Director: Frazer Lee
Writer: Frazer Lee
Producers: Joseph Alberti, Juliet Naylor
Cast: Doug Bradley, Charley Boorman, Beth Murray
Year of release: 1998
Country: UK
Reviewed from: VHS
Official website: www.robber-baron.co.uk

Frazer Lee’s critically acclaimed and justifiably award-winning short On Edge is satisfying in three ‘at last!’ ways. Firstly, it’s based on a short story by Christopher Fowler. Chris has been one of my favourite writers for years, and is also a leading figure in the British film industry. His publicity company created the advertising campaigns for Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, among others.

But attempts to film Chris’ own stories have generally come to naught. Roofworld has been in development for years now, while his Faustian tale Spanky came this close to being shot by Guillermo del Toro (as Mephisto’s Bridge) before conflicting schedules (or something) caused it to fall apart. On Edge is an example of how well Chris Fowler’s ideas and characters can translate to the screen.

It’s also a comparatively rare chance for Doug Bradley, a sorely underused actor, to actually perform without layers of pin-studded latex over his face. He gets to play a real character here and it shows what a waste it is that he is still making Hellraiser Part XXIV several films beyond the point when everyone stopped watching them. Finally, it’s a great example of dental horror, a surprisingly underused subgenre that is otherwise pretty much limited to The Dentist, the two versions of Little Shop of Horrors and, um, The Dentist 2.

The story is simplicity itself, as it needs to be in a film running only ten minutes or so. Charley Boorman (more recently in The Bunker, written by Clive Dawson) is Mr Thurlow, a young chap with a broken tooth, indignant that his regular dentist is on holiday and he will have to see a locum. Bradley is the smooth-talking but creepy chap in the white coat whom Thurlow allows to poke about in his mouth and then put him under. But can you trust a dentist you don’t know? Beth Murray provides sterling support as the receptionist.

Without giving too much away to those who haven’t seen the film, it builds to a horrific climax courtesy of prosthetic effects work by the legendary Bob Keen (Highlander, Hellraiser, Hardware and almost everything else made in the past 20 years).

Another useful addition to the crew is cinematographer Alan Stewart, a BAFTA nominee who has worked on numerous short films, including the Tartan Shorts series, as well as major production like Band of Brothers. Frazer Lee’s direction is remarkably sure and accomplished for a first film, making full use of carefully structured point of view shots that play up the full helpless/willing horror of the dental patient. The film was shot in 35mm widescreen and it really shows; DV is fine and all that, but you cannot beat a strip of celluloid.

But really, and with due acknowledgement to how uncomfortable Charley Boorman must have been, this is Doug Bradley’s film. For the most part it’s a monologue and that’s the one place where it stumbles slightly. Not through any fault of Bradley’s, but with Thurlow unable to speak, his character must answer his own questions and towards the end the script tips over into infodump mode - “Shall I tell you what I’ve done?” - though it’s difficult to see how this could have been avoided. It certainly doesn’t detract from the atmosphere or the tension.

On Edge is now available as a ‘special edition’ VHS which includes an interview with Frazer Lee, originally aired on the Sci-Fi Channel (US) in 2000 as part of a Clive Barker-presented series, plus a few out-takes which allow a slightly closer look at Bob Keen’s creation. Contact Robber Baron Productions directly for details.

Lee and Bradley (and some other On Edge crew) subsequently worked on a second excellent short, Red Lines. Two short films in five years may seem a less than prolific output, but good films are like icebergs - you only see the tip of them. Frazer Lee is hard at work on as-yet-unseen projects, building a career slowly, steadily and sensibly. Catch his early work now while you can.

MJS rating: A

Director: Joe Dante
Writer: Caleb Carr
Producer: Dan Dugan
Cast: John Corbett, Carolyn McCormick, John Pyper-Ferguson
Year of release: 1996
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK rental VHS (CIC)

Before he got married in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, before he was a semi-regular on Sex and the City, John Corbett was Chris-in-the-Morning on Northern Exposure. Inbetween Northern and Sex, he was intergalactic outlaw Jason Thorpe in this movie. Well, I say ‘movie’ but some things just scream ‘failed pilot’ before you’ve even taken the tape out of the box - and here’s one of them.

Thorpe lives with his supergenius ten-year-old sister Nova (J Madison Wright: Earth 2) on the planet Caliban 5, ruled by warlord Heenoc Xian (an overacting John Pyper-Ferguson: Space Marines, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr). It sounds for all the world like the character is called ‘Enoch Sean’, but apparently it’s ‘Heenoc Xian’... Anyway, it is years since the Galactic Republic fell and most worlds have reverted to a clichéed sort of techno-barbarism. It’s the sort of society where people live in semi-squalor but have super-advanced computers.

When Nova disappears, apparently kidnapped by some off-worlders in a cloaked ship, Thorpe seeks help from Xian who has the only interstellar craft on the planet, the Daedalus, but to no avail. Fortunately, Nova’s best friend is 15-year-old Maggi Sorenson (Elisabeth Harnois, later on All My Children), ace pilot, whose grandfather General Lars Sorenson (Time Machine star Rod Taylor) still holds dear the values of the Old Republic. Sorenson also owns a large, shark-like vessel, the Osiris, in orbit above Caliban 5, which is in full working order apart from its engines. The only race who could repair it are the mysterious aliens called ‘the Engineers’ who will come if paid enough, so Thorpe steals some jewels from Xian’s coffers and the silent, cloaked, hooded figures set to work getting the tachyon engines back on-line.

Sorenson of course has his own agenda: he wants to rebuild the Republic and to do so requires Trajan Cabel, grandson of the last Proconsul, Julius Cabel. Typically woolly American politics there: the only person who can create a republic will do so not because of any political skills or because of any mandate from the population, but purely because of who his grandfather was. Very democratic, that.

The rest of the crew of the Osiris come aboard for no real reason at all. There’s token black guy Wally Price (Darryl Theirse: Crocodile 2, Bug), an old friend of Thorpe’s who has ‘really strong feelings’ but is not actually psychic or telepathic. And who just happens to be on his ship with him but Sorenson’s daughter - and Maggi’s mother - Rula Kor (Carolyn McCormic: Minuet in a couple of episodes of ST:TNG), who is an ‘Arbitrator’ - a diplomatic mercenary. With her is her tall, cat-eyed, silent ‘Zentric’ bodyguard/assistant Jana (Marjorie Monaghan: Space Rangers).

Escaping from an attack by the Daedalus, the Osiris finds itself confronted by an entire cloaked planet in deep space, home of the Engineers, who have taken Nova because they want to re-educate her and use her vast intellect. Sorenson, Kor, Thorpe and Price are the first outsiders allowed to ‘transverse’ (transporter beam) down to the home-world of the Engineers, a race who have eliminated feelings and all concept of family. The Engineers are ruled by the Sublime Plenum, an amalgamation of their greatest ancestors’ minds and souls, which unfortunately turns out to be a really awful collection of goop and rubber tentacles. You can almost see the exact point in this production when the effects budget ran out.

Nova wants to stay but Thorpe reminds her of the meaning of family (their parents abandoned them for some reason but at least they have each other). Escaping back to the Osiris, again under attack from the Daedalus, Nova is grabbed away from the rescue team at the last minute.

The last ten minutes or so are rather complex as more aspects of the potential series are set up. Sorenson wants to rebuild the Republican Fleet but the ships he wants are on Marcab 4 which is laid waste by the Engineers. Trajan Cabel should be there too but he left years ago, opposed to the idea of a new republic, and is now calling himself ... Enoch Sean! Or Heenoc Xian...

So Xian and his slimy second-in-command Valois (Philip Moon: The Young and the Restless) join forces for no very good reason with the crew of the Osiris, now captained by Thorpe, and they set off to adventures which, sadly, remain entirely unchronicled. What happens to the population of Caliban 5, deprived of what little leadership they ever had and their only means of communication with other planets, is not something that anyone seems overly concerned about.

Shot for CBS in 1996, The Osiris Chronicles seems to have remained on the shelf until it turned up on UPN in January 1998 as a TV-movie, retitled The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy. In the UK it was released as a rental tape under its original title, with a sleeve that shows the whole crew of the Osiris - except the black guy!

Don’t be fooled by Joe Dante’s directing credit - this is strictly work-for-hire and could have been shot by anyone. The only distinctively Dante-esque element is a cameo by Dick Miller (Piranha, Gremlins, Explorers) as a peddler who sells Thorpe a ‘bio-crystal’. Screenwriter Caleb Carr’s only other produced credits are a 1991 TV movie and one of the Exorcist prequels. He’s better known for his books, notably the historical psychological thriller The Alienist. Carr and Dante were also executive producers on this pilot.

