King of the Rocket Men, Chapters Seven to Nine (Fred C. Brannon, 1949)

 Chapter Seven: Molten Menace

...and yet, in another of those "well, you just didn't see this last time" twists that I so know and love (like a mutant stepchild kept in the attic), we see that Jeff recovered from the gunshot long enough to leap from the truck inside the warehouse just before the driverless vehicle caroomed - yes, that's a word - to its doom.  Happy that at least Vulcan didn't manage to get his hands on the device which now languishes at the bottom of the river, Jeff and Prof. Millard head back to the cave where after laughing that Dirken must now be convinced that King is not the Rocket Man (maybe that was the title of Tristram Coffin's first volume of autobiography, a la Leonard Nimoy's I Am Not Spock) Millard bemoans that it's the superior intellect of the malignant Vulcan that is keeping him languishing in this subterranean haven and that finding Vulcan's weakness must be their priority.  As Millard has finally completed his work of the experimental sonic decimator - which he demonstrates by utilising its beam of 'thromium waves' to melt a thick bar of manganese steel, "One of the hardest metals we know" - they decide that the time will soon be right to try and draw Vulcan out using the machine as bait.  But first, suggests Jeff, the time has come to take Burt and Glenda into their confidence.

Jeff tells his friends the truth and arranges for them to take his completed X-22 launcher to the Rocket Cave (which, we discover, is located "near Hermit Mountain") while he, anticipating being tailed by Dirken and his hoods, will head in the opposite direction.  However, the wily Vulcan intercepts a radio transmission from King's car transceiver to Millard and orders his goons to turn around and trace the cave.  As Winslow and Ms Thomas arrive with the firing mechanism, Millard has scarcely just incorporated it into the decimator when Dirken and his men arrive to seize what is now "one of the most deadly machines ever devised".  As Jeff busts the rocket suit out from the boot of the car and jets to the cave, a struggle with the villains results in the decimator being activated and the haywire machine causing the inner walls of the cavern to begin melting into running lava...

Chapter Eight: Suicide Flight

...and as Millard struggles valiantly with the out of control device, Jeff rescues Burt and Glenda from their bonds and they flee down the cavern corridors pursued by the molten magma flow.  Spotting an open air shaft in the side of the mountain (what is this, a pyramid or something?), Rocket Man ushers his charges through the tunnel and they break on through to the other side into the open air as the bubbling lava stream sweeps through the caves.

 Back at Science Associates Administration, Jeff confesses to the rest of the board that yes, he knew that Millard has survived the initial attempt on his life by Dr Vulcan and that he had kept his secret while he worked underground (quite literally) to complete his life's work.  His fellows show understanding, but comment that it was all for nought as the decimator has now been destroyed - to which King declares that as he had worked alongside Millard in the artefact's development he may be able to recreate it.  This gets his fellow members to stand to attention (that gag will never get old, because I will never grow up), and many of them offer and assistance and expertise that he may require in making the machine.  Thanking the group, he says that he will be in contact should he require anything and as the meeting breaks up moves to place the designs for the decimator in the office safe.  When Burt comes over and asks whether he thinks it wise to leave the plans here, King declares that it's the safest place that he can think of loud enough for any and all of the departing experts to overhear.

When later that evening a shadowy behatted figure makes its way into the room, opens the safe (constantly muttering the combination as if 'twere an incantation) and removes the plans, Jeff and Burt pounce on him to find that it is Dr Von Strum.  As they begin to interrogate the suspected villain, they begin to realise that the terrified Teuton is under the influence of a malign mesmerism and has no idea why he was there or what had befallen him beforehand.  Jeff resolves to pursue the only clue that they have: Von Strum's only memory is to deliver the papers to an address at Mink Shoals (Or: considering the whole enemy destroying a country from within angle - Moseley Shoals?  Eh?  Eh?  Amirite?  Tell me why does the river run red?).

Leaving the recovering Von Strum at Glenda's apartment to recuperate and recover his wits in the care of Glenda and Burt, King locates the assigned address and finds a house on a lonely road wherein Durkin dwells.  Disappointed to find the monkey rather than the organ grinder himself, Jeff gets into one of his regulation two-fisted dust-ups but comes off second best as Durkin flees with the information that Von Strum lives and that Dr Vulcan is compromised.  Tracing the errant professor to Ms Thomas' building, Vulcan decrees that Von Strum must be destroyed before his memory returns and he can finger the Vulcan (if you're having bad thoughts about T'Pol right now, you're a very naughty nerd).

Bursting into the apartment and overpowering Burt, Durkin and his co-conspirators prepare to execute the inhabitants when a roaring of engines alerts them to Rocket Man's rapid approach.  As the airborne ace jets towards the windows, the gunmen level their weapons at the approaching target and open fire...

Chapter Nine: Ten Seconds to Live

...yet somehow our hero manages to outmanoeuvre the oncoming hail of bullets and lands on Glenda's balcony.  Realising that the jig is up, Durkin and his men hare out through the apartment door pausing only to pump a couple of slugs into the prone Professor Von Strum.  As Rocket Man makes his entrance onto the scene of the crime Bury is already checking the fallen scientist's vitals and pronounces him dead.

"I'm sorry," says our tardy hero flatly over the corpse.  "If I could only have gotten here sooner, I might have prevented this."

Oh, you think?!?

Back at S.A. H.Q. (which in my head is pronounced exactly the way that the CPU says "SARK!" in Tron), King also has to face the quite correct accusations of the board when the coroner's verdict of homicide comes in and his co-workers opine that had he let some of them in on his plans Dr Vulcan may not have made such a gambit and Von Strum might still be alive.  Acquiescing, Jeff states that in future he will report any and all further progress with regards to the decimator - adding as an aside to Burt after the meeting breaks up that they might be surprised just how soon that may be.

At the new Rocket Cave (the original having been destroyed by magma), Jeff shows Burt the completed decimator but seems unsure as to whether it can be safely tested without devising some kind of shielding - as the thromium may be detectable even beneath the ground.  Meanwhile, Dr Vulcan is unveiling his own device to Durkin (tee hee): a machine that can track the thromium waves from a distance.  He gives the tracer to Durkin and instructs him to locate the secret hideout and the decimator.  When Durkin's mooching around the entrance sets of a proximity alarm, Jeff and Burt make their way outside just in time to see one of Durkin's confederates zooming away on a motorcycle.  Falling for the decoy they hop in the car and head off in hot pursuit, tailing the biker around the mountain road until King gets off a well-aimed gunshot that propels the fleeing felon over the side of the cliff to his certain doom.  Our hero once again, ladies and gentlemen.

As Killer King and his accomplice return to the cave, they realise they've been had when they find the decimator predictably gone.  Checking the secret camera hidden outside, they get a good look at the getaway van that the villains have mounted the errant device inside and Jeff changes into the rocket suit to head heavenward to give chase.  Reaching their rendezvous with another of Vulcan's goons, Durkin and his pal load the machine from the van into another car before setting a bomb with a ten-second fuse in the van.  As Rocket Man arrives and enters the truck hoping to find his invention, the vehicle is blown to smithereens...

