whilst Jimmy continues from behind (two 'doggies' for the price of one!).  'Tis an energetic and fun little scene that ends with Candy taking the Dog's muck in her gob while Jimmy felches his own out of her pussy, before Jamal proclaims her a "good ho" and gives her the job. Happy endings indeed.

They receive a call from a customer described as a "high rollin' Arab" (pronounced "Ay-rab" as Americans sometimes do for reasons unknown) requesting the services of two of their ladies, Jamal advising the client that they can supply "the finest bitches" but that he'll have to play them new wave music (You know - that silly-ass rock 'n' roll shit!").  The ladies are the beauteous Nora (Brooke Fields) and the lovely Palace (Kimberly Carson), who meet 'The Sheik' (the conspicuously non-Arabic porn legend Peter North in a fez) at his Valentino-esque tent which they hope contains "a big hard cock".  They're in luck.  Beginning by engaging in some Sapphic fun together because music makes them "really horny" and because the Sheik's unintelligible Arabic meaning what we have here is a failure to communicate, the ladies prove themselves cunning linguists in the labia-licking language of love.  Let's just take a moment to compliment the outfits they're wearing her, too: bright coloured high heels (I believe they're called "fuck me shoes", at least according to Germaine Greer) and diaphanous wisps of cloth are a great combination.   After enjoying the show for a while pulling on his pretty prodigious pecker North gets in on the action, the fine young fillies alternately chowing down on his cable and licking his balls before the trio go at it in various positions (I think I'd have to put in a few leg days before I could manage the standing clasp - I'm 46 next week, you know) finishing with North firing a mammoth amount of man fat over buttocks and breasts.  Noice.

Next call comes from "a couple of nerds" who desire some female companionship - more specifically "anal companionship" (causing Jamal to dub them "booty bandits"), and so Ginger Lynn Allen as 'the beauteous Cherry' is dispatched to fulfil the rectal desires of this pair of nervous students played by a doubling-up Steve Powers and Tom Byron.  Arriving with the classic declaration "So... Boys, boys, boys, do you wanna?  Do you wanna fuck me in the ass?" (and who could refuse?) Ginger Lynn swiftly strips down to little more than her white plastic belt (with a pair of decorative handcuffs hanging from it, which is both punk and kink and therefore perfection incarnate), bringing to mind Meat Loaf crooning "My hands kind of fumbled with her white plastic belt" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show's 'Hot Patootie'.  Only the fumbling in this case is with her shit chute, as she commands the giggling lads to lick her arsehole before dropping to her knees to blow the eager freshmen to maximum hardness as a prelude to a very vigorous double penetration (possibly my favourite DP since Charlotte/Charlie's red latex gangbang, which I think is now only available to watch on Motherless) with Byron in the pink and Powers in the stink both hammering away until she ends up bathed in spunk.  I'm just happy she kept the belt on the whole time; I don't know too much about fashion, but I know what gets me hot.

Back at the office, Jimmy is making enquiries as to whether "rat's ass" is a suitable meal for a Japanese gentleman despite his being neither.  Jamal responds that sushi would be more appropriate (though, mind-bogglingly, states that sushi is more Chinese).  Is if by magic, a Sushi Girl (cute brunette Kristara Barrington, who unlike Gillis is actually of Asian extraction with 'Kimberly Wong' and 'Chi-Chi Ling' among her alternate screen names) enters to serve the meal clad in a leather miniskirt which winds up hitched up around her waist as soon as Jamal persuades her to put on the cans and listen to some groovy choonz.  After she becomes a slave to the rhythm and frantically rubs herself along to the beat, Jamal can't resist bending her over the desk and feasting on her wet ass pussy -  so her sushi delivery notwithstanding there is a lot of munching fish pie going down.  Whilst the Dog takes over fiddling with her flaps and Jimmy gets busy tucking into the actual food, she blows first Jamal - receiving a fountain of froth on her face - and then the Dog who proceeds to fuck her eagerly and vigorously on the table with a lot of verbal encouragement from his owners-cum-employers, cumming all over her stomach.  Her heeled ankle boots are tres sexy too.  Am I focusing on the wrong things here?  No.

Next up is the infamous bit.  We get a customer wanting to make it with the Devil and Jamal's promise that "she'll be hot as hell" leading to the scene of the Satanically-clad Tracy Lords asking an 'Angel' (Rick Cassidy in a literal white hat topped with a halo) if he wants to see and taste her "burning cunt", then mounts his face and gobbles his knob: the eternal struggle between Heaven and Hell artistically interpreted through the medium of a sixty-nine.  You don't get this in Renaissance art.  Well, maybe round the Borgias' place you did.  God, those thigh boots are hot.  I know, I'm doing fashion commentary again.  This is getting like the Grazia of grot.  Anyway, they look especially good when she's on her back with her knees hoisted up getting pummeled like a piston.  I suppose it ends with Good 'conquering' Evil as the Luciferian lovely receives the symbolic (some bollock, more like) sacrament of sperm when the Angel busts a nut.  I'd have done it on the boots, but that's just me.

