Red Dwarf USA (Jeff Melman / Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, 1992)

 It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere...

In 1992, during the lacuna between the fifth and sixth seasons of Red Dwarf, something truly monstrous was born.

Throughout the history of international televisual relations between the USA and the UK, there has been a relationship as 'special' in its one-sided way as the toxic abusive battered-wife syndrome relationship of a political alliance. While the UK has always happily hoovered (in a vacuum cleaner sense, rather than a Herbert or a J. Edgar sense) up many a US TV export and presented it in its original unexpurgated glory to the Great Unwashed British Public, our Stateside cousins have generally opted to remake British TV shows tailored to more Americanised (or 'Americanized') tastes, with the Anglo originals relegated to PBS (with very few exceptions: back in the dim and flickering shadows of the 1960s the antics of Steed and Mrs Peel in ABC's [Associated British Corporation] The Avengers may have aired on ABC [the American Broadcasting Company], but this was a pretty rare exception).

There is a long litany of popular UK sitcoms being reinvented for American TV over the decades, some with great success (Galton and Simpson's Steptoe and Son switching race to become the highly popular African-American Sanford and Son, the bigoted Alf Garnett of Johnny Speight's Till Death Do Us Part translating into Archie Bunker of All in the Family and Man About the House spawning the popular Three's Company and its spinoff/continuation Three's a Crowd) and some less successful (even the star power of Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman, failing to help the quickly-canned Viva Laughlin! achieve the success of its Lancastrian forbear Blackpool - while the Indianapolis-relocated Men Behaving Badly made the twin errors of casting Rob Schneider in the lead Martin Clunes role and underestimating the prudishness of the mainstream audience).

So when the popular BBC2 sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf made the leap across the pond (facilitated by vice president of MCA Universal's Comedy Development department Brad Johnson) and the Mancunian originators and co-writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor found themselves nonplussed in a writer's room and branded "The Wave" - short for "The Wave of Negativity" - for not meshing with the culture of emitted braying false laughter at every attempted gag being pitched around the table, signs and portents were not great for the Stateside incarnation of a show trumpeted as being a smash hit on PBS that was watched by a avid fans such as Bill Clinton and Madonna and had Star Trek: the Next Generation's Patrick Stewart phoning his lawyer to sue over copyright infringement.  The first couple of these factoids were of course exaggerations and untruths partially put about by Grant and Naylor themselves, the last is - bafflingly - apparently true.

And so the ill-fated pilot (well, pilot and a half - it'll all make sense, probably) episode of Red Dwarf U.S.A. was born, like the scion of the cripple and the idiot.  Please note before cancelling that this is a Red Dwarf reference and not some kind of bizarre outburst of bigoted ableism on my part, yeah?  And thus it was that the first attempt at an American take on Grant Naylor's space sitcom - bizarrely spawned from a viewing of John Carpenter and Dan O' Bannon's film school project Dark Star via the radio segment Dave Hollins: Space Cadet - begins:

Our twenty five and a half minute (four and a half minutes shorter than the original Red Dwarf opening episode 'The End', presumably to incorporate corporate commercial breaks) pilot opens with the same gag that had opened the show's third BBC season three years earlier: the ludicrously speeded-up Star Wars style scroll, here utilised as a scene setter rather than to gloss over cast and set changes and hastily resolve a cliffhanger.

"Red Dwarf

The story so far...

By the latter half of the twenty-second century, huge space cruisers powered by hydrogen ram-jet drives had colonized the outer fringes of our solor [sic] system.  Human kind was poised to explore the dark mysteries of deep space.

We wish we could have told you stories about those brave men and women but we couldn't afford it.  Instead what you're getting is this.

This is the story of a beat-up old mining ship which ambles between Earth and the moons of Saturn, transporting raw materials which are badly needed by someone.

Is it just me, or does this sound really tedious?  No one's going to like this.  A show about people who move rocks from planet to planet?  Intergalactic rock movers?  Who are we kidding?

I didn't even want to be a writer.  Do you realize how hard it is to type this fast?  My fingers are bleeding.

Uh oh.  Looks like we're slowing back down.  I'd better start making sense again, so all the cheapos who don't have a VCR with freeze frame will think they really missed out on something important.

Ahem...

...Which you really need to know to understand this story."

Yeah, not as funny as the original version, is it?  There'll be a lot of that.

We then get a title sequence that mixes the footage of a space suited Lister painting the outer hull of the ship that opened the first two seasons - but scored not with Howard Goodall's original slow opening theme that communicated the lonely vastness of a godless universe, but instead a sort AOR/MOR soft rock monstrosity courtesy of Todd Rundgren, who really should have known better - and various model shot of the small rouge one and Starbug with inserts of the new cast, all take from the upcoming episode.

Writer (and 'developer') Linwood Boomer's script isn't simply a straight Americanisation of 'The End', but instead takes the general outline and main story points of the series' genesis and mixes in elements of Grant Naylor's debut novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.  We are introduced to the Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel Red Dwarf (apparently a Class 5 miner/freighter with a cargo capacity of 47 cubic miles), replete with Zocalo-style shopping arcade and zero gravity sporting amenities, by the ship's computer Holly 6000 (Frasier's Daphne Moon herself Jane Leeves [though she wouldn't land her most famous role for another year, and wouldn't have if this show had been picked up so it's best for all that timeline was aborted really], who is the best of the recasts and seems to be having a blast in the role).  We then meet the ships holographic crewmember Officer Munson (Michael Heintzman), taking up the plot role of George McIntyre and expositing to camera; oddly, here the holograms are marked out not with an 'H' emblazoned on their forehead but with a circular red dot.  It was bad enough coming across a Quora conspiracy theory about Chinese people not believing in skeletons (because of China's censoring of certain video games), we don't need one about all Hindu people being dead!

We then meet service mechanoid Kryten, played as always (well, not always; everywhere except in the character's eponymous debut episode where he was portrayed by David Ross) by Robert Llewellyn.  Llewellyn would be the sole actor from the UK show to make the transition, though Chris Barrie was asked to reprise Rimmer but balked at signing the standard US TB five year contract.  Llewellyn gives his normal Kryten performance, complete with Herman Munster walk and expressions, though the make up job doesn't look quite right even through the haze of a crappy nth generation copy.  Making his way through the ship's corridors in search of the commanding officer Captain Tau, Kryten encounters Dave Lister (Craig Bierko, probably the most controversial recast as the slobby everyman Lister is played by an actor who almost landed the role of Joey Tribbiani in Friends; it's odd to see Lister as a square-jawed all-American hunk, though Bierko's likeability and charisma is great) and Arnold Rimmer (Chris Eigeman, who plays all of Rimmer's nasally, prissy dislikeability without Barrie's shades of pathos - but it is weirdly fitting to have Lister and Rimmer played by actors named Craig and Chris respectively) as they fulfill their important function of maintaining the craft's chicken soup machines.  When Rimmer is called away on a confectionery-related emergency via his beeper - because this a very late '80s/early '90s 22nd century - Lister takes Kryten and explains his backstory: how he had to sign up aboard the ship after he got drunk (in Detroit, rather than Liverpool) and woke up on the fourth moon of Saturn, material cribbed from the Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers novel.

After on again-off again girlfriend Christine [sic] Kochanski (Elizabeth Morehead) renders their relationship permanently off due to his lackadaisical coasting through life, Lister takes Kryten into his confidence about Frankenstein, the cat he had illegally smuggled aboard in contravention of space quarantine after rescuing 'him' from a being served up in a Titanese restaurant - Kryten has to point out that 'he' is pregnant rather than just gaining weight from all the beer Lister's been putting in the cat's drinking bowl.  Lister asks Kryten to hide his feline friend from detection by Holly and the captain.  Alas, the subterfuge is captured on the security cameras, and Lister and Kryten are hauled up in front of the captain (Lorraine Toussaint).  When Lister refuses to talk, and Kryten self-destructs after being ordered to disclose the errant cat's whereabouts (giving a pretty amusing sight gag - in all senses - of his eyeballs landing in a crewmember's cup of coffee), the punishment is meted out of Lister being frozen for six months in suspended animation.  When he's finally released from the stasis booth by a far daffier than usual Holly, he takes a while to grasp the situation.