Cannibal Apocalypse ([a.ka. Apocalypse Domani] Antonio Margheriti, 1980)

RIP John Saxon

The world of genre cinema lost a legend recently with the sad passing of John Saxon's shade beyond the veil.  Though he'll be forever remembered for the role of Nancy's dad in Wes Craven's seminal frightfest A  Nightmare on Elm Street and Bob Clark's pioneering slasher Black Christmas - alongside early appearances in horror/sci-fi flicks like John Gilling's 1965 The Night Caller (a.k.a. Night Caller from Outer Space) and Curtis Harrington's Martian vampire tale Queen of Blood the following year - the artist formerly known as Carmine Orrico graced many Italian exploitation movies with his presence, working with greats such as Mario Bava (The Girl Who Knew Too Much, a.k.a. The Evil Eye, 1963) and Dario Argento (Tenebrae, 1982).

Betwixt these twain, Saxon worked with spaghetti splatter maestro Antonio Margheriti (who was operating under his usual nom de guerre of Anthony Dawson - not to be mistaken for the Dr. No-serving British character actor of the same name) on the notorious Cannibal Apocalypse (alias Apocalypse Domani: literally Apocalypse Tomorrow, in an amusing Coppola-baiting move; alias Cannibals in the Streets; alias Invasion of the Flesh Hunters), one of the DPP's infamous "Video Nasties" rounded up by the likes of professional God-bothering busybody Mary Whitehouse and idiotic Tory Graham Bright.  Now, since I were but a wee youth i've been fascinated with horror movies, and the Nasties in particular: it's the sweet tang of the forbidden, combined with a natural inclination toward the contrary which has always made me want to do anything The Authorities tell me not to.  Which explains all the killings, probably.  Anyway, over the years i've managed to see quite a few films on the DPP's famous list - many of them now freely available and uncut, and leaving wondering what all the panic from the 'moral' minority was about in the first place - and the only one that I definitely don't want to see again is Ruggero Deodato's infamous 1980 real animal slaughter fest Cannibal Holocaust.  Seen it once, never want to see it again.  We've all got a line we've got to draw somewhere, right?

So it was with a slight bit of trepidation that I approached its fellow Italian cannibal stablemate Cannibal Apocalypse.  

The screenplay, by reliable Italian splatter stalwart Dardano Sachetti, begins back in the 'Nam a green beret Captain Norman Hopper (Saxon) braves hails of bullets and shards of spiced-in stock footage (the grainy 16mm film of helicopters sticking out like much more of a sore thumb on a cleaned-up Blu-Ray than it would have done on an original grittier grindhouse print in 1980) on his mission to rescue two of his fellow soldiers who've been captured by the Viet Cong.  Fighting his way through explosions and insurgents, Hopper locates his home town boys - Tom Thompson, played by Tony King, and the amusingly-named Charlie Bukowski played by one of sleaze cinema's all time heroes Giovanni Lombardo Radice under his John Morghen pseudonym.  Bukowski and Thompson have been held down a bamboo-barred pit, an oubliette of starvation wherein they have been left without food for a tortuous amount of time.  When during the raid-cum-jailbreak one of the female Vietnamese plunges into the prison pit (on fire), the starving men eagerly pounce upon her and feast upon her flesh.  Nothing like having a cooked meal delivered to you, I guess.  As Hooper reaches down into the hole to rescue the men, Thompson sinks his teeth into the Captain's arm - 

- only for Hooper to awaken in his own bed alongside his wife Jane (Elizabeth Turner) years later, still haunted by the nightmares of his wartime trauma, the scars on his arm a constant and indelible reminder.  When Bukowski, on finally being released from the Hospital for Nervous Disorders onto the streets of Atlanta, gets in touch with his old war buddy and reaches out to meet up with each other Hopper demurs - the sound of Charlie's voice triggering him with flashbacks and giving him strange carnal urgings for the flesh of his teenage neighbour Mary (Cinzia De Carolis, credited as the more Anglophonic Cindy Hamilton) and not in a sexy way.  Or maybe in a sexy way, if longpig is what strums your strings.  The dejected Bukowski, looking more and more like a cadaverous Travis Bickle, seeks haven in a cinema but the young couple getting frisky in the row in front of him provokes more than an annoyed tut: his suppressed cannibalistic desires suddenly overwhelm him and he takes a bite out of the girl's throat.

Fleeing the shocked theatre, Bukowski is pursued by an enraged mob of bikers and holes himself up in a grimy strip mall raiding the huntin' 'n' fishin' section to arm himself and get involved in a shootout that culminates in police siege.  As his ex C.O., Hopper volunteers to go in and negotiate a de-escalation of tensions and finally convinces Charlie to give himself up, but not before he gnaws into the hand of one of the police officers as he's bundled into the wagon ("GET IN THE BACK OF THE VAN!").  Taken off to be incarcerated in the nearest psych ward, Bukowski makes eye contact and implied psychic contact with a fellow inmate: his ex-pitmate Thompson.  When Thompson bites May Heatherly's Nurse Helen as he's strapped down to a gurney, the contagious and transmittable nature of the cannibal transmission becomes clear when she bites out the tongue of her co-worker (though she doesn't bite off his penis as per the original screenplay, the actress asking for the scene to be scaled back a wee bit) and sets Thompson and Bukowski free.

As the cannibal plague spreads, the police station also becomes a scene of gore when the bitten cop goes rabid and tears off the breast of a female officer and eats it before being dispatched by a bullet to the head.  When Hopper too finally gives in to his long suppressed hunger for human, he joins his war buddies and the nurse to go on the run.  After a communal bonding feast together on a garage mechanic who Bukowski gleefully carves for dinner with a power saw, the group (what's the collective term for cannibals?  A cluster?  A chowdown?) head down into the sewer system beneath the contaminated city.  Hooper's command authority enables him to somewhat rein in and marshal his 'troops' as they revert to their wartime mentality to survive - a cadre of veterans against the outside world, their perverse killer instincts brought back from the killing fields to the urban jungle marking them out as outsiders that the authorities must ultimately destroy.  Obviously I don't want to delve right into the climax for those who have yet too experience the movie, but caught like hungry rats amongst the actual hungry rats and cornered by the cops, this does not end well.

In summation, Cannibal Apocalypse is a much better film (better acted, better directed, better budgeted) than i'd expected.  I suppose the real grime is to come when I finally subject myself to stuff like Cannibal Ferox.  I'll get round to that one day, probably.  But here we have something approaching a meditation (albeit a deliciously exploitative one) on the after effects of war, post-traumatic stress and the outsider in society wrapped in a bow of celluloid stitched together from Cronenberg's Rabid, Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Cimino's The Deer Hunter.

Plus, y' know, blood and guts and stuff.

Don't take as long as I did to actually get around to watching it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Episode One 'Second Contact' (Barry J. Kelly, 2020)

Obviously, ahead may well lie spoilers for anyone who's not seen it yet...