We close with a big gangbang scene involving mos of the film's previously featured cast with the addition of Gina Carrera but sadly sans the participation of Kimberly Carson and Brooke Fields.  Frankly, though, I was too knackered by this point to pay that much attention.  Understandable, I hope.  Balls like raisins, mate.  It may take me weeks to recover.

Dark would go on to helm other classics such as the sequel to this film and several follow-up entries (heh heh) to Gerard Damiano's Georgina Spelvin-starrer The Devils in Miss Jones, as well as music videos for artists such as '90s MOR rockers Counting Crows, and popstrels Britney Spears and Mandy Moore.  None of which would particularly approach the impact of this movie.

Double Shadows: The Shadow - The Case of the Cotton Kimona (Charles F. Haas, 1954); Invisible Avenger (James Wong Howe, Ben Parker and John Sledge, 1958)

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow knows!"

Created in 1931 by jobbing pulp writer, crossword puzzle setter and magician (now that's a heck of an eclectic resume!) Walter Brown Gibson, the beak-nosed and behatted Shadow is a veritable legend of pulp noir detective stories and very much a proto superhero with his secret identity - actually secret identities, plural: this guy was presenting multiple personas decades before Steven Grant and Jake Lockley were even a gleam in Marc Spector's fractured mind's eye -  and instantly recognisable costume for tackling crime.  Initially merely an introductory voiceover for radio's Detective Story Hour, the mysterious Shadow was soon evolved into a character in his own right when Gibson was hired to flesh out this enigmatic raconteur of 'tec tales with a backstory and modus operandi all of his own.

Debuting on the 31st of July 1930 as the narrating character, the Shadow was initially voiced by James La Curto but soon the role was taken over by Frank Readick Junior whose vocal talents made the character a popular sensation - both men would alternate turns over the following couple of years.  Meanwhile in the world of pulp fiction, Gibson was cranking out stories at a rate of knots - beginning with the debut text story The Living Shadow on the 1st of April 1931, he would pen 282 Shadow tales over the following two decades.  These novellas - all written under the in-house pen name of 'Maxwell Grant', used by Gibson and other authors alike - would fill in the fictional background of the mysterious crime fighter known as the Shadow: his original and true identity as First World War pilot Kent Allard who, after faking his own death in a plane crash, returns to New York City to fight crime on the streets as a masked - well, scarfed - vigilante.  With a brace of alternative identities such as wealthy playboy Lamont Cranston, business maven Henry Arnaud and a learning disabled janitor named Fritz who mops up at NYPD HQ (handy for surreptitious information gathering) and with a cadre of collaborators and informants including socialite Margo Lane (huh, a dual-identity hero having a female sidekick / romantic interest with the surname 'Lane'?  That might just  catch on... indeed, Philip Jose Harmer's Wold Newton universe postulates Lois and Margo Lane as sisters), cabbie Moe 'Shrevvy' Shrevnitz and police Commissioner Ralph Weston at his disposal and clad in his iconic slouch hat and red-lined opera cloak over a dark double-breasted suit and armed with a pair of Colt .45 pistols and an array of stage magician's tricks and illusions to baffle and distract his prey: the criminal scum that the rain fails to wash from the city - he is the Shadow.

Who, of course, knows.

While the stories continued in the pulps, the character's radio days were entering a purple patch as the Shadow went from mere introductory narrator of tales to main character, with the gravelly tones of a young Orson Welles (Unicron himself, fellow philistines!) incarnating the role.  The programme began on the 26th of September 1937 with 'The Death House Rescue' and as well as Welles as Cranston / the Shadow (like many future adaptations into other media, Lamont Cranston became the character's real name, rather than one of many adopted identities) the show starred Bewitched's Endora Agnes Moorehead - who was followed by the more name-appropriate Margot Stevenson - as Margo(t) Lane; apparently it's spelled 'Margot' for the radio character, as if you can hear a silent 't' on an audio medium.  The radio series was in fact the origin and debut for Lane, who was swiftly incorporated into the pulp stories' continuum.  It was over the UHF airwaves that the Shadow gained "the power to cloud men's minds", learned from Yogi mystics in India, rendering himself effectively invisible to his enemies until about to strike - this being conveyed by the voice of Welles and subsequent Shadow players having an effect overlaid when he switched from Cranston to the Shadow.

