Doctor Who: The Masters of Luxor (Frank Smialek, 2001)

 

Oh look, he's talking about Doctor Who again.  Must be a day with 'day' in it, I guess.  This year's season is over and as of the time of writing we seem to be in a sort of Zero Room of "pathways to continuation" and the whole enterprise (the series, not the starship; wrong franchise mate) seems to be in a state of stasis as to when the show will return and I'm jonesing for my Who fix - I desperately need new, or even "new" (to me) old Doctor Who to watch!

And waffle about, of course.

I don't do it on this blog all that often though, not as a review anyway - I'm aware that the show does get referenced a bit, that's just how it goes when you've been immersed in a fictional (how dare you, sir?  It's real, I tells thee!) universe since the age of three (that'd be 1982, fact fans: my earliest memory of television is Peter Davison's Doctor and Adric in the woods, which would probably be 'The Visitation' rather than 'Kinda' - I like to think I could discern a real life location from a studio set even at that age but I'm kidding myself of course.  I thought that Biggins really was in the jungle in On Safari) it's just second nature.  It's just how my brain works.

Or doesn't, depending upon your point of view.  

I think the first time I encountered the word 'periwig' I assumed it was a hairpiece cut into a brunette bob a la 1984-vintage Nicola Bryant.   This isn't true of course, it's a joke, but you get my meaning.  I'm actually slightly surprised at how much I've restrained myself over the years from constantly rambling on about Who - I think the last time was my review of the first story featuring the Barbara Benedetti incarnation of the Doctor, 'The Wrath of Eukor'* (see HERE if curious), and I do intend to watch the other three entries in her oeuvre at some point, as well as the Projection Room flicks featuring the Chris Hoyle embodiment of telly's titular Time Lord and to rewatch Krystal Moore's groovy Doctor Who Velocity (the Tron crossover [yes, you read that right and it's as glorious as it sounds] especially) - gosh, the expanded universe of fan films is big - but for now I'd like to turn to something I've wanted to watch for a long time.

[*Wrong, you fool!  You've forgotten your rambling, probably drunken maunderings about last year's season - Ed.]

Anyway, as many will know the history of Doctor Who like every television show encompasses as many storyline routes not taken as were - fictive forks in the road unexplored as scripts were rejected or abandoned for sundry reasons, mostly ones of sheer practicality.  The earliest comes with just the second ever story, as Terry Nation's 'The Daleks' was not originally scheduled for that place.  Odd though it may seem from the distance of more than sixty years of cultural history that includes the Skaroine pepperpots, the show's four-part debut 'An Unearthly Child' (or '100,000 B.C.' if you're one of the contrarian elitist editors of DWM, or even 'The Tribe of Gum' if you go by the Titan script books  - and more thereon soon) was originally to be followed by another story from the same author: Anthony Coburn.  Though now probably best known to Who fandom for fathering a rather problematic man, Coburn was also the progenitor of many of Doctor Who's iconic staples such as the outer form of the TARDIS as a British Metropolitan MacKenzie Trench police box and the character of schoolgirl 'Suzanne' being reformatted as the Doctor's unearthly grandchild Susan.  Having delivered these initial four scripts, Coburn embarked upon a second serial - variously titled as the rather prosaic 'The Robots' but later settled on as the much more evocative 'The Masters of Luxor' - comprising of six episodes and set on an alien world to contrast with prehistoric earth setting of the bulk of the opening story (apart from the present day 1963 of the opening instalment), and having a much more science fiction bent.