After the long dark drought of any televisual Trek in the great Ginnungagap between Enterprise's end in 2005 and the DISCO getting started in 2017 (the big screen JJverse trilogy [which looks not to be expanding further than the three, sadly, in their perverse I: good, II: shit, III: good reversal of the commonly accepted ranking of ST movies] notwithstanding) now comes the deluge.  We've had two - soon to be three - seasons of Discovery, the second of which set up the forthcoming Pike-centric Strange New Worlds, the first season of Picard, a brace of the anthological minisodes (oh that word, what have you done to my brain, fandom?) Short Treks, a prospective Section 31 show covering the darker sides of Federation espionage and now the animated series Lower Decks.

As only the second animated venture into the Great Bird's galaxy after '73-'74's (there's almost a Connells song in there, but not quite) explanatorily-titled Star Trek: the Animated Series, and the first to have input from a writer best known for comedy rather than drama - the show's creator being Mike McMahan of Rick & Morty - I suspect that I wasn't the only one looking slightly askance at this when it was first announced.  I dig Rick & Morty myself, but knowing that there are a lot of reactionary and conservative members of fandom (witness some of the online rage at aspects of Discovery and Picard over the last few years) it was always going to be... interesting, so say the least.

Speaking of Connells - we've got one here, namely Jerry O'Connell of Sliders fame (or Joe's Apartment fame.  Or Kangaroo Jack fame if you really must) alongside other names I recognised such as Jack ('son of Dennis') Quaid off of The Boys and veteran voice actor Fred Tatasciore.  With animation from Titmouse studios (of The Venture Bros., among others) very much in the style of Rick & Morty, the episode opens with the starship USS Cerritos docked at Douglas Station which bears a great resemblance to Spacedock of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock - as well as Starbase 74 of the TNG instalment '11001001' - earning the episode its first "Squee!" from me.  Here we are introduced to our Lower Decks protagonists: the stickling and command hungry Brad Boimler (Quaid) and the can't-be-arsed fun times lovin' Beckett Marriner (Tawny Newsome, whom I was previously unaware of, but on the basis of such a fun performance i'll have to rectify that) who appear on first impression to be the Rimmer and Lister respectively of this craft - the bottom of the power ziggurat, doing the menial work that keeps the spaceship running, to the disinterest and non-recognition of the main crew.

After Marriner, drunk on Romulan ale ("You'd think it would be green - but it's BLUE!"), finishes her bout of roundly mocking Boimler for wanting to reach the echelons of command that she's been busted down from by accident stabbing him with a bat'leth belonging to a one-eyed Klingon general (Martok?!?) the pair make the acquaintance of new crew member D'Vana Tendi (Noel Wells)  an eager beaver ensign of the green-hued Orion race.  Sadly, she's wearing full uniform.  Darn. We're also introduced to our other main character, engineering ensign Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) who is adjusting to his newly-installed cybernetic head implant (like a cross between DISCO's Kayla Detmer and the full Airiam) which keeps fritzing into a Vulcan-like logic over emotion state and jeopardising his upcoming date with a sexy Trill coworker.

As these are our main characters, the main crew of the ship including Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) - who is [SPOILER ALERT!) Marriner's mother and constantly frustrated by her wayward rule-breaking daughter, butch Will Riker-alike First Officer Jack Ransom (O'Connell) and Chief Medical Officer T'Ana (Gillian Vigman) - who is of the feline Caitian race as a nod to TAS's Lt M'Ress, are very much in the background making the big decisions and causing the havoc that our lower decks guys have to deal with. This includes making Second Contact - the form-filling, box-ticking bureaucratic also-ran to the prestigious First Contact - with a race that i'm sure were called the Caladonians.  I may have misheard.  They certainly didn't look very Caledonian: i've met many inhabitants of Bonnie Scotland and none of them looked like these misshapen purple betusked characters.  The again, i've still never been tae Fintry.

While Ransom and other members of the command crew unwittingly bring a mutagenic pathogen aboard the Cerritos that leads to outbursts of murderous violence and attempted cannibalism, Boimler has to try and follow the captain's instruction to keep an eye on Marriner and make sure she doesn't deviate from Starfleet protocol as the pair are pursued through the alien jungle by an immense creature.  Meanwhile, Tendi is co-opted by Dr T'Ana to assist with the medical emergency, having to palpate the exposed heart of her immediate superior whilst a virtual zombie apocalypse of black bile-spewing infected occurs around her, and Rutherford's Dax-y date culminates in a spacewalk across the ship's outer hull to reach safety.  Chaotic and hilarious, Lower Decks had me alternating between squeeing at such fannish stuff as equipment designs and title fonts and cackling at the rapid-fire gags.  Quick-paced and full of character and humour, i'm sure stick in the mud devotees of such staid and beige stuff as Voyager will hate it.

Which, from me, is a big recommendation.

King of the Rocket Men, Chapters Four to Six (Fred C. Brannon, 1949)

Time for more Rocket Man!

Chapter Four: High Peril

...and Jeff returns to the realm of the senses just in time to get up off the floor and dodge outside, just before the chemist's shack goes up in a ball of flame, causing more harmacy than your usual pharmacy.

Back at the Science associates Administration building, Jeff and Burt Winslow discuss how the crooks gained entry - Jeff pointing out that they definitely had an inside man who gave them access.  Burt concurs, saying that "If Dr Millard were still alive" (which we, dear watchers, of course know that he is) he would say the same thing, as he was convinced that Dr Vulcan was a member of the board.  As they mull over which of professors Conway, Bryant, Graffner or Von Strum are the most likely candidate, the devious Dr Vulcan is listening in by hacking the radio in the boardroom.  I don't think even Hardison from Leverage could manage that level of techno-botch.

Via the power of flashback, Jeff recalls catching a glimpse of the hand of the inside operator and that he was wearing a distinctive signet ring.  Figuring that a criminal mastermind is unable to perform the fairly simple task of removing an item of jewellery from his person, he puts all his eggs in the basket case of using the ring to identify the culprit.  At the next day's S.A. general meeting, King asks his fellows to place their hands on the table so that he can inspect them - a somewhat strange request with which they comply.  Spotting the ring on the hand of Professor Conway, Jeff fingers him as the traitor; an accusation to which Conway responds by producing a pistol from under his hat (said titfer is resting on the table, so sadly it's not as ludicrous a scene as that may sound) and yells that Jeff is determined to pin Vulcan's misdeeds on anybody and that he isn't about to be made the scapegoat.  

Conway flees in his car, and King dons the Rocket Man suit to soar into the big blue in search of the errant academic only to lose track of him - as flyboy scans the rocky roads (not to be confused with pornographic performer Rocki Roads, nee Mary Ann Bradley, whom I have visually scanned a few times) the prof eludes him via the fairly simple method of parking 'neath a tree.  When the rocket recon proves a bust and he flies, off Conway heads to the nearest phone box and calls the shadowy Vulcan for help, being directed to the Hotel Mesa.  Here he meets with the man he was told will help him: Durken, who forces him at gunpoint to write and sign a confession taking the blame for all of Dr Vulcan's crimes.  When Rocket Man arrives through the tenth storey window and disarms Durken, Conway begins to spill the beans - telling him that the ring he wears is a marker of a scientific fraternity and that one other member of S.A. has one.  Just as he is about to confess Vulcan's secret identity, Durken knifes him in the back and knocks King out the window, sending him spiralling towards the pavement far below...