After numerous big-screen attempts (including the awesomely-named Rod La Roque in 1937's The Shadow Strikes and the following year's sequel International Crime, Victor Jory - The Man Who Turned to Stone himself! - in the eponymously-titled 1940 Columbia Pictures chapter serial, and Spy Smasher Kane Richmond in a 1946 Monogram made trilogy), it was surely television's turn.   The Case of the Cotton Kimona is the better-known and more distinctive title for the more prosaic The Shadow, a 1954 pilot for a projected Shadow television series. Written by prolific radio Shadow scribe Peter Barry, whose most recent script for the wireless show aired mere months before the shooting of the pilot, we meet Lamont Cranston (British export Tom Helmore, a familiar face on U.S. screens both big and small in the '50s and '60s) who is here portrayed as a criminal psychologist on retainer to the NYPD, called in - along with his trusty confederate Margot (yes, with the 't') Lane (Paula Raymond, of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [Eugene Lourie, 1953] and Blood of Dracula's Castle [Al Adamson, 1969]) - by Commissioner Weston (Frank M. Thomas) to investigate the mysterious murder of a young woman (Peggy Lobbin, who would go on to provide English dub voices for the original Ultraman)  who was shot in a kimono.  I mean, she was shot by an unknown assassin in the doorway of her apartment whilst wearing a kimono, which everyone insists on referring to as a 'kimona'.

So Cissy from Springfield is slain at the scene (that would be some much more satisfying if her name were spelled 'Sissy', a la Spacek, but it isn't and so stands as proof that we live in an imperfect universe), though not of course by the Springfield Slasher; Mr Frederick Krueger wouldn't be plying his razor-gloved trade in that town for at least a decade.  Cranston and Lane, ever partners in crime, are soon investigating Cissy's death, with the hindering 'help' of newly-arrived in town Springfield detective Harris (Norman Shelly) who seems possessed of an obsessive interest with the murder of his home town girl.  The focus of Harris's harassment is Cissy's boyfriend Alex Bromm (William Smithers, another familiar face who I instantly recognised from episodes of Star Trek and Spider-Man), who repeatedly denies involvement in finalising his fiancee but Harris is absolutely driven and determined to pin the rap on him.  Almost suspiciously so.

Lamont and Margot (who he addresses, charmingly, as "Milady" at one point) aren't entirely convinced and follow up another lead - that of Cissy's impressively-named music teacher Professor Rollo Grimbauer (Alexander Scourby).  When an initial questioning proves fruitless, Cranston returns later that evening as the Shadow, his mind-clouding invisibility conveyed by a strobing key light and his disembodied echoing voice:

"You can't lie to me!  The Shadow knows!"

After Grimbauer is shot dead before giving up his information and Bromm is fit up by Harris for not only Cissy's murder but that of the clerk in the store where the weapon was purchased, Cranston figures out that the rogue detective was dangerously obsessed with the girl from Springfield and killed her when she knocked him back for the patsy Bromm.  Getting to Margot just in time after she comes to the same conclusion and is about to be capped by the killer cop, the Shadow makes a dramatically disarming entrance - "The fear of retribution in men's minds... I am justice!" - to disarm the disgraced detective and bring him in.

Helmore is a perfectly acceptable Cranston / The Shadow, even if he's a little long in the tooth - and moustache - for the part, and Raymond makes for an appropriately elegant and beautiful Margot despite getting relatively little to do. In all, it's certainly an interesting relic to watch, but not a great surprise that a regular series never resulted; whether that's due to an unprepossessing script or some ideas conveying better on print and audio than film is perhaps up for debate.

Four years later in 1958, Invisible Avenger came together (can you see the joins?) as a combination of two prospective pilots made as a second abortive attempt to get a Shadow television series off the ground.  This Frankenstein-ing together results in a 'film' with three directors: James Wong Howe (one of his few directorial credits, but an Oscar-winning cinematographer and pioneer of camera techniques whose resume includes everything from Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire to John Frankenheimer's Seconds), Ben Parker (disappointingly not Spider-Man's uncle) and John Sledge, though only Wong Howe and Sledge receive an on-screen accreditation.

Also going by the alternate title of Bourbon Street Shadows, denoting the relatively exotic New Orleans setting, the film begins - and indeed end, the identical scenes bookend the piece quite nicely as well as giving the feeling of the eternal return or ewige wiederkunft; perhaps the Shadow has always been here and will be again - with a shot of crepuscular nighttime lamplit streets with a shadow moving along the wall.  Is this just a shadow or the Shadow ("What am I, but a shadow of a Shadow?" as the Drakh said to Londo Mollari)?  The question is answered by the echoing refrain of his trademark catchphrase, ensuring that we as well as he definitely know.