It’s not difficult to see why The Osiris Chronicles remained unchronicled. There’s no real depth to the characters and the series premise is humdrum and ill-thought-out. The Sublime Plenum aside, there are some decent effects including a few excellent mattes and some competent but unimaginative prosthetics by Steve Johnson’s XFX company. The Osiris and the Daedalus are both neat-looking ships, thanks to conceptual designer John Eaves (Star Trek), but as someone once almost said, you don’t leave a movie theatre whistling the spaceships.

There are long infodump speeches to explain to us what’s going on and the whole sketchily explored intergalactic background of a republic fallen into the dark ages is trite and clichéed, a lazy mishmash of ideas from Star Trek, Star Wars and the Foundation saga. Costumes look like they have been carefully designed to make each crew-member look distinctive, rather than being the sort of thing that such people might actually wear in their circumstances. There are action sequences that exist purely to enable the producers to tick the ‘action sequence’ box rather than making any sense within the storyline. The dialogue is largely banal. Character and planet names are yet more clichés. The whole thing is just dull and the lack of a series is no great loss to the world.

As the Osiris and Daedalus woosh off into the depths of space, one is left really not caring what happens next. Which is not good for a pilot episode...

MJS rating: C+

Director: Derek Hayes
Writer: Martin Lamb, Penelope Middleboe
Producer: Naomi Jones
Cast: Daniel Evans, Jenny Livesey, Matthew Rhys
Year of release: 2003
Country: Wales
Reviewed from: UK theatrical screening

British animated features are rare enough, but an entirely Welsh animated feature? There’s a novelty, isn’t it? Actually, Otherworld employs the well-worn device of a live-action framing story with our main characters becoming animated about ten minutes in (cf. The Water Babies, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Pagemaster, James and the Giant Peach...).

Dan (Daniel Evans), Rhiannon (Jenny Livesey) and Lleu (Mathew Rhys: Deathwatch, the BBC Lost World) are three Welsh teens going diving on Lleu’s 18th birthday. Below the boat they see a magical floating island and dive down to it, where they become three characters in stories from the Mabinogi, a book of Welsh legends (and the film's Welsh language title). The idea of the floating island - lush meadows just beneath the sea - is explained in an 1896 newspaper report right at the end of the film. It’s really just a way to take us into the legends, but occasional live-action reflections of the characters remind us (and them?) who they are, and their adventures reflect their real situations (especially Lleu, who discovered that morning that he was adopted).

The main story is a tad confusing, not least because we have several legends conflated together and we switch pretty much at random between our three stories. Keeping track of characters is tricky because everyone wears cloaks and beards and has Celtic names that sound like they’re choking: Lleu Llaw Gyffes, Gronw Pebr, Bendigeidfran. Efnisien... The stories themselves are already well-known in Wales, but for the rest of us there’s a bit too much to take in during this surprisingly long (about 105 minutes) animated film.

Nevertheless there is a lot to recommend this film, not least a non-patronising, adult attitude which belies its 12A certificate. There’s a fair bit of bloody violence - this being animation, it costs no more to show a sword actually going into somebody’s chest and the blood welling up in torrents as they fall. About an hour in there’s a cracking battle which pulls no punches and though the actual reason for it wasn’t clear to me - something to do with a marriage that seals a union between Wales and Ireland - the action is top notch. There is also a certain amount of female and (briefly) male nudity - again it’s not the salacious appeal but the kudos of a film that doesn’t water down a legend by being coy. The highlight is undoubtedly a sort of giant wickerwork demon which appears about half an hour in, which is absolutely terrifying.

The animation (largely done in Eastern Europe) is painted - which takes a bit of getting used to, but is much more appropriate to these sort of stories, landscapes and characters than traditional cell animation, and there is effective use of CGI in some places, such as the wicker demon. A roster of notable character actors provide voices - Philip Madoc, Rhys Ifans, Ioan Gruffudd, Paul McGann - while the visuals are well-served by former Velvet Undergrounder John Cale’s excellent score. The live-action bookends - directed by Marc Evans (My Little Eye) - have just enough narrative to show that the messages in the Mabinogi stories are still relevant.

After the crushing disappointment of the awful Christmas Carol: The Movie, Otherworld restores confidence in the ability of British animation to make good feature-length productions. (Unfortunately, two years later this film remains apparently unavailable on video or DVD anywhere...)

MJS rating: B+

Director: Matt ‘MJ’ Stone
Writer: Matt ‘MJ’ Stone
Producer: Matt ‘MJ’ Stone
Cast: Nick Smithers, Georgia Goodrick, Marysia Kay
Country: UK
Year of release: 2009
Reviewed from: UK DVD

The title is enough to make your heart sink. Ouija boards are the hoariest cliché in horror movies. On the other hand, any film by someone called ‘MJ’ has to be good. As it turns out, Ouija Board is actually very good indeed, a terrific addition to the apparently never-ending British Horror Revival which has been going on for a decade and shows no signs of stopping.

The set-up is utterly formulaic: five young people celebrating the end of university by heading off to stay for a few days in a remote cottage in the Scottish countryside. Paul (Nick Smithers: Evil Aliens) and Kerry (Georgia Goodrick: Mind the Gap, Mess) are the couple whose idea this was. Paul would have preferred just the two of them but Kerry insisted on bringing along Simon (Lee O’Driscoll: Crooked Features) and Lucy (Australian-born Candice Edmunds) plus singleton James (Ross Maxwell: Sessions of the Mind, Night is Day, The Bench) - the only character with a Scottish accent.

What impressed me most about Ouija Board was the characters. These are marvellously written, finely acted portrayals of real people. Often with these things it is possible to delineate the participants by simple attributes. One could do that here: Kerry has straight, brown hair; Lucy’s is curly and blonde; Paul is tall, James is Scottish and Simon is the other one. But to pursue this option would be to do the film a great injustice because these characters are not defined by anything as simplistic as hair, height or accent. Rather, they are defined by - and this actually taught me something which I can use in my own scripts - their relationships to each other.

That’s what makes a character: the way that they interact with the other characters and the way that these relationships change over time. Amorous, amiable or antagonistic, these relationships are all real, all factorial four of them (okay: 24). And there is certainly antagonism here, which is good: conflict is what creates drama. But you need these clearly defined yet thoroughly rounded characters to generate believable conflict.

Their problems start on the journey to the cottage when Paul, driving along endless identical country lanes, momentarily falls asleep at the wheel and mows down a young woman standing in the middle of the road. Recriminations fly about whose fault it is and what to do with the body. They can’t leave it so the suitcases are shifted onto the backseat and the girl’s body is shoved in the boot.

Sometime later, still unable to find the cottage, the quintet stop for the night and simply crash out in or near the car. But when they awake - the girl’s body has disappeared. More recriminations, more conflict, more characterisation.

They make it to the cottage. I’ve never understood the desire of people in horror films to go and stay in nicely decorated, all-mod-cons cottages in the dim and distant middle of nowhere. If you want to get away form it all, pitch a tent. You’re mad, but pitch a tent. If you want hot and cold running water and a comfy bed and a fridge - well, that’s why God gave us hotels. The whole getting-away-from-it-all thing, it’s beyond me. Anyway...

At the cottage, people start seeing the girl who was hit on the road. Individually, they just see her briefly but unequivocally - and with increasing corporeality. By now we’re into an effective ghost story. Who is this young woman? What does she want? Why has she targeted this group of young people? Does somebody know more than he or she is saying?

And thus we come eventually to the titular ouija board and it must be said that this is one of the better ouija board scenes that I have seen. It’s done for a valid reason - there is already unambiguous evidence of a ghost, and a dangerous one at that. Furthermore, some of the answers given by the spirit are surprising and disturbing, a real breath of fresh air in a trope which is stale and clichéed. The tension mounts, the conflict rises, character relationships change, it’s all top stuff. I don’t want to go into details - watch it.

Towards the end, when things actually start getting nasty, the film stumbles a little as its very limited budget starts to show. There’s a knife attack which doesn’t look anywhere near as harmful as the dialogue subsequently indicates it is, and a car injury likewise looks like something that might cause mild bruising. Another mis-step is a sequence in which Lucy leaves the cottage and encounters a farmer (Doug McFarlane). It is entirely unclear what happens there or why and it smacks of a scene that was meant to be much more and has been truncated because of the constraints of time and/or money.

But these things don’t distract from the film as a whole which is a storming horror picture with genuine chills and frights and a generally cohesive and original plot. And the reason why these chills and frights seem genuine? I already told you: it’s the characters. Every one of the cast turns in a note-perfect performance of a character who is clearly already alive on the page and then fleshed out further on screen. Not only that, but the casting is as spot-on as the cast, with each actor perfectly suited physically to their role even before they do or say anything.