Chapter Five: Fatal Dive

...but his death dive past the rear projection screen is swiftly halted by igniting the rocket pack to re-orient himself and fly off as Durken has already fled from the scene of his crime.  Back at the Rocket Cave (i'm going to keep calling it that.  I am determined to make it A Thing), he consults with Millard and they come to the conclusion that the late patsy Conway (doesn't that sound like a dead Country and Western singer?  "The late Patsy Conway") was persuaded by the real Dr Vulcan to wear the ring to the meeting in order to take the fall.  Jeff realises that the only person at Science Associates with whom he's shared any of his intel is Burt Winslow, and begins to grow suspicious of the genial PR man.

Meanwhile, Burt and Glenda are listening to a radio bulletin which informs all that the police have accepted the confession found in the same apartment as Conway's corpse as genuine and are closing the books on the matter with the dead man painted as an agent in the employ of an unfriendly power.  Maybe he worked for Huawei or something (TOPICAL REFERENCE ALERT).  Glenda is adamant that Conway was the fall guy - and now I have that theme tune stuck in my head: "I'm the unknown stuntman..." - and reckons that Jeff King is the most likely suspect to be the genuine article, much to Burt's disbelief.

Back at S.A. HQ, Jeff locates the concealed transceiver in the boardroom's wireless and stages a phone call for the benefit of the listening-in villain to the effect that he is going to illicitly sell one of his own inventions - an experimental firing tube - at the old Barnes ranch at 4 PM that afternoon.  Also overhearing are Glenda and Burt, who have headed to the lab in order to ascertain Jeff's guilt or innocence and now think him at the very least a traitor in a misunderstanding of sitcom proportions.  Following him to the ranch with the intention of foiling King's un-American activity of selling his own property, the confused twosome wreck the plan to hand Durken a package containing not a firing tube but a homing device that would have made Jeff able to trace Vulcan's secret lair.  As the misguided Burt engages our hero in a dust-up in the barn, Glenda jumps into Durken's getaway plane with him as he takes off.  When Vulcan announces that he's detecting radio transmissions from the aircraft, Durken ditches the parcel out of the plane and attempts to make Glenda follow suit.  As Jeff, having finally managed to get a word in edgeways and persuade the punch happy Burt that he's a good guy, rockets to her aid, Durken grabs a parachute and bails out leaving the roving reporter and the airborne adventurer in a plane hurtling towards the rocks...

Chapter Six: Mystery of the Rocket Man

...but the quick-thinking hero manages to get Glenda strapped into the spare parachute and bundles her out of the aircraft before jetting towards Terra Firma himself, leaving the empty plane to sunder on the terrain below.

After ensuring our plucky gal reporter's safe landing and making sure he can make her way back to town, he returns to the Rocket Cave and commiserates with Millard that were it not for Burt's well-meaning but bullish interference they would know the identity of the dastardly Dr Vulcan by now.  Millard's pining to see the outside world including the sun and the moon, once again is tempered when King points out that until Vulcan is stopped knowledge of Millard's survival and of his work on the sonic decimator (now there's a coo, name for a sonic device - put that in your screwdriver and smoke it, Doctor!) must remain secret.

Durken's next communique to Dr Vulcan opens with the rueful henchman vowing revenge on Jeff King, to which the wily Vulcan replies by determining that King and the Rocket Man are one and the same (SPOILER: so are Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), and that they can deal with two birds with one stone.  Meanwhile, the board at S.A. are discussing the fact that the boardroom had been bugged by a confederate of Vulcan, causing the members to stir uneasily (heh) since an experimental drone is due to be transported from their Eastern laboratory - a drone that would be valuable to any foreign power.  Citing King's good record thus far as Head of Security, Jeff is put in charge of oversight of the weapon's conveyance.

Waylaid by kidnappers outside his apartment building, Jeff struggles valiantly against them but even n appearance by Burt (who had arranged to meet Jeff to discuss the transportation), who is as per usual more than willing to wade into a punch-up, proves futile as Winslow is knocked to the pavement and King is bundled at gunpoint into his own waiting vehicle to be whisked off.  Struggling to his feet and cradling his jaw, Burt heads for his car and attempts to give chase only to be shaken off when the kidnap car jumps a railroad crossing in front of an oncoming express train which cuts Winslow off until they're out of sight. Prisoner in his own car, King offers his captor a cigarette as a pretext to activating the modified car lighter - now a secret radio transmitter which relays their conversation back to Dr Millard.  Overhearing the information that the new weapon is about to fall into the hands of Vulcan, Millard dons the rocket suit himself and jets in the direction of the Eastern Electronics warehouse where Jeff is being forced to sign over the truck containing the drone to Durken.  Surprised and undelighted at seeing the arriving Rocket Man and Jeff King in the same place, Durken and his goons begin a gunfight inside the warehouse culminating in King commandeering the truck only to be shot through the windscreen by one of the goons and the lorry crashing out of the building and into the river below...

The Legend of King Arthur (Rodney Bennett, 1979)

"Bright Caliope, come from Helicon[...]  Tell, Caliope, so that I might tell again as you relate; (whence the Britons came, what the origin of their name was, whence noble Britain had its kings); who Arthur was, what his deeds were, what his end - and how an unlucky nation lost its kingdom."
 - William of Rennes, Gesta Regum Britanniae (The Deeds of the Kings of Britain), c. 1236

I think, looking backward into the deep dark abysm of time, that my fascination with Arthuriana began when I was ten years old.  1989's 26th season of the BBC's Doctor Who opened with the story 'Battlefield', which was a tale of knights from a parallel dimension led by the witch queen Morgaine (a delightfully evil turn from the great Jean Marsh) and my youthful self was entranced with words and phrases like "the Forest of Celyddon" redolent of some kind of ancient mysticism - much as I would be later that same season with 'The Curse of Fenric' and its lexicon that included "the Well of Hvergelmir" that sparked my equal preoccupation with Norse mythology.  Seriously, that year's run of Who led to lots of trips to the library and much poring over of tomes.  Educational as well as entertaining, indeed.  Positively Reithian, dear boy.