Way down in Louisiana, down in New Orleans we are introduced to Felicia Ramirez (Jeanne Naher) and her father Pablo (Dan Mullin) through jazz musician Tony Alcalde (Steve Dano) who is meeting them in the Famous Door jazz club.  Pablo's brother - apparently his identical twin brother, since when we see him later he's also played by Mullin, and for some reason sporting the same surely fake oddly-cropped beard as both characters - and Felicia's uncle Victor is, we are told, the rightful ruler of their Latin American home country whose role as El Presidente has been usurped by the Generailissimo (Magnificooo!) and these exiles on Bourbon Street are attempting to plot and action a popular uprising to restore the Ramirez family to their rightful status and supplant the military junta that has taken a stranglehold on Santa Cruz.  When Tony leaves the table to place a telephone tip-off to Lamont Cranston (Richard Derr, star of George Pal's classic When Worlds Collide) in New York, he has little time to convey many of these facts before being assassinated by villainous henchman Rocco (Leo Bruno).  Talk about your call being cut off.

Cranston and his faithful telepathic 'Asian' servant - this adventure supplies him with his very own Kato, presumably in a nod to the character's abilities being taught by a 'Yogi priest' at the Temple of the Cobra, though at least Burt Kwouk was actually Asian and not a clearly Caucasian actor in makeup with a questionable accent - Jogendra (Mark Daniels, in his penultimate role; his final film would coincidentally be 1964's Felicia) try to make sense of Tony's dying clue about 'Tara'.  Could it be a hint about Scarlett O' Hara's plantation?  Or maybe a planet of lifelike androids once visited by Doctor Who*?  No, of course not.  It's a reference to the jazz club's proprietress Tara O' Neill (former child actress and star of Abbott and Costello meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Monster on the Campus and Tales of Frankenstein [on which...] Helen Westcott).  Taking a flight to the Big Easy, Cranston's arrival at New Orleans airport plays out very like Bond's in Jamaica in Dr No four years later - tracked by the villains and met by a treacherous fake driver, in this case Charlie (Sam Page).

Rocking up to the Famous Door, Cranston attempts to inveigle himself into the swinging scene by dropping some scat talk to Tara.  No you dirty buggers, not like that - we (sadly) don't get any coprophilia or Cleveland steamers here.  This does not impress Rocco, who - like Johnny - hates jazz (so much for Rocco's modern life.  No wait, that was a wallaby, not a hep cat) but Tara thinks that our man Lamont is "a good lookin' hunk o' man" but advises him to go back North and look for love in a cold climate.  Clearly a Nancy Mitford fan.  Rocco and his boss, a man known only as 'the Colonel' (Lee Edwards), make an attempt on Cranston via 'swatting' i.e.: hitting him with a car, but a psychic message from Jogendra allows him to dodge the rogue Dodge (it probably isn't, I don't know American cars) in the nick of time.

Adopting his Shadowy invisible persona, Cranston makes contact with Felicia and her father and together they discover that uncle Victor is in fact a traitorous turncoat working with the Generalissimo's regime and attempting to stifle the coup and arrest and deal with dissenters and dissidents in a deadly fashion.  With the Shadow's help the quisling is conquered and the story concludes with Pablo being hailed as the new El Presidente and vowing to restore justice and democracy as he returns to Santa Cruz with his daughter.  Bye Felicia!

A decent story and at just under an hour more room to breathe than the brief and brisk Case of the Cotton Kimona, Invisible Avenger is hampered by a weak link in the lead: Derr is acceptable if a bit workmanlike as Cranston but his Shadow fails to fully convince, the muffled echo placed on his voice making him sound like he's gargling the lines from the bottom of a well.  No Margo(t) either, so minus points there.  But there's some decent action and it's certainly decently directed, as one would expect with James Wong Howe calling at least some of the shots.  Shame that the only available copy is of such ropey quaility really. 

The Shadow would have another go at the silver screen in 1994 between other period superhero revivals The Rocketeer and The Phantom ("SLAM EVIL!" indeed) with another eponymous entry helmed by Russell Mulcahy of giant swine terror flick Razorback and duelling immortals fest Highlander; starring Alec Baldwin as Cranston (I do hope that there was a competent arms specialist on set) and Penelope Ann Miller as a newly-telepathic Margo - not a 't' to be seen here - Lane who team up to contend with the menacing Temujin descendant Shiwan Khan (John Lone, The Last Emperor himself; appropriate as 'Pu Yi' was something like the critics' reaction to the film on release) and his plot to detonate a slightly anachronistic nuclear bomb in New York City.  Penned by genre stalwart David Koepp, the '94 movie mixes elements of the original pulps such as the lead character's multiplicity of identities and the iconic design replete with wide-brimmed hat and scarf and beaked nose - Baldwin sporting a prosthetic conk to look the spitting image of the original illustrations with edgy and stylised '30s period dialogue.  Alas, once again it failed to result in any follow-ups.  A Shadow filmic franchise really seems - La Roque's duology and Richmond's trilogy aside - doomed to not happen.  As to why, who knows?

