Radar Men from the Moon Chapter One: Moon Rocket (Fred C. Brannon, 1952)

Stand by for Rocket Action

A long, low time ago when people would talk to me (for I was but young and death was just a dream) I reclined supine upon the old couch while off sick from school and watched the flickering shadows dancing before on the television screen - shadows of a bygone age.  I was very young, and we must be talking about the late 1980s - certainly before 1991 and the release of Joe Johnston's fabulous yet oft-forgotten pulp period spectacular The Rocketeer - as this was my first exposure to the jetpack-bedecked, bullet helmeted sky-soaring hero the Rocket Man, in the form of a morning television repeat of the 1949 serial chapter play King of the Rocket Men.

Also my introduction to the concept of an episodic monochrome movie serial (a genre which has since become a favourite of mine, with such choice gems as Adventures of Captain Marvel, Atom Man vs Superman, Undersea Kingdom and the unfortunately problematic and Japanophobic Batman), my glee at the discovery of this heretofore hidden style of filmmaking, with all of its literal car-goes-over-a-cliff cliffhangers and cheat 'he rolled out of the car at the last minute in a new edit you just didn't see last time' resolutions was tempered somewhat by the fact that I would only see an episode or two - they were being screened each weekday morning as opposed to once every Saturday like on their cinematic debut - before the illness passed and I was forced to return to school desolate in the knowledge that I could not know precisely how Jeff King and his amazing aeronautical adventures would triumph over the evil Dr Vulcan.

A few years later, of course, The Rocketeer would be released, and would rekindle to my inexpressible joy my fondness for this character (and also my burgeoning thing for Jennifer Connelly, the seeds of which had been sown at a tender age when I first saw Labyrinth, but that's another story).  It would be a long time before I learned that there had been other similar such serials featuring the masked rocketeer, such as 1952's Radar Men from the Moon (which replaced Tristram Coffin's Jeff King with George Wallace's Commando Cody), the same year's Zombies of the Stratosphere (starring Judd Holdren as Larry Martin, and featuring an early appearance by Mr Spock himself Leonard Nimoy) and Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (Holdren again, this time as the eponymous Cody) in 1953 - all of these serials being directed (or in the final run's case, co-directed) by orginal Rocket Men head honcho Fred C. Brannon.  Clearly, thought I, a number of individuals had come to possess and utilise the famous rocket pack after the 'King of the Rocket Men' himself Jeff King - including Larry Martin, The Rocketeer Cliff Secord and Commando Cody himself - but there again I did always like maintaining a fictional continuity in my head.  I blame Doctor Who fandom.  The name of 'Cody' would become familiar again during the mid to late 2000s when George Lucas' 2005 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith introduced the similarly monikered clone trooper Commander Cody (not to be confused with the 1970s country singer) whose story would be furthered in the animated TV series The Clone Wars.  Having just recently finished watching the debut season of another television series set in Lucas' galaxy far, far away The Mandalorian, which featured another helmeted and booster-packed hero, I thought it was high time to raze the walls that time constructed and finally get back to some classic Rocket Man movie serial action.

In the opening chapter, 'Moon Rocket', we begin with a montage of stock footage representing a swath of destruction across the United States - replete with spinning newspaper headline reports - akin to the campaign of terror waged by Stupor Duck's imaginary arch-nemesis Aardvark Ratnik ("I blow up buildings, bridges, trains!  Everywhere ruin and destruction!").  The government agent Henderson (Don Walters) brings news of these terrible events to the laboratory of Commando Cody and his scientific co-workers Joan Gilbert (Aline Towne, who would go on to play the very similar role of Sue Davis in this story's semi-sequel Zombies of the Stratosphere) and Ted Richards (William Bakewell).  These incidents have been discovered to be of an atomic nature, but not the work of an atomic bomb but some kind of atomic ray emanating from the Earth's sleeping satellite.  As Cody and his indefatigable team have been working on an experimental rocket ship capable of achieving a lunar landing, they are tasked with discovering the root cause of this extraterrestrial terrorism.  Strapping himself into his trusty leather coat, backpack and helm ensemble, Cody traces the location of the latest incident - the destruction of a governmental supply train - and is able to examine the ray gun responsible for America's entry into the Star Wars (no, not Ronald Raygun).

Rocketing in their space-age rocket ship from Earth to the moon (via intra-lunar space that is conspicuously bright and starless, just like the sky), the team discover the lunar city ruled by the malevolent Retik, monarch of the moon (Roy Barcroft), who reveals that these incursions have been but a softening up of the Earth's (for which read 'America's') defences in preparation for an invasion.  Pulling his trusty revolver from his belt, Cody is outmatched by Retik's atomic disintegrator gun...

To be continued...

Star Wars: Underworld - A XXX Parody (Dick Bush, 2016) [NSFW!]

Loving you long time, in a galaxy far, far away...

While George Lucas' long-mooted TV series set in his long time ago galaxy far, far away Underworld may never have reached our screens - despite years spent in development hell with scripts being reportedly worked on by everyone from Life on Mars' Matthew Graham to Battlestar Galactica's Ronald D. Moore - such trifling matters have never stopped the veritable juggernaut that is the pornographic parody.  From studio Digital Playground (and the initials 'DP' are quite, quite appropriate for the subject matter) and prolific director Dick Bush, Underworld - A XXX Parody does exactly what it says on the tin - taking the mooted setting of the seedy underbelly of Lucas' Star Wars settings to spin a tale of the lowlifes and subculture of the universe, though with the navicomputer's co-ordinates firmly set on masturbation rather than midichlorian or Mandalorian.

Opening with the usual canonical opening roller caption, the scene is set establishing that - in a move that surprised me by pulling (not that way, not yet) from the now-defunct Legends literature - the Order of the Black Sun rules the clubs and brothels of Coruscant.  Here we are introduced to the Togruta bounty hunter Danni Ora (Aria Alexander, looking very fetching in red and white body paint, montrals and head-tails, and making my wet dreams of a live action adult Ahsoka Tano come true [and quite hard]), who is presently working as bodyguard for spoiled senator's daughter Tyleah Daivik (Eva Lovia, proving - as if Femi Taylor in Return of the Jedi and Natalia Tena in The Mandalorian already haven't - that Twi'leks are 'teh sex').  After being persuaded by her coquettish charge to join her on the dancefloor for some spice-fueled bumpin' 'n' grindin', Danni finds herself passing out from all the Corscanti disco sherbet and therefore completely misses out on the raid on the nightclub by kidnappers who blast the boozed up patrons and spirit Tyleah away.  Waking later feeling like death among the actual dead, Danni is greeted by fellow bounty hunter Dengar (British army man stud Luke Hardy, playing a younger version of the briefly-glimpsed Empire Strikes Back character, very much the Ewan McGregor to the Original Trilogy's Maurice Bush [what?  Yes, i'm taking this seriously as canon!]), who is happily stripping the corpses of their valuables and lifting drinks from the empty bar.