I soon found myself pretty much wearing out an off-air VHS recording of John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur through repeated viewings, under the spell of Nicol Williamson's enigmatic Merlin and Helen Mirren's seductively evil Morgan, and over the years have accrued an Arthurian library encompassing everything from Thomas Malory to T.H. White to Chretien de Troyes and large (and expensive!) volumes of the mediaeval Vulgate Cycle.  Oh how my bookshelves yawn and creak like the ancient oak tree of some grove-dwelling Druid.  Obviously, i've also seen a great many filmic and televisual versions of the tales, from the high fantasy of Excalibur and Knights of the Round Table (Richard Thorpe, 1953 - notable mainly for Ava Gardner's Guinevere and Gabriel Woolf - "Neil before the might of Sutekh" himself! - as Percival) to the mud-soaked post-Roman grit of the 1972 HTV series Arthur of the Britons (recommended to any fans of archive telly) and Antoine Fuqua's 2004 Clive Owen vehicle King Arthur (disappointing).  I haven't watched Guy Ritchie's 2017 King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, because it looks and sounds rubbish.  You've burned me too many times, Ritchie.  Beep, beep.

Anyway, one TV adaptation that until now i'd never seen (but long wanted to, ever since I read about it in Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of King Arthur, which is well worth the purchase price) is the 1979 BBC eight-part series The Legend of King Arthur.  Like the coming of the rex quondam, rexque futurus himself - the time is finally at hand!

Adapted in serial fashion (rather than the episodic 'adventure of the week' format of Arthur of the Britons) in eight parts by none other than Mr Adaptation himself Andrew Davies - long before he was spinning Machiavellian webs with Francis Urquhart or bestowing us with the vision of a wet Darcy (though, personally, i'll most remember [and never forgive] him for Badger Girl) - the story follows all of the main story beats of Le Morte d'Arthur.  Filmed in the '70s BBC standard format of videotape for interiors and film for exterior shooting, the production nevertheless does not look cheap, being a co-production betwixt Auntie Beeb, Time-Life Television and the ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Commission, as opposed to either the American Broadcasting Company or the old Associated British Corporation).

Eschewing the mediaeval knights in anachronistic shining plate armour aesthetic of so many other Arthurian productions,  this is rooted firmly in a post-Roman Dark Ages waste land of broadsword-wielding Brythonic barbarians in bearskins and breeches; a realm where chieftains rule from timbered longhouses rather than faerie kings and queens reigning from dreaming-spired castellations.  Opening with the brutish warlord Uther Pendragon (Brian Coburn) demanding ownership of the lady Igrayne (Anne Kidd) from her husband Gorlois of Cornwall (the late genre veteran - and father of the next generation's genre veteran Mark - W. Morgan Sheppard) and triggering civil war, the stage is set for the tale to come.  After Gorlois is slain by Uther in battle, the ire of the young Morgan (a spirited performance from an eleven year old Patsy Kensit) is raised against both her new stepfather and Uther's spawn: her baby half-brother Arthur.  Pledging herself to the ways of magic under the wary tutelage of Merlin (a well cast Robert Eddison, who would ten years later play the aged Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), Morgan le Fay grows into a red-maned witch clad in the robes of a nun (Doctor Who veteran Maureen O'Brien) with her sights still obsessively fixed upon her semi-sibling's ruination.  

When Arthur (Andrew Burt, memorable as Valgard in Doctor Who's 'Terminus' and lamentable as Jarvik in Blake's 7's cringe fest 'The Harvest of Kairos') reaches maturity as king, riding into battle against the rebellious chieftains fighting  under the banner of Jon Croft's Lot of Orkney whilst wearing a battle helmet strikingly similar in design to the famous Sutton Hoo helm, Morgan sets to work along with her dwarf minion Branic (Peter Burroughs) and the embittered knight Accolon of Gaul (Anthony Dutton) to destroy the incipient Order of the Round Table.  As the story follows the outline of the Malory tale, Arthur and Bors (Godfrey James) are slanted and enchanted by the witch in the woods and Excalibur stolen away and given to the treacherous Accolon who then challenges the king to a duel - with the recreant traitor wielding the blessed blade.  Though the trap is overcame and Accolon defeated, the Queen of Air and Darkness remains steadfast in her desire for Arthur's death and continues to weave her web of traps - including exploiting the love of the steadfast Lancelot (David Robb) for the fair Queen Guinevere (Felicity Dean) and turning the minds of Agravain (Niall Padden) and Mordred (Steve Hodson), brash and reckless younger sons of Lot, against the champion and his perceived infidelity.  When the fellowship of Camelot is sundered by warfare and Lancelot's dalliance with Eleanor of Escalot (Amanda Wissler) the lovesick and half sick of shadows Lady of Shalott which leads to her grief-stricken suicide, Morgan's plots comes to their fruition as Mordred frames the queen for murder and turns all the court against one another in a strife that leads inexorably to the carnage of the Battle of Camlann and the twilight of the Arthurian world.

A triumph of 1970s BBC television ingenuity and a valiant attempt to compress Malory's sprawling collation of tales into eight half hour episodes, The Legend of King Arthur surpasses - for my money, anyway - Boorman's Excalibur as the finest example of the Matter of Britain on film (and videotape, natch).

Now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to climb into my coracle and sail across the sundering sea to the misty vales of Avalon.

King of the Rocket Men, Chapters One to Three (Fred C. Brannon, 1949)

Time for another olde-time serial chapter play again kids.  Let's party like it's 1949 matinee mornings, after the Pathe newsreel and cartoon but before the main feature.  Having already tackled this serial's semi-sequel (try spraying that with a lisp) Radar Men from the Moon it seems high time to go back, back to the beginning to check out the onlie begetter of the Rocket man's jetpacked adventures, King of the Rocket Men.  Yes, to my fannish brain it seems crazy not to have done things in chronological order, but here we find ourselves.  I had at least partially seen this story a long, low time ago (when people talked to me) when it ran on weekday mornings on UK TV - either Channel 4 or BBC2, memory fails - and so lucked out on being ill for a week or so.  If i'd been at school i'd have remained oblivious of the joy of serials for years.

Directed, like the three sequel chapterplays, by veteran Republic serial helmer Fred Brannon it stars Tristram Coffin (replacing Kirk Alyn, who had incarnated the first live action Superman the previous year [and yes, i'll get round to covering that one too]) as the titular Jeff King - the first man to strap on the jetpack and helmet of the iconic Rocket Man.  And so here we go with the Secret Origin of the Rocketeer...

Chapter One: Dr. Vulcan - Traitor!

When a series of mysterious "accidents" - including a plane crash claiming the life of noted chemist Paul Kenyon and an explosion which wrecks an experimental nuclear fission laboratory - occur in rapid succession, the brains trust Science Associates (a clique of the top minds in various fields such as metallurgist Prof Bryant, atomic boffin Martin Conway, aerodynamics wizard Dr Graftner and Teutonic physicist Gunther Von Strum) begin to worry.  The grip of fear on the egg-headed backroom boys tightens when Associate member and cyclotron expert Dr Drake finds himself locked inside his own car and spoken to by a sinister voice over the car vehicle - a disembodied presence identifying itself as Dr Vulcan - and his car driven by remote control over a cliff edge in another manufactured tragedy.  When Professor Millard (James Craven) is also contacted by the mocking voice of the invisible menace whilst working in his lab just before a blast wrecks the building neither any trace of he nor any of his secret experimental work can be found in the wreckage.