The Shadow knows.

(*Please don't come at me with comments like "Actually, I think you'll find the character is called 'The Doctor'".  I've been watching Doctor Who since I was three years old - that's over four decades now, and you don't even get that for murder - and he / she / they are called Doctor Who.  Deal with it.)

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror ([Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens] F. W. Munrau, 1922)

"And when he had crossed the bridge, the phantoms came to meet him."

With Robert Eggers' acclaimed new iteration/interpretation (I refuse to use the word 'reimagining' seriously; was it Tim Burton who started that with his 2001 Planet of the Apes?  The film that may as well have had the tagline "you'll believe a chimp can be sexy"?) of Nosferatu - the third recitation of the decrepit revenant Count Orlok's macabre machinations after the 1922 original and Werner Herzog's masterful 1979 remake - due out on December 25th 2024 - at least in the States, here in the old country we have to wait 'til New Year's Day but at least that's U2's best song so there's some solace to be found in that I suppose - (someone needs to get the hashtag #NosferatuIsAChristmasMovie trending, if it hasn't been done already), I thought it was high time to go back ("back, back to the beginning!" as Morbius roared to the Fourth Doctor as he previewed the Timeless Child storyline back in the day) to the source of this particular sanguineous rivulet that runs like an offshoot from Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula and flows out to its own delta of delicious devilment.

Now, it's very likely that anyone reading a blog like this has at least a passing familiarity with Nosferatu's history, but allow me for the sake of exposition and clarity to infantilise you - like a businessman who pays good money on a weekend to be dressed in a nappy, breast-fed and spanked.  No kink-shaming or judgement here.

Stoker's tome of terror had, as said, been published in 1897 and swiftly went on to be performed live on stage as a dramatic reading organised by the author himself in his day to day workplace of London's Lyceum Theatre on the 18th of May that same year, during which the establishment's principal star - and the man whose physiognomy Stoker had used for the physical description of the vampire Count - Henry Irving had declared the text to be "Dreadful!".  This criticism notwithstanding, the novel would be adapted into a fully-fledged theatrical (as in on stage live as it's performed, rather than in the American sense where they really mean 'cinematic') production by actor-producer Hamilton Deane which began a wildly successful tour in Derby in 1924 and would in turn be transferred to Broadway (with an Americanised, or rather 'Americanized' script by John L. Balderston) in 1927 for a run starring Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi that would run for 261 performances to packed houses of enraptured audiences and lead to Universal's immortal yet stagey 1931 classic movie.  

But during the in-between days, the lacuna betwixt the staged reading of the novel and the first professional and official acted rendition there crawled from the dark heart of Europe in 1922 the wholly unofficial and unauthorised first film adaptation (though not the first Dracula film, as in a film featuring the character of Dracula, the now lost Hungarian flick Dracula's Death [or Drakula halala] directed by Karoly Lathjay and co-scripted by future Hollywood maven Michael Curtiz emerging a year earlier in 1921, though this unrelated tale of a visitor to an asylum for the insane seeing visions of the Count is certainly an atypical entry in the canon).  Directed by cinematic pioneer Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau who would go on to helm classics such as The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926) and Sunrise (1927), Nosferatu would dodge paying Florence Stoker - widow of Bram Stoker and executor of his literary estate - for the rights to Dracula forcing Murnau and screenwriter Henrik Galeen to come up with their own (albeit barely disguised) spin on the tale of terror.

Murnau, who had previously tried to circumvent copyright on Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde [and see here for more on early adaptations of that tale) by simply changing the names of the protagonist's alter egos to Dr Warren and Mr O'Connor in the now sadly lost - like many of the twenty one films in his canon - 1920 Der Januskopf.  The dual role was essayed by Conrad Veidt who in your correspondent's humble opinion would have made a fine screen Dracula, and in fact was Universal head Carl Laemmle's pick to play the role (after Veidt's turn as the Joker-inspiring Gwynplaine in Paul Leni's 1928 The Man Who Laughs) subsequent to the loss of Lon Chaney Sr., firstly to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and then to the cold grip of Thanatos due to throat cancer - other actors such as Victor Jory, Ian Keith and William Courtney also being taken under consideration before Lugosi successfully lobbied for the role.