However, as we know, this was destined not to be and the story went unproduced in favour of Nation's less philosophical and more pulp action serial influenced 'The Daleks' seven parter and the course of history flowed in the direction that we all know.  Coburn's second story (and final one, he never wrote for Doctor Who again) was forgotten - indeed his first one went unremembered to the extent of Trivial Pursuit citing Terry Nation as the actual instigator of the show.  But in the early 1990s, during the series' wilderness years away from the screen, Titan Books produced a sadly short-lived range of published script books and astoundingly to my young self included 'Luxor' among their number.  In fact, so astounded was I that I dropped the book in the bath at one point (in the interests of accuracy, this may have been more to do with falling asleep than astonishment) and the cover and pages are still all crinkly.  Much like the pages of the magazines under your bed, only not with the 'good pages' stuck together with your special glue.  That probably isn't a thing these days, what with the internet and everything.  But it wasn't just me reading it and imagining what might have been had this story have been made - across the ocean in Chicago in the space year 2001, some crazy college kids went as far as actually realising it.  Manifesting it into reality, if you like - only by actually getting off their arses and doing it rather than the power of hope or whatever.

Director Frank Smialek and his Doctor actor Anthony Sarlo decided to edit the originally scripted six parts ('The Cannibal Flower', 'The Mockery of a Man', 'A Light on the Dead Planet', 'Tabon of Luxor', 'An Infinity of Surprises' and 'The Flower Blooms') down into the more traditional - at least by the standard of the '70s and '80s - Doctor Who shape of four twenty five-ish minute episodes.  Another alteration was to make Susan the Doctor's niece rather than granddaughter, which both better suited Sarlo's more youthful Doctor than William Hartnell and - probably completely coincidentally - echoes Jill Curzon's Louise and her relationship to the Peter Cushing Doctor in the 1966 Amicus/Aaru feature Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.  Which is canon as fuck and totally amazing, I insist.  I really do.

Episode One: The Cannibal Flower

Opening evocatively with the classic original Hartnell era title sequence of unfurling strands of howlround and Delia Derbyshire's never bettered rendition of Ron Grainer's theme, the story begins with the Doctor (Sarlo), Susan (Samantha Eaton) and her erstwhile teachers Ian Chesterton (Clyde Scott Goble) and Barbara Wright (Stephanie Gloeckler) in the TARDIS console room - a very well constructed one for a low budget fan film - ostensibly following on from the events of 'An Unearthly Child' or at least a very close parallel universe version thereof.  As I adjust to the strange dissonance - as any traveller betwixt universes always must - of the familiar Year One TARDIS crew with American accents (which has never been a deal-breaker for me with Who leads honestly; unlike fandom's more conservative contingent [which includes, bizarrely at it seems, many American fans who first came to the show for it's perceived quirky 'Britishness'] I've never been opposed in principle to actors from North America playing the Doctor - cast Gillian Anderson, you fools!  It was just slightly jarring to have the original '60s ensemble of the First Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara conversing in USAian), the temporal ship is temporarily rocked by some strange time turbulence and a quick look on the scanner screen shows that they're hovering above a desolate and rocky celestial body (speaking of heavenly bodies, Eaton's Susan is hot) quite akin to the moon.  Dismissing Chatterton's... sorry, Chesterton's assessment that that's where they are with the factoid that there are many planetoids fitting the same description, the Doctor spots a structure upon the dead world and divines that this is the source of the broadcast signal that disturbed their flight.

After a brief pause for a very Sixties conversation with Barbara about her feelings of foreboding about the alien structure, prompting the Doctor to opine of 'women's intuition' as being akin to the energy that powers the TARDIS itself (Bad Wolf girl confirmed!), our titular time traveller decides to manoeuvre the ship around the edifice ("Like a helicopter!"); this causes the erection to tremble - I know the feeling - and open up like the eponymous zoophagous plant and draw the craft within itself.  

