A Very Adult Wednesday Addams (Joanna Angel, 2015) [NSFW]

Being most of the way through the second season of the glorious gothic phantasmagoria of Wednesday and eagerly waiting finishing it by the end of September (yes, it can take me a while with current series, there's only so many hours in the say and so much film and television that needs watching.  Spoiler-dodging his become something of an art at this point) my idling thoughts about Jenna Ortega and goth chic and goth chicks wander, as is their wont, to the dirty end of the dark side.

For the longest time I've been trying to find a reason to extol my longtime obsession with Joanna Angel and her prolific litany of works that have brought me much intense joy over the years (in fact, I honestly thought I had done years ago when I meant to write a review of her superb Evil Dead parody - titled, appropriately, Evil Head - but apparently that was just another in the long, long line of things that I meant to get round to doing but either got distracted or just never bothered; though I did scribble down my thoughts on Doug Sakmann's 2004 Re-Penetrator [HERE], a skit on the classic Re-Animator that starred the divine Ms Angel and her Evil Head co-star Tommy Pistol).

In any case, I have very much enjoyed her works including her musical output.  I can't decide between 'Ay Lay Un' and 'Fish Food' as the song I like best to be honest: the former is about aliens so naturally it should claim my love, but the later has a really fun music video so maybe wins on that score ("To the bottom of the pool, of course / Of course!  (GIGGLE)").  But they're both slices of '60s inflected punk-pop heaven in my opinion.  She may not have the greatest voice in the annals - I mean, she's more used to anals right? - of music history, but it works for me in a kawaii kewpie doll vocalising sort of way.  With guitars.  And buttfucking, probably.

For any uninitiated out there who may have stumbled naively into this piece, the artiste known to the world as Joanna Angel was born Joanna Mostov in Brooklyn, New York in 1980 (which makes her a year younger than me, which wouldn't be a problem apart from the fact that she has resided in the 'MILF' categories of porn for quite a while and that makes me feel old) and grew up in New Jersey - working in a kosher restaurant in Teaneck and graduating from Rutgers University before founding the alt-porn Burning Angel website in 2002.  Which I may have come across whilst I was myself at uni, now that my aged memory struggles to think about it.  Thereabouts or very shortly thereafter, anyway.

When it came (and so did I, of course) to deciding which of her Burning Angel movies to scribble a review about I was hard pressed to choose.  So many great titles to choose from, including the rather magnificent As Above, So Below from 2018, which is certainly the best no holds barred (and indeed no holes barred) gangbang that takes its title from the Emerald Tablet of Hermeticism that I've ever seen - if you know of any others, please let me know.  The shortlist also included not only but also the amusingly titled Fuck This Couch (a favourite of smoky-eyed Vice President and connoisseur of upholstery J.D. 'Just Dance' Vance, no doubt) as well as rather wonderfully self-explanatory Goth Anal Whores 2, the prospect of which had me not only foaming at the mouth and glans but also was enough to make me abandon my generally de rigueur rule of never watching a sequel without having first viewed the original; a cast including lady Joanna herself (also on writing and directing duties such are her skills as auteur as well as star) plus queens of the nightside Aiden Ashley (wearing a collar and leash in a wonderfully ball-emptying sweaty scene of ass 'n' vag-munching, fingering and buttplugs with Joanna), Charlotte Sartre (playing with a ouija... sorry.. orgy board before taking a big schlong up the wrong 'un) and the lovely Marley Brinx (in a threeway with the aforementioned Tommy Pistol and Small Hands - the very jammy real life Mr Angel - that ends with her gorgeous face plastered with cum).  Wonderful film, extremely highly recommended.  Alas, I don't think my vas deferens would survive another viewing so for the purposes of a review I went with this prophetic 2015 vision of a hot Wednesday's exploits.

Or should that be sexploits?  Yes.  We'll go with that.

Taking its inspiration - though this one both has and causes a whole lot more perspiration I can tell ya - from the title of the 2013 to 2015 Youtube series Adult Wednesday Addams by Melissa Hunter and having the extended title of A Very Very Very Adult Wednesday Addams in the opening credits, we kick off with a house-hunting Wednesday (Draven Star) being interviewed by dudes Xander Corvus (Peter Parker / Spider-Man in all those Axel Braun XXX Marvel parodies where he continually fires out a white sticky fluid almost but not entirely unlike 'web') and Mr Pete as a prospective new housemate for their shared apartment.

"There comes a time in every ghoul's life when she has to leave the family plot and find her own mausoleum" says the groovy ghoulette, who has no time to waste on wastemen and wants to skip the smalltalk of the digs being a "4/20 kind of place" and get down to smoking something fleshier than a fat chronic blunt.  You know what I mean.