I really enjoyed Ouija Board. It’s a joy to watch an effective, dramatic, unashamed horror film like this. Which is why I find the film’s packaging both puzzling and disappointing. Here’s the blurb from both the website and the sleeve of the self-released DVD:

Escaping to the Scottish countryside for a weekend of sex and drugs seemed a good idea to Kerry and her new boyfriend Paul. Lucy, Simon and James want to get in on the fun so they all head off to Paul’s remote country hideaway. When a tragic accident leaves a girl dead, the friends, after a nights drinking, decide to play the ouija board. A terrifying decision they may not live to regret.

‘A weekend of sex and drugs’? There is no suggestion of drug-taking and almost no sex. (Both actresses gamely disrobe but only very briefly and for reasons of narrative, not exploitation.) The front of the DVD sleeve proclaims: ‘violent, bloody, sexy and crude’ - yet the film is none of these things. There is a certain amount of blood in the final act - you can see that on the sleeve image which, incidentally, is something of a spoiler - but I would never describe this as a bloody film. Or a violent one. As for sexy, if a two-second flash of tits gets you hot then you need to start worrying. And crude? I don’t know what to say to that.

Assuming that Matt Stone was responsible for his own publicity, I can’t understand why he would drastically undersell his own very effective film like this. There are lots of horror movies out there which are indeed violent, bloody, sexy and crude - and they usually have a fifth adjective applied to them by audiences: crap.

This sleeve copy, together with the completely inaccurate ‘weekend of sex and drugs’ blurb, gives the impression that this is a sleazy, gory, over-the-top splatter-fest instead of the thoughtful, emotional, gripping supernatural drama that is actually on the disc. I could understand this misleading packaging if the film had a distributor who decided that it would sell better if people thought it was full of boobs’n’blood, but Matt Stone is selling his own DVD through his own website. It’s like he hasn’t seen his own film.

I mean, I could understand somebody misrepresenting a film to make it seem better than it really is, but this packaging and blurb makes an excellent film look like a piece of trash. It’s just wrong. I can’t explain it.

Homegrown horror star Marysia Kay does a very effective silent, spooky routine as the ghost. Tyler-Wayne Thompson (Pini Banini’s Razor) provided the effective special effects make-up while the score was by Alex Zaven Taylor. Matt Stone (who presumably added the ‘MJ’ to distinguish himself from the co-creator of South Park) handled his own cinematography and editing. I saw an online review of Ouija Board which complained about the awful sound mix but that guy must have received a bad DVD because the sound was fine on my screener. And regular readers will know that bad sound on indie films is a real bugbear of mine.

Pay no heed to the packaging: Ouija Board is a smart, effective, spooky horror film.

MJS rating: A-

Director: Philip J Cook
Writer: Philip J Cook
Producer: John R Ellis
Cast: Tracy Davis, Michael Mack, Hans Bachmann
Country: USA
Year of release: 1987/2004
Reviewed from: screener DVD
Official site: www.eaglefilms.com

It was rather a shock, on watching the 15-minute Making Of included on this DVD, to realise that I have had a poster for this film in my files for the past decade.

This first feature from writer/director/editor/cinematographer Philip Cook (Invader, Despiser) was filmed as Pentan (the name of the main character) and initially released as Beyond the Rising Moon before ending up as Star Quest: Beyond the Rising Moon. That’s the title on the one-sheet that I have, which I probably picked up at the AFM. Now it has become Outerworld, putting this picture into that select group of movies which can boast almost as many alternative titles as the average Jess Franco film.

But Outerworld is in many ways a different movie. The special effects have been completely revamped and Cook has used this as an opportunity to tighten up the story to the extent that this is, apparently, as much like Star Quest as Godzilla, King of the Monsters was like Gojira. (I should stress that I have never seen the previous version, I just have the poster. So I can’t make direct comparisons and can only go on what is self-evident on screen and what Cook and co say in the featurette.)

Pentan (Tracy Davis: Nemesis 2) is a genetically engineered woman constructed by the Kuriyama Corporation and trained in combat and other skills. I don’t recall any actual kickboxing and she’s not really a cyborg but this certainly leans towards KCM territory. In a clumsily scripted opening scene, corporation enforcer John Moesby (Michael Mack: Star Trek: Generations) informs head honcho Takashi Kuriyama (Ron Ikejiri) about recent Earth history, prefiguring his infodump speech with the dreaded “As you know...”

What Kuriyama-san does indeed know, but we have to be told, is that humanity has developed interstellar travel, among other things, from technology found in an alien spaceship. No other extraterrestrial artefact has ever been located, until now. A Norwegian company(!) has spotted another alien spaceship on a distant planet but has not actually landed. The first person to make planetfall will be able to claim salvage rights and will make a fortune from licensing all the new technological developments which this discovery will spawn. Naturally, Kuriyama and Moesby believe that the corporation should have that ship. (No-one at any point considers the possibility that the new spaceship will be the same as the old one and so won’t offer anything new.)

Moesby despatches Pentan to intercept two Norwegian agents and steal the briefcase containing the planet’s co-ordinates but for some reason, once she has this, she decides to make it on her own, leaving Moesby fuming on a monorail platform as Pentan waves goodbye from a carriage.

Before you can say "Millennium Falcon", Pentan finds and hires a jobbing spacefarer, Brickman (Hans Bachmann, who was in a 1985 Austrian sci-fi picture called Time Troopers) to take her where she wants to go. He is keen to depart because he is being threatened by the two most law-abiding hoodlums on the planet, who threaten that if he doesn’t come up with the money he owes them they will come and find him armed not with clubs, knives or guns but with someone from the authorities. Despite a last minute attempt by Moesby to stop them, Pentan and Brickman blast off in his nifty little red ship, the Rising Moon.

The complication in all this is that Pentan, having been artificially produced and therefore being the corporate property or Kuriyama Corp., has a doodad inside her head which Moesby has triggered which will kill her in a few days’ time. So before heading for the alien craft, she and Brickman stop off at the isolated, castle-like base of scientist Robert Thornton (Rick Foucheux: Invader) who originally created her. He somehow deactivates the doodad (rendering it a somewhat superfluous plot point). Apparently, in the original version Thornton survived after Brickman and Pentan left - but in this ‘special edition’ his castle gets blasted by Moesby and co, with him in it.

The alien spacecraft sits on a desolate plain on a distant planet. Brickman and Pentan make it first but they are swiftly followed by Moesby and Kuriyama in their impressively large craft the Promethean which carries eight small 'Tulwar' fighter craft. There is a stand-off on the surface and then a big old dogfight in space - I won’t go into too much detail. Nothing too unexpected happens - especially with two decades of other sci-fi movies inbetween this and the current state of the genre - but there is no point in my spoiling things for you folks.

At heart, Outerworld is a good, solid, unabashed slice of 1980s indie sci-fi with all the requisite whooshing spaceships and political intrigue - although noticeably there are neither aliens nor robots. And it is very 1980s, especially in the character of Pentan. With her ultra-tight jeans, ankle boots, wide-collared batwing blouse, short jacket and permed hair she looks like she stepped out of the slow bit of a Meat Loaf video.

And yet, this 1980s film now boasts 21st century special effects, giving it a frankly unique look. Wisely, Cook has retained the best of the original model effects - which are terrific - and used CGI for sequences which simply couldn’t be shot before, such as Thornton’s HQ blowing up or the climactic dogfights which originally took place in open space but now happen within the rings of a Saturn-like planet. Computers have also been used to matte newly shot moving figures into existing model shots which adds greatly to their believability and hence their integration into the live-action footage.

Without ever having seen the original version I can’t really comment on what changes have been made in the storyline and characterisation but the impression I get is that there have been a few and they’re all for the better. As for the effects, some of the CGI work does look ‘very CGI’ but it’s still pretty good for a movie made (or remade) on this sort of budget. The miniatures are superb - there are some behind the scenes shots of them in the Making Of featurette - and while it’s a shame that Cook has now apparently abandoned this technique in favour of CGI, you can’t really blame him when you consider the vast amount of work required to construct very large, very detailed miniatures.

Also in the cast are Norman Gagnon (Twilight of the Dogs, Mark Redfield’s Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde) who also has a bunch of behind-the-camera credits; Jon Trapnell (Ron Ford’s Alien Force and Hollywood Mortuary) and producer John Ellis whose extensive visual effects CV includes Don Dohler’s Nightbeast, JR Bookwalter’s The Dead Next Door, Subspecies IV, Witchouse, Totem, Retro Puppet Master, Voodoo Academy, Dave Parker’s The Dead Hate the Living, Python, Trancers VI and uncredited clean-up work on some big titles including Van Helsing, Daredevil and The Day After Tomorrow.