As more adventurous (to reference a great Rilo Kiley album, and why not?) teacher Ian heads outside to explore with unearthly child Susan, his erstwhile staff room compatriot Barbara remains in the ship to aid the Doctor in detecting the sudden and mysterious power drain of the TARDIS' systems.  Ian and Susan come across an empty space age banqueting hall replete with  long table bedecked with a feast, a scenario that puts me in mind of something out of an Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy roleplay novel (roll the dice to decide what happens next: will Susan give in to her hunger and tuck into the feast only to find it poisonous, or will Ian have a Skill and Stamina score high enough to stop her?) but the Sixties schoolmaster references the Grimm tale of 'Hansel and Gretel' being fattened up for the witch's dinner instead.  Curiosity the cat killer - maybe that's what wiped out Gallifrey's native Killer Cats of Geng Singh!  ZOMG, it suddenly all makes sense and must indeed be canon - overcomes Ian and he presses a switch which causes some robotic automatons to emerge from concealed recesses in the walls (Coburn's original and less evocative title for this story of course being the rather prosaic and perfunctory 'The Robots') which of course causes Susan to emit a shrill scream though at least she doesn't find a way to twist her ankle.  These silver bacofoil '50s space adventure-style robots appear to be inert and totally lifeless and thus presumably mostly harmless; Ian and Susan rejoin Barbara and the Doctor in the feasting hall just as the automatons twitch into life and follow them...

Episode Two: The Mockery of a Man

Following straight on from the episode one cliffhanger - which, anachronistically, ended with the traditional cliffhanger 'scream' into the 1970s version of the closing title theme; odd for a production that otherwise strives for the verisimilitude of the time it would have been made but perhaps understandable from the point of view of what feels like classic Who - the second installment carries on after an opening establishing shot of the alien edifice with our heroes still being approached by the mechanical men (one of which is portrayed by the director Frank Smialek).  The Doctor steps forward with a Hartnellesque clutching of his lapels and adjudges that these droids were built by creatures akin to themselves (as he is referring to himself, Susan, Ian and Barbara we can deduce that he's just speaking of humanoids in general rather than a particular species, although at this early point in the series' development the Doctor and Susan may well have been humans from the future: witness Susan's line in the pilot version of the first episode, "I was born in the 49th century" before it was changed to "I was born in another time, another world").  Addressing the artificial beings, he informs them that he and his crewmates were drawn to this world by a malfunctioning signal and that they would very much like to meet the robots' 'Masters'.  The servitors, obviously confused as to the newcomers' identities, address Team TARDIS as "the masters of Luxor" - finally at least naming the world upon which they stand -     and seek assurance that they are pleased with the food and drink provided for them.

"The masters of Luxor have made us well, and we serve you."

Shown to their rooms to rest and provided with fresh and futuristic clothing (my sadness at Susan changing out of her school uniform is quickly alleviated by her and Barbara's new outfits consisting of form fitting white dresses with side splits and go go boots - it's like they're catering to all of the fetishes) the crew relax and enjoy themselves, Barbara relishing the use of the baths of Luxor to wash the cobwebs of the "caves of Za" right out of her hair in a nice continuity nod and both she and Susan mocking Ian's white leotard as looking like an acrobat about to attempt the high wire.  They come across a map of the city of Luxor, prompting the Doctor to muse "If that's Luxor, where's here?"

Another kind of  droid, one with glowing Jawa-esque eyes that calls itself a Derivatron, enters the room and tries to question the existence of the team.  Which seems needlessly existentialist to me, but important to the Derivatron who speaks of taking them to 'the Perfect One' and prompting the Doctor to demand "Take us to your Masters".  So close, Time Lord.  It's 'leader', you fool!  Spooked by the Derivatron's parting comment about the rather rude mechanicals of this world having destroyed the "living men" who created them, the time travellers decide to make a break for it.  Leaving the comfortable quarters-cum-cell that they were sealed inside, they make their way to an observation deck where they observe (well, duh) a weird experiment in which a captured man and another humanoid being (who we soon learn is the Perfect One, played by Matt Ellegood ) are strapped to elevated tables side by side and wired together in some sort of life force transfer.  Think Larry Talbot and the somnolent Monster in Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man and congratulations, you've got it.  But also commiserations because if that was your go-to mental reference then you've gt the same brain as me.