"Freely adapted" by Galeen, as the credits phrase it, Nosferatu like Der Januskopf attempts a "not Dracula, honest guv!" veil by giving the characters different names; so we are introduced to solicitor Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), our Jonathan Harker analogue and Ellen, his wife (called Nina in some prints, rather giving the Mina game away, played by Greta Schroeder) as our distaff Mina Murray-Harker combined with Lucy Westenra who dwell in the town of Wisborg (the filming location was the similarly-named real world city of Wismar as well as Lubeck) in the year 1838.  True to the usual versions of the story, Hutter is sent on a mission to deepest, darkest Transylvania (represented by location filming in Slovakia including Orava Castle for Orlok's damned demesne, a location later used for the Count's citadel in Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's rendition) by his employer, the bizarre and eccentric estate agent Knock (Alexander Granach) - a strange hobgoblin of a man with whom the vampire client Count Orlok communicates in letters containing esoteric Kabbalistic signs and Enochian symbols.  These pictograms reflect the producer Albin Grau's esoteric inclinations; Grau was responsible for set designs and props including the Orlok/Knock correspondence and imbue the sinister characters with a feeling of an ancient and dreadful power - Orlok is as much a sorcerer (Orlok the Warlock?) as a vampire.  This calls to mind the mentions of the Scholomance from Dracula - the hidden school of witchcraft hidden among the peaks of the Carpathians wherein the Count trained as a Solomani, something that also finds a modern echo in in the 2024 version (2025 if you're in the UK, due to what the TV guide used to call "regional variations").

Leaving the distraught Ellen with Harding, a ship owner and the Hutters' neighbour (Georg Heinrich Schnell) and Ruth, his sister (Ruth Landshoff, in a similar fashion to the way Hammer's 1958 version makes Lucy Arthur Holmwood's sister) and takes the familiar journey to Transylvania, a land replete with fearful peasants dwelling within inns warning travelers to beware the castle on the hill so familiar after a century of entries in the Universal and Hammer canon and derivatives thereof.  In this land of phantoms, gods, monsters and werewolves that look suspiciously like striped hyenas, Hutter finds himself swept through a negative-tinted landscape at unbelievable inhuman speed - for the dead travel fast; it's interesting that these days one might depict a terrifying supernatural journey with slow motion, as Herzog did in the '79, rather than the opposite - to come face to monstrous visage with the Count. 

 Max Schreck's Orlok is certainly not the suave and slick bloodsucker familiar to audiences now and exemplified by the likes of Lugosi, Lee and Langella and first introduced in the form of Lord Ruthven (pronounced 'Rivven' - yes, I've been mentally mispronouncing it for decades too) in Polidori's The Vampyre, but a truly folkloric vampire.  Stoker's Irving-inspired Count may have been portrayed as noble of brow with a strong aquiline nose, but Orlok is a of rodentine, reptilian race apart from humanity; with a skull-like head from which protrude pointed ears and central incisor teeth - which make more sense for his diet than the now-traditional canines - and overgrown talons for fingernails like the pointed fingers of the nocturnal aye-aye, he certainly seems more animal than man, the lone surviving embodiment of an ancient race, the very seed of the daemon Belial rather than Stoker's moustached undead nobleman that inspired other embodiments including Bill Skarsgard in Eggers' film.  Orlok certainly appears every inch the disease-bearing beast, which brings us to the derivation/etymology of "nosferatu" - whether it comes from the Greek nosophoros meaning 'plague carrier', or Romanian nesuferitul signifying 'the unsufferable one', he fulfils both remits, his black shadow of death spreading across Europe like the mediaeval Black Death or the (then extremely, uncomfortably recent) Great War.

The vampire dwells in a realm of dreams and nightmares, a shadow land beyond life and death, and perhaps represents our shadow selves.  The eldritch thing that is Orlok himself may be Ellen Hutter's animus - in the Jungian sense, the masculine part of her, as well as the other sense of ill-feeling or ill-will; their deep and primordial destructive attraction for each other resulting in their mutual destruction.  Murnau plays up the shadow of the vampire (arf!) with some real Expressionistic shadowplay: the iconic shot of Orlok ascending the staircase to his and Ellen's terminal conflagration in flagrante delicto (taking the sexual term of le petit mort, "the little death" to its literal apogee) is one of the most recognisable in horror cinema if not cinema in toto.

As it turned out, the attempts to skirt copyright (despite actually crediting Bram Stoker in the title credits!) resulted in Stoker's widow Florence suing Prana Film into bankruptcy and gaining a court order to have all copies of the film destroyed.  Whatever the legal rights and wrongs though, thankfully for us lovers of the macabre some copies slipped through the net and survived (and yet a perfectly legal film like London After Midnight [for more on which...] didn't, such are the vagaries of the fickle finger of Fate) and to this day 103 years later - a vampiric lifespan - we can thrill to the chills of Orlok creeping through the darkness of German Expressionism to feast on our life's blood.