After establishing that the Black Sun organisation are undoubtedly behind the snatching, Danni pleads Dengar for his help by persuading him that he's not the only one feeling 'thirsty' ("You know, some people tell me i'm a tall glass of water...") and positioning herself provocatively atop the bar counter clad in her doubtless practical for bounty hunting garb of strips of PVC and buckled heeled boots.  Showing a flimsiness of armour that clearly isn't Beskar steel, she easily pulls away his codpiece and eagerly and noisily slurps on his cable before flipping over with her head dangling over the bar top to receive a face fucking.   After alternating between doggy-style and standing - and is it wrong that perhaps the most arousing part was when she began to fellate her own head-tails, demonstrating that she could give a double BJ without any problems? - they return to oral for the win finish, but are rudely interrupted when the kidnappers return to the scene of the crime.  Having to hurriedly hide behind the bar, they overhear the villains stating that they're holding their "screamer" of a hostage in the slum district before having their position (Dengar on his back, Danni with her face in his crotch) given away by the fact that Danni just can't stop herself chowing down on that man meat.  After blowing the pair of criminals away, Dengar finishes being blown away by Danni who gratefully accepts the mouthful of goo that she's been so eager for.  The twosome then decide to join up to rescue Tyleah, as Danni is cock-a-hoop for both Dengar's aid and his "blaster" (as she calls it whilst gleefully eyeing his groin).

 The second scene opens with the bound and gagged Tyleah being led through the alleyways and spice dens of Slum District 311, replete with headless burning Artoo units like the flaming metal trash cans one sees cinema hobos gathered around, by burly henchmen Zeb (Monty Don - no, not the gardening one) and Aiden (Juan Lucho) who argue about who has the most powerful weapon - subtly, yes? - until the Twi'lek temptress mentions just how rich and powerful her father is.  Deciding that they'd rather have fun than work for Black Sun, the guys swiftly switch sides and slip their bounty out of her slinky dress to admire her beautiful blue breasts.  Dropping to her knees betwixt them, Tyleah takes each tackle in her mouth, tickling the tips with her talented tongue, before assuming the position for a good old spit-roasting.  Shot by both sides taking lengths inbetween both sets of lips, Tyleah's turned as the sides switch at half time (you'd think who takes heads and who takes tails could be decided by a coin toss, really) and alas the illusion of alien orgasm is slightly spoiled by the body paint slightly peeling away as her pussy is pounded - but what're you gonna do?  The sweaty session concludes with both dudes delivering their doses over her face, before she takes advantage of their exhausted distraction to shoot one of them with his own gun.  Before the situation can escalate, the feared leader of the Black Sun, Kendra Veris (the very sexy Alessa Savage, devilishly alluring in purple-red pigment, leather corset and thigh high boots) arrives and dispatches the second lackey herself for daring to defy her orders about "fucking with the merchandise".  She then ominously warns Tyleah that she fully intends to get her money's worth out of her: "I know just  the place for a girl like you..."

We then return to the adventures of Luke Starkiller Danni and Dengar as they search the slum areas for signs of their errant quarry.  Observing Kendra taking out the trash, i.e.: dragging out the corpses of the spent henchman (who had quite literally came and went) and dumping them behind her spice store, Dengar decides to pump her.  For information.  It's not too soon before the villainous vermilion vixen is slurping on his nutsack and devouring his dong-gar, then sliding down her leather booty shorts to have her foxy hole fingered and fucked.   A spot of queening from the underworld queen follows, Kendra straddling the face of the prone pathfinder before moving on down to mount him reverse cowgirl and pounding him with her purple pudenda until his pecker parps its puke.  Sated, Kendra happily fulfills their quim pro quo by volunteering the information that shes sold Tyleah ("that Twi'lek bitch") to the Black Sun's vigo Nash Thracken for his own personal use.

Episode IV of our salacious saga takes us to Level 3125 of Coruscant and the Black Sun brothel, brimming with bawds and Bothans, where horned and horny patron Rayfe (Nick Moreno) is refusing to go home and  rethink his life by dispensing death sticks to the scarlet-maned Mara (ravishing redhead Ella Hughes, showing that unlike the sequel trilogy this movie is ready to give us an auburn-tressed character named Mara).  The jade - see what I did there? - accompanies him to his room where his appointment awaits in the shapely form of a bright pink hued Twi'lek named Nikana (gorgeous Polish anal queen Misha Cross).  As Nikana performs a sultry dance that would have had Jabba filling his palace with drool, Mara proves that she's good for sucking on more than just death sticks by filling her face with gobbler's knob before lying back to stroke herself watching as Nikana takes over on oral duties - getting a thorough deep throat fucking and devouring the swordsman's rapier to the hilt.  She then proceeds to accept Mara's open-legged invitation by burying her face in ginger minge while having her pink rump pumped, giving the 'rear entry permitted' green light for Rayfe to plumb the depths of her rusty Moff's badge while she laps at Mara's luscious labia.  All the while, this menage is being witnessed by a hog-tied Tyleah, who is off-limits to regular customers as the exclusive reserved property of Thracken.  Perhaps spurred on by her fellow Twi'lek's plight, Nikana ends the session by producing a curved blade and slashing Rayfe's throat in revenge for her subjugated people, leading to a catfight to the death with Mara who ends up with a length of steel rather than meat buried in her.  Le petite mort followed swiftly by le grand mort.  Seems fair.

Next Danni and Dengar decide to infiltrate the brothel, with the delightful Ms Ora (not Rita) donning an even more revealing outfit than her usual one - which seems scarcely possible - that consists of a few leathern straps and is utterly fetish-tastic.  After catching the eye of the clientele, Danni is handed over by Dengar, who is posing as her pimp, and is quickly ushered into the company of Nash Thracken himself (Nacho Vidal himself) where she is reunited with Tyleah.  Liking the idea of a bit of playtime with "the senator's daughter and the cheap whore", Thracken is swiftly getting gobbled good as he thrusts his shaft between Tyleah's thighs intercrural style while Danni laps at his bulb.  A great mutual blowjob follows, with Nash taking turns to alternate his cock between both girls' slobbering mouths in the greatest union of red, white and blue since the founding of flags.  As the Twi'lek mounts him cowgirl and the Togruta sits on his face, the grateful godfather's tackle and tongue both get a thorough workout.  A nasty bout of coitus interruptus is narrowly avoided only due to noshin' Nash pumping his generation juice all over Danni's tits just before being distracted by a hubbub from outside - a diversion that she quickly takes advantage of, punching him and delivering an elbow to the gut (usually one has to pay extra for the rough stuff, so I really don't know what he's complaining about).  Dengar then makes his entrance, taking out Nash with his blaster (his actual gun, not his tallywhacker).  The trio emerge into the brothel's foyer, now strewn with the corpses of clients Dengar's dealt with, apart from one supine survivor who gets trodden on by both Tyleah and Danni in their stiletto heels, spat on and called "Bantha poodoo" - again, some of us will pay good money for this type of thing - before Dengar delivers the coup de grace of a laser to the head and leads his liberated ladies outside.

As the triumphant trio come full circle and return to where it all began at the Dealer's Den cantina ("It's like poetry", said a certain G. Lucas, "it rhymes!"), their celebratory round of drinks is interrupted by a recalcitrant Kendra with her bounty hunter minion (Marc Rose).  The pretty purple putain apologises to Danni, admitting that the Black Sun is weak and offering the chance to join together in a new alliance of bounty hunters.  Tyleah and Danni decide to test her commitment to this new covenant on Coruscant via a three-way bout of snogging and fingering which can't fail to catch the attention of the room's two male members (and I mean that most euphemistically, folks!) and the bounty hunting blokes soon get in on where the action is.  After the ladies once again prove their sword swallowing skills (and i'm sorry to harp on about it, but Christ does Alessa look gorgeous when she's slurping on a nutsack), the ladies take turns being taken over a table until both Kendra and Danni take her henchman's hummus all over their faces and Dengar delivers his donation directly into Tyleah's twat in a move I like to call a 'Corellian creampie'.