"There was an accident, Dave.  A radiation leak.  The entire crew was subjected to a lethal does of Cadmium 2."

"Is everyone okay?"

"Everybody's dead, Dave.  That's what 'lethal' means."

Finding himself the last human alive almost three million years in the future ("My baseball cards must be worth a fortune!") with an eccentric computer and a holographically resurrected Rimmer for company, Lister is happy to discover the sentient but still disassembled Kryten, whose head has been stuck on a shelf whiling away the millennia by reading the fire exit sign opposite him.  Meanwhile, an 'alien' life form has been detected down in the cargo hold - which is introduced in a slightly janky matte shot that seems to aim to replicate the closing shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark - the same part of the ship that Kryten concealed the cat.  Venturing into the hold, they encounter the humanoid Cat (the sadly recently departed Hinton Battle, probably best known to genre fans as the musical demon Sweet from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 'Once More, With Feeling' instalment), the last mutated and evolved scion of Frankenstein's line.  Assembling in the drive room, this ragtag crew try to help Lister overcome his existential ennui ("I started out with absolutely nothing... and I couldn't hold on to it!"), and are aided in buoying up his spirits by a quick visit from their future selves - with Kochanski joining Lister, Cat and Kryten in Rimmer's place in a weird foreshadowing of Red Dwarf VII five years early.  Lister resolves to get them back home to Earth, even if the road back entails encountering "parallel universes, time warps, black holes... y'now... space stuff!"

When the decision was made by the higher-ups to fire not only Boomer (is it so wrong of me to hope that the memo he was sent regarding his dismissal began "OK Boomer"?) but most of the cast except for Bierko and Llewellyn, Grant and Naylor decided to helm the second attempt themselves.  Instead of a full second pilot episode - a 'Where No Man Has Gone Before' to Melman's 'The Cage', if you like... what, you don't like?  Bloody sod the lot of you - the Grant Naylor effort would take the form of a short promo reel to convey the idea of the projected new series and spotlight the main characters (including fresh recasts).

Shot as a 'promo reel' rather than a full-blown pilot episode, this second go contained quite a bit of footage from season V's 'Terrorform' as well as new sequences including bookend scenes of Lister and Rimmer (now played with more authentically Rimmerish traits by Anthony Fusco, with the hologrammatic 'H' duly reinstated rather than the red circle) recording a message on the ship's black box - scenes which bear an uncanny similarity to Llewellyn's Kryten linking narration on the Smeg Ups VHS.  We get a recreation of the opening bunkroom scene from 'Backwards' with Fusco's Rimmer taking the place of Danny John-Jules' Cat in the 'Wilma Flintstone or Betty Rubble?' discussion, as well as scenes of Bierko and Leeves from the first pilot, with close-ups of Fusco spliced in to replace Eigeman.  Lister then introduces us to the new female version of Cat (Terry Farrell, in the same year she was on the big screen in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and a year before starting his long stint as the Trill Jadzia Dax in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine [which as any discerning viewer knows is the best Star Trek]), descended from "a common alley cat" with nine lives, a fearless warrior ethos, a slinky predatory sexuality and back-combed hair.

We then get a selection of scenes "from future episodes" (feel that optimism) including recreations of 'Marooned' (with "Cup a Noodle" substituted for Pot Noodle) and a reformatted version of 'The Last Day' retitled 'Shutdown' that gave Fusco's Rimmer and Farrell's Cat a good dialogue exchange that would later be used for the Barrie and John-Jules originals in season VI.

In all, a very interesting doomed experiment and a glimpse into a parallel reality that was never to be.  Jane Leeves is a great Holly, and after getting over the initial shock of such a different portrayal of Lister Craig Bierko is certainly charming and likeable and doing well with the material.  What we see of Fusco's Rimmer is much closer to the 'proper' portrayal and could have worked well, and Farrell's Cat is certainly an interesting - if totally different - take on the character that's valid in it's own right.

 

Maybe if they'd reshot the pilot with this cast it would have been better; then again it's impossible to argue with Craig Charles' comment that it would have been White Dwarf with nary a non-caucasian cast member.  So maybe it's better for everyone - including Leeves and Farrell's careers - that it didn't happen.  After all, we might never have got Red Dwarf VI if this had worked out.

And a universe without 'Gunmen of the Apocalypse' in it scarcely bears thinking about.  

Purple Playhouse: Dracula (Jack Nixon-Browne, 1973)

I have seen a lot of Draculas.  

Bram Stoker's classic tale of the undead Count is one of the most adapted novels in  the history of the visual medium, with cinematic and televisual renderings numbering well over 270 and counting - making Dracula the second most portrayed fictional character after Sherlock Holmes.  And possibly Jesus.

And so it's always fun and interesting to track down a rogue iteration that has thus far eluded me.  My trusty copy of Stephen Jones' The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide has proven invaluable in seeking out strange new flicks from new civilisations (another example is the 1971 Hrabe Dracula from the pre-velvet revolution Czechoslovakia which is waiting on a flashdrive to be watched; I only put that one off because I have little to no Czech in my lexicon and it lacks subtitles), and I have long wanted to see this 1973 Canadian TV production which has intrigued me since I first read about it more than a decade ago.

The Purple Playhouse was an hour-long (though, being North American TV, that's inclusive of commercial breaks - something that those of us raised with a love of the BBC [hurr hurr] find it hard to wrap our heads around) eight episode drama strand that ran on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from February to May 1973 as a mid-season replacement.  Adapting works such as Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and The Corsican Brothers, the series embraced the over the top grand guignol melodramatics deliberately implied in its name; 'purple playhouse' being the dramatised equivalent of purple prose, with all of the florid outrageousness conveyed by that concept.

Dracula was of course a stage dramatisation shortly after being penned as a novel in 1897, Bram Stoker holding a stage reading of the book at his workplace the Lyceum theatre to a distinctly unimpressed Sir Henry Irving - the venue's star actor and Stoker's physical model for the Count - who reportedly left the building intoning "Dreadful!"; the actual stage play version by Hamilton Deane would debut in Derby in 1924 and on Broadway (with Americanised [or rather 'Americanized'] amendations by John Balderston) in 1927 before becoming the basis for Tod Browning's stagey 1931 movie.

This theatrical pedigree therefore behooves (is that the name of a Friendship Is Magic character?  Let me know, Bronies [no kink-shaming here]) a multi camera setup videotaped television production to lean into the artifice and be a televised play, which suits the Purple Playhouse modus operandi.  So let's raise the curtain and watch through the limelight-lit proscenium arch of the television (or computer monitor in this case, as Youtube seems to be the only place to see it).

Adapted by writer and actor Rod Coneybeare (whose voice acting roles include both the 1960s Thor and 1990s X-Men animated series, True Believers!) and the debut directorial credit for Jack Nixon-Browne, who would go on to helm episodes of child-traumatising Canuck canine export The Littlest Hobo, the action of the novel is telescoped down to a brisk hour (that's a North American TV hour, so inclusive of commercial breaks - in reality it's really about three quarters of that hour; IMDb of course lists it as 30 minutes, showing themselves to be as reliable as ever).  

Beginning with an opening caption declaring it to be 'Sunday at Nine' - presumably Purple Playhouse's regular slot - we then get a brief introductory interluditude* from Robertson Davies, Canadian 'man of letters' and author of the acclaimed Deptford Trilogy (not to be confused with Robin Jarvis' Deptford Mice trilogy, which is better, probably) among many other works.  Mr Davies goes on to claim that the universal appeal of Dracula is not "melodramatic" (presumably he hadn't pre-screened the piece he was introducing!) but that he represents the Devil "sucking out our blood or some other form of vitality".  I knew someone at college like that.  No, you can't have her number.  Just watch Jess Franco's Female Vampire (a.k.a. The Bare Breasted Countess) if you're too naive or sheltered to know what I'm winking (not a typo!) about, or see my review of it here).  After Davies' rambling intro, in which he even manages to get the publication date of the novel wrong saying it came out in 1894 rather than 1897, we begin with the promise that "what you are about to see is faithful to the original Dracula).