Investigative reporter Glenda Thomas (Mae Clarke - Elizabeth from James Whale's classic 1931 Frankenstein of course, but she's perhaps less well known as Myra in the same director's pre-Code version of Waterloo Bridge earlier that same year; a role portrayed by Vivien Leigh in the better known [though less good, in my own opinion] 1940 remake) of Science Data Magazine is hot on the case, having her inquiries as to whether an outside party could have engineered these incidents fended off by Science Associates' PR man Burt Winslow (House Peters, Jr.) when she meets rocket propulsion expert Jeff King (the moustachioed and splendidly-monikered Tristram Coffin) who has been nominated by his peers to supervise the safe and secret transportation of a rocket for the group's next guided missile test.

When the unseen Dr Vulcan contacts his chief henchman Durken (Don Haggerty), he commands him to break into the files of Dr King (not that one - though this one does have a dream, too) and search for any notes that may have been passed on by Professor Millard - who is still though to have passed on.  However, they find nothing more than King himself who is happy disprove the scoffing assertions that "these scientist guys are all brain and no brawn" by engaging them in a two-fisted punch-up before they flee the scene with tails betwixt legs.  Next morning, King makes his way to the secret cavern where the not-so-late Millard has set up his new laboratory to report on his unwelcome uninvited guests.  Millard is eager to get out there, confident that he can unmask the true identity of the villain, but Jeff persuades him that for his own safety he must remain securely "dead" for the time being.  

Millard announces that he has finally completed work on the experimental rocket suit on which the pair had been working ("to change men into human rockets"), consisting of an atomic-powered jet pack attached to a leather coat and an aerodynamically-designed helmet.  Jeff takes the suit, vowing to test it himself out in the open, and stows it in the trunk of his car as he sets off for the top secret warehouse where the secret missile is being stored.  Or, rather, not that top secret, as he arrives just as Vulcan's goons hijack the truck carrying the rocket.  Swiftly donning the untested suit, Jeff takes to the skies in hot pursuit (he truly is King, of the Rocket Men, see?).  Manipulating the "nipple, nipple, tweak, tweak" chest-mounted controls, he shoots into the back of the van and brawls with a pair of thugs; yet a shove into the back of the missile's tripod mounting results in an unexpected launch.

"If that torpedo" says King, bizarrely not understanding what a torpedo is, "lands in a populated area, you'll be guilty of mass murder!"  He then blasts off in hot pursuit of the buzz-bomb as it hurtles towards the city, taking it out with a blast from the laser gun tucked into his belt - but the resulting explosion sends him falling to the ground far below...

Chapter Two: Plunging Death

...but just in the nick of time he tweaks the controls and fires up the rocket pack, righting his trajectory and flying off into the skies.  Returning to the safe haven of Dr Millard's cave lab, Jeff and the Prof listen to a radio bulletin about his saving the city from the so-called "aerial torpedo" wherein he is dubbed 'the Rocket Man' (and also described as a "strange human-like object" and speculated to be a visitor from another planet).  They discuss how only the members of Scientific Associates knew of the transportation of the missile, and arrive at the conclusion that the villainous Dr Vulcan must be one of the group.  Fearing that Jeff's life is in danger should Vulcan suspect him to be Rocket Man, Millard advises him to be circumspect at any board meetings.

King goes about this be arriving at the next meeting and immediately asking if anyone suspects him of being the Rocket Man.  Way to not draw attention to yourself, dude.  However any inklings are interrupted by Winslow arriving with news that lady reporter Ms Thomas managed to get a snap of the junior birdman in flight.  King advises that he will personally inspect her negative (I bet he will, the mucky sod) before granting permission for publication.

While Jeff and Burt head off to meet Ms Thomas, the shadowy Vulcan contacts Durken and grasses the address of Glenda's gaff so that he can get to her Piedmont pied-a-terre before them and grab the negative.  As the goons rifle through her stuff, they have to duck into an adjoining room as Glenda arrives with Winslow and they wait for the tardy Jeff.  Coming up with a bright idea, Durken grabs a telephone and gives the operator the address, asking to test whether the phone's ringer is broken.  When the unwitting operator complies and the phone in the living room rings, Durken is connected and atests to being King, unavoidably detained, and asks that Glenda bring the negative to the S.A. lab.  As she retrieves it from her hollowed-out book hiding place, the goons burst out and assail them.  When Burt goes down with a chair smashed over his head, Durken grabs the film and dashes for it with the dogged Glenda in hot pursuit.  

When the dallying real King arrives, Burt informs him of the situation and that Glenda is after Durken and the film in her car.  Grabbing the jet suit from his own auto, he dashes into a nearby alley for a quick change and soars skywards.  As Glenda burns rubber to catch up with the thief, the all-seeing Dr Vulcan (who is watching on his monitor that he can tune to focus on anything, anywhere, because SCIENCE) manipulates his magic remote control machine and causes her car to crash out of control.  As Rocket Man land son the roof of the vehicle and climbs inside to valiantly wrestle with the steering wheel the car careens over a precipice to crash and burn in the valley below...

Chapter Three: Dangerous Evidence

...only to survive via the method of pulling that hoary old trick that enraged me as a child - the footage that we didn't see last time of him yelling "Jump!" and the two of them bundling out of the car just before it soars Thelma and Louise-style over the edge.

Still feels like a cheat all these years on.  The flame of ire still burns brightly.

When Glenda follows thanking her saviour with an interview request she is swiftly spurned - Rocket Man informing her that in his quest to rid the world of the menace that endangers the nation he needs zero publicity.  He then informs her than the inter city bus runs along the road on which they stand and that one should be along shortly, before shooting off.  Back at the Rocket Cave, King and Millard muse that the villains cannot be allowed to enlarge and inspect the photograph - for even though the masked Jeff can't be recognised the rocket suit will be identifiable by all as the same prototype that they had been working on.  Since this will either finger Jeff or reveal that Millard is not as dead is everyone currently thinks, Jeff resolves to come up with a scheme to prevent Team Vulcan from blowing up that pic.

When Durken reports back to Vulcan that he is finding it impossible to find a supplier willing to sell the specialist type of film needed to develop the negative, the unseen menace replies that Science Associates has a small amount in stock and that he can arrange an inside job; Durken should get to the premises at 9.00 PM where he will find the gate unlocked.  The stooge and another man of hench slip in through the shadows easily, getting their grubby mitts on the coveted Micro-Film 247.  Confronted by an armed King who demands to know who allowed their entrance, the pair manage to catch him unawares and get away with their prize.

Blasting off after them, King follows their tracks to a remote cabin where Durken has a lab-coated science guy to process the photo.  Landing in the woods and for some reason deciding to strip off the Rocket Man outfit and stash it in the shrubbery, he approaches the hideout as his usual civilian self (and hold on a minute - it's weird enough that he he wears the whole tight leather coat over his business suit, but where the hell was he keeping his hat?).  Confronting Durken and taking on both him and the lab goon in a fist fight that quickly reduces the place to rubble, Jeff is knocked unconscious and left in the burning shack as a shattered jar of acid ignites a crate marked CHLOROMITE: DANGER - EXPLOSIVE...