Quite frankly, my dear, you had me at Misha Cross, Ella Hughes and Alessa Savage (if the third scene is described in a little less detail than the others, it's because it's really quite difficult to write things down whilst masturbating furiously).  If Stella Cox and Joanna Angel had been involved too, I think i'd probably be endlessly watching it on an eternal loop and outdo that kid who pissed off Alec Guinness by saying he'd watched Star Wars over 100 times.  Packed to the gills with sly canonical references and greedy (if not Greedo) girls, this comes in at a definite seven sexy Kylo Rens out of ten.  With more lapping and necking than 'Lapti Nek', I couldn't give a XXX for anything else.

Canon.

The House in Marsh Road ([a.k.a.: Invisible Creature] Montgomery Tully, 1960)

The House of the Four Wynds, or: Patrick the Protective Poltergeist

Irish-born director Montgomery Tully may not have had the most spectacular career in the history of cinema, but as the man behind the lens on such offerings as 1960's The Man Who Was Nobody (probably my favourite of all the brilliant Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre quota quickies) and 1967's The Terrornauts his name tends to bring a smile to my thunderous features like a surprise appearance by an old old friend long unseen.  Whilst the majority of Tully's output would be in the realms of crime thrillers and mysteries, he had already dipped his toes tentatively into the realm of  the fantastic film with 1958's The Electronic Monster (alias Escapement) and would go on to helm the 1962 full moon murder mystery Out of the Fog (alias Fog for a Killer) before ending his career in 1967 with the double tap of The Terrornauts and the sci-fi disaster movie Battle Beneath the Earth.

The House in Marsh Road is a 1960 offering from Wimbledon's Merton Park Studios based upon a novel by prolific and multi-pseudonymed author Laurence Meynell, and opens by introducing us to David Linton (Tony Wright) and his long-suffering spouse Jean (Patricia Dainton) as they go about their obviously regular routine of fleeing their latest lodging house without paying the proprietress of the property (Olga Dickie).  David is ostensibly an author, but is more interested in idling and soaking himself in booze whilst procrastinating his purported penmanship (sadly, I can kind of relate to the dude, even though he be an undoubted douche - sometimes I can put off writing things for weeks and would rather have a drink instead.  Still, my emotional wounds are deep and he's just a knobhead, so I win).

Whilst the dosser and his dear are dodging the debts for their digs, Jean receives the unexpected news that she's come into an inheritance - a house names Four Wynds, located out in the wilds of the countryside on the lonely Marsh Road.  Arriving to inspect their bounty of a rambledown manor, the pair are greeted by the also-inherited Irish housekeeper Mrs O' Brien (played by Anita Sharp-Bolster, recognisable to any fan of Dan Curtis' cult Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows [or 'The Vampire, the Witch and the Werewolf' as I like to call it] as line-fluffing mystical crone Bathia Mapes).  Mrs O' Brien welcomes her new overlords employers, but informs them of the house's resident presence 'Patrick'.  David scoffs, not believing in any spirits that don't come in a bottle, but Jean soon notices small events such as chairs being moved and starts to give credence to the tale.

Whilst Jean embraces the idea of residing in her new abode, David is of the opinion that a house is not a home and more than eager to make some money by selling off the property and begins to grow more grudgeful of his bride the more she resists the idea.  Spending most of his time carousing in the local village inn while Jean settles in at Four Wynds, he is pointed in the direction of local lady Mrs Stockley: an accomplished typist who can help him get on with his work by transcribing his scribblings.  David finds Valerie Stockley to be just the diverting antidote for his writers' block, as she's far from the prim and bookish widow he might have imagined - being a blowsy blonde played by platinum bombshell '50s pin-up Sandra Dorne.

Growing steadily infatuated with the voluptuous Val and ever more estranged from Jean, David begins to plot a spot of uxoricide - after all, with the dull and ghost-believing missus out of the way, he can inherit the house then sell it on for a big pile of cash which can then roll about on naked with the new Mrs Linton Mk II.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, for a start there's the small matter of the friendly spectre.  The titular creature (no, not Ms Dorne, I mean Patrick - the eponymous Invisible Creature of the movie's alternate name) foils David at every turn: when he gets Jean stumbling drunk and then attempts to engineer an 'accidental' fall down the house's elevator shaft the lift gate clangs shut just in the nick of time.  Patrick also foils plan B of poisoning Jean with an overdose-laced glass of milk by utilising his silent powers of telekinesis to point to the danger of the noxious fluid, probably permanently putting her off dairy.  Which will be of health benefit to her in the long term as well as the immediate future, really.

As Jean flees her lethal and quite literally toxic relationship, running back to London ('Heave on - to Euston / D'you think you've made / The right decision this time?'), David finds himself trapped in the house he hates with a vengeful shade and finally receives divine justice (or at least, supernatural justice) via a bolt from the blue that sends the house on Marsh Road up in flames.  Frightening lightning indeed.

Featuring a supporting cast of familiar faces from the period such as Sam Kydd, and whisking by at an enjoyable 70 minutes, The House in Marsh Road is a diverting little piece that I can definitely recommend checking out - it's available along with fellow curio The Monkey's Paw (Norman Lee, 1948) on a nice twin-spin DVD from the ever reliable Renown Films.

New York Wildcats (Johnny Crash, 2005)

It's Sunday: it's a Misty Fun Day!

Those of a similar age and similar inclinations to myself may remember, back in the backward abysm of time (namely, the early 2000s), being entranced by the erotic adventures of the pert and pale as milk Erin Brown, aka Misty Mundae.  As Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were to Hammer, Ms Mundae and performers such as Darian Caine were to Seduction Cinema: stalwarts of their sleazy and silly softcore output.  Whilst she might in more recent years have gone on to the slightly more mainstream side of genre productions (if any part of the horror/exploitation field can be called "mainstream" or "respectable") in things like Lucky McKee's Masters of Horror segment Sick Girl (2006) and the Sesame Street-themed puppet parody Nightmare on Elmo's Street (the brilliantly-monikered Bill Zebub, 2015) under her real name, it is as Misty that we remember her, engaging in such straight-to-video Sapphic antics as Gladiator Eroticus: The Lesbian Warriors (John Bacchus, 2001), Playmate of the Apes (John Bacchus, 2002) and The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the String (Terry M. West, 2003).

The latter of this parodic trilogy had also featured Misty's sibling Chelsea Mundae, who had co-starred in her debut I Was a Teenage Strangler (William Hellfire, 1997).  The pair would go on to star in the Seduction softcore-noir Sin Sisters (Tony Marsiglia, 2003), which is actually a better film than you might think.  But that's not what we're looking at today.