Mr Perfect (sadly, he doesn't perform a Perfect plex on anyone) explains that the 'Masters' first created the basic functional robots, and then the more advanced Derivatrons - for illustrative purposes he has models on tiers of differing height like the 'class' skit with the two Ronnies and John Cleese - before they dared to dream of him and he in his perfection destroyed the creators.  This backstory is pretty similar to Ruk in Star Trek's 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?', basically.  And without the power flowing through the City, which only operates when someone living arrives, the Perfect One is non-existent; making him pretty similar to the eponymous antagonist of the Red Dwarf episode 'Legion' too.  This mockery of a man ("It's in the title", as Josh Spiegel of Movie Timelines would say) now wishes to transcend his origins and become a real live boy by draining the travellers' life forces into himself.  He'd get on famously with Jano and the Elders from 'The Savages'.

And showing great taste, he is intent on feasting on Barbara and Susan...

Episode Three: Tabon of Luxor

As our knee-high boot wearing heroines are strapped down firmly (for the plot and not purely in order to cater to my fetishes I tell myself), Susie Who makes her move: tearing free from her bonds with some kind of usually-hidden Gallifreyan super strength, or maybe an extra-dimensional power inherited from the Timeless Child - hey, isn't headcanon fun? - she bops a robot and a Derivatron and swiftly frees Barbara.  Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian spot a light through a window and the Doctor divines that someone out in the wilderness outside the city is flashing a beacon in the same one, one-two, one-two-three rhythm as the signal that brought the TARDIS to this benighted planetoid.  Resolving to get down there, they break through the window and the Doc (I do usually kindly refrain from addressing him as such) takes a gander through his handy-dandy collapsible telescope leading to a neat P.O.V. shot - complete with making to simulate the scope - of an era-appropriate model of ancient-looking ruins in the near distance, I suppose.  That's a little Puressence reference, for anyone counting my inevitably dated pop culture spots.  The Time Lord and the teacher decide to chance the climb down the outer wall of the city to get to that temple of secrets and find out what's going on.

Recaptured by the robots, "these women creatures" as the Perfect One refers to them and thus making his sound like a proto-incel and leading me to wonder if Luxorans Going Their Own Way was a movement that led to their seeming extinction are conveyed to the 'guest apartments' under order to rest and take food and wine.  I mean, it would be inhospitable to do otherwise.

"The order is registered."

Out in the wilderness, Chesterton and our hero are exploring the ruins and find what appears to be a stone sarcophagus bearing an elegiac eulogy in overtly religious language (something of which there was apparently a lot more in Coburn's original scripts, including presenting the usually rationalist Doctor as someone who balances science and faith equally, whilst quoting Karl Marx) including the legend "O Lord, please deliver them from flesh", which to me sounds almost Cronenbergian.  Alas, we aren't going to get my dreams of body horror realised here, but there is a smidge of Universal / Hammer style gothic as the hermetically-sealed tomb is opened - the Doctor wishing that he had "a sonic..." something to hand -  to release a cryogenically preserved man (Kirk Jackson) whose lowered lifesigns are rapidly on the rise as he returns to the land of the living.  As Tabon - for 'tis he - rises from his self-imposed grave like an Altered Beast and we find that 'twas he who was the original creator and onlie begetter of the Derivatrons and who conceived of the creation of the Perfect One only to retreat out here in the fields to preserve himself in his cryogenic crypt to hide in shame from his Promethean endeavours.

Did you know that an early, and now sadly lost, cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (to give her novel it's full and cool title) was Joseph Smiley's 1915 Life Without Soul?  The title wafted and wended through my mind as Tabon went on about how he created life, but without a soul.  Which makes him I suppose the Victor in the end, with the Perfect One his creature or demon (it's never referred to as 'the Monster' in the text as frustrated Karloff fans have discovered through the ages).

Episode Four: The Flower Blooms

The finale opens - like the titular blossom - with our heroes having thought of Susan and Barbara whilst squeezing themselves up a dark and dangerously tight shaft with the expectations of it all ending with a messy explosion, for Tabon has conveyed that the Perfect One has control of the Luxorians' atomic stockpile and it's almost never a good idea to let someone with dodgy motives who wants to prove themselves to be a real man have unfettered access to your arsenal.  Unfortunately, the unknowing Susie 'n' Babs have slightly damaged the saint of (im)Perfection with a jerry-rigged trip wire which risks the whole planetoid; if he/it dies then the nuclear magazine will detonate and take everyone and everything with them.  Hang on to your ego there, metal man.  Baffled by Barbara and Susan's recitations of "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" and "Mary, Mary, quite contrary" and especially especially unnerved by the two women laughing at him (I'm telling you, definitely an incel-bot enraged by girlish giggles), the not so Perfect One declares that "the meaning of all this is that it has no meaning" and resolves to end their lives by absorbing them into himself as the Doctor, Ian and Tabon race to rescue them.