After a brief title sequence consisting of the Purple Playhouse Presents logo and then a red-scrawled 'DRACULA' superimposed over a shot of a castle turret with one illuminated window, we dissolve into the videotape world of the interior, where solicitor's clerk Jonathan Harker (Dan MacDonald, the Reverend Matthew Dawson himself from Canadian Dark Shadows knockoff Strange Paradise - which I only got round to seeing last year, and so smiled at the sight of this journeyman actor like spotting a friend) is being framed in an artsy shot through the glass of a brandy balloon clutched in the taloned hand of an extraordinarily pallid and white-haired - no moustache though, marks off for that - Count Dracula (Norman Welsh, in whose career's coffin this was to be the final nail; even though he apparently lived til 2008 there are no further credits.  Perhaps he crept the boards in his age?).   They succinctly cover the Count's purchase of the Carfax estate and his impending preparations to move to England before Harker is startled by the howling of a wolf outside and breaks his glass, cutting his finger.  This leads to a rather amusing reaction from Welsh's Dracula as he licks his lips like a pervert outside the school gates. 

We cut to Harker tossing in his bed restlessly, as well he might as the spectral Brides (played by the exotically-named Marie Romain Aloma and Marcella Saint-Amant.  I have no idea which is which, but the one in the green dress beguiles me: I for one would certainly be happy to remain in the castle and be drained dry by her.  The slightly taller, more regal looking one is very nice too, and sports a kickass and stylish diadem.  I believe the kids call it 'the drip'.  The drip of blood, amirite?)  - only two of them here rather than three; we are on a budget after all - whisper of having him all to themselves once the Count is gone, with "kisses for us both".  I sense a very bloody double blowjob coming in his future.  Jess Franco has warped my tiny fragile mind. 

As Drac crawls down the face of the castle wall Nicholas Hammond-style - or maybe that should be Adam West-style? (Not the first occurrence of this scene from the novel in visual form; at least Hammer's 1970 Scars of Dracula had essayed it previously) - leaving Harker alone with the Brides, we suddenly cut to black in what I assume to be the original TV broadcast's commercial break, before returning with a time jump: Jonathan is now back on English soil, in the care of Dr Jack Seward (Steven Sutherland, who despite being Canadian appears to be no relation to Donald) and Professor Van Helsing, played by Nehemiah Persoff (Israeli-born all-purpose 'European' / 'ethnic' actor - presumably the go-to guy when Oscar Homolka was unavailable [were they ever seen in the same room at the same time?  Closest thing off the top of my head would be them both guesting in separate episodes of the '70s David McCallum The Invisible Man] - who guest starred in pretty much everything; most recently sightings of him in our house have been in episodes of Honey West and Alfred Hitchcock Presents).  Apparently both Seward's fiancee Lucy (Charlotte Hunt, in her sole imdb credit) and Harker's wife Mina (Blair Brown, the only person in this other than Persoff [and MacDonald, I guess] to have a significant career; I'll always remember her as Emily in Ken Russell's amazeballs psychedelic Altered States, especially the final A-ha's 'Take On Me'-inspiring scene) are being predated upon by a creature of the night, and Van Helsing suspects that the culprit is a vampirism-infected Jonathan.

When these suspicions are allayed by Harker (who refers to the brides of Dracula as "the furies" from whom he managed to escape - evoking the Erinyes of Greek myth) snatches the cross proffered by the Prof and weeps for forgiveness for conveying the Count to Carfax; "Carfax?!?  That adjoins this property!" splutters a splenetic Seward through his moustache.  Realising that Mina has been left alone and unprotected, they race up to her room only to find her bed empty, for the runaway bride is out for a mesmerised moonlit stroll in the graveyard outside Lucy's tomb - which is strangely emblazoned with the family name of Murray rather than Westenra, so presumably Lucy and Mina are sisters in this version like the 1977 BBC Count Dracula...?  Maybe?  We're definitely missing some information and a lot of footage here, I feel certain of that.  As Harker, Seward and Van Helsing arrive on the scene Mina is approached by two lovely Alsatians portraying wolves who dissolve via the magic of a cross-fade (or is it a 'roll back and mix'?) into the vampirised Lucy and Dracula himself.  Wielding a large silver cross each, the dynamic trio force the bloodsuckers to retreat: Dracula to vanish and Lucy to retreat into the vault.  Ordering Harker to take the somnambulistic Mina home, Van Helsing leads Dr Seward inside in order to enact a tame and bloodless (this is TV, I suppose) version of the familiar staking of Lucy scene as Seward reads out the prayer for the dead while Van Helsing pounds a length into the supine blonde.  The dirty old bugger.

After another cut to black for commercials, we have another and more sudden time jump: Mina is now in the Count's thrall and sporting a cruciform burn mark upon her forehead and Van Helsing is hypnotising her in order to try to trace Dracula to his resting place.  There's definitely footage missing here - the time jump after the first break actually worked and was covered in the dialogue of the ensuing scene, whereas here it's just too sudden and garbled even for someone like myself who knows the story and a myriad adaptations inside out.  There must be about 15 to 20 minutes missing, which does make a thorough review difficult and can't help but mar the ending of what had thus far been a far from perfect but certainly interesting and enjoyable version of the well-worn tale.  So instead of covering the last act in detail, I shall simply include a link to the version I watched on Youtube and enjoin fans of the Count to give this rarity a go (I'm sure ardent Drac acolytes can spare the 35 minutes) with the proviso that it does seem incomplete.  It would be nice if a complete and restored print (ideally without the studio timecode) were to surface someday, but I shan't be holding my breath.  Some things don't return from the dead.

(*No, that's not a typo for 'interlude', it's from Blackadder.  'Tis a common word, round our way)

Three Faces of Dr Jekyll (Lucius Henderson, 1912; Herbert Brenon, 1913; Allen Reisner, 1955)

Edinbugger Robert Louis Stevenson was quite a radgie gadgie.  The author of 1883 pirate romp Treasure Island - which begat the legendary Long John Silver - and 1886's Jacobite adventure Kidnapped, in that same latter year he would legendarily be roused from a nightmare by his wife only to tell Fanny (by gaslight, no doubt) that she should not have woken him for he was "dreaming a fine bogey tale".  This night terror induced phantasm of a man changing his face (unconsciously inspired, perhaps, by the previous century bogeyman of his native city Deacon William Brodie, who lived a dual existence: respectable gentleman and cabinet-maker [indeed, Brodie had made the wardrobe that stood in Stevenson's childhood bedroom] who mixed with polite society including poet Robert Burns by day whilst shedding the veneer to be a housebreaker and robber by night) would go on to become one the classics of Victorian Gothic horror.   

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde would be embraced by the emerging medium of the cinematograph, the first public showing which by the freres Lumiere would happen a scant nine years later.  Already a mainstay of the stage from 1887 courtesy of actor Richard Mansfield's barnstorming rendition, creeping the boards as Hyde and achieving the metamorphosis purely through physical performance and lighting changes (an audience-traumatising spectacle that would have the show closed during its 1888 London run after suspicions arose that the man who could so easily and effectively become a monster must be Jack the Ripper himself), the move to the silver screen came in 1908 with not one but two film versions - fitting, given the story's theme  of duality.  The first was produced by 'Colonel' William N. Selig's Polyscope Company and starred Hobart Bosworth in the title roles, and debuted Betty Harte as love interest Alice (a role absent from the novel, a female romantic part debuted in Mansfield's stage version and became a mainstay).  The second, produced by Kalem Films and starring Frank Oakes Rose is, like its predecessor, a lost film with no known extant copies.  Another brace would emerge in 1910: the first version filmed in the U.K., titled The Duality of Man, was directed by Harry Brodribb Irving (son of noted Victorian actor-manager Sir Henry Irving, on whom his employee Bram Stoker would base the physical appearance of Count Dracula); the second was a Danish production by Nordisk Film produced by Ole Olsen (sadly not the same Ole Olsen who starred in 1941's Hellzapoppin' alongside Chic Johnson) helmed by August Blom and starring Alwin Neuss.  This iteration of the tale was marred by the addition of a cheat 'it was all a dream' ending.  Once again, both films are no longer extant.