New York Wildcats (filmed in 2003 but not seeing the light of straight-to-DVD day until two years later) is a remake/rehash/reimagining/ripoff of sexploitation pioneer Joseph W. Sarno's 1972 film Swedish Wildcats (aka Every Afternoon) which had starred Diana Dors as brothel madame Marghareta presiding over such Scandinavian sexpots as Christina Lindberg and Cia Lowgren.  The slightly more down-at-heel Seduction slight return instead stars Chelsea Mundae in the role of Aunt Marghareta, proprietress and procurer-in-chief of a rather grotty establishment on the Lower east Side which is being threatened by the protection racket headed by one-note Sopranos parody Mr Camute (John Paul Fedele, also director of photography on the film so at least they were getting their [hopefully low] pay cheque's worth: the cinematography is only marginally better than his 'acting').  When Camute and his hired goon (John Boom) turn down the madame's request as to whether they seek "fine ladies of the world" and he instead demands "My fucking money!", we are treated to some of the most leaden and clunking dialogue this side of an Eric Saward script editing session as Marghareta responds "Your Money?  I do not understand.  Of which money do you speak, sir?" in a bored and robotic monotone that elevates it to the dizzying heights of kitsch joy.

After upping the protection money to "sixteen thousand five hundred fucking dollars[...]every Friday, from this Friday on", Camute and his henchman nonchalantly attend the house's burlesque action, wherein Marghareta's girls dance on a stage before being bid on by members of the audience to become the paying punter's puppet of pleasure.

First up is "everyone's favourite pussy" Kitty Katie (Katie Jordan), who cavorts in feline facepaint, cat ears and studded collar while stroking her own bejazzled pussy before being bought for $5000 by a lusty lady (Allanah Rodes, credited as 'Bondage Female') who leads her to a plastic-lined play area to lap mill from a saucer before they begin eagerly lapping at each other.  After some PVC-clad bondage and rope play, Katie inquires as to her new owner's motives for paying such a high price for her - "Not that i'm not worth it" - and asks if she knows about Camute's attempted shakedown of the place.

The "next animal delight" up on stage is the slithering and sensual Ruby the Texas Rattlesnake (Ruby Larocca), gyrating in glittering green body paint and flicking her long tongue in serpentine fashion.  Camute's henchman pays the princely sum of $2,500  for "reptilian pleasure" and is guided by a now latex-clad Ruby to the pool room for a "rattling good time", wherein she uses her talented tongue on his own trouser snake before baring her bum on the billiard table and delivering the deathless dialogue "Well, what are you waiting for?  This is prime reptilian ass!  Get in there!" before receiving a bum-burgling buggering from the bum who emits such gems as "You like my snake, you little bitch?  Hiss for me!".

Last up on the auction block is the prize chicken of the establishment, the "pure, unadulterated" Pleasure the Peacock (the lovely Misty Mundae) who dances bedecked with feathers including a peacock tail and a feather boa which she undulates betwixt her legs in a stimulating fashion.  Pleasure's pleasing plumage catches the eye of Camute, who demands ownership of "this fine, feathered fuck" without paying ("I'm the cock, and that's my fucking hen!").  Taking her into her nest (which includes among its ornamentation a lighted crystalline peacock startling reminiscent of Argento's own Bird with the Crystal Plumage), Camute proceeds to snort disco sherbet in large amounts while demanding that Pleasure dance for him while downstairs Ruby informs Kitty and Marghareta that she's been informed by the sated mook that Camute isn't here for normal fun but rather stuff rough enough that Pleasure will be "lucky to wind up in hospital".  Reconsidering her house's "never say no" policy regarding the clientele in light of Camute's ill intentions towards both the Bowery brothel itself and the "world-famous Peacock" in particular, Aunt Margharete takes the girls and crashes the party.

Offering the coke-addled gangster the privilege of a no holds barred, never say no four-way session with the kitty, the snake and the peacock, the wily madame distracts the befuddled brute by ordering the three girls to put on a show.  As they dance, touch and lap at one another Camute unknowingly snorts a mirror full of a white powder that isn't the one he was looking for.  As Marghareta clutches him in a chokehold and informs him that strichnine will do that - and that he shouldn't fuck with the New York Wildcats.

Obviously this couldn't be described as a good film under any circumstances whatsoever, but at a brisk and brief 46 minute running time one can't conceivably get bored.  Frankly, i've passed the same amount of time watching an episode of Space: Above and Beyond and that kind of tedious wastage of three quarter of an hour of life puts this into perspective.  Low on plot beyond a straightforward revenge story and with little character apart from stock gangster goons, it's still a diverting enough piece of ephemeral yet entertaining enough erotica to brighten up a rainy Sunday morning.

Devilman: The Birth (Umanosuke Iida, 1987)

"Until now, the Devil was thought to be a figment of man's imagination... Just like God."

It's OVA between us. Yes, it's time to take a deep devil may care dive down the Devil Gate Drive of daemonic anime, a world first opened up to me, like some parting curtains revealing the chthonic world of night, when i was around twelve years old and some schoolmate like a serpentine tempter lent me a VHS of legendary monster hentai fever dream Urotsukidoji and i began to wonder if cartoons could even do that kind of thing. Eager for more, like an adept tempted into an arcane library in search of some siren's call of revelatory mysteries, i got myself down to the video shop and rented what seemed to be the nearest thing (Japanese cartoon: check, demons: check, violence: check) to what i'd seen. This would prove to be the initial original to video animation based upon Go Nagai's manga Devilman, and my young self would sit rapt for fifty minutes of eldritch fun before being slightly baffled by the cliffhanger ending that he would not see the resolution of for the best part of thirty years.

"The primaeval dwellers of the Earth.  The demons.  The devils, to be precise."

Starting out by showing us tales of a primaeval Earth when the daemons dwelled (and they did dwell well) and death was but a dream, betwixt the sparkling rivers Acheron and Styx 'neath a starlit sky, we see the ancient days of old - of faerie folk dancing in the moonlight (and, yes, now that awful fucking Toploader song is stuck in my head and i hope it is in yours) whilst the wyrms of the Earth surge to the surface to devour with their unholy maws. Flash-forward about a billion years, and we arrive in the present day to join in with the daily trevails of young Akira Fudou. Akira (no, not that one - i saw that a few months later) is a teenage orphan whose day is just getting progressively worse as he goes about his routine of feeding the school's rabbits only to find their hutch starkly violated and the pets slaughtered by a gang of bicycle chain-wielding toughs who like to practice their maimings on mammals.

Rescued from his home time head-kicking by the quite kawaii Miki Makimura (try saying that three times fast while drunk) - the girl with whom he has found himself living after his parents' death - Akira finds himself in a more awkward struggle than a physical beating from goons as she tends to his wounds and the sexual/romantic tension becomes thick enough in the air to cut with a sai, as Miki makes her attraction to him plain and he bottles it and ruins the moment like a goon thus proving himself to be my spirit animal.

It is into this febrile situation that an interloper injects himself - this being Ryou Asuka, an old friend of Akira who comes from out of nowhere (my glance turns to a stare) to demand that Akira accompany him immediately. Cutting a bishonen figure with his Super Saiyan spiky blond hair and swishy trenchcoat (which contains a Kyle Reese style sawn-off shotgun - he's not just pleased to see you), Miki mistakes their intense closeness for a bit of yaoi zowie and watches forlorn as Akira is swept away by this charming stranger in his cool red hot car with suspected Squarepusher intentions. Ryou takes Akira to his home, a gated mansion that has fallen to ruin, and explains to him that his father recently took his own life after a period of instability which exhibited such mild signs as slaughtering a songbird in its cage (Freddy's Revenge style: as if things needed to get any more homoerotic round here) and decapitating a dog - though he did offer to replace it with an even bigger, jucier one that would be more worthy of slaughter in a mad Renfield like outburst that mistook lunacy for lucidity - before pouring petrol over himself and immolating like a protesting monk.