"And the last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death."

I really would encourage anyone interested in the history - including the alternate 'could have been' histories of short trips and side steps - of Doctor Who to check it out.  It's available to watch at time of writing as part of the Doctor Who Fan Film Database on Youtube.  Show it some love and prove that you are a human with a soul and not a robot.  Or don't, whatever.

Shot on colour digital videotape and then converted to monochrome with an authentic to the period electronic score composed by Smialek himself, 'The Masters of Luxor' is a pretty unique artefact: a fan film that's an adaptation of an actual official set of BBC-commissioned Doctor Who scripts, rather than the usual fan-penned fanwank (which I of course mean in the sense of fannish wallowing in continuity [I'm looking at you here, too, Big Finish; no, Nick, "What if Bellal met River Song?" is not a 'lovely idea' worthy of multiple box sets], rather than what happened to that lad who won the competition to have a sleepover at Mike Yates actor Richard Franklin's house [IYKYK]).  And that isn't a slam on all fan films at all - as I've said I do mean to dive into more in the future - it's just that this has a standing of it's own apart from the others, in my view at least.

A weird glimpse into a parallel timeline (ah, but is it a continuation of the 1970 Parallel Time dimension from Dark Shadows?  And was that itself the same continuum as 1841 Parallel Time?  ANSWER ME!  This is what goes on inside my head the whole entire time, you know - it's like Herman's Head if the voices contained within Charlie Brewster were constantly arguing over continuity and canonicity) where Anthony Coburn's second story followed his first instead of Terry Nation's 'The Daleks', it's certainly an interesting plane of reality to visit but I'm not sure that many would want to live there permanently.

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (David Lee Fisher, 2023)

"I'm a Nosferatu.  But probably not the one you're expecting."

These words are neither spoken by Graf Orlok in this film nor by Paul McGann in the 2013 anniversary minisode 'The Night of the Doctor', but they convey the sufficient level of surprise.  We're all - I think - aware that over the period Christmas 2024 and New Year 2025 (depending upon the release pattern wherever in the world one was, or 'regional variations' as they'd put it when I were a bairn and frustrated that my BBC or ITV station wasn't showing a programme or film that I wanted to see) a rather illustrious new reimagining (yes, I still harbour something of a hatred for that word but it seems to have infected common parlance, alack) of F. W. Murnau's 1922 vampire classic Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens (see here) which had of course already been remade in 1979 by Werner Herzog as the sepuchrally majestic Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (see this sordid little incubus ), this time by feted director Robert Eggers of The VVitch and The Lighthouse renown was unleashed from its mouldering crypt, but the previous year had respawned the monster with a lesser known, but very worthwhile, version of the vampiric varlet.  Not to be confused with the vampiric Varney, antiheroic antagonistic protagonist of James Malcolm Rymer's Victorian penny dreadful Varney the Vampire; or The Feast of Blood.

This iteration of the already twice-told tale (not including the 1988 sequel Nosferatu in Venice, once again starring Klaus Kinski reprising his role as the revenant [I really do need to rewatch that one, I haven't seen it in years], or 2000's Shadow of the Vampire with Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck/Orlok two and a half-ish decades before he would take on the role of Professor von Franz in the Eggers edition - making him a rarity as an actor to have essayed both the Dracula and Van Helsing roles) comes courtesy of director David Lee Fisher, who had already helmed a remake of the German Expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr Caligari in 2005, and brought much the same approach here of hewing extremely closely to the monochrome silent source material to the point a recreating sets and shot compositions to the letter - even superimposing actual original shots into the background (these Fisher editions being all shot against a green screen) with the addition of dialogue, sound effects and an original soundtrack from composer Eban Schletter who in addition to working with Fisher on Caligari has a resume sporting credits for the music on the unasked-for 2003 prequel Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry met Lloyd and the long-awaited (be me, anyway) 2023 belated sequel History of the World Part II.