Outerworld is good fun and you can’t really ask more than that. The leads are likeable, the plot is internally consistent and there are some interesting quirks that make it stand out from the morass of the 1980s science fiction boom (I mean, why Norwegians?). Most importantly, Cook’s reworking of the film nearly 20 years later works to make it better, unlike a certain trilogy of big budget ‘special editions’ which seemed to just have new effects inserted at random irrespective of whether they added anything or not.

Cook has recently done a similar CGI update on Invader. All he needs now is a time machine to take Despiser back a few years and add some miniatures into it.

MJS rating: B

I spoke with Ed Naha by phone at the time that The Adventures of Sinbad was just starting on British TV, in May 1997. This interview was published in a different form in SFX.

Where and how did the Sinbad TV series originate?
"Actually, I wanted to do Sinbadas soon as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids came out. I'd fallen in love with Sinbad when I was eleven. I hadn't seen any of the movies at that point, but I used to read Famous Monsters of Filmland and they had an article on Ray Harryhausen and they ran stills. I was too little when the first movie came out, but eventually I caught up with it. After Honey, I Shrunk the Kids came out, I just figured everyone would understand what I wanted to do - and no-one did.

"So we fast-forward to about a year and a half ago. I was up at All American Television, talking to a Vice-President up there; just a 'Hello. How are you? I won't kill you' meeting. And we were talking about fantasy action series. He said, 'Would you be interested in something along the lines of Sinbad?' So I said, 'If you can wait a day, I can get you sixty pages.' So I went home, found my movie treatment, added characters, and basically within a week, All American bought the series. Then about a week later Atlantis Films joined in. Then we sold it here in the States to Tribune Syndication and we were up and running.

"The thing that's so funny is that we had the commitment for a show on the basis of an outline. We had no script, we had no cast. So the first season was really... It's a little bit of a different take on the traditional Sinbad film, in that our Sinbad is younger, and we emphasise not only the character of Sinbad, but the people aboard his ship. He has a small crew that really form sort of a seafaring family. Only one of the crew members is actually a blood relation - his older brother Dubar is there."

If the original treatment was a movie, have you used the ideas from that, or just the characters?
"Actually the idea for the original film became our first two-hour episode, which is sometimes shown as a two-hour and sometimes shown as two one-hour episodes. But basically, yes, I just played with it and we wound up doing a movie. It was like: wow!"

As executive producer, creator and writer of some episodes, how much control have you got over how the series progresses?
"It's pretty much between myself and David Gerber, who is the President of All American Television. David has been around television for ever. He has more awards in his closet than I have shirts in mine. And the nice thing about it is, David and I share a passion for old movies, so we can talk in shorthand. Whenever we're thinking of modifying, changing direction, or whatever, rather than us go at it in terms of little yuppy-puppy Hollywood buzzwords, he'll say something along the lines of, 'Akim Tamaroff!' And I'll go, 'Yes, or perhaps Turhan Bey!' And I'll know exactly what he's talking about, and he'll know what I'm talking about. And between the two of us, it's a very nice situation. It's a nice give and take."

Akim Tamaroff rings a bell, but Turhan Bey I know. He was in a Mummy movie.
"Akim Tamaroff was also a villain. He was one of those villains in bad toupées. He was in Touch of Evil, the Orson Welles, Venice California film. The longest crane shot in the world is the opening shot! So that's one thing. And we're also trying to do something that harkens back to the swashbuckling films of yesteryear. Now, for me, I grew up watching Jason and the Argonauts and Mysterious Island and the Sinbad films. For David, it's the things that I later saw on television: Thief of Baghdad, Captain Blood, The Crimson Pirate. We're trying to be as evocative as possible and still be contemporary."

The two things that make this the right time for the series are the accessibility of special effects, and the vogue for mythical adventure that was sparked off by Hercules and Xena. How much has each of these contributed to making Sinbad a success?
"Honestly, I don't know. Certainly Hercules paved the way for us, Xena, and Robin Hood, which is over here now on the Turner Network. That proved that there was an audience. And thank God for CGI! Because, having grown up watching the stop-motion movies and just drooling over them, but also being knowledgeable of what it takes, I realised that you can't use stop-motion on a weekly series. We were very fortunate in finding an effects house in Toronto that's headed by a fellow who loves all those old movies. So he's got it from the get-go.

"It's a lark. It's been very hard work: seven days a week, 16-17 hours a day. But at the end of the day, when you see the show, it's like we're doing a Saturday matinee every week. And our take is a little different from Xena and Hercules, in that we do emphasise the magical aspects of our time period. Whereas Hercules is the son of a god, and Xena has some whammies at her disposal. Sinbad, in terms of magic and super-powers, is just a sailor, he's just a guy. And he has no magical abilities, no super-strength. It's all his brain and his athletic prowess. He's a clever guy. And in terms of the magical aspects of it, we have a character, Nhaim, who's a sorcerer's apprentice. But since she's a sorceress in training, she's not exactly up to speed on some of the spells that she casts. So it makes for some nice give and take.

"The camaraderie with the crew has really proven to be a plus with our viewers here. Dubar, Sinbad's older brother, he's the older brother that, had I had an older brother, I wish it was him. He's sort of the gentle giant, Nhaim is the sorceress. We have a sort of a Leonardo da Vinci type, an absent-minded inventor, aboard, who invents things but never writes stuff down. So his inventions are lost until someone reinvents them hundreds of years later. He comes up with the hang-glider, he discovers dynamite, sort of a laser beam. But whenever anyone asks him, 'Aren't you going to write this down?' he just points to his head: 'Nah, it's all up here.' Probably the most fun is that he actually invents the jacuzzi. Not only does he invent it, but it actually plays a pivotal role. We just sit there at the end of the day, just going, 'I can't believe we've got a jacuzzi! I can't believe that it plays a part in the story.' Then we have a knife-throwing dwarf whose tongue has been cut out, for reasons that we don't know, initially. We're actually starting the second season here now, and we'll be addressing that in the second season. And the crew is rounded out by Dermot, who is Nhaim's familiar, who is a hawk."

This is the one that's listed in the press notes as being played by 'a hawk'.
"But he's gone Hollywood now, so he's hyphenating his name!"

Do you use a real bird or animatronic?
"Real bird. We're very fortunate in that Jaclyn who plays Nhaim just loves animals. She and the hawk just hit it off wonderfully."

That's good, because if you work with birds of prey and they don't get on with you, you've got problems.
"The word 'eyepatch' comes to mind! It's really been nice, because Zen Gessler who plays Sinbad, this is his biggest role to date. The nice thing about the show, from my perspective now at the end of the first season, is that these people were basically dropped into a situation cold. We didn't have that much time. We were casting two weeks before production. And the nice thing about the show is that everyone did pull together as a crew. Zen, as the captain of the ship, is wonderful for me. He actually fell into that role off-camera as well. So the camaraderie is just lovely."

How were the leads cast?
"We had open casting for Sinbad, and we had about 25 people in the end reading sides. I figured I wrote audition sides such that if anyone could get through the sides, they could get through the series. We got down to around ten people. Basically, Zen didn't tell us very much about himself. We just felt that he embodied Sinbad and later we found out he's an expert swordsman. His mom is an actress as well, which he didn't let on, and his mom made a film when Zen was about six years old, where Zen finds a magic sword of a conquistador. We couldn't believe it - this guy was born to play Sinbad. Then later on, we arranged for him to meet Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who played Sinbad in the '40s, and the two of them just sat there for two hours and just talked about swashbuckling! It was really interesting."

Have you thought of asking Fairbanks to do a cameo in the series?
"He's a tad frail."

I'm not thinking of getting him to do a sword fight!
"But it's a really tough life. We were the first series to be shot in Cape Town of this magnitude. We were also the first series to work the kind of hours in that area, so it's really tough. So I really would've liked to, but it just would have been too difficult. I don't want to put anyone in a situation where they could get sick."

Why did you choose South Africa for filming?
"It was really interesting. This is a very bizarre production because half of us are down in South Africa, one company's in Los Angeles and the other company's in Toronto. Between the two countries, with our time schedule in terms of getting the show done by 'x' date, we couldn't use either America or Canada. So then it was: could we find a tropical location? Well, yes we could, and there are a lot of them, but since every episode is a separate voyage, we needed a place that really had a varied selection of locations. So Cape Town is perfect because you have beaches, forests, deserts, mountains - there's a variety of looks. It just seemed like a beautiful place, the people were great. We knew it would be a challenge: we had to build our own soundstage. So we took over an old warehouse and made our own soundstage, built our own boat. Then basically used a combination of local actors and actresses, our cast and Canadian guest stars."