"The only way to fight demons is to become a demon yourself."

The rhyme behind the reason for this, Ryou explains, is that Asuka Senior had discovered the truth. On an expedition into the Mayan ruins of the Mesoamerican rainforests he uncovered evidence of a pre-human, antediluvian civilisation that walked the Earth long before the dawn of man like one of Graham Hancock's wildest masturbatory fantasies. The land of the demons glimpsed in the past prologue, a pre-Piri Reis mappa mundi, now lies beneath the Antarctic ice pickled in time like the justified ancients of Mu-Mu in a jar. Akira's parents had been killed on a polar expedition which encountered the fiends frozen like Frankenstein encased within glaciers, who then proved to be not as dormant as a dormouse as the sleeper must awaken.

"In the dreadful cold, Lucifer, the bat-winged King of Demons is buried up to his chest in ice suffering in motionless torment."

After their conversation is interrupted by an arachnoid manse raider (no, not Ciaran Hinds from Game of Thrones), Ryou finally unfurls his plan to Akira: to find someone pure enough in heart to be able to bond with a demon in order to become... I want to say 'the Hybrid' but it's giving me serious Doctor Who series 9 flashbacks.... a creature who can take on the demons themselves. To this end, Ryou takes Akira down to the convenient basement nightclub that he has had installed wherein a Bacchanalian rave is taking place upon the Sabbath. Seizing a broken bottle and glassing a few revelers like it's a Saturday night in Newcastle's Bigg Market, Ryou unleashes the demons in the hopes that they will inhabit the bodies of all present and that either he or Akira will be pure of heart (with or without wolfsbane blooms) enough to absorb the daemonic energy and destroy all monsters.

Spoiler: it's Akira, who becomes one with the demon Amon and metamorphoses into the horned and goat-legged Devilman to tear all around asunder and stand alone, victorious yet bloodied, amid the ruins of myriad corpses.

"Truly a legacy of horror!"

His Satanic majesty, by request.

Within the Woods (Sam Raimi, 1978)

"You have violated the ancient ways, and so must DIE!!"

And so it came to pass that in that little corner of the globe known as Michigan in the late 1970s a group of college buddies decided to follow the home-made Three Stooges-inspired slapstick movies they'd made with an exploratory expedition into the realm of grueling terror.  This triumvirate of teen terrors consisted of Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert (credited in the film's opening legend as  'RIP TAPERT PRESENTS'), and they were following their feature length (70 minutes) movie debut of the previous year It's Murder! with a 30 minute short horror movie which they hoped to use  as a showcase for prospective investors in order to gain the funding to make a full length feature version (which, of course, would be 1981's epoch-making The Evil Dead).

Made for a grand budget of $1600 secured mostly from friends and family, Within the Woods is very much the prototypical Sam Raimi film, debuting many of the tricks and tics that would define his filmmaking style, as well as being the ur-Evil Dead, or Evil Dead 0 if you will.  Featuring co-producer Campbell alongside friend and co-star in the trio's earlier shorts Ellen Sandweiss in the not-the-most-imaginatively-named roles of 'Bruce' and 'Ellen', the story unfolds in a manner broadly familiar to any audience acquainted with its cinematic consequent as two couples take a vacation in a remote cabin in the woods.  The 'cabin' of Within the Woods is a more substantial structure than that of Evil Dead, more of a small farmhouse than the shanty shack to follow.  Bruce and Ellen are joined on this ill-fated trip by their friends Scotty (Scott Spiegel, who would later gain co-writing credit on 1987's Evil Dead II and make his directorial debut with 1989's supermarket slasher Intruder) and Shelly (Mary Valenti in her sole credited role, which isn't much of a surprise as she's absolutely fucking chronic).

Ellen and Bruce decide to spend the warm summer day outdoors having a picnic, leaving Scott and Shelly inside indulging in a game of Monopoly. After finding some flint arrowheads in the grass, Bruce chooses this moment to announce that their selected holiday destination is built on an old Indian burial ground (typical - isn't that just always the way?) which bears a medicine man's curse. He does continually say 'Indian' as well, rather than 'Native American', which is a bit non-PC this side of the Seventies. Deciding to build a fire to heat up their hot dogs, he uncovers yet more arrowheads and some potsherds. This impromptu edition of Tony Robinson's Time Team results in the discovery of a dagger which Bruce proclaims to be the property of the powerful shaman buried beneath them, which is almost enough to put Ellen off her wieners.

Waking from a postprandial nap a short time later, Ellen finds herself alone and ventures into the woods to search for the missing Bruce. It was at this point that the Nth-generation dub that i'm reviewing (the film having never been commercially released for reasons of copyright) skipped and glitched so badly that when Ellen stumbles upon something lying in the undergrowth and screams, i had absolutely no idea what she - or I - was supposed to be looking at. I must say, a pirated who knows how many times copy of a film shot on 8mm film before being blown up to 16mm is not the easiest viewing experience i've ever had. I think if it was longer than half an hour it may have induced glaucoma. Anyway, a terrified Ellen is chased through the trees by an unseen presence in a sequence that sees the debut of the soon to be famous 'Sam cam' technique (the camera secured to a wooden plank held between two running people), and reaches the supposed safety of the house only to find the door locked. Here we get a routine that would be replicated shot for shot in The Evil Dead as Ellen frantically scrabbles at the door lock with a series of keys on a keyring as the presence looms in ever closer behind her, only to drop the keys and have her hand grabbed by an occupant coming to her rescue (in this case Spiegel's Scotty).

Either not believing or not comprehending the hysterical Ellen (given Spiegel and Valenti's 'performances' it's hard to tell), Scotty leaves Shelly to look after her while he goes outside to search for Bruce. After growing anxious waiting for either of the boys to return, Shelly decides to ignore Ellen's frantic pleas and investigate ("I'm just going to step outside. And shine a light into the woods" she intones non-grammatically) but barely makes it onto the porch when she opens the door to be confronted by a lurker at the threshold. This particular thing on the doorstep is a demonically cadaverous Bruce, possessed by the vengeful Indian's spirit. Boy is his face red. He stabs Shelly in the neck with the dagger, ending her reign of thespian terror forever, and a relieved bereaved Ellen barricades the door and arms herself with kitchen knives. This new Rambo attitude leads to a bit of a misunderstanding as a figure enters the back door to be greeted with a knife to the gut, only for it to be revealed as a returning Scotty - a gag that Raimi repeated with Dan Hicks' Jake in Evil Dead II). Choking on his own corn syrup, Scotty uses his dying gurgles to tell Ellen to go into the cellar where the gun is. Obvious place, really.

In another eerily familiar sequence, Ellen braves the rickety steps down into the cellar and probes its dark depths to arm herself (with a handgun, rather than the Evil Dead shotgun) and thankfully there's nobody buried in this fruit cellar but zom-Bruce decides to enter 'intruder window' (arf!) and for some reason instead of shooting him Ellen manages to partially sever his dagger-wielding hand which he then chews through to remove completely in a scene that would be transferred to the possessed Shelly in the movie. Stabbed with the enchanted Amerind blade (still gripped by his own disembodied hand), Bruce departs this plane of existence with a series of echoing moans - but not before grasping Ellen's ankle in a fake out "Psyche!" moment which provokes her into taking the advice of Richard E. Grant's Withnail and take the bastard axe to him! The act of bodily dismemberment dutifully done, Ellen sits shattered amidst the entrails and remains as a victorious final girl until the last second "Gotcha!" as Scotty's reanimated cadaver suddenly sits up into shot - another shot that would be recycled.