1912's one-reeler iteration of the tale - titled, as are the vast majority of adaptations, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and directed by Lucius Junius Henderson - begins with our good Henry Jekyll (James Cruze, who as well as an actor was an accomplished director having helmed the landmark 1923 Western The Covered Wagon - widely considered to be the first epic Western and the first U.S. epic to be directed by someone other than D.W Griffith [that film also co-starred Charles Ogle, the first screen Frankenstein Monster]), portrayed book-accurately as an older gentleman (something rarely seen in adaptations: I can think of Paul Massie in Hammer's 1960 The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll and the 1980 BBC television version starring David Hemmings as others which have an older Jekyll becoming a younger and more athletic Hyde off the top of my head.  Oh, and Malkovitch [Malkovitch, Malkovitch] in Mary Reilly), hard at work in his laboratory - or 'cabinet'.  Perusing the text of a tome entitled Graham on Drugs (which of course conjures "This is your Graham; this is your Graham on drugs", which might have livened up televisual excrement Blind Date a bit had the unseen 'Our Graham' been off his mash in an altered state of consciousness) which states that "The taking of certain drugs can separate man into two beings - one representing EVIL the other GOOD" as if 't'were scientific fact.  I do hope that this work was properly peer reviewed.

Undeterred by considerations such as sense, our white-coiffed and distinguished prober into the unknown reaches of science mixes his medicines and tastes the secret sauce of life much to his immediate chagrin; collapsing into a chair immediately after quaffing the draught and transfiguring into a nasty brutish and short snaggle-toothed specimen with dark bedraggled hair (played in certain shots by Harry Benham, eschewing the usual convention of having both Jekyll and Hyde portrayed by the same performer - which is actually quite effective in that we clearly see that Hyde is a more diminutive figure than the patrician Jekyll [as in the original text] as he regards his new form in the wall-mounted mirror, which wouldn't be nearly as effective with Cruze simply hunching over) in a jump cut; no slow lap dissolves or Mamoulian-esque bravura transformations here.  After physically expressing his unalloyed glee at existing (that sounds dirty in my head for some reason) Hyde downs the reflux elixir and melts back into Jekyll, who excitedly scrawls down the results of the experiment.

We are then treated to the intertitle informing us that Jekyll has become the accepted suitor of the minister's daughter; surely everyone's true burning ambition.  That sarcastically said, I definitely would have swooned at the chance to suit one of the Haworth minister's daughters what with being a fully paid-up Brontesaurus and everything.  Jekyll and his fiancee (Florence Le Badie) - who goes unnamed as women couldn't afford names in the olden days - take a lovely walk whilst sporting splendid hats and the good doctor shakes his prospective father in law (actor uncredited) warmly by the hand, before another intertitle informs us that it is now months later and the transformation has begun to happen without the aid of the elixir.  After suddenly taking a turn, the bestial Hyde dons his jaunty titfer and tears up his good self's notes before going outside on a spree of kicking small girls (Marie Eline) and then retreating to his laboratory sanctuary and changing back to his more respectable form.  Later, whilst on a romantic stroll with his sweetheart, the change comes again and Hyde attempts a forcible romantic interlude on the unwilling lady and when her pastoral pater intervenes bashes him senseless with his stick - the vicar here being a clear analogue for the novel's Sir Danvers Carew.

Pursued by a passing policeman ('Ello, 'ello, 'ello), Hyde races back to Jekyll's home and makes a hurried intrusion via the rear entrance (ouch) - by the time the officer of the law makes a more conventional and vanilla entrance to the abode via the front door he is met by a bewildered and apologetic Jekyll.  Realising that his supply of the drug is rapidly diminishing and that soon he will be forced to exist as Hyde permanently, he decides to tell his lady friend that he is going away.  After going through the ultimate metamorphosis and being faced with and axe-wielding worried butler, the policeman, and a small crowd of onlookers breaking down the laboratory door Hyde ends it all by drinking poison.  No post-death transition back to Jekyll, Hyde is found self-deaded and presumably presumed to have done away with the doc.  At a brisk twelve minutes, this is certainly an interesting curio that concertinas the tale down to its barest essentials.  As the earliest surviving Jekyll and Hyde film, though, 'tis a treasure.

1913 saw the next retelling in the form of Herbert Brenon's two-reel production for Carl Laemmle's fledgling Independent Moving Pictures (IMP), soon to become Universal Pictures.  Starring the cinema's first star leading man King Baggot as the dual leads (in point of fact the opening title proclaims "Starring King Baggot in a Dual Role"), the film begins with Jekyll asking the father of Alice, Jekyll's fiancee, played by Matt B. Snyder - who I assume is no relation to Matt Snider a.k.a. DJ Schnootz as he shows zero proclivity towards acid trance or techno music (presumably preferring a nice string quartet) - for the hand of his daughter (Jane Gail, who had made a brief and uncredited appearance as an extra in the 1912 film), who has the same moniker as Jekyll's fiancee from the earliest Hobart Bosworth production.  

We have here the cinematic debuts of the characters of Dr Lanyon (Howard Crampton) and the lawyer Mr Utterson (William Sorrel) - referred to as 'Lawyer Utterson' as though it's his given name - who confide and chide - it's like wining and dining with more upbraiding - the diffident Jekyll for his "unheard of" experiments.  After a hard days' charity work tending unpaid to the sickly poor, Jekyll decides "in the dead of night" to carry out his experimental self-abuse - presumably no longer necessary after the wedding - and unleash and indulge his primal side that his ego can override.  Locking himself into his laboratory, he necks the potion and transforms via a slow dissolve into a Hyde form curiously similar to the Cruze/Benham version, with mop out tangled black hair, crooked protruding teeth (were the Americans mocking British dentistry from the dawn of the 20th century?) and stooped posture; Baggot's Hyde walking with a crouched gait reminiscent of Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate.

Handing his startled butler a note from Jekyll stating "the bearer Mr Hyde is my best friend, treat him as myself", the unbridled Hyde'll not be questioned by the household staff and dashes out into the night for an evening's carousal.  No, I don't mean a merry-go-round, that's a carousel.  After picking a fight in a pub, Hyde decides to a take a room at a disreputable lodging house - though honestly I've stayed in worse Airbnbs.  This one looks less like it smells of sex and desperation and would get a better Tripadvisor or Trustpilot review than some of the dens of iniquity I've had to crash in.  Hyde then goes out on a nocturnal spree, including assaulting a disabled child (a boy here, rather than a young girl as in the original text.  I can't believe that the 1913 internet [made of a kettle and some string] didn't go into meltdown over this gender switching of in important character) by knocking away his crutch and giving a few whacks with his cane.  When an outraged crowd (no, not the aforementioned outraged internetters: there's nobody blaming Kathleen Kennedy for everything) quickly assembles, Hyde has to agree to pay for the child's injuries.  Leading the throng to the back door of the laboratory and paying them of with a bag of coinage he is spotted by a passing and perturbed Utterson, absorbing some of the plot points of is literary kinsman Mr Enfield.  Changing back to his courtly self, Jekyll vows never to repeat his mistakes but as he sits and thinks of Alice - to whom we intercut in a nice shot that puts me in mind of the Hutter/Ellen interaction from a distance in Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu - he undergoes an unwanted and unsolicited Hyde-ing. 