I understand that the shooting stage is linked to Toronto and LA by an ISDN line. Is that vital?
"Yes it is, especially because we are doing a lot of green screen. We use more computer generated imagery than any other show on television, with the possible exception of space shows where you're looking at spaceships and so on. But in terms of actual creature features... We've completed one episode, that hasn't aired yet, where we have Sinbad and his crew attacked by 200 skeletons. Having that link helps because you can use motion capture, and that makes it easier for the guys at Calibre, our effects house. We've used every kind of effect you can imagine. We have herds of CGI monsters. The first season we have sea serpents; we have an avalanche of rocks that reconfigures into a rock giant; we have harpies. We have this one thing that's like a floating eyeball with tentacles."

Oh cool!
"It looks like something after twelve gin and tonics. You wake up in the morning: 'Ah, jeez!' And we have sorcerers, you know. One thing that we can do in year two is using a combination of CGI stuff and real animals, so you will have a giant spider or a giant lizard. We have a cyclops - and a giant goat! This is the way the show is. They're confronted by a giant ram, and the ram's about 60 feet tall. Sinbad is worried that they're going to be crushed. And Faruz the scientist points out: 'We really don't have much to worry about because they're herbivores.' Sinbad's worrying about the hoof, and the scientist is basically saying, 'Well, you know, they're vegetarian. So they're not going to eat us'."

Which is more important to the series: the special effects or the scripts?
"The scripts, no contest. I lived in a movie theatre when I was young. When I was eleven I was probably a lot harsher a critic than I am now. So one of the things that bothered me about a lot of the fantasy films of the '60s and the '70s - and today - is that the accent is almost totally on special effects and the plot is almost an afterthought. When I was a kid, I loved Jason and the Argonauts. I thought that was a smart movie. And I loved The Three Worlds of Gulliver and I loved Mysterious Island, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. It was just 'Huh?' - the plot was minimalistic to the point where your popcorn really looked interesting. So one of the things that we tried to do was have a story that would hold up whether we had a CGI effect or a guy in a bunny suit. As long as the plot holds up and you really love the characters, then we're home and free."

Do you know if Ray Harryhausen has seen the series?
"You know, I don't. Someone asked us once if we were ripping off Ray. I'm not uncomfortable with that question, because obviously he is the king. But it's more that I grew up watching Ray Harryhausen and George Pal and Willis O'Brien; and in the B-movies Bert Gordon. It's almost like me personally saying thank you: thank you for my childhood and thank you for giving me a sense of magic and wonder that I still have. Maybe now in a little way I can turn around and pass them on to someone else. When you look back and you think of Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Jim Danforth, George Pal: these guys had no money, no time, and they produced movies that influenced so many people. I'm sounding like a preacher."

I'm hoping to see Ray later this year.
"Tell him I said hi. I haven't seen him since... I used to work for a magazine in the States called Starlog and we did a couple of things on Ray while I was there."

You were founding editor?
"Not of Starlog. I was the founding editor of Fangoria. I was one of the editors and half the staff of Starlog. I had twelve different names. Which is great training, by the way. You know how it is with deadlines. I was working on three magazines for the same publishing company: Fangoria, Future Life and Starlog. You would come in in the morning and you would be writing a science article on space stations for one of the magazines. Then somebody would come in and say, 'We need three pages on Lou Ferrigno. By three o'clock.' Oh fine! But that was a lot of fun."

What were Starlog and Fango like to work on in the really early days?
"It was hysterical. I used to be an A&R man at Columbia Records. And I totally burnt out after Born to Run, because - boy! - that was like pulling teeth, getting that out. So I answered an ad in the New York Times and went up to meet Kerry O'Quinn who was one of the publishers. It was such a tiny, tiny place! The editor-in-chief's office at that time was a reconverted storage closet! His desk was positioned longways so he wouldn't have to climb over it to get to his chair. So when I started working there, they moved to bigger offices, but they were still smallish. It would have two people in an office with their desks facing each other, so it looked like a Ferrante and Teicher piano set-up. There was only us, really, and Cinefantastique. But we had a schedule; I believe we were published ten times a year. Then we started Fangoria as a one-shot; then we had poster magazines. Then we had Future Life which was sort of a pre-Omni Omni magazine. It was like a Marx Brothers movie with ferns. You had people like Boris Vallejo doing artwork. He had no money! And everyone felt sorry for him."

How long did you stay on Starlog and Fango for?
"I was there three years. Then I decided that it was time.to see if I could make a living writing freelance. I had been writing. I had published a couple of novels that I wrote at night while I had my full-time job."

Was this The Paradise Plot and The Suicide Plague?
"Yes!"

You see: I've done my research! Tell me a bit about those two novels.
"Oh God! Well, actually The Paradise Plot was published because I was pissed off. Future Life were having a series on what life on a space station would be like, on an L5 colony. Everyone was writing these little articles: everything's going to be fine, everything's going to be perfect, we're all going to kiss and hug and play Donovan records. So when it came for me to do the chapter, I was wondering what would happen if you had a loose cannon up there, like Ed Gein. Well, I was called into the publisher's office and they skinned me alive. It was like: how dare I have such a jaded, cynical attitude, blah blah blah? So I figured, 'Ah!'

"Then I went out one day with an editor from Bantam books who worked with Fred Pohl. I knew Fred, but I didn't know this lady, so we were just talking. We got lacquered and started complaining about attitudes: when people looked to the future, they were always expecting pie in the sky. I said people are people, so she said, 'Why don't you do up a little outline?' Now, at this point, apart from Sherlock Holmes, I had never read a mystery. So I went to a book store and I said, 'I'd like $30-worth of mystery novels'! They said, 'Do you want the good stuff, or The Crap That Sells?' so I said, 'Well, how about half and half?' I read a lot of crap, and then I fell in love with people I'd never read at that point in my life: Chandler, Hammett, and at that point Elmore Leonard wasn't known as a mystery writer but for his westerns. So someone said, 'You should check out Elmore Leonard. He's starting to write mysteries.'

“So I read all that stuff and thought, 'Yes, this is cool.' So I handed in this outline and they bought the outline and I got the book out. And it did well enough - or they felt sorry for me enough; I'm not sure which - that I did the second one. [Although it meant nothing at the time of this interview, it has since become notable that the central character of these two novels is named Harry Potter - MJS] Then I felt cocky enough in 1980, because I had been a rock'n'roll writer as well, that I had enough freelance stuff going on that I could pay my rent. Then I wrote a book on Roger Corman. I figured, 'Well, I've been in New York for ten years. Gee, maybe I'll pack up my dogs and go to California.' So I came out here with no plans at all and walked into Roger Corman's office - by that time we knew each other - and said, 'You know, I think it's about time I wrote a movie for you.' So he just went, 'Okay.' I wrote a movie..."

Which movie was that?
"God! Eventually it wasn't so much released as let loose. It was called Oddballs. It was a grotesquely unfunny comedy; it has all the comedic timing of a major telethon. Then I did a fantasy adventure for him that was filmed in Argentina! That was hideous, called Wizard Wars. Again it did so well on tape that they had a sequel."

That's not the same as Wizards of the Demon Sword, is it?
"No."

I guess they must just film hundreds of wizard films in Argentina. [Wizard Wars was released as Wizards of the Lost Kingdom - MJS]
"As a matter of fact, this was filmed bad because 90% of the actors were speaking their lines in English phonetically. And they would just drop stuff. We had one entire speech, a pivotal speech dropped. And the line that the actor read was, 'Good! Good! Varrry good!' And I'm going, 'Holy Jeez...'! I wrote 400 loop-lines for this movie. By the time they cut together the usable footage, we had a 62-minute movie. So Roger, undaunted, went out and he assembled 20 minutes of footage from other sword and fantasy films that he had done. And that was both the prologue - that had nothing to do with the movie - and during the movie, three or four times, characters have flashbacks to other movies!"

That's Roger Corman. That's what he does.
"I know. At a certain point, I found myself behind a Moviola. I had never seen a Moviola, let alone worked on one. And I'm in an attic in Venice, California, and it's about 120 degrees, and I'm looking at bad footage from Argentina. And I just thought, 'You know, life doesn't get much better than this.'!