We begin proceedings, as per, in the Teutonic town of Wisborg with a very familiar shot of the conurbation from above with the church spire centred - though this time 'tis a 3-D CGI rendering of the steeple that we pan round and down to the people and the streets below and meet our new couple of Hutters, Thomas (Emrhys Cooper, perhaps best known the British audiences as Corrie's cult villain Rowan Cunliffe) and Ellen (Sarah Carter, super-powered bunny boiler Alicia Baker in interminable Superman prequel series Smallville as well as the second Cicada in the fifth season of its DC stablemate The Flash).  The couple have apparently been married for almost a year, but their relationship shows few signs of intimacy - and now I've got the voice of Tommy Wiseau in my head saying "Hey, Hutter, how's your sex life?" - as Thomas seems more into his job of shifting property than showing much interest in his beautiful bride.  If he isn't interested in taking her up the aisle then I'll happily volunteer.  And yes, that is an euphemism.  Neglecting his nuptials, he wanders off to work, encountering Dr Bulwer (George Maguire, no relation as far as I know to Spider-Man Tobey) along the way who gives him the same sage philosophical advice that Alan Ruck's Cameron Frye gives to the viewers of Ferris Bueller's Day Off: "Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you'll miss it".  I'm paraphrasing slightly of course.

Arriving at the office of his eerie and eccentric employer Herr Knock (Eddie Allen, trading as 'Edgar Allen Poe'), Herr Hutter receives his instructions to traverse the highways and byways that lead to that strange land beyond the forest to arrange a property conveyance for one Graf Orlok and... look, I really don't need to go through the plot point by point at this... point, do I?  Not after having done it twice already.  But I'll make a note of any innovations or additions to the previous versions that stand out to me.  Okay?  Good, good.

He places Ellen in the charge of their friends, ship's captain Wolfram Harding (Jack Turner) and his spinsterish spiritualist sister Ruth (Joely Fisher, real life half-sister of Princess Leia herself) before leaving on an animated train to the land of phantoms; sort of Eugenio Martin's Panic on the Polar Express.  As Hutter hurtles toward his hellish destination, Ruth reassures Ellen by not so subtly putting the moves on her and chatting her up about the different kinds of love including the kind that dare not speak its name.  After the Sapphic overtones going on here I assumed that we were leaning right into the homoeroticism barely bubbling beneath the surface in the Murnau version, and so Hutter making eyes, and later making the sex, with the comely dirndl-dressed Transylvanian bar wench (Sara Montez) at the inn did take me somewhat by surprise.  If he isn't closeted, why the emphasis on him and Ellen not consummating their year-old marriage?  Well, aside from keeping her a pure unicorn for Orlok to feast on of course: I mean an in-universe reason.  If randy Tom is willing to shag any sultry bit of skirt that smiles at him, what on Earth's going on at home?  It's not like Ellen isn't gorgeous and wanting deflowering.  She's gagging for a shagging, you buffoon!  Sigh.

We have the addition of the character of the Blind Man, a harbinger like Friday the 13's Crazy Ralph, played by Thomas Ian Nicholas - Kevin from the American Pie films - who claims to have lost his eyes, perhaps voluntarily removed them, after seeing evil up in the mountains.  No striped hyenas masquerading as werewolves this time, though, alas.