Calling in Utterson and Lanyon, Jekyll makes out his last will and testament with the codicil that in the event of his sudden disappearance all his possessions should pass to My Hyde.  Then a visit from Alice makes our repressed gent come over all funny, taking a turn for the worse and snarling at Alice, Lanyon and Utterson through the window.  After Hyde has, once again, clubbed Alice's father with his walking stick, the desperate monster engages a messenger boy to convey to his scientific peer Dr Lanyon a note from Jekyll begging him to retrieve the boxes of chemicals from his (Jekyll's) laboratory - "My liberty, my life, my honor [sic] and my soul depend on you.  My messenger will call at midnight".  The famous scene then plays out with the misshapen Hyde calling at the witching hour and decrying the befuddled Lanyon as "unbelieving" as he mixes and downs the mixture and changes before his very eyes back to Jekyll in one sustained and unbroken take - no cuts or dissolves.  Admittedly it's a tad less impressive than that sounds, as the scene starts with Hyde facing away from the camera, masking the fact that Baggot isn't in full make-up, and when he'd doubled over in the agony of the metamorphosis he removes the wig unseen.  Still a feat for the time though, I suppose, and a memorable screen first; as is the film itself for managing to convey all the novella's main story beats into less than half a hour - the film ends as the story does with a desperate Hyde, out of antidote and out of luck, trapped in the laboratory and ending his life by poison. 

Herbert Brenon would that same year direct Baggot in a feature-length (a whopping 48 minutes in four reels!) adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, one of the earliest Hollywood pictures to mount an overseas location shoot filming around Chepstow Castle in Monmouthshire, Wales, Ingerland. As the U.S. crew may have thought of it (no, seriously, it was trumpeted as "the biggest venture of its kind attempted in England"!).

In 1955, the anthology television show Climax! (that's not an order despite the imperative exclamation mark; I am not commanding you to 'arrive') - which had also given the world the live action debut of Ian Fleming's agent 007 James (well, 'Jimmy') Bond the previous year: see here for review - decided to give Stevenson's schizophrenic saga a go as the thirty-fourth episode of its premier season, directed by series regular Allen Reisner from a script by Gore Vidal.  In the lead role(s) was British star of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still Michael Rennie, the six foot four Bradford born and bred actor becoming one of the first U.K. performers to essay the role on screen since Irving (perhaps beaten only by Dulwich's own Boris Karloff in 1953's Abbott and Costello meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde). 

Opening as per usual with the Climax! Mystery Theater [sic] introductory spiel - "live from television city in Hollywood" and sponsored by the Chrysler automobile corporation - from regular host Bill Lundigan (who pronounces Jekyll correctly as "Jeekill" but oddly pronounces co-star Cedric Hardwicke's name as "Seedrick"), we begin the tale with Dr Jekyll's faithful manservant Poole (recognisable to Star Trek fans as John Hoyt, the starship Enterprise's first C.M.O. Dr Boyce, making a good go of an English accent) anxiously visiting legal eagle Mr George Utterson, Esq. (Hardwicke, second son of a Baron Frankenstein and father of a Dr Watson) to tell of the good doctor's prolonged absence, and how he and the household staff have spent two weeks preparing meals and leaving them at the laboratory door for unseen collection and consumption by the occupant: either Jekyll or, as Poole nervously states, "the other".

Utterson dismisses the suggestion, saying that Mr Hyde vanished a year ago and wouldn't dare return to town with the police after him.  Poole however insists that he has come back and possibly done some harm to the doctor.  Taking the precaution of arming himself with a pistol, Utterson accompanies Poole to the lab; within stirs an agitated figure, face unseen (Rennie), who prowls like a caged panther whilst ransacking the room.  When the solicitor and servant join forces to force the locked door, the stranger crouches before pouncing and receives a fatal bullet.  Judging the dead man to indeed be the fugitive Hyde, Utterson sends Poole to fetch the police.  Looking over the wrecked laboratory, he comes across Jekyll's notebook which bears a note addressed to Utterson stating that the book should be read in the case of Henry Jekyll's death or disappearance.  As he peruses the tome we dissolve to a flashback (presumably either a rare pre-recorded section of the scene played in, or Rennie made his way off set and onto the other out of camera view, given the live nature of the broadcast) to two years previously, when Utterson arrived at Jekyll's house to find the urbane scientist quarreling with their mutual friend Dr Lanyon (Lowell Gilmore, no stranger to dramatisations of Victorian gothic fiction having played Basil Hallward in The Picture of Dorian Gray ten years previously) over Jekyll's 'fantastic' (in the unbelievable, rather than the Eccleston sense of the word) theory about dissecting the soul to bring out both the angel and the monster that dwell within.  And I always thought it took gamma rays to unleash the raging beast that dwells within.

Turns out it actually takes a liquid suspension of certain salts with an added secret ingredient - not the Colonel's secret sauce as it's a powder delivered by the dutiful Poole - as we see Jekyll's self-inflicted experimentation one night in the lab.  Draining the draught he collapses in a fit of spasms and we get a subjective trick camera shot of the room whirling (really, there must be a few pre-records in here, what with the transformations and all - there's no way they could have had the make-up on and off several times during a live one hour show) before he sees his nasty and brutish - but unlike life in Hobbes' Leviathan not short given Rennie's stature - new face: Rennie's savage mono-browed Hyde make-up is curiously similar to Lon Chaney Sr., as the mute ape-man creation of Dr Lamb (also portrayed by Chaney) in 1922's A Blind Bargain, Wallace Worsley's adaptation of Barry Pain's The Octave of Claudius.

Realising that he has freed not the inner angel but "the monster from its pit", he adapts quickly to his new double life and identity and cruises the darkness on the edge of town frequenting low establishments and getting into scraps with the local toughs, taking names and taking their ladies (possibly of ill repute).  Threatening "gentleman friends" with a good glassing - he'd really fit in down the Bigg Market on a Friday night, this lad - he manages to pull (unwillingly and problematically) a nice young lady played by Mary Sinclair, who struggles gamely with the accent despite the hindrance of not even being given a character name.  One would almost think that Gore Vidal wasn't all that interested in women or something  We get the standard story played out, with a regretful Jekyll tossing the ingredients into a furnace and then finding himself unwillingly transforming without the aid of the potion (with an odd focus on the mole on Hyde's cheek appearing and disappearing; honestly, I've never seen such focus on a mole outside of Bloodbath at the House of Death or Austin Powers).  Eventually, obviously, we loop round to the beginning to witness the good doctor's and bad man's impending ending.  It's... interesting, certainly.

In another instalment of Climax! titled 'Strange Sanctuary', Michael Rennie played a character referred to throughout as 'Mr O' Connor' - despite the name of the character inexplicably being given in the closing credits as 'Irish Sean Dillon'.  'Mr O' Connor', of course, was the moniker of the Hyde form of Conrad Veidt's Jekyllish Dr Warren in F.W. Murnau's copyright infringing 1920 Der Januskopf: obviously the gateway drug to the hard stuff of 1922's Nosferatu and Max Schreck's Count Dra... erm, Orloff!

It's a funny old world, whatever name you're using or face you're wearing.

Purple Noon ([a.k.a. Plein Soleil] Rene Clement, 1960)

It took the discovery that Netflix are mounting a new adaptation of the misadventures of Patricia Highsmith's roguish antihero Tom Ripley - in the form of the prosaically-titled Ripley, starring Andrew Scott of Sherlock and Fleabag and unnervingly high forehead fame (seriously, why haven't Marvel cast him as the Leader?  Just paint the lad green, no CGI enhancements required) - to finally prompt me to get round to sitting down and watching "the original, you might say".  Yes, I typed that in the voice of Richard Hurndall.  This Netflix series apparently premieres (or 'drops',as we say these days about television shows as well as music [I am so down with da yoof]) this April 4th, which - should I make it that far - will be the day after my 45th birthday.  Will it be a wonderful belated present or an unwanted gift?  Time will tell, I suppose.