"I'll just tell you this. We had a flying lion that was supposed to be in the movie. So they had a costume and the wings and they had a crane. Well, the director got fired after a day. So the lead actor and the Argentinian producer decided that they were going to direct the film themselves. So the first thing they did was cut out the lion. Now unfortunately, the lion was the sidekick. So they took off the wings. Now you had a guy in a lion suit, who looked like he was Nana the dog in a bad production of Peter Pan, the kind of production where you see a play and get a sandwich. So they said, 'Well, why don't we just stand him up?' So now there's a guy standing up in a lion suit!"

All you need is a tin man and a scarecrow and you're there!
"Oh no, it wasn't even like that. It looked like someone in seedy pyjamas. So they covered him in fur. Now they had something that looked like... something the cat threw up. So to really polish it off, they covered the fur with yak hair. So basically, in this movie the young wizard has a sidekick that looks like a six-foot-three hairball with bell-bottom legs."

Like Cousin Itt grown up.
"Yes, except it was white! I have no idea what this thing looked like. Mystery Science Theatre wouldn't touch this. It was really a mess. From there I went to working for Charles Band and met Stuart Gordon on a film. And then Stuart and I and the producer of one of our movies came up with the idea of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. From there I moved up - or down, depending on your point of view."

This is bizarrely synchronous, because our next issue has got an interview with Stuart Gordon in it to tie in with Space Truckers.
"Really? Oh cool."

And the next issue has an interview with John Carl Buechler, who did Troll, which was one of yours.
"I wouldn't even go into Troll, man! I wouldn't even go into that film! Suffice to say that it bankrupted Empire Pictures!"[The central character in Troll is also called Harry Potter! - MJS]

What was your connection with it?
"I wrote it and then hid. The nicest complement I ever got for Troll was that a whole bunch of us went to see it on opening night. At the time I was a tequila man, and somebody brought a bottle of tequila in their purse into the theatre. It didn't take me long to know I'd need it. So afterward we were holding a kind of wake for the film. Somebody from the studio was there and said to me, 'You know, if you closed your eyes, it sounded good'! Oh great; now I have a career in radio! If they bring back Inner Sanctum I can write! Stuart was okay, though. He's an amazing man, Stuart Gordon, he's brilliant."

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is really not the sort of film we associate with him.
"Well, you know, it's interesting because we did Dolls together. He has children, and so does Brian Yuzna, who did Re-Animator and Dolls, and they wanted to do a movie that their kids could see. We all sat down and came up with this idea and I did a treatment, and Disney flipped out over it. My only regret about that whole episode, that whole time period in my life, is that Stuart did not get the chance to direct that movie. Because I know it would have been, not really that different, because we really went out of our way to do a traditional Disney film. But it would have been a little smarter, and it certainly would have been more coherent. Out of everything I've ever done, that's the only disappointment that I've had; not getting to have Stuart direct that."

But the rest of it you're pretty pleased with? Even Troll?
"What are you gonna do? When you put the words on paper, you have to hope that maybe three out of ten words survive. Which is the nice thing about Sinbad. It's really a nice experience to write something and then see it in dailies a month later. In film, that just doesn't happen."

I believe you also did a few Tales from the Crypt.
"Yes, I did Tales from the Cryptkeeper."

The cartoon series.
"That was really interesting because I had never dealt with a network before. And man, the things you have to go through! It basically depends on how much fibre the person you're dealing with has had that morning for breakfast. Because you're dealing with censors, you're dealing with children's watchdogs. To me it was amusing, because when I was little, the Catholic Church back East had something that they called the Legion of Decency. Now, in the Catholic newspaper they would print ratings for all the movies. Horror movies almost across the board were rated 'O' - 'objectionable in part for everybody'. So kids weren't allowed to see them. Fortunately, most of our movies were so obscure that they didn't make the list.

"So my mom would make me call the arch-diocese of Newark and I'd get a little old lady on the phone: 'Yes, may I help you?''Yeah, I'd like to know the ratings for Circus of Horrors and A Bucket of Blood.' And she'd say, 'Oh no, you can't see those! Your mind will turn to tapioca!' So I'd hang up the phone: 'Thank you, lady.' And my mom would say, 'What did she say?' and I'd just go, 'Oh, she said they was fine'! So I'd go out and see these movies and I didn't become an axe-murderer. But apparently now, everyone's worried that if a child sees someone turn into a werewolf and attack someone that they're going to actually become a lycanthrope when they grow up. As opposed to watching the evening news, where the body count is in two or three digits. It's a very, very interesting retro time period in terms of morality. Everyone seems to think they have a lock on it."

Do you think that's why clean-cut, nice things like Sinbad are so successful?
"Well, I don't know that it's because they're clean-cut and/or nice. I think it's nice to sit down with a show and go to a movie, or even read a book, where there is a hero. And the hero basically isn't embarrassed to be a hero, and isn't embarrassed that he's working for the good guys. He's not a closet heroin addict, and he doesn't snort coke, and he doesn't come home and beat his children. It's just, 'I'm a hero. Hello! You're bad. I'll get ya.'

"I think overall, in terms of the recent revival in fantasy action on television, that people kind of crave that. At the end of the day, you're in a job that you hate, or you're going to school and you're bored stiff, you have to pay the rent, you have to do this, or you have to do whatever, you're just burnt. And you can turn on a TV set and see someone who has problems that are slightly different and a lot more grotesque than yours. Which is worse: dealing with a teacher you hate or a sixty-foot cyclops who's carnivorous? Although oftentimes they feel the same. This guy just steps up to the plate and confronts evil. It's kind of a reassuring feeling that yes, there are people that still think this way."

Let me just go through a few recent projects. What is Omega Doom?
"Omega Doom is this strange movie that Rutger Hauer stars in, and Albert Pyun directed it. The only time I ever met Albert was about 15 years ago, and the reason we remembered each other, is we both wear Hawaiian shirts. I had worked with the producer on the film, prior to this, and they needed a re-write - a drastic re-write, four weeks before production. So I thought, 'Yes, here's a really good idea.' So I did a re-write and it's a very, very stylised post-apocalyptic movie about basically a loner who's almost like an avenging angel. But he's an android."

An android? In an Albert Pyun movie? No way!
"It's a stretch, but we thought it's about time he made that leap!"

I don't know if that's out over here yet. Videos come out all the time under odd names, and we go, 'What the hell is this?'
"I know!"

And they're usually by Albert Pyun! No, I'm a sucker for his stuff. The sign of a good film is killer androids or giant ants. If it hasn't got either of those, I'm not interested.
"That's why I was so disappointed with the last Meryl Streep film."

I think they edited them out after its first run. Anyway, it says here, 'ABC and Disney have chosen him to write Babes in Toyland'. Babes in Toyland?
"Well, yes. But not the drecky version. I am a total, total, total Laurel and Hardy fan. My company is called A Fine Mess Incorporated. My house, right now I have run out of wall-space. As I speak right now, six feet away from me are life-size cut-outs of the boys, next to Laurel and Hardy clocks. These guys just saved my butt at a time in my life when I just needed levity, there they were. And they did Babes in Toyland, and it's a very twisted movie, it's kind of creepy.

"And like a lot of Laurel and Hardy's pictures that had music in it, it was almost completely terrible except for Laurel and Hardy. It's a trap that some comedians fell into, like the Marx Brothers. You'd love the Marx Brothers, but then you had to sit through Zeppo crooning a tune: 'Oh God.' So I came up with an idea about two guys, but they're not Laurel and Hardy. There's a lot more physical comedy, and it skews much more towards traditional comedy than Frankie Avalon and Annette and Ed Wynn running around the Disney lot being cute. We'll see. That's in the development stages, so it might or might not happen."

The other thing that's got us all excited is To Serve Man. Is this going to get made?
"To Serve Man, I just dropped out of. And it's something that I wanted to do for the last five years. The producer was wonderful, and he tracked me down, and I signed to do it. Then basically what happened is that Sinbad turned into my life. So I didn't want to do a bad job or a perfunctory pass at it, because I really love Damon Knight. But they are developing it at CBS in the States as a television film."

How are they going to pad it out to two hours? It just builds up to that one great joke at the end.
"The thing is, I don't know whether they'll pursue this idea, but I came up with something that basically that punchline is the end of the first hour. The second hour is, if you take that and spin it forward, set it aboard the spaceship. That's when the fun begins. Whether or not they'll go forward in that direction, I don't know."

The Encyclopaedia of SF says there are 13 books in the Traveller series by DB Drumm. It says that you definitely wrote the first one, but they think that most of the rest were written by John Shirley.
"No. John is... Were there 13 books in the Traveller series?"

It lists 13.
"Jeez! Do they combine Traveller and The Marauders?"