As a fan of The Evil Dead and its subsequent sequels and series for most of my life, i'm not sure why i left it so long before actually getting round to watching Within the Woods. Sure it's very rough around the edges, but it's fascinating to see so much that is familiar actually being incepted and i'd eagerly urge any fellow fans to set aside a half hour and give it a go. Come into the woods.

Join us.

Creepozoids (David DeCoteau, 1987)

Remember that time back in 1992 when the word ended and we all survived in an acid rain-lashed post-holocaust wasteland? No, neither do i, but here we are just six years after the apocalypse in the far-flung future space year of 1998 following a ragtag team of deserters from a crack commando squadron being pursued for a crime (mutiny and desertion) that they most assuredly did commit.
The B-Team here includes everybody's favourite (actually my own third favourite, after Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer) clothes-allergic '80s scream queen Linnea Quigley. La Quigs is playing the role of Blanca, and unlike the big green guy from Street Fighter II you might not actually be averse to this one leaping on you, wrapping her legs around your waist and getting a little bitey. With her are leader Jake (Richard Hawkins), meathead Butch (Ken Abraham), bookish Jesse (Michael Aranda) and Kate, 34C-22-33 (Kim McKamy, who a mere three years later would reinvent herself as porn starlet and AVN and XRCO Hall of Famer Ashlyn Gere).

The gang take time out from stalking moodily along abandoned train tracks to a pulsing sub-John Carpenter and oh-so-brilliantly-'80s synth score to take refuge from an oncoming acid rain storm in some ruins. Surrounded, like the Monty Python gang, by film (in this case stock footage of stormclouds and rain) they decide to explore their new temporary accommodation further and discover an underground bunker consisting of a network of tunnels and rooms. This rabbit warren is a deserted scientific facility belonging to the Research For A Better Tomorrow project, and even ill omens such as a severed head in the laboratory and obvious signs that something has escaped from one of the experimental cages can't deter the crew from making use of such amenities as a working hot shower. Because did you really think we'd get more than fifteen minutes in before Linnea took her clothes off?

Jesse manages to access the lab's computer files (which bear such personnel in-joke names as Forrest Ackerman, Roger Corman and Charles Band) and discovers that the absent eggheads had been working on the synthesis and recombination of amino acids (primordial soup, from which all life springs). The results of this particular folly of hubristic science include mutant rats the size of small dogs and a mutant creature resembling a betusked Giger xenomorph. Cue some very familiar Ridley Scott-esque creeping around ventilation shafts as the male members (tee hee) of the squad meet successive gory demises, leaving Blanca and Kate as the last girls standing. After Kate succumbs to the mutagenic effects of a giant rat bite which reduces the star of Put It In Gere from a perfect 10 to "nice body, butterface", Blanca has to tangle with her friend - now a prosthetics covered zombie mutant (whenever i think of "Ashlyn Gere in latex", this isn't it) - in a girl fight to the death. It's less sexy than you might imagine.

Having been set up as the surviving 'final girl' of the movie, we are thrown a sudden curve ball by director DeCoteau as Blanca finds that Jake isn't dead but has been stashed away in the creature's nest-cum-larder before she is suddenly and ignominiously feasted upon by the monster. Waking Jake understandably exits, pursued by beast, until he is cornered in the complex's supplies store where he is tossed around like ragdoll physics until he injects the thing with a handy hypodermic of... bleach? Acid? Something. Then as he crawls away from the scene of battle, we get a Zilla-style swerve as a baby mutant resembling a cross between the fertility drug frightmare of Larry Cohen's 1974 It's Alive and the demonic Selwyn of Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992) crawls from the creatures corpse dragging its dripping umbilical cord behind it. This fanged hellspawn mounts a frenzied assault but fails to reach it's five minute birth anniversary before Jake garrottes it with its umbilicus.

But of course it's not dead, because final shot cliffhanger.

Relatively well-shot in twelve days on a meagre budget by DeCoteau - who would go on to other such genre delights as Nightmare Sisters (1988), Dr Alien (1989) and Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991) as well as hardcore homosexual hot stuff like Men of Action II (1989) - Creepozoids is a breezy 70 minutes of lightweight fun with a bit of T&A and a splash of gore. Certainly not the peak of the genre but not a waste of its brisk runtime, any aficionados of the low budget end of the VHS era should find something to enjoy.

The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire (Ray Dennis Steckler, 1971)

"I am Elaina, the wife of Count Dracula, and the film you are about to see took place a very short time ago."

"Do you like vampires?  Do you like grainy '70s porn loops?"

Perhaps these are not questions that other people ask themselves on a regular basis,  but at least for me the answer is an assured yes - all these Jean Rollin and Jess Franco DVDs aren't just for decoration, you know.  But it turns out that taking the obvious sex and death metaphor inherent to the vampire legend (both le petit and le grand morts irrevocably intertwined) was not the sole province of those European masters of the macabre: in the faraway US of A Ray Dennis Steckler was crafting his own answer in the form of The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire.  Yes, the pseudonymous 'Cash Flagg' himself of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964) and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966) infamy had within the scant space of a few years found himself directing hardcore filth.  Such a falling off was there.  Or was there?

"Dracula decides to make love, not war."

Under one of his more common noms de plume, Sven Christian, Steckler helmed this 50-minute slice of filmic eternity in '71, a couple of years before such delights as 1974's The Sexorcist or 1981's Debbie Does Las Vegas.    Also here is the then Mrs Steckler, Carolyn Brandt (Cee Cee Beaumont herself from Rat Pfink), though sadly she isn't participating in the mucky stuff but is relegated to the sidelines spouting gnomic and impenetrable (fnarr!) gibberish as the Bride of Dracula.  The Count himself is played by Shock Theater television horror host Jim Parker aka 'the Vegas Vampire', who spends much of his screen time mugging at the camera and making extravagant Bela Lugosi-style hand movements.  The Count and his hunchbacked servant (a performer going under the great name of 'Rock Heinrich') are in the midst of a masterplan which entails sending out three vampiric hookers to harvest "the blood of the innocent" for Dracula - but not before commanding the trio to engage in some girl-on-girl orgy action for his devilish delectation, and the hunchback getting involved.  There's something about watching a crooked-spined henchman gurning gleefully in the throes of fellatio from a disinterested-looking naked vampire girl that's a strange combination of intriguing and disengaging.  I haven't been simultaneously pulled in and pushed away so much this side of a Hitchcockian zoom.  But kudos to Mr Heinrich on managing to distractingly overact whilst getting his cock hitched.

"You most immediately bend over - forward and backward - all of you, your entire parts... of your body... MAKE LOVE!  LOVE!!  LOVE!!!  Yes: do it!  Do it!  Enjoy!"

Meanwhile, a pipe-smoking Professor Van Helsing who resembles a Lucio Fulci cameo as a middle-management level businessman is visiting the home of his favourite pupil the barbigerous Bill (who continually refers to him as "Professor Van Hersing" for reasons known only to the great archons of the beyond), along with Bill's blonde beehive sporting and vapid girlfriend Janet.  Bill has summoned the Prof via a letter expressing his concern over his late sister Camille, who perished in a car accident before her body went mysteriously missing from the mortuary.  This piques the vampire slayer's interest, and he links this incident to the recent cases of bodies found in local motels drained of all their blood.