It always does.

Having read all five of Highsmith's Ripley pentalogy (The Talented Mr Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water) in the early 2000s in the wake of Anthony Minghella's celebrated Matt Damon-starring 1999 movie of the first in the series - which, much to my chagrin, didn't spawn the requisite sequels I was awaiting unless one counts the unrelated 2002 variation upon Ripley's Game with John Malkovitch (Malkovitch Malkovitch); it does seem somewhat de rigueur to skip the second novel, as Ripley Under Ground was skipped in between the days of Rene Clement's 1960 Purple Noon and Wim Wenders' 1977 The American Friend, and again between 1999 and 2002 although there was a belated 2005 adaptation from Roger Spottiswoode that I always forget about, as seemingly does everyone else) - I have of course been meaning to watch the first cinematic version of Ripley (there had been a televised one hour live performance in January 1956 as an episode of the anthology series Studio One which sadly seems not to have been preserved as a Kinescope recording) for two decades now.  It does sometimes take me a while to get round to things.  

Procrastination's what you need if you want to be a record breaker, as Roy Castle never sang.

Hands up in honesty, though - who amung* us didn't look at the cover art of The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead album when young and want to be Alain Delon when they grew up?  I know I did.

So, briefly for those who don't know the story, the wealthy Boston Greenleafs (Greenleaves?  You do me wrong) hire Tom Ripley (Delon) to fly to the Med to bring back their errant son Philippe (nee Dickie, played by Maurice Ronet) who is living the high life of the idle rich being elegantly wasted around the Italian Riviera.  Quickly becoming quite taken with this louche Ligurian luxury lifestyle, Tom worms his way into the elite existences of Philippe and his girlfriend Marge (Marie Laforet) as well as their occasionally appearing friend Freddy (Billy Kearns) and his entourage of girlfriends - one of whom is an uncredited Romy Schneider of Sissi fame (she was da bomb in Visconti's Ludwig, yo): wouldn't we all like to spend five nights at Freddy's?

After larking about on the town and engaging in such shenanigans as buying a white cane from a blind man (Jess Franco regular Paul Muller), Philippe Marge and Tom embark on a recreational yacht trip so dripping with sexual tension that they should definitely have just organised a thrupple or a threesome or a menage or whatever and just got it over with.  This boat badly needs some bisexual lighting.  Wait - is that the purple that the English language title refers to?  MIND BLOWN.

Anyway, Tom winds up stabbing Philippe in a different way than the tension might lead us to suspect - i.e.: fatal rather than fun - and pitching the body overboard wrapped in a tarpaulin and weighed down with the anchor before taking his inveigling to its ne plus ultra by assuming the late Mr Greenleaf's identity and habits, gaslighting Marge into a relationship along the way, whilst dodging the suspicions of Freddy and the police (didn't they have a hit with 'You Were Made For Me'?).

Expertly directed by Clement (who, hopefully, didn't get too handsy with any of the female talent like he allegedly did with Jane Fonda), who sustains the suspense and tension admirably throughout as Delon's Ripley coasts through on his looks and insuppressible charm, the film is marred only by an ending that can't help but feel like a cop-out as our antagonist/protagonist exits the movie (sadly not pursued by a bear) walking into a police trap - feeling a bit like those Hong Kong movies with a mandatory 'the police must arrest anyone who breaks the law during the film' closing sequence.  An undoubtedly excellent adaptation of both Highsmith's novel and character with a mark deducted for cowardice in the face of the finale.

(*Yes, of course I spelled it like that deliberately.  I can be a silly creature of whim sometimes.  You should know that by now)

Doctor Who - The Barbara Benedetti Years (1984 - 1988)

 (Given the title of this piece, it would be fitting, probably, to picture us beginning with a title sequence consisting of a cube - each facet of which contains an image of Barbara Benedetti - rendered in loving early 1990s Quantel; all the while Keff McCulloch's 'Latin version' of the theme batters your brain with it's sick Calypso beats)

We all remember when BBC TV's titular Time Lord regenerated into the form of a blonde-haired woman, right?  No, not Jodie Whittaker.  Before that.  Before Cybermen.  Before Iceworld.  Back, back to your beginnings!  Sorry, I managed to segue from Fenric into Morbius there.  I think I really must have an undiagnosed villain complex.  That explains so much...  Anyway, where were we?  Ah, yes.  There really was a female incarnation of the Doctor before Jodie Whittaker.  Not Jo Martin (though, both canonically and chronologically [chronologically in-fiction, that is, but I'm being Doylist here rather than Watsonian just for a change] that would be a right answer) - I'm talkin' 'bout Barbara Benedetti.  "Who?" you might ask.

"The Doctor - that's Who!" being my tiresomely predictable retort.  I can't help myself, it's an illness, probably.

In these days of part of Doctor Who fandom losing its shit (what, really?  That never happens!) over the upcoming brave new era of the show being produced with a distribution deal in place with - and input from - Disney+, the attendant angst over thoughts of the show being 'Americanised' and 'going Hollywood' have emerged to give me serious mid-Nineties flashbacks.  When the 1996 TV movie (which I still like to think is titled 'Starring Paul McGann', since that's the first caption appear onscreen after Doctor Who during the title sequence) was a thing that was happening, there were extremely similar 'concerns'.  Would the integral Britishness of the show be lost now that we were adventuring in a suspiciously Vancouver-looking San Francisco instead of a quarry in Gerrards Cross or a Victorian museum village in Shropshire?  Would the Doctor be stepping out of a Coke machine TARDIS with a cute furry robotic companion into a story that was unrecognisable, like some kind of X-Files meets Voyager meets Airwolf mash-up in a crack lounge?  What would a North American made Doctor Who be like?  Well, let's take a look, shall we?  Like the foundations of the series itself, let me take you on an educational (in true Reithian BBC style) and perhaps (?) entertaining adventure back trough space and time to a far and distant destination...

Early 1980s Seattle.

Independent outfit Seattle International Films, headed up by Anglophile Ryan K. Johnson, were already a going concern that had made 16 mm short films such as the one-minute parody Escape From Seattle (with lead character 'Slug Plissken' - can you tell what it is yet?) and were in the midst of what would become the 20 minute epic set in a men's toilet cubicle (?) Kill Roy when Johnson became a fan of Who through the PBS runs of the Tom Baker stories in 1983.  Discovering that the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) was to have a film contest judged by a panel including Gary Kurtz of Star Wars fame (is he still of Star Wars fame these days, or has everyone forgotten who he is in these days of just slagging off Kathleen Kennedy as the Antichrist?), he made the decision to dive into the Whoniverse with an episode of his own, shot in sunny (ha!) Seattle.

The result of his toils was The Wrath of Eukor (written by Ryan K. Johnson, script edited by Cheryl Read [credited writer], Linda Bushyager and Deb Walsh, directed by Ryan K. Johnson, 1984).  Our adventures begin with a glimpse of the Seattle International Films logo over a nice vista of the city with the Space Needle prominently visible, before we are taken to a dark street with the caption 'London, 1911' explaining the need for all the fog machine-generated swirls of mist: we are in the American idea of an Edwardian pea souper.  We hear a voice singing the lyrics to the 19th century song 'Benny Havens, Oh' as a chirpy Cockernee chimney sweep emerges.  This jaunty singer and whistler is Carl Evans (played by Randy Rogel, who has gone on to have quite the writing career in the field of animation, with credits on Batman: the Animated Series, Animaniacs, and The Legend of Tarzan).