Or maybe just flick our lightswitch on and off.

Oh, Nosferatu!

THE JOHN SAXON BLOGATHON: Night Caller from Outer Space (John Gilling, 1965) [for 6th to 8th December, 2024]

Look, I'm just fashionably late, as per, okay?

So there I was peeking in at Xitter after having taken a long hiatus both from social media and quite frankly the world, when I espied amidst my many notifications (actually, cards on the table, there were fewer missed notifications than I expected; I was clearly not as missed as I'd liked to imagine.  Boy, is my ego bruised) a Tweet - or Xeet or whatever they're called now - putting out the word that another Blogathon was underway care of Barry from Barry Cinematic and Gill from Weemidgetreviews and that the subject of this one was none other than the late great and legendary John Saxon.

Having participated in the Blogathons in the past - my contribution to the Vincent Price one a while back, 1958's The Fly, can be found here - I thought I'd quite like to get involved; the down side being that coming to it a bit late meant that the more obvious options would have already been nabbed: stuff like Black Christmas, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Enter the Dragon will have been long gone.  Somebody had probably already bid for My Mom's a Werewolf and Blood Beach as well.  I've no idea if From Dusk Till Dawn would count, but putting a bid in for that one would have been a laugh, even if his small cameo may have gone against the spirit of the thing.  Can't be going against the spirits: that would be like Rush going against the spirit of radio.  Spirits are for drinking.  This is why optics are important - they're where the spirits come out of.

Anyway...

The artist known to the world as John Saxon was born Carmine Orrico in Brooklyn in August 1936, scion of a New Yorker father of Italian descent and a Calabrian mother and raised in a household where Italian was the primary spoken language.  Signed to a contract with Universal Studios in 1954 at the tender age of 17, the newly-Christened John Saxon (it being the style of the time for studios and managers to give young stars Hollywood-style names, hence Roy Scherer Jr becoming Rock Hudson, Norman Rambeau transformed into Dack Rambo, Francis McCown gaining the moniker of Rory Calhoun and Arthur Kelm being reinvented as Tab Hunter - all given their new identities, like Saxon, by agent Henry Willson) went on to gain teen idol status starring alongside such luminaries as Mamie Van Doren and Sandra Dee (who was not actually "lousy with virginity", despite what Grease tells us) throughout the '50s.  After expanding into the genres of neo-noir, Westerns and war movies, Saxon got his first taste of the horror genre when, after travelling to Italy in 1962 to make the drama Agostino for director Mauro Bolognini, friend Leticia Roman asked him if he would like to co-star with her in what he thought she he had described as an "art film".  Presumably expecting to be working with Fellini or Visconti, Saxon discovered that he had misunderstood Roman's accented way of saying "horror film" and that he'd signed up for the pioneering giallo movie The Girl Who Knew Too Much (La ragazza che sapeva troppo) for genre auteur Mario Bava - possibly a more prestigious name than Federico or Luchino for us fans of the macabre.

After taking the lead role in 1964 adventure The Cavern for director Edgar G. Ulmer, the man behind such classics as 1934's The Black Cat and 1944's Bluebeard, and completing Filipino-filmed war picture The Ravagers under Eddie Romero of Mad Doctor of Blood Island exploitation infamy Saxon's next assignment would take him to merry old England to make the subject of our discussion.  Released variously as The Night Caller (its original title, not to be confused with the recent Channel 5 Sean Pertwee and Robert Glenister drama of the same name), the slightly more explicit and less elliptical Night Caller from Outer Space and its more ostentatious U.S. distribution title of Blood Beast from Outer Space.  The film was directed by John Gilling, a veteran who had already overseen genre fare such as 1956's Anglo-American co-pro The Gamma People and the 1960 Burke and Hare-inspired The Flesh and the Fiends as well as many works for the illustrious Hammer Studios like the 1961 chiller Shadow of the Cat and 1962 adventure romp The Pirates of Blood River - and would go on in future to helm Hammer horrors The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile (shot back-to-back in 1966) and The Mummy's Shroud (1967) before ending his career on high horror note with 1975's Iberian iteration The Devil's Cross (El cruz de diablo), an unofficial fifth entry in the Blind Knights Templar series initiated by Amando de Ossorio (further unofficial follow-ups exist, such as this) with a script by El Hombre Lobo himself Jacinto Molina  - such a shame that he had also made the low point of Bela Lugosi's career (yes, even more of a nadir than his work with Ed Wood), 1952's Old Mother Riley meets the Vampire, which I can only gesture towards explaining to modern audiences as Mrs Brown's Boys with a slumming Dracula in it.  Only that sounds fun, and it really isn't.