"You know, i'm thinking that, uh... maybe Dracula went to the mortuary, and cursed Camille's non-living corpse with a taint of vampirism.  And if this IS the work of Dracula, then wherever he is we must find him.  And we must destroy him."

And so Dracula dispatches his three ladies of the night (what music they make - wait, what?) with a command of "I want you to fill this vial with blood.  Vile blood!" to sexily exsanguinate some suckers.  We follow two of them as they pick up a john each and take them back to respective sleazy motel rooms to engage in some hairy pre-waxing '70s style sleaze.  The film grain and aspect ratio lend a level of nostalgic grime that quite entrancingly enhances the mood as the ladies engage in their sucking 'n' fucking, plus a spot of flagellation - girl on boy for a change, and man were that guy's buttocks redder than a baboon's by the end! - before "finishing off" in a manner familiar to anyone who's seen Lina Romay in Female Vampire (Jess Franco, 1973).  If Steckler's intention was to make the male members of the audience wince as his actresses chowed down on male members wearing joke shop vampire fangs, then he's just played right into my fetishes.

"Dracula is groovy."

It was at this point that i'd given up wondering what had become of the third vampiress, and just assumed that her scenes had got lost in the editing or something.  Oh me of little faith.  The plot strands dovetail masterfully when Janet decides she's had enough of Bill and Van Helsing's interminable conversation and goes for a piss, only to find herself under attack from the rogue vampire in the bathroom - upon which happenstance the two fools rush in and Bill emits a flat and monotone "Oh my God, it's my sister Carmille".  Clearly the shock of the situation has robbed the poor man of both his capacity to express emotional feeling, and the knowledge of his sister's actual name.

"Run, Dracula, run!!"

This pair of brave vampire hunters, after destroying Camille/Carmille/Carmilla/Mircalla, locate Dracula's hideout and attempt to destroy the Count and his other underlings.  Dracula flees the scene, only to find both himself and the hunchback (who performs a baffling but impressive flip whilst the run across wasteland in slow motion) in the rays of the rising sun 'neath which the Count disintegrates laving only his cape behind in a powerful and moving sequence of which F. W. Murnau would be proud.  This opus ends with a shot of a tearful angry hunchback clutching his departed master's cloak and flipping the bird to the blazing and uncaring sun.  Magnificent.

I knew i'd enjoy this film from the second the opening credits included 'Art Direction by De Sade', to be honest.

Nice and sleazy does it.  Does it every time.

Bram Stoker's Burial of the Rats (Dan Golden, 1995)

There was but little water, and the bottom of the drain was raised with brick, rubbish, and much matter of the kind.  He had made a fight for it, even when his torch had gone out.  But they were too many for him!  They had not been long about it!  The bones were still warm; but they were picked clean.  They had even eaten their own dead ones and there were bones of rats as well as the man.

It seems fitting, somehow, that in the week when Dame Helen Mirren arrives on screen playing a Russian monarch in Catherine the Great I found myself watching one of my own personal favourite Queens of Scream, Adrienne Barbeau, portraying a a slightly more sordid sovereign in a production filmed in Russia. I speak of course of nothing other than 1995's Bram Stoker's Burial of the Rats, a film which deserves prejudice of place alongside Bram Stoker's Dracula in the "taking the author's name in vain" stakes.

Bram Stoker's short story 'The Burial of the Rats' is an eerie tone poem that was published alongside its perhaps more well-known stablemates 'The Squaw' and 'The Judge's House' in 1914's posthumous collection Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories. Bram Stoker's Burial of the Rats is a slightly bizarre slice of cinematic Skinemax exploitation that was filmed as part of the Roger Corman Presents strand (alongside such debacles as pointless remakes of The Wasp Woman and Not of This Earth [not the Traci Lords one - that's far from pointless, Heaven forfend: I speak of the useless third version]).

Ms Barbeau may have only taken the role because she'd never seen Moscow - and, apparently, needed a new roof on her house - but she does an expert job of maintaining a shred of dignity here as she portrays the Queen of the Rat Women, an exalted position which seems to mainly consist of Marie Antoinette cosplay whilst presiding over bacchanals of nubile young women dancing around in varicoloured diaphanous wisps of fabric like a Russ Meyer vision of Themiscyra. The queen proclaims herself to be "The Pied Piper's twisted sister" - explaining her ability to charm and summon hordes of vermin by tooting her flute, and also causing my brain to debate the 'fact' that in canon with The Sarah Jane Adventures this means that Adrienne Barbeau is playing the sibling of Bradley Walsh. Don't think about it. I think these things so you don't have to.

The Rat Women are a secretive sect of sexy ladies including the lovely Maria Ford, Olga Kabo, Nikki Fritz and Linnea Quigley (the latter two so briefly glimpsed that i'm fairly certain they were shot in inserts filmed in California rather than being with the rest of the cast in Russia) who live a life free from the shackles of the tyranny of men. These Women Going Their Own Way dress in a uniform that appears to consist mostly of leather bikinis, knee-high heeled boots, chokers and gloves. Because they are liberated and dressing for themselves and not your Male Gaze, okay? Fine. Did I direct this movie? Because it totally seems like something sixteen year old me would have done. Me, or Jim Wynorski. Or maybe Fred Olen Ray. But definitely one of the three.

(Checks) Nope, it's directed by Dan Golden, apparently (also helmer of 1995's Stripteaser and 2017's fairly self-explanatory T&A Time Travelers), who also has the prime role of Man Stabbed in Back. Okay then.

This murine matriarchy finds itself in possession of a mislaid Bram Stoker (Kevin Alber)), although the portrayal of the taciturn and bewhiskered Victorian Irish author of Dracula as some Fabio-haired Californian may be the biggest desecration of a legendary figure of these fair isles since Kevin Costner befouled Sherwood in his quest for the sheriff of "Notting Ham". Captured by the cult and facing the prospect of spending most his life living in a Sapphic paradise, Bram befriends Madeleine (Ford) much to the chagrin of her scissor sister Anna (Kabo). The sisterhood are dedicated to avenging themselves against priapic oppression, including the wandering-handed priests of St Cecile and the corrupt local dignitary Verlaine (Leonid Timtsunik) who possesses neither the wisdom of his original namesake nor the musical talent of Tom. As they continue to "claw at the rich and tear down the powerful" - a maxim I can certainly get behind - they raid the local brothel (within whose walls Verlaine has indentured a twelve year old local girl) to wipe out the oppressive male scum and liberate the sex workers. This goes slightly awry when the premises' madame takes exception and has her uppity swash truly buckled by the sword-wielding maidens for the crime of being a woman who enslaves women.

"Let all repressed women face the consequences!" is the rather problematic cry, which seems to me to be taking their liberation philosophy to the extreme. Perhaps if this was a Gregory Dark joint it would have been called Third Wave Hookers.