Carl stops as he hears a woman's voice in the darkness.  "Too soon... must get back... three times in as many years... it's too much."  He notices blood on the pavement and follows to trail to the newly-regenerated Doctor (Benedetti), dressed in the Sixth Doctor's outfit and obviously in a state of confusion - possibly at the fact that this is chronologically only the second ever pre-titles sequence in Doctor Who: three years after 'Castrovalva' and predating 'Time and the Rani', both of which were also regeneration sequences.  Carl offers assistance to this strange lady, who seems surprised to see her reflection in a shop window ("The DNA matrix must have failed!  The nose is an improvement.") and wants to get back to her 'ship' but - as he points out - is heading in the opposite direction to the harbour.  When they arrive at what Carl recognises to be "just an old police call box", despite the MacKenzie-Trench box design not coming in for another 18 years (foreshadowing of a Susan and Nyssa style incipient telepathy on Carl's part?  No.  To be fair, police boxes were around before 1911, just not this particular kind, so let's be charitable and put it down to Carl being able to read the signage [though I'm not sure of the literacy levels among early 20th century chimney sweeps] and being familiar enough with the concept) he asks the eccentric stranger worriedly "Did they just let you out?"

"No.  I escaped.  I barely got out.  Not alive, though."  I really want to know the circumstances of the Sixth Doctor's death in this particular time track; it certainly seems a damn sight more dramatic than banging his head on an exercise bike due to tumultuous buffeting.

They then enter the TARDIS together, Carl helping her through the doors to the swelling sound of  Paddy Kingsland's regeneration reprise theme from 'Castrovalva'.  I'm already pretty sure I love this.  We then crash into my childhood version of the opening titles and music - namely the Sid Sutton starfield (I'm glad I don't type with a lisp) accompanied by the Peter Howell rendition of the legendary Ron Grainer theme; the infinite universe opening up before us to the oo-ee-oos of a Jupiter 4 (my favourite Sharon Van Etten song, incidentally).  As we proceed past the new Doctor's face forming from the stars, the neon logo and the story title and writer's credit as standard - so far, so very 1980 to 1984 Doctor Who - we arrive in a leafy forest in Washington state, where Vince Wallace (Tom Lance), a reporter from the Seattle Times is attempting to get a story on a group of Vietnam war veterans (you don't get this sort of The Deer Hunter-cum-Born on the Fourth of July stuff from Eric Saward, do you?) who are holed up in the woods and living a life separate from the rest of humanity.  The group's leader, Grant (Jim Dean) and his shades-bedecked henchman Tate (Michael Smith) are quite keen on sending Wallace packing with knife-wielded death threats, whilst their cohort Harris (Keven McCauley) seems quite jumpy and nervous, claiming to sense some sort of malevolent presence all around them.

As this is occurring, the TARDIS arrives with its (her) customary vworp vworp wheezing groaning sound.  The Doctor - who has changed out of Colin Baker's Technicolor dreamcoat into a new outfit of  a vaguely military-looking beige getup replete with epaulettes - attempts to convince Carl that they have most certainly moved in time and space and are no longer in London Taaahhn: "Well, the foliage is greener", she says whilst examining the local flora, but thankfully not feeling the need to eat and of the soil.  Carl expresses the belief that 'old Mr Wells' would give a pretty penny to see the wonders of TARDIS travel, to which the Doctor replies that she "did show H.G. the TARDIS once - he said it would never work", canonising 'Timelash' before it was even broadcast.  Wibbly wobbly... No.  Stop that.  It's silly.

Wallace emerges from the trees and tries to warn the time travelers off before the 'Nam dudes find them and become unfriendly to strangers in finest rural pub tradition, but the Doctor remains jauntily defiant and prescribes a brisk walk through the undergrowth to the synth strains of Peter Howell's score for 'The Leisure Hive'.  When Vince panics and runs off, he drops a metallic object that the Doctor quickly studies and finds maddeningly familiar but can't recall from where ("The body's fit, but the mind isn't"); dashing after him the Doctor and Carl find him lying dead and are surrounded by the army dudes who want to know why they "greased" him.  The Doctor swiftly establishes her authority, tapping Grant some blows with her umbrella and deducing that Wallace was killed by a massive electrical shock and that whatever did it is out there in the forest and might strike again.

While this is going on, we cut to another member of the Vietnam vets, Francis (George Catalano), fishing in the river.  Hearing a noise, he gets up and calls out to his comrades, only for something unseen to rush towards him from the underbrush in an Evil Dead-style P.O.V. shot.  Tate splits off from the group to have a scout around, and comes across a clearing in which stand some strange alien obelisks of such a shape and design that one expects a culturally appropriating William Shatner to emerge from one shouting "KIROK!"  He too is soon pursued and killed by the free-floating Evil Force, and the rest of the group - now down to just Grant and the jittery Harris, led by the Doctor and Carl - follow in his footsteps to the obelisks.  Harris can feel an intense energy in the air, but Grant puts it down to the presence of the power plant nearby.  The Doctor recognises the writing on the obelisks as Darnian, and informs us that the inhabitants of the planet Darnia were beings of conscious energy who at one time made it to Earth and imprisoned one of their own here.  As she is imparting this information, Carl feels compelled to hold the metal object dropped by Vince against the block where it is revealed to be a key, opening the Darnian prison and releasing the otherworldy convict ensconced within.

This act of foolishness leads to Harris [? I think.  Frankly, the whisky was kicking in by this point] immediate possession as the unleashed being - Eukor - gets all up inside him and wears him like a glove (to quote the Spirit of Jazz from The Mighty Boosh)

When Eukor arrives at the power station: they can hear it through the wires, they can hear it through the lines

The Barbara Benedetti Doctor returns in Visions of Utomu (written by Ryan K. Johnson with input from Linda Bushyager, directed by Ryan K. Johnson, 1986), Pentagon West: A Doctor in the House (written by Ryan K. Johnson, directed by Howard Carson, 1987), and Broken Doors (written by T. Brian Wagner, directed by Steve Hauge [not a typo, rhymes with "howdy"],1988) - which I will doubtless get round to covering in the future.  Or was it the past...?

Oh, and incidentally, a very happy 60th Doctor Who anniversary to all of you at home!

Dr Hackenstein (Richard Clark, 1988)

 I couldn't quite decide which quote to open this with - it was a tie between "We don't care about live people - we only fool around with people who are dead!" and "He wants your body for his wife... he wants to bring her back to life!", the latter being from the rather extraordinary theme tune by Claude LeHanaff and the Hard Roaders.  I should like a band name like that.

Well, my 'Ten Days of Halloween' plan (to review a horror movie a day for the last ten days of October) got well and truly scuppered - as do most of my damn fine plans - by poxy real world concerns.  Never mind, though, I'm still going to do all of the films I had planned.  Maybe eked out over the run up to Christmas.  Hey, if the celebration of the birth of a man that millions genuinely believe dies and then rose from his tomb like Dracula and the Blind Dead isn't spooky, I don't know what is.  So - on and on, and on to the next one, as Dave Grohl so wisely sang.

Mary Shelley's tale of Frankenstein has gone through many cinematic permutations over the last century or so (113 years since the first silver screen version, if we're being pedantic [and I'm in that sort of mood, so I am]), from James Whale's legendary Boris Karloff-starring Universal classic through Gary Conway's 'teenage' monster to Toho's gigantic Baragon-battling kaiju version and many many others.  One variation on the Frankie theme that I was intrigued by as a youth was Dr Hackenstein, the VHS box for which I often saw on the video shop shelf but never saw.  I think I tried once, and when the store owner pointed out that I couldn't rent it because it was rated 18 and I was clearly under ten I angrily protested that I'd been getting 18 certificate films from his shop since I was six - which prompted a shushing that I shouldn't say that when there were other people in the shop and I was palmed off with a free lend of American Rabbit or somesuch.  Anyway, here we finally are.

Not really worth the 30-plus year wait is the short review.  But it was a laugh so we'll try like the good doctor himself to stitch a bit more flesh on the bones than that.