We begin with our intrepid team of boffin Dr Morley (Maurice Denham, who for all his solid career will forever best be known to me as renegade Time Lord Azmael in Colin Baker's sadly execrable debut 'The Twin Dilemma') and his assistants Dr Jack Costain (our man Saxon, fulfilling the role of the American import a la Brian Donlevy or Dean Jagger in this Quatermass-like - or maybe Quatermass-lite, if that's not throwing shade - scenario) and Ann Barlow (Patricia Haines. ex-Mrs Michael Caine [not a lot of people know that... they probably do] and stalwart of '60s and '70s TV such as Danger Man, The Avengers, Department S and Randall and Hopkirk, who sadly departed this harsh realm all too young aged 45 from lung cancer) as they are tracking what appears to be a meteorite entering Earth orbit, a la Quatermass II or Doctor Who's 'Spearhead from Space', before which we launch into the title sequence which - at least in the version I watched - features a crooning Mark Richardson rather than the original Alan Haven instrumental track.  The team go out on location to the site of the space object's landing, where they encounter a military team comprised of John Carson from Taste the Blood of Dracula as the Major, with the posh slur of James Mason, and Jack Watson as one of his sergeants; Saxon adrift in a sea of recognisable British faces of the small and silver screens - possibly moderating his accent to fit in?  He at least seems to be toning it down a little, even if he's not attempting a 'British accent' (whatever that is).

The object in question turns out to be a small football-sized sphere comprised of some type of carbon, which - after being cleared that the radiation being picked up by the Geiger counters is merely negligible stuff picked up as the orb passed through the Van Allen belt - they take back to their home base of Falsley Park (not, unfortunately, Paisley Park; much as the late His Purpleness Prince Rogers Nelson may well have been an alien) for study.  After Ann stays behind late to finish up her report and is menaced by a malevolent presence that appears in the lab after the globe glows a bit, resulting in a clawed reptilian-looking hand reaching for her around the door, Morley concludes that the object is a receptacle for a matter transmitter: what Mr Spock would call a transporter and Brundlefly might call a telepod.  Morley maintains that he should go on there alone and try to make contact, all miked up by the army men and insisting that no-one come in to attempt to rescue him no matter what they might hear, much to Costain's chagrin, and shortly comes a cropper at the taloned hands of the unseen invader who disappears into the night.

With Morley's Reginald Tate-flavoured Quatermass deceased, Costain steps up to the mark as his Donlevy/Jagger replacement.  Teaming up with Scotland Yard's Superintendent Hartley (another familiar 1969s British face, the Public Eye himself Alfred Burke), who swiftly becomes his Watson-cum-Lestrade, the pair are investigating some twenty-odd cases (yes, I should have taken more extensive notes whilst watching) of missing young women - obviously we've had a bit of a time jump in the narrative, and our alien boy has been busy - all connected to replying to an advertisement for modelling work in Bikini Girl magazine.  Seriously, we've gone from Quatermass sci-fi horror to Her Private Hell sexploitation sleaze.  I do approve. 

Following up on these ads placed by the mysterious Mr Medra (Robert Crewdson, dubbed with the voice of Robert Rietty - whose vocal talents grace many a film including being the original voice of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in From Russia with Love and Thunderball), who has traveled all the way across space to lurk around Soho taking pictures of girls: 'From Ganymede with Lust'?, Costain and Hartley are ably assisted by Hartley's compatriot Detective Grant (Stanley Meadows).  Allowing Ann to go undercover as a prospective model to infiltrate Medra's operation, via his seedy associate Thorburn (Aubrey Morris, another seemingly omnipresent UK genre face who's been in everything from Blood from the Mummy's Tomb to The Wicker Man to Babylon 5) our heroes and imperiled heroine discover that Medra's plan is to repopulate his war-torn world - or moon, if we're been finicky - with human females as they're running rather low on the ladies.  Ganymede wants women as much as Mars does, it seems.  All of this leads to a rather unexpectedly but rather refreshingly downbeat ending; Ann is dead, clawed and strangled by the angered xenomorph, and the victorious Medra, his mission completed, beams away back to his home leaving our awestruck protagonists dumbfounded in the ashes.

A grim finale to an interesting collision of science fiction with gritty (or maybe grotty) British cinema of the 1950s and '60s - an auspicious start the John Saxon's science fiction resume which would soon see him fighting the vampiric Martian Queen of Blood and taking part in a Battle Beyond the Stars.