All of this infighting - combined with Madeleine's growing forbidden infatuation with Mr Stoker and his manly charms - leads us on the road to Rouen, or at least to St Cecile. When Verlaine and his gynophobic gendarmes ("Good moaning" indeed) storm the palace, Maddy helps Bram escape along with his injured father and confronts the jealous Anna in a rambunctious rattling of rapiers whilst the queen breaks her enchanted flute and allows her scurrying scabies subjects to rip her fleeeeaaasssshh. You know, like weasels.

Vapid and verminous visual Viagra. I feel violated.  But in a good way.

Shadows: Dutch Schlitz's Shoes (Stan Woodward, 1975)

Talkin' with the Taxman about poetry

'Tis the time of the season for rhyming with reason as we follow on from our previous review to take another adventure with the sibilant sorcerer Estabis of the Brotherhood or Arcanaan - 'Mr Stabs' to you and me - and his leprous lieutenant Luko.  Earlier in real-world chronology (1975 does come before 1984 after all, i know how many beans make five) but later in his own personal time stream (this all seems very Doctor Who all of a sudden.  Yes, it's "wibbly wobbly, timey wimey", if you must), here the malignant mage is portrayed by his Onlie True Begetter Russell Hunter whilst the role of Luko is essayed by Kenneth Caswell who had featured in the 'Gone to the Angels' installment of Terry Nation's post-apocalyptic farmer drama Survivors earlier the same year) taking over from Ian Trigger's original.

After the end of Ace of Wands in late 1972, producer-director Pamela Lonsdale had gone on to over see the inception of the legendary children's show Rainbow before heading Thames TV's anthology series Shadows.  A sort of tea-time Twilight Zone for tweens, Shadows featured a variety of tales of a supernatural bent and - as she'd helmed the Wands story 'Seven Serpents, Sulphur and Salt' which debuted Mr Stabs - Lonsdale was quick to contact Trevor Preston for a solo Stabs spin-off as part of the show.  The sixth episode of Shadows' first season, 'Dutch Schlitz's Shoes' (try saying that three times fast) saw the wicked wizard and his cringing acolyte on a foray into the land of the "merely mortals" on a quest to obtain an arcane artefact of power - the fabled Black Glove of Mendoza.

Upon a darkened country lane, Stabs and Luko come upon a night watchman named Albert, played by Ron Pember (an actor with impressive resume whom i nonetheless find it difficult to think of as anyone else but the thumb-breaking Taxman from Red Dwarf: 'Better Than Life').  Tired from their voyage, Stabs decides that the mile-long journey from the Albert-minded roadworks to his destination is too much to walk, and there fore employs his customary poesy of power - magical incantations delivered in stanzaic form a la the spells from '80s animation Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light ("By natures' hand / By crafts, by art / What once was one now fly apart!" is one such that springs to mind, though i did always like "By mist-filled pits / Dark, dank, unclear / Fill all before me with frost-fingered fear!" as well) - to convince Albert to carry him on piggyback on pain of being transformed into an aged horse fit for the knacker's yard.

"Hand of Stabs, prepare straight 'way / A serpent circle pot of clay / Polandi dust and all i need / To make this magic spell succeed"

Arriving at Inchwood House, Stabs and Luko wander amidst the glass-cased exhibitions in the private collection of the doddery eccentric Sir Arthur Inchwood (an absent-minded turn by Gordon Gostelow, who played Shakespeare's Bardolph twice on television in 1960's An Age of Kings and 1979's Compleat BBC Shakespeare adaptations of Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two and Henry V and yet shall forever remain enshrined in fannish memory for his outrageous performance as outer space mining pioneer Milo Clancy in Doctor Who's 'The Space Pirates') before coming across their quarry just as the proprietor of the property, dressed in a Halloween skeleton suit and wielding a blunderbuss, finds them.  Ignoring the protestations of the "senile sentinel", Stabs takes up the occult gauntlet of the centuries dead Mendoza and re-infuses his hand (the power of which has been fading and growing weaker) with that hideous strength before transfiguring Sir Arthur into the form of a hop toad.

"Hand of Stabs, these shoes exchange / This fabled footwear rearrange"

Browsing among the alien lanes of this 1970s drawing room version of Henry Van Statten's Utah extraterrestrial museum, Stabs chances upon a snazzy pair of old brogues marked as the clogs of Chicago gangster Dutch Schlitz, an obvious allegorical avatar of Dutch Schultz whose final post-fatal shooting stream of consciousness ramble included - among such apropos of what the fuck non-sequiturs as "French-Canadian bean soup!" - the mournful plea of "They won't let me get up.  They dyed my shoes.  Open these shoes, give me something!"(William S, Burroughs of The Naked Lunch fame would dramatise this dying diatribe in 1970's The Last Words of Dutch Schultz).  Popping on the pimp's possessed pumps, Mr Stabs soon finds his corporeal form becoming home to the spectre of Schlitz, his normal silky tones replaced with 1920s gangster lingo (all "mook"s and "wiseguys"s) delivered with a drawl that gives Gostelow's Clancy characterisation a run for its money in the "talkin' American" stakes.

Packing a pistol, Schlitz!Stabs orders Luko (or "Shorty" as he now calls him) to drive him to the nearest bank in order to stage a heist as "I gotta fatten up my bank roll, which at this moment is zero potatas" (on another Red Dwarf related reverie, all this George Raft jive talk put me in mind of the season eleven opener 'Twentica').  After the armed robbery in which the bank teller Mr Baxter (George Waring, another Doctor Who and Survivors alumnus) is referred to as "Tootsie" and forced to fill a Gladstone bag with money the local constabulary is called in in the form of Inspector Rumbold, a role essayed by the late great John Abineri amidst whose long list of credits people may remember as Herne the Hunter from Richard Carpenter's Robin of Sherwood, and who appeared in not only Survivors (in the regular role of Hubert Goss) and Doctor Who (as Van Lutyens in 1968's 'Fury from the Deep', the xenophobic General Carrington in 1970's 'The Ambassadors of Death' and boy was his face green as Ranquin in 1979's 'The Power of Kroll') but also played Rimmer's dad in Red Dwarf (alongside Ron Pember's Taxman in 'Better Than Life').  At a loss as to what to make of the teller's tale of the robbery, combined with the reappearance of Sir Arthur (still croaking like a toad) and the discrepancies between the two victim's reports as to whether the perpetrator was named Schlitz or Stabs, Rumbold-not-of-the-Bailey sets out for Inchwood House just in time to witness a cabbalistic confrontation.

Unable to remove the shoes himself, Stabs summons the spirit of Schlitz (Barry Stanton, also of Survivors, and the bird-like Noma in Doctor Who nadir 'The Twin Dilemma') to manifest and take his spellbound spats back.  Schlitz is ceded his shoes, but refuses to return to the netherworld from whence he came as the modern world has banks that require robbing and eludes Stabs' spells by vanishing and rematerialising in different locations throughout the house in a game of cat and mouse watched through the window by a baffled Rumbold, Baxter and Sir Arthur.  Finally, this hexed hide and seek comes to a close when Stabs focuses the power of the Black Glove of Mendoza and banishes the rogue ghost in a piff-paff-poof of sulphuric smoke before teleporting himself and Luko away from the house and off the the bright lights of the big city where real evil can be done - leaving the entering trio behind and baffled as they go.

Featuring some lovely location works, sparkling along at a brisk pace and never outstaying its welcome, Dutch Schlitz's Shoes is a nice slice of 1970s archive television and an insight into what Preston and Lonsdale's hoped-for but sadly never realised Mr Stabs series could have been.