Oh My Goddess! ([orig: 'Aa! Megami-sama!'], Hiroaki Goda, 1993-1994)

Kosuke Fujishima's manga series Oh My Goddess! (or the minutely different Ah! My Goddess! in some transliterations) began in 1988 as a serialised story in the anthology collection Monthly Afternoon, making the leap from the printed page to the screen at first in the form of a short series of OVAs (original video animations for the uninitiated: animated shorts created solely for home video - and later DVD - distribution rather than being aimed primarily at the television or cinematic market) beginning in February of 1993 and concluding with the fifth chapter in  May 1994.  The franchise would continue with a 48 episode anime TV series from 1998 to 1999, a cinematic movie (with the perhaps obvious title of Ah! My Goddess: the Movie in 2000, two further TV series (Ah! My Goddess! in 2005 and Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy in 2006) as well as two more OVA runs (the two-part Ah! My Goddess: Fighting Wings in 2007 and the three-part Ah! My Goddess: Together Forever from 2011 to 2013), throughout all of which the original seinen manga continued to run before concluding in 2014 after almost a quarter of a century of publication.

Such a vast franchise is kind of beyond the purview of a blog that i'm already quite behind in updating, however, and we concern ourselves here with the original five-part series of OVAs from the '90s - which i'm pretty sure, after Devil Man, was one of the first OVA I ever saw thanks to the remarkably extensive set of anime in South Shields library.  Clearly a member of staff was a fan, and my young self shall forever be grateful since my other main source of VHS perusal (my local video shop: remember those?) had a pretty limited selection.

So, anyway, let's dive in!

Part One: Moonlight and Cherry Blossoms

It all begins so unassumingly on an ordinary day with student Keiichi Morisato stuck in his dormitory digs fielding phone calls and taking messages for his older and more senior dorm-mates (I don't think "Notice me, senpai!" necessarily means "Get me to be your answering service").  Growing hungry but unable to leave and frustrated at the restaurants he phones either not delivering during the day or not answering, Keiichi mis-dials and through the tangled lines of the Fates somehow gets a trunk call patched through the world-tree Yggdrasil to the Goddess Help Line.

When the goddess Belldandy (an understandable Japanese transliteration of Verthandi - the Norn of the occurring present) appears through his mirror, all wide shimmering purple eyes and bright expression, offering to grant whatever wish he desires, our boy Keiichi is understandably gobsmacked.  Believing himself to be being pranked (or Punk'd, if that's even still a thing?) by his roommates and embarrassed by his singleton status, he wishes that the radiant remain with him as his girlfriend forever - a blithely-spoken heart's desire that is quickly and irrevocably granted.  This, however, sets powerful and immutable forces into motion - such as his roommates quickly returning and throwing him out for violating the rule of never having a girl within the dormitory.  

Suddenly down and out and on the streets, the despondent lad is cheered by the effervescently upbeat magic dream girl that's landed in his lap.  Belldandy advises that fate will provide them with accommodation to the west, and so they mount Morisato's motorbike and continue stabbing westward through the nighttime rain until they reach an old abandoned temple; the crumbling edifice is soon restored to its former beauty by Belldandy reaching out to the building and asking it to remember what it used to be.  In the morning, as the new couple settle into their appropriate abode for an angelic occupant, Keiichi's younger sister Megumi arrives on their doorstep and announces that she'll be staying with them for a while until her college course kicks off.  Thus the stage is set for what I assume will be a Manga-style magicom along the lines of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched - a magical girl, an ordinary boy and the hilarious consequences that thus arise.

Breezy and charming with some surprisingly touching moments (Belldandy's communion with the temple took me quite by surprise with how nonchalantly affecting it was), this first episode is a highly enjoyable scene setter.

Part Two: Midsummer Night's Dream

Having settled well in and enjoyed five months of domestic bliss - somewhat ameliorated by the friendly needling in ways only a sibling can of Megumi - in 'Morisato Mansion' (as the sign hung on the temple wall now calls it), Keiichi and Belldandy's still somewhat platonic relationship receives what could either be a shot in the arm or a bullet in the throat when Megumi convinces them that a holiday by the seaside would be a good idea.  Masking his fear due to his inability to swim because of Belldandy's enthusiasm at actually getting to see the ocean, Keiichi agrees to go and his day only begins to get entangled further in a web of weirdness and neuroses (I can so relate) when he receives a mysterious VHS tape in the post.  Waiting until Bel and Megumi have gone out shopping, he opens the parcel to find a VHS tape titled Goddess Films: Sexy Dynamite!! Part II.  Obviously, he immediately breaks out the box of tissues and puts it on.

Don't judge.  I'd do the same, and I suspect you would too.

Things begin to turn and face the strange when the sexy white-haired lady (no, it's not GILF stuff, she just has hair that's white) breaks the fourth wall be emerging from the TV, bare anklet-clad foot first.  Yes, this caters to my fetishes.  No, it's not a Tarantino movie.  This is Urd, the Fate of things past and Belldandy's older sister, who has grown tired of watching Keiichi's fumbling overtures and wants him to become a pouncer (though not of the Sylvia Daisy kind).  Urging him on to take Bel to the beach and make his move, she instigates a series of unfortunate events with hilarious consequences (which sounds rather like a bad pitch for a Lemony Snicket sitcom, now that I read it back) through her matchmaking efforts - including giving Keiichi a love potion that will make him fall hopelesslty in love with the first person that he sees upon awakening.  Alas, this turns out to be his rich spoiled bitch classmate Sayoko rather than Bel, who walks in on the scene of the hopelessly devoted to her Keiichi declaring his undying burns-hotter-than-a-thousand-suns amour for Sayoko.

Shakespeare could easily have written Three's a Crowd, you know.  There's always some kind of misunderstanding.

Thankfully, Keiichi's hunk o' hunk o' burning love for Bel gets him over the spell, but just as things appear to be getting on track as they finally admit out loud their feelings for each other, Urd is thrown to Earth with a thundercrack (I mean an actual crack of thunder, not that film) and a message from the All-Father declaring that "It is evident that the Ultimate Force system has crashed due to your tampering.  Until further notice, the goddess Urd shall be banished to the mortal plane."

And so Keiichi finds himself with another extra lodger.  Sharing a house with two sexy goddesses.  I wish I had that guy's problems.

Part Three: Burning Hearts on the Road

 Opening with a pre-title sequence introducing us to the younger sister of our trinity of Norns - Skuld, Fate of things yet to come - as she races around the heavenly realm frantically playing whack-a-mole with spider-legged leporine abominations with her trusty croquet mallet , the third instalment sees Keiichi in a bit of a bind as his fellow students have entered him as the Nekomi Tech contender in the intercollegiate drag racing festival.  Sitting amid the yet-to-be-assembled parts of the twin engined bike that he's meant to race on trying to put them together like Dave Lister with his space bike and being more hindered than helped by Urd (her attempted spell to bring the parts together on their own quite literally blowing up in both their faces), Keiichi resolves to take a bath.