I don't know. It goes up as far as #13: Ghost Dancers.
"Oh yes. I did all of them, except for... I don't have the list in front of me. I didn't do, I think, three of them. Whenever you see ones that have large animals, like a Buddhist monk riding on a 15-foot rat, that's John. Mine were more spaghetti western hardcore stuff. Then I did a series of books as Michael McGann: The Marauders. I don't know how many of those I did. They were post-apocalyptic, swashbuckling, guns'n'ammo books that won the accolade of the mercenary crowd! 'Hey! You like guns? I like guns!' I'm thinking of moving to the Republic of Texas."

Finally, I have your bio in the press notes, which I suspect you wrote yourself...
"Yes."

'As a plumber', it says 'you haven't accomplished a hell of a lot.' Are you getting better at being a plumber?
"Yes, actually, I can do something. When the toilet runs, I can do something more than just jiggle the knob. I actually know how to screw around with that little chain inside the tank that really is the all-important link to the flush chain."

If the writing collapses, you've got a second career.
"And if my plumbing continues like that, I would like to get in touch with Jim Cameron, because I think for $200 million I think we probably could film a scintillating film about my toilet. We would have to use a few thousand CGI shots."

Or you could get back with Stuart Gordon and do Honey I Flushed the Kids Away.
"I was thinking more along the lines of the Titanic. One thing I did want to tell you in terms of Zen, because I can't say enough about this guy. He's the nicest guy in the world, and just an incredible trooper. One thing that might be interesting is that he actually was the assistant fight director at the Royal Opera House. He earned an advanced certificate from the Society of British Fight Directors, and he went to school and the London Academy. He went to the Summer programme on Shakespeare."

The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, LAMDA. That's one of the really big ones.
"And he wound up doing fight scenes. That's kind of a lost art in itself, especially in television. There's a lot of jumping and running and leaping, but not a lot of actual swordplay."

So does he do all his own fight sequences?
"Yes. He missed out a couple of days. He actually got the chicken pox. And the way he got it was typical. He had all these schoolkids come to the set. And one of the kids had the chicken pox, and he had never had the chicken pox when he was a kid. He continued this episode, it was the samurai episode, he continued until he physically he couldn't move. He would not leave. They had so much pancake on him, he was sweating through it. They put different lenses on so he didn't look like a George Romero film festival. This guy is just amazing. I'm not going to say the first season was easy because it really was not. We had everything going against us, and he just pulled everyone together. So I would like to tip my hat to him.”

Brooke Nevin played Rachel in the children's TV series Animorphs. I interviewed her over the phone in August 1999 for a piece that appeared in The Sunday Times - no, honestly! She subsequently appeared in episodes of Smallville, Supernatural, Charmed and The 4400 as well as the DTV sequel I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.

How would you describe Rachel, your character in Animorphs?
"I'd say that she's the bold one of the group. A leader, in that she's a risk-taker and she's a go-getter. She's very outgoing and very adventurous."

How did you land this role?
"We all auditioned for the parts. My agent sent me out and then they called me in to audition. So then, I guess, three auditions later they decided to pick me."

What did you have to do in your auditions?
"Basically, for the first audition they gave all the girls one part and then they gave all the boys another part, so everyone initially tried out for Rachel. So they had me read for the role. And then they gave me more specific sides - sorry, I'm using the TV lingo! - other scenes to do. And then I just redid them for the third audition. They paired us up at the end: I was paired with a Tobias in the audition. And thank goodness - they picked me!"

How did you feel when you learnt you had the part?
"Oh, I was ecstatic. I couldn't believe it, actually. I think I was almost shocked too because it was the biggest role I'd ever gotten. So it was definitely very exciting."

I suppose an ongoing series requires more commitment than a guest role.
"Yes, it was actually a little scary at first, because when you're doing a series it's going to be five months' non-stop filming. I thought, 'Oh my goodness. How am I going to do this?' And then everyone was older than me, all my co-stars, so I thought, 'Oh no, what if they think I'm a baby?' So it was nerve-wracking until the first day of shooting and then after that it was all fun."

What did you think when the five cast members got together for the first time and you all got to know each other?
"I think I knew from the first day that we'd have good time. Everyone was very pleasant, very fun-loving, outgoing, special in their own way. So I think we clicked right off the start. It was a good match."

Had you read any of the books before you made the series?
"I had gotten the books initially to study for my audition. So I got a couple of books before they called me in - which helped a lot for character study and looking for the Rachel personality. Some of my friends had heard about the books before, but I didn’t know of them before I auditioned for the role."

Are you reading them now to keep up to date with how the character's developing?
"I have read a lot of the books. I think I'm up to... 25, or something? I know there's more, but I keep up with them every so often just to make sure that I know what's going on."

Is there anything in the later books that you can see has been based on what you do in the TV series?
"For the TV show, we do tend to take some of the storylines from the books. Some of them we just have to omit because it's really hard to film some of the scenes. Of course in books everything's left up to the imagination but it's definitely harder to actually put that onto film. I haven't read any the really recent ones lately. But we have done The Stranger and The Reaction and basically the whole story premise has stayed the same."

How are you finding working with the animals?
"Oh, I love it! It's a wonderful learning experience. And it makes for some candid moments, I have to say, as well."

Like what?
"Well, okay, the tiger. Shawn had to actually put his hand on its nose once and that was pretty scary fun because a tiger is pretty big, right? So he had to go and actually touch his nose, but he told us afterwards that when he had gone to put his fingers on its nose, they actually went right up it! His instinct was to pull them out quickly and run away, but you can't do that or else it'll eat you or something! So he had to do it very slowly, very carefully and the trainer is like, 'Okay, back up, back up.''Okay, okay.' So I'm sure that was quite an ordeal for him. I have mishaps with the hawk now and then; it does funny things sometimes."

Are you okay handling the icky animals like the cockroach?
"The cockroach? That was fun. Nadia and I, we're not particularly fond of bugs. Nadia actually was the one who had to hold it in one of the scenes where we all acquire DNA. They had sedated the cockroach by putting it in a jar sitting in cold water, but it didn't work. So it was very skittish, the little cockroach, and it jumped out of our hands. And they said, ‘Whatever you do, don't let it get away because you wouldn't want a film set infested with cockroaches.' So we mustered up enough courage, while everyone else is screaming and jumping, to actually pick it up and put it in a bucket. So we were pretty proud of ourselves."

Did they explain to you at the audition that you would be handling animals?
"They did ask us, but they put it in a discrete way: 'How do you feel about animals?' So I think we're all enjoying working with the animals. I don't think there's any particular animal that we don't like working with."

How are the actually morphing sequences filmed?
"There's a couple of different parts to it, I guess. In a morphing scene, we'll do the beginning of the morph on location, with the background, and then we have to do it again in front of a green screen. And that will be filmed after they've filmed the animal doing whatever it will do, because we'll try to mimic whatever the animal has done. We have to match our faces together, or our body or whatever part they'll be morphing in the shot. Then they add the sounds or whatnot in post-production."

How did you feel when you first saw yourself morphing?
"The very first morph that I saw was Jake's morph when he morphs into a dog. We were all together when we saw the first morph and we were all amazed; we thought it was wonderful. It was nothing like we'd ever seen when we first saw it, so it was pretty exciting, pretty different."

How has being in a regular show affected you? Are you recognised on the street?
"I do get recognised here and there. I went to my sister’s dance class a couple of months ago and some little kids were looking up through the window and pointing and saying, 'Um, who is that?' My sister gets a kick out of that! Here and there. Not too much though."

Are you getting fan mail?
"I think most of the fan mail gets forwarded to Scholastic Productions, so I don't get any direct fan mail."

How has this affected your career? Are you getting offers to do other shows?
"Well, I'm still in the auditioning phase, so I don't actually get offers to do things. That would be nice though! But I'm not at quite that point yet"

What do your friends think about you starring in a TV series?
"Oh, they think it's great. They have a ball watching it. Sometimes they make fun of me, but they treat me just the way they always have and that's just how I would like it. I wouldn't want it any other way."

I understand you've just finished season two. How does that differ from season one? How have things developed?
"There are some changes. It has less of a dark feel. I think we added some more spunk, I guess you could say, to the series. There's some funnier moments, it's more comedic. So it has a bit of a lighter feel. So maybe little kids that were too afraid to watch the show for the first season might be able to handle it for the second season. And I think they're getting more high tech with the morphs too. They're going to try morphing when we're moving and things like that. So it's something to look forward to, I think."

What about the characters? How have they changed?
"I would say some relationships have evolved here and there. I think as a cast, as a group, we all had more fun this season. We were much more relaxed and I think our acting abilities have improved since the first season. So I think it's a general, overall improvement."

How do you cope with having a different director every episode?
"We actually did have quite a few different directors. I think it gave a different flavour to the show each time. It was fun having different directors, being able to work with their different styles, so I think it was a good experience."