Helmed by first time director Richard Clark (and his only directing credit until the short Bookworms a decade later, which was his last), our story opens in 1909, at what the captions helpfully inform us was the 'dawn of modern science', where our eponymous antagonist/protagonist Dr Elliot Hackenstein (David Muir) is getting up to some very Herbert Westian shenanigans reviving a stitched together hairless rat.  To briefly address the Lovecraftian nightmarish elephantine beast from beyond the limits of fragile human understanding in the room: this film is obviously inspired by Stuart Gordon's masterful rendition of Reanimator of a few years earlier (seriously, why aren't I reviewing that instead?  Maybe in the new year I'll do a piece on the whole trilogy), but in timey-wimey (stop that at once! - Ed.) fashion is more similar to Bride of Reanimator which wouldn't emerge until two years later.

Skipping ahead to 1912, we meet the awful Trilling siblings Wendy (Dyanne DiRosario), Leslie (Catherine Davis Cox) and Alex (John Alexis) who with their likable cousin Melanie Victor (Stacey Travis, who two years later would go on to star in Richard Stanley's brilliant Hardware [no really, why aren't I reviewing that instead? (Because you actually like that film and would have to do more than make some crap jokes?)]) are drunkenly tooling around the country lanes in a sprightly vintage roadster (copyright Terrance Dicks, like so much of my standard phraseology) just like McCulloch, Carlson, Bastedo et al at the outset of 1975's The Ghoul.  Just like that party of passengers, vehicular bother leads to them seeking shelter in the nearest Old Dark House.

This is of course the rural residence of the hack-happy doctor, who welcomes in the trio of nubile young ladies - and the unfunny injured comedy stooge they're bearing - without mentioning the preserved head of his late wife (who he claims lost her life and the rest of her by falling into the sea during the maiden voyage of the Lusitania and getting minced in the ship's propeller, whereas she very much lost her head at her husband's hands) kept in cold storage in his upstairs laboratory with which he frequently has conversations like a cross between Baghead Jason from Friday the 13th Part II and Ed Gein (or Ezra Cobb from Alan Ormsby's Deranged, to continue the movie comparison).  Elliot is very soon eyeing up the young ladies - and who can blame him? - for parts to stitch together a new body for Sheila's bonce: he sets out to take Wendy's legs, Leslie's arms and has his eye on Melanie Victor's eyes.  I guess because Bette Davis' and Gary Gilmore's weren't available.

Whilst all off this is going on, we have comedy from Logan and Anne Ramsay (yes, she of The Goonies and Throw Momma From the Train fame, sadly in her final performance - the film being released posthumously and carrying a dedication to her [I'm sure she'd be thrilled]) as a comedy graverobbing / bodysnatching couple, similar to the characters played by Dennis Price and Joan Rice in Hammer's 1970 The Horror of Frankenstein, silent comedy-style slapstick with Hackenstein's deaf and mute maid (Cathy Cahn) and a shrill turn from Phyllis Diller as the Trillings' overbearing mother.  I mean, I say "comedy" but the quotation marks are appropriate.

All of it - basic plot, gore effects, humour - were done far better in Bride of Reanimator, frankly.  Still, at least I've finally seen it.  One more off the list.

Night of the Beast ([a.k.a. Lukas' Child] Eric Louzil, 1993)

When trying to figure out what horror film one should select from their vast collection of genre cinema that mostly remains unseen to watch for the very first time with the fresh eyes of a newborn babe, I find that the best approach is to ask oneself "Do any of these feature a porn star trying some 'straight' acting within the genre?"  And you know, it's surprising how many times that comes back with a "yes".  My review of David DeCoteau's Creepozoids - which co-starred Ashlyn Gere - is one that springs to mind (as an M. R. James-style warning to the curious, that review can be found here).  And so it follows, quite naturally enough if you're mental, that I asked myself if I had to hand a horror movie that I had yet to view that also starred a classic '80s American porn star.  No, not Jeff Stryker - I've seen Zombie Flesh Eaters 3 more than enough (at least twice: the second time was to check that it was as bad as I thought it was [note: it definitely is]).  No, not Amber Lynn - I don't actually own a copy of Things, and judging by every review I've seen it might be awful enough to jeapardise my already fragile mental health.

Shanna McCullough it is then!  Now, obviously my appreciation for vintage 1980s pornography is retrospective - but only because the internet wasn't around then - so my coming across / discovering the lovely flame-haired Ms McCullough was comparatively recent, and I found myself quite enchanted and intrigued.  Not just because she almost has the same surname as me; I mean, same surname, alternate spelling.  Obviously her porn star name isn't her actual name.  Not that any of this matters one iota.

Probably best we move on from this.

Night of the Beast - also known under it's shooting title (shooting title?  Are you implying that actual work, thought, and the normal filmmaking process were involved in the creation of this?!?) of Lukas' Child (no, it isn't a sequel, even in name only, to the 1986 Corey Haim classic Lucas)  - opens with a gathering of a Satanic cult, the members of which dress in regulation hooded cloaks and skeleton masks and as a result look highly reminiscent of the supernatural army from Jess Franco's The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein.  Their leader, Lukas Armand (Robert May), is to be charitable a portly older gentleman who sits smoking a cigar like a bored businessman in a strip club whilst an 'exotically' dressed (breast-baring fetish wear, thigh high boots and a rather fetching diaphanous cape) dancer terpsichores for him and his minions in their neon bulb and candle-lit dungeon lair.  Neon and candlelight?  Surely a faux pas?

A nubile young scantily-dressed sacrifice is brought in, and Lukas informs her that "You have broken the Code of Conduct, and cannot be forgiven!"  I wouldn't mind if she violated my CoC.  Anyway, the young lady, dressed in some lovely lingerie, is swiftly dispatched.  Which seems a shame.  Is that what 'pantywaist' means?  Lukas cackles with his stripper henchwoman, who seems very much the Evil Lyn to his Skeletor.  This young woman isn't the first victim to have been captured by Lukas' cult, of course, and Detective Steve Anderson (Gene LeBrock, in the penultimate role of his thankfully brief career) is on the case, ably assisted by Detective Susan Wesley (Shanna McCu... oh, wait... Marcia Gray.  Because what a piece of cinema to go legit in).  Susan has discovered a medallion bearing a five pointed star in the home of the most recent missing girl.

"It's a pentacle, it's used in witchcraft... to ward off evil spirits" she helpfully informs plank of wood Steve and the thicker members of the audience, whilst proving her credentials from the Slaughtered Lamb Police Academy.  And so Steve is hot on the trail of the missing aspiring actresses who have all mysteriously vanished after auditioning for a part in a horror movie - auditions which always seem to end with the bookcase of the room sliding back to reveal Lukas sitting in his wheelchair like a Satanic cross between Ironside and Nero Wolfe, and deciding to sacrifice these nubile twentysomething clothes-allergic ladies to his 'son' - a behorned and bewinged daemonic monstrosity whose prosthetics are quite good to be fair.  If you can imagine the Unnameable's cheaper cousin, you're there.

When two more girls go missing, one whom's father is, according to Susan, "a cop in the Hill Street division" (boy, he must be feeling pretty blue) Steve gets right on the case by sleeping with two of the witnesses.  In his defence one of them if played by fetish wresting starlet Tori Sinclair, but still - unethical, right?  But by gritty determination... no, outright luck, and the assistance of two random boys straight out of either The Goonies or The Return of Swamp Thing (more the latter, really.  And Monique Gabrielle probably should have shown up in this film, too) he manages to solve the case, rescue the surviving scantily-clad captives, and defeat the bad guys.  Just like a proper hero cop on a mission who lives his life on the edge (who sleeps with every woman he meets apart from his far more attractive partner) should.

I can't in any form of honesty pretend this is a good film or recommend it to anyone.

As spurious reasons for T & A packages as horror films go, I think I preferred Burial of the Rats in all honesty.  Maria Ford's no Shanna, but at least she had the common decency to wear a sexy outfit.  Seriously, who hires a genuine porn star and AVN Award winner and she's the only actress in the entire movie to keep her clothes on throughout?  Looks like I'm going to have to get round to watching Pornogothic after all.  Don't expect a review of that one though, because Shanna + goth = I'll probably be blind by the end of it.