This endeavour at simply relaxing goes as astray as all else, however, when the reflective surface of the bathwater acts - like the mirror and the television screen - as a divine conduit for Skuld to emerge much to the surprise of both parties.  Perhaps more so for Keiichi as the impetuous young Skuld's immediate reaction to a naked bathing male is to scream "Pervert!" and serve him up a concussive crack on the cranium.  Skuld is unhappy at having to manage goddess business on her own without her big sisters, and Bel's devotion to "K" makes him the unfortunate recipient of the tyro's ire.  After the temple abode (would it be wrong to want to call it the Goddess Cave?  Maybe.  I think i'll reserve that as a pet name for a paramour's genitalia) is paid an uninvited visit by Toshiyuki Aoshima, the equally vain and spoiled cousin of Sayoko who has set up his own rival college motor club and makes sickening overtures towards the lovely Bel replete with flowers and poetry that put even my own clunkiest fumbles at romance to shame, Skuld concocts a plan to make Keiichi lose the race in the hope that Bel's ardour will be doused - paving the way for her to return home.

As the gang assemble the motorcycle via the medium of a montage and get ready for the race, it seems that events will not transpire in Keiichi's favour until Bel openly rejects Aoshima's advances and makes a rousing speech to the race team about the goddess of victory (Nike: just do it) smiling not on the prideful, but on those with burning hearts.  Of course true love sways and Keiichi wins the race, garlanded not only with the winner's medal (by Urd, very fetching as a grid girl) but with Bel's love.  For a moment it seems like Skuld has been swayed over to team Keidandy, but she swinftly abandons that 'ship, declaring "You know, I really hate you!"

Part Four: Evergreen Holy Night

In which we begin with Keiichi finally pledging his love to Belldandy by giving her his ring (no, not like that - get your mind out of the gutter!), only for her to react by sprouting feathered wings and floating away on the winder wind telling him that the force of Destiny cannot be defied forever ad that she must return to her Heavenly home.  Which probably wasn't the reaction the guy was expecting.  Of course, 'tis all but an anxiety dream and he wakes screaming just like Jesse Walsh from Freddy's Revenge.  Bel is still by his side of course, but the thought that their "we shall never be apart" promise may not last begins to gnaw at him.

It is four days 'til Christmas at the Morisato Mansion, and going outside the star-crossed couple find the temple grounds completely bedecked with festive snow - and Urd and Skuld magically outdoing themselves in the sibling rivalry department when a snowball fight magically escalates into the creation of a gigantic living Ymir of a snowman.  Figuring he'll have to put snow chains on the wheels of his bike, Keiichi goes to see how blocked the road is only to find that the snow has fallen solely on the temple and its environs.  General bafflement at this mysterious and mystical weather phenomenon is disrupted when Skul espies a "bug" - of of the spider-legged rabbit creatures she had spent her time swatting in the nether-realm - and sets off in hot pursuit after it across the pristine snows before pummelling it with her trusty mallet: a pest extermination which results in the frozen tundra vanishing as instantly as it arrived.

Quickly determining that the infestation are quite literally bugs in the divine system (bugs which "aren't supposed to show up here in the surface world; something must really be wrong up there"says Skuld) and that they have to do something about it, things become curiouser and curiouser when a series of unfortunate events occur to Keiichi in rapid succession culminating in his suddenly becoming magnetic and drawing all the breakfast cutlery to his body including a Bottomesque frying pan to the face.  Skuld locates the portal facilitating the bugs' arrival to have manifested between Keiichi and Bel - any contact between the two of them is making things worse.

K has a nervous bug in his system, which makes him edgy and afraid as it looks increasingly like his dream was less pathetic and more prophetic: something which seems to become certain when Bel is contacted by her heavenly father and told that a Recall Notice has been issued and that she has only three days before the gate will open and she must return home.  Having to remain physically apart lest more accidents be caused by the system glitch an increasingly despondent K attends school without Bel and finds himself on the receiving end of Sayoko's unwanted attentions as she makes it abundantly clear that if Bel is no longer dating him then she'll be predating upon him.

This stressful day comes to a peak when Urd and Skuld identify the energy source that is the main attractor of the bugs - a tall and forbidding gnarled cherry tree by the temple, the sight of which causes Belldandy to recoil in abject atavistic terror.

Part Five: For the Love of Goddess

Another new dawn breaks, and with only two days until Bel is recalled Urd and Skuld are hard at work trying to find a festive miracle to get all of them out of this predicament.  Alas, the malfunction sin the Heavenly paradigm caused by the bugs is even ruining communications with the other side, as Goddess Second Class, Limited Licence Urd finds when she tries to place a call to their father (though the bored secretary voice that answers with "Heaven, can I help you?" is pretty damn funny even as she puts Urd on hold and refuses to connect Urd to the main office).  Determining that they have to deal with the cherry tree and the energy sealed within it to deal with the system imbalance, Urd encourages Skuld to aid her in utilising an Ultimate Magic Circle to negate the power that feeds the tree.

As a mutually heartbroken Keiichi and Bel deal with their enforced social distancing - Keiichi by staying away from the temple all day working a series of zero hour contract jobs that he was set up with by his college senpais (including window cleaning, directing traffic and pizza delivery) originally with the aim of earning enough money to buy Bel the engagement of of their dreams - Skuld is hard at work on the calculations needed to deal with the system bugs.  When K collapses of exhaustion after working from dawn til dusk he finds himself riding the night mare as some serious REM dreamscapes come during the night seemingly taking the form of flashbacks from long ago as though Bel were always with him since his youth.  I guess they'll at least be together forever in eccentric dreams.  As this occurs, Bel self-isolating in her room feels some kind of powerful movement in the Force, reacting with "His memory is returning... There's still time."

As Christmas Eve begins, Bel is busy sadly erasing all traces of her mortal life including all mementos such as photographs of her time with Keiichi, as she can leave him no reminders of the nine months they've spent together after her ascension.  Keiichi frantically rushes home with the promised ring just as the clock strikes the 10.00 A.M. deadline, to be met with the sight of Bel raising her pretty fists like antennas to heaven and the sky cracking asunder to welcome her as she floats into the firmament.  Luckily, Urd and Skuld are just finishing the ultimate circle incantation and the energy unleashed disrupts the sky portal just as Keiichi's buried memories of his childhood encounter with Bel and their youthful promises to each other return.  As a message from the All-Father arrives cancelling Bel's recall and also grounding Urd and Skuld to Earth for unauthorised meddling arrives, Bel finally wears the ring and they are together forever in love.

Because if a trio of goddesses can't bring about a Christmas miracle, who can?

A simple story well told with solid animation, a good English dub voice cast and a suitably upbeat yet emotive soundtrack, Oh My Goddess! is a great example of accessible anime recommended for any fans of the genre or animation in general.  Or even just viewers in search of something breezy and romantic.