Doug Jones, purveyor of lanky gangling characters such as fishman Abe Sapien from Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy duology and Commander - later Captain - Saru in Star Trek: Discovery and who had essayed the Conrad Veidt role of Cesare the somnabulator in David Lee Fisher's Caligari plays the daemonic Count Orlok with make-up that takes the original Max Schreck look and adds something like a pinch of Mr Punch, or possibly Guy Henry's most memorable genre role.  No, not his Tarknologically-assisted Grand Moff in Rogue One though his Peter Cushing impersonation is quite uncanny; I refer of course to his horror host persona Dr Terror from the sadly short-lived Dr Terror's Vault of Horror.  Or perhaps his fellow early '90s horror protagonist Funny Man.  Either way, any way I turned my early teens were haunted by a Man with a Long Chin.  I chiefly blame Paul Rose's Teletext-based Digitiser for warping my fragile little mind.

Lengthy delays in this one getting crowdfunded and finished and timing - either bad or good, you be the judge - lends the feel of an Asylum mockbuster hastily-made to be rush-released at the same time as a bigger budget movie, despite the fact that this one was gestating for far longer than the Eggers take on the same material.  I'm not too much of a cinema snob to say that on balance I might have actually found a bit more to enjoy in this version, whether that be down to lowered expectations (certainly lower than I had for the one from the director of The VVitch and The Northman) I just don't rightly know.

The Collector (William Wyler, 1965)

We have lost one of the beautiful faces and talents of 1960s British cinema.

The news of the death (people tend to say "passing" these days in regard to this sort of thing, don't they?) of the iconic Terence Stamp should not have come as a shock, really,  The man was 87 years old, after all.  Yet there was something about him - and I'm not just talking about his role as Kryptonian villain General Zod in Richard Donner's 1978 Superman and its 1980 Richard Lester sequel (and yes - the Lester version being superior to the 'Donner Cut' is a hill I am prepared to die on, whether Mr Stamp would agree with that assessment or not; I shan't litigate all of the reasons why I fervently hold to that here though. Another time mayhap) - that seemed as indomitable and permanent of the rock of Gibraltar.

He's far from the maddening crowd of humankind and reality now.

In considering something to review as my own meagre tribute to the great man, after mulling over everything from Steven Soderbergh's The Limey ("You tell 'im I'm coming!!!") to the 1967 Ken Loach joint Poor Cow that it 'sampled' (might have made for a good twin-spin double review) my thoughts first turned to his turn as the titular 'Toby Dammit' in the Federico Fellini-helmed segment of the 1968 portmanteau film Spirits of the Dead, based on the mysterious and imaginative tales of Edgar Allan Poe - the Fellini/Stamp collaboration being based on the story 'Never Bet the Devil Your Head'.  Great though Stamp is in that movie, however, he commands only a third of the film; the others being led by Jane Fonda and Alain Delon respectively.  Thinking there must be something else Stamp had done that was genre-adjacent (in the area, see?) it suddenly hit me that I'd had in my possession for years and yet for some unfathomable reason - it's time, it's always time-related - not got round to William Wyler's The Collector.

Based on the 1963 novel of the same name by the posthumously problematic John Fowles, author of The Magus (filmed by cinematographer par excellence Guy Green in 1968, starring Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (brought to the screen by kitchen sink pioneer Karel Reisz in 1981, courtesy of a script from pausing playwright Harold Pinter), the film adaptation was taken on by German-born Hollywood veteran, cousin of Universal pictures founder 'Uncle' Carl Laemlle and director of classics such as the 1939 Olivier-Oberon Wuthering Heights (not my own personal favourite adaptation of the novel, I have to say: as a Brontesaurus I much prefer the 1978 [contemporaneous with the eponymous Kate Bush anthem, pop pickers!] BBC Hutchison-Adshead version) and Biblical chariot porn Ben-Hur William Wyler.

The mid-1960s of course was the epicentre of the 'Swinging London' trend that saw many productions happening in the Happening United Kingdom; whereas the previous decade had seen some directors and writers moving to Britain from Hollywood they had been blacklisted victims of the McCarthy witch hunts such as Joseph Losey and Cy Endfield.  By the middle of the Sixties however, many would choose to work across the Pond rather than out of necessity.  The Collector's uncredited co-screenwriter Terry Southern had worked with Stanley Kubrick on Dr Strangelove the previous year and with Christopher Isherwood on adapting Evelyn Waugh's (and I still say that should be pronounced "Evellin Woff" rather than "Evil-Lyn Waah") The Loved One the same year, and would go on to co-pen Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson after this period of a flurry of UK-centred work that saw the American writer constantly jetting back and forth across the Atlantic doing a lot of his script work in the air over the North Pole in that aeroplane over the sea.