The guys naturally don't much encouragement; when a girl says "Gentlemen, please remove your pants and we can proceed as the Darkness taught us" she tends to mean it.  Unless she's talking about Justin Hawkins' '70s metal tribute band.  Fortunately for both them and out eardrums, the type of wanking she has in mind involves frenulums rather than fretboards and she's swiftly on her knees taking mouthfuls of man meat and putting those tongue piercings to proper use.  "How's your gag reflex?" asks Xander as she demonstrates how to have your tonsils ticked with a todger in various positions: standing bent over, reverse cowgirl (always a fave) and mish as she takes it from both ends before a great and very loudly enthusiastic D.P. - she certainly seems to love both those holes getting rammed - and her face bedecked with sticky spaff as they discuss the house rules concerning cleaning the dishes. 

The second scene features Ophelia Rain with Xander Corvus and begins with Corvis awaking in his bed not, like Gregor Samsa, that he's been transformed into a monstrous insect whilst somnolent but to find that his sexual partner is now a different actress.  At least, that's how I read the scene at first: we have one of the performers upon which we've just perved in the previous scene waking up in an obvious post-coital situation but the female protagonist whist still a Wednesday has seemingly regenerated into a newer form.  That's very probably not meant to be the case, though, and it's just the way my brain does things.

Ophelia!Wednesday acknowledges that she may have had fun the previous evening and makes ready to leave, giving the number 666 - because "Satan is real", obvs. - when he asks if he can at least get her number.  She soon decides to remain and do the sexing again, though, because "Your penis was like rigor mortis, and I want to have it again before I die".  None more goth.  Maybe not a sparkle goth, but she'll get some sparkle soon.  Maybe some glitter up her shitter if she asks nicely.

Gasping with delight throughout a preliminary fingering, she responds equally affirmatively to a tongue in the pussy and a finger probing her arsehole before submitting to a vigorous face fucking with her pigtails held like handlebars as he uses her mouth like a cunt.  Flipped and fucked doggy-style for a while, she eagerly receives it in the rectum ("Up my hole, yeah!") spreading her pink for us as her arse is hammered to the hilt to a pretty convincing screaming orgasm.  Which kind of makes sense, that being the name of a cocktail and she having a cock up her tail.  

And so on to the highlight of the film for me, which serves us Joanna herself with Mark Wood.  And believe me, wood shall be achieved.

In the words of the late Macho Man Randy Savage (or was it Yello?  It's so easy to get those guys mixed up): Ohhh yeah.

Mr Wood knocks at the door of stately Angel Manor in the guise of a worker for the gas company and asking for "Mr Small Hands", which rather begs the question as to whether the lady who's answered the door in the Spirit Halloween Wednesday cosplay is meant to be Joanna Angel in character as Wednesday Addams - or, rather, a Wednesday Addams - or as a fictionalised version of herself.  Either way, Mr Hands is not available possibly due to a gas leak, and the baffled gas man is directed to use the rear entrance to gain access; this is definitely not the last time he will obey this instruction over the coming (cumming?) minutes.

From the back garden, he witnesses the spectacular sight through the window of Joanna sliding off her panties on the black-sheeted bed and sliding an ebony dildo into her pussy with the rather appropriate salutation "Hail to the darkness!  The void is opening!".   It surely is.  Summoned into the boudoir by the power of her sex magicks, how can our hapless helper do ought but obey when ordered to "put that clipboard down and stick that dildo inside of me"?  Once she's nicely lubricated with a thorough tongue lashing and stripped down to her black high heels, she feasts on man flesh like a hungry orc taking that johnson deep down her throat.  Some rigorous choke-fucking serves as the warm-up to her spreading her cheeks to have her ass reamed out.

Hnnggg.  I'm pretty sure that was the exact sound I made as my nuts emptied at this point, which as pretty much as high a recommendation as  can make for this type of thing, really.  Still, we must soldier on I suppose.  After some energetic cowgirl riding, we get some more enthusiastically-received rimming before some orgasmic (both her and me; the fact that I'd already gone five minutes earlier didn't stop me and my poor testes are like raisins) anal.  "I can take it!" she shrieks, but I don't know if I can.  There's still at least one scene to go.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to walk after this.

The fourth and final scene of this titillating tetraptych brings us sexy suicide girls Judas (as Monday Addams) and Necro Nicki (as Tuesday Addams) who meet the palindrome-tastic Ramon Nomar on the street as he's handing out leaflets and perhaps naively asks them whether they'd like to party.  These girls are up for semen.

"Fuck our brains out - the Abyss is waiting!"

Nice girls being nice, getting nasty.  To be honest, I'd all but checked out by this point despite both ladies' enthusiasm during a lovely sloppy double blowjob with ball sucking and some of the best ATM action seen on screen since the late Chandler Bing got stuck in a vestibule with Jill Goodacre.

I really should give this segment another go after a little lie down when I can give it the attention it deserves.

So there we have it.  Incidentally, I watched this film in order to write this here review or whatever this is on a Saturday morning.  I have no idea how traditional (I almost said 'hardcore', but that would have been absurd wouldn't it?) Ms Angel is in her beliefs and whether or not I'd be castigated by her for wanking on the Sabbath - after all, it could certainly fall under the classification of manual work, and I certainly worked up a sweat - but maybe I want to be castigated by her.  Really, really hard.

Right.  That's it - you can fuck off now while I wait for my balls to regenerate.  There I scene I need to get my breath back and rewatch...

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.