My first becoming cognisant of the movie was of course due to the baleful influence of Morrissey - another man who, like Fowles, has gone from feted for his earlier creative output to acknowledged as problematic for his sometimes repellent views though Mozza has managed it whilst still alive  - due to the cover for one of my favourite Smiths tracks, the coruscating and effervescent 'What Difference Does It Make?, featuring a still of Stamp in character as Freddie Clegg.  Though Stamp's initial demurring meant some early copies had Steven of Trafford himself cosplaying Clegg, with a hilariously incongruous glass of milk in place of the chloroform.

Zod (Not Zod).

Got milk?  You're not going to pin and mount anyone like a butterfly with that, sonny boy.

Billed sardonically as "almost a love story", the picture opens by introducing us to Freddie (Stamp, his eye blue eyes at their most chilling) frolicking in the countryside with his butterfly net and cyanide jar, happily catching and killing defenceless beautiful creatures as is his wont.  Stumbling upon an empty and isolated rural house that's advertised as being up for sale, he starts to explore the grounds and is apparently entranced when he finds the property has a very spacious dungeon-like cellar - the score turning from bucolic to baroque as his plan forms in his mind.  Freddie is, of course, stalking attractive art student Miranda Grey (Samantha Eggar, in her feature debut) and has designs on her that are rather different to the kind one gets studying art and design.

Kidnapping Miranda to keep prisoner - of love, like the song that closes The Producers - in his newly acquired underground hidey-hole, Clegg (not to be confused with the eponymous protagonist of the Lindsay Shonteff movie) is quite clearly a dangerous obsessive who keeps his captive in relative comfort (unlike fellow deceased British star Julian Sands' Nick in Boxing Helena, he at least allows Ms Grey to retain her limbs) and proclaims that he will allow her to go free after thirty days - an allotted period that he has deigned to be enough for her to begin to "love" him.  An intense psychological cat and mouse game between Freddie and Miranda unfolds; the film's minimal cast means that the majority of it is carried by the two of them, a bit like Malcolm McDowell and Madolyn Smith in The Caller (a film I covered last year).

While I thoroughly enjoyed The Collector and would exhort all to give it a whirl; I find myself loath to go into as much plot detail as I usually would in order to leave readers the room to discover the majority of the movie for themselves.  I thought I pretty much know everything about it before I'd watched it (one can't really complain "SPOILERS!" about a film that was made fifteen years before one was born, in my view) but there remained some elements to be discovered that took me by surprise.  Especially the ending.  I thought Markus Schleinzer's Michael was downbeat.  Yeesh.

For a somewhat lighter variation on the theme, 1968's The Bliss of Mrs Blossom is a female-led reflection of the film.  Co-written by It'll Be Alright On The Night stalwart Denis Norden, it stars Sweet Charity herself Shirley Maclaine as a housewife who keeps her (consenting, in this case) lover locked in the attic of her house. This gender-flippery somewhat echoes the ultimately unused ending that Terry Southern was brought in to write for The Collector, when the producers were getting cold feet about the bleak ending of the tale getting past the scissors of the censors, which would have seen Miranda turn the tables on Freddie and have him as the prisoner.  Oh, how the turns have tabled.

Featuring Palme d'Or winning performances from both Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar - along with a Best Actress Golden Globe win for Eggar's blistering turn - and with a music score by Maurice Jarre, composer of David Lean epics Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago and father of avant-garde soundscapenik Jean-Michel, The Collector is well worth a Terrace Stomp at anyone's home football ground.  I can highly recommend the Indicator Blu-ray, which is bedecked with interesting extra items including a locations featurette and interview snippets with Stamp, Eggar and Wyler and deserves pride of place in any... uh... collection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway...

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

One thing at a time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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