You were in an episode of Goosebumps.
"That was called 'A Shocker on Shock Street' and I played the part of Erin, this crazy scientist's daughter who dares her friend into going into her dad's workshop and checking out his scary monster things that he's made up for this amusement park. We end up going on a ride and meeting these monsters."

Did having worked on Goosebumps help you in getting the Animorphs role?
"I would say that any role I got prior to Animorphs as an actor definitely took me one step closer to getting bigger and better roles, for sure. Because you have to start somewhere, and it’s just a case of building up experience - and a longer resume, which always helps!"

You were also in an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?
"Yes, I did that this past January. I played the part of Danni on that one, and my best friend goes missing after snowboarding and it's presumed that she's lost or dead or something like that, but I'm determined to find her. It turns out that there's a certain energy-sucking monster involved in the story. I set out to find my friend but certain things get in the way, I guess."

What do you think are the main differences between Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Goosebumps?
"I would say, normally Goosebumps tends to end on a lighter note and Are You Afraid of the Dark? tends to leave the audience a bit 'hmm…' afterwards. But I remember on this Goosebumps episode it was sort of a spooky feeling too. Maybe Are You Afraid of the Dark? is geared towards a slightly higher audience range, age-wise. There's not too many differences, the genre's very similar. When I filmed Are You Afraid of the Dark? I filmed it in Montreal so most of the crew spoke French - that was the main difference, I guess."

You've done a couple of films.
"Yes, I did a movie of the week for Showtime Network in the States called Running Wild and that was actually shot in Zimbabwe in Africa, so that was an experience."

Was that directed by Tim Bond?
"Yes, that was with Tim Bond as well."

He's doing a movie about land mines in Africa right now.
"Yes, I heard he was back there."

What was Running Wild about?
"I played this daughter of an army pilot and her mother dies so to start a new life our father takes us to Africa where he's a helicopter pilot for a wildlife reserve. And I make friends with a baby elephant that was stranded by poachers who killed her mother. So it was a friendship that evolves between a baby elephant and this girl. And poachers get involved in the story, and my brother and I find out that one of the main contributors to this wildlife rehab centre is actually the guy behind the huge poaching operation. It was pretty action-packed."

Did you see much of Zimbabwe while you were there?
"Actually we got to film in Harare which is the capital of Zimbabwe and then for the last couple of days of shooting we all flew to Victoria Falls. But I got to ride in the helicopter on my way from Harare to Victoria Falls, where everyone else had to take an aeroplane. So I got a wonderful view of the whole Zimbabwean landscape for three hours which was beautiful. And we flew over Victoria Falls and we landed in this village in the middle of nowhere. It was amazing."

Did you do a film called Short for Nothing?
"That was a very small actress role that I did in that one. I actually don't know exactly what that one's about – I couldn't tell you! It was very small. They called me actually at eight that night and they called me for a three o'clock call in the morning or one o'clock or something like that. At that time I don't know if I even knew what my own role was about, let alone the movie!"

You were in a show called called Real Kids, Real Adventures.
"That's based upon true life stories of kids who have proven themselves to be brave or adventurous in some way. Some of them are about fires or hot-air balloon crashes or aeroplane crashes. Mine was about a girl who got lost in the woods during the wintertime on a camping trip. So she had to take care of herself and survive for three days on her own until she was actually found."

Sounds like you're playing a lot of quite adventurous roles.
"Yes, it would seem so, wouldn't it?"

Are you happy doing those or would you rather do safer stuff?
"Hmm, I would say the adventurous roles are pretty fun. They definitely lend themselves to more action, but I don't think I have to worry about being typecast or anything."

I read that one of your favourite shows is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
"Yes, that was a while ago. I guess I sort of let that one go for a while. I missed the season finale but maybe one of my friends taped it or something. I like other shows too. My mom and I, we like Candid Camera. I like 20/20. I like Friends, that sort of things."

What would your dream show to be on?
"Hmm… I'd like to be on The Rosie O'Donnell Show! Friends would be fun to be on, that would be a cool show."

You'd like to do some comedy?
"That would be fun actually. I'd like to try my hand at that."

How have you grown and learned over the few years you've been acting?
"I think I've become more in touch with myself. It's always a challenge to be natural in front of the camera, to be yourself, and I think that I've definitely improved in that way over a couple of years. So I think that was the biggest challenge: just to be myself in front of the camera and let myself be open to it all, instead of keeping anything inside."

Do you hang out with the other cast members now you've wrapped Animorphs?
"Oh yes, oh definitely. Nadia's away travelling again so I haven't talked to her for about a week now. Especially her and I we keep in touch because we made best buds on set, so that was fun. I still keep in touch with the others."

Have you heard yet whether there's going to be a third season?
"I don't think we'll know for sure until the end of September. I don't know yet."

Anything else lined up?
"Not yet. I'm trying, I'm auditioning, and I'd like to see something happen. But it's been a relaxing summer for me, which is nice."

Where do you want your career to go in the long term?
"I'd love to continue acting. This is my passion right now and I don't see myself losing that passion for quite some time. But I'd also like to pursue studies in a certain field, like visual arts or graphic design, or law or journalism or something like that. I always see myself, no matter what, going to university. So even if I was given the opportunity to become an actress, I'd definitely make the most of it but I'd definitely go back to university as well."

When I asked Ted Newsom, director ofThe Naked Monster, for an interview in September 2006, I didn't expect the extraordinary level of detail and fount of great stories that he sent back.

When you started making the film, how long did you expect it to take, and at what point did you realise that this was not going to be the case?
“From the time I first interviewed actor Ken Tobey in 1978, I wanted to do a send-up of ‘50s sci-fi monster films. I told him, ‘One of these days, I want to make a movie where you’re an old military guy, and some punk comes up with a way to kill the monster, and you say, “Son, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been fighting monsters since before you were born.”’ He smiled and said, sure.

“I’d always loved Tobey’s work. Whirlybirds was one of my favourite shows, and I’ve got this wonderful prenatal connection to The Thing - my mom and dad went to see it in Portland, Oregon before I was born - hell, I think it was before I was conceived. And they remember at one point, a big guy, a seven-foot giant, rose up from his seat and walked up to get popcorn. Everybody screamed. I’m sure it was a plan, a William Castle type ballyhoo gag.

“I wrote at least three or four variations on the script over the next few years, the constants being setting at least some of the story in the desert a la Jack Arnold’s films, the other being Tobey as a grumpy old Patrick Hendry. I know now that all of those scripts were flawed (the same could be said for the final film, I suppose), but the central idea never radically changed. It was going to be Airplane meets Godzilla. On an Ed Wood budget. And there’d be a grumpy, retired monster-fighter.

“I put together a reunion of The Thing in 1982 because the remake was coming out. There was a screening at the Fox Theater in Venice, California, and we had Ken there, and Robert Cornthwaite, Bill Self, Chris Nyby (who flew in from Hawaii for it), George Fenneman, several of the tech crew guys, and the husband of Margaret Sheridan and their two daughters. Maggie had died about three months earlier.

“In 1984, a guy bet me I couldn’t do a movie for $2,500. I hauled out the old scripts, took gags and lines, and did 25 page script, which condensed things to manageable size. That version of the project was designed as a half-hour short which could be shot in about four weekends (plus the time for effects). On that basis, I asked Wayne Berwick to direct it, since I was ‘producing’ (I put it in quotes, because I never saw myself as a cigar-chomping William Castle type) and had drawn the storyboards for both the live action and effects shots. I had enough to do. I also wanted to snare actors Les Tremayne and John Harmon, who were close friends with the Berwick family. Wayne’s dad Irv had been one of my teachers (Irv made Monster of Piedras Blancas), and I thought the request would be stronger if it came with that pedigree. And Wayne had done things I hadn’t, like actually directing a feature (Microwave Massacre) and a neat little short called The Shooter. Both of those were a lot slicker than any little films I’d ever done, and he’s great on a personal and technical level.

“I rewrote the female lead with references to Brinke Stevens in mind, and I knew she’d begun a career in marine biology before modelling and acting. For the early drafts I had my pal Ron Wilson in mind as a deputy sheriff, a sort of comic-relief character, which you probably don’t need in a comedy, but what the hell. Knowing his enthusiasm and improv comedy talent - and his availability - I rewrote the script with him as the male lead, the handsome, stalwart sheriff instead. The Rex Reason part, or Charles McGraw. The gag being that Ron looks nothing like that. The third corner of the triangle was a Richard Carlson investigator who thinks he’s 007-cool. I asked John Goodwin, ‘Do you want to be in a monster movie with Kenneth Tobey?’ That was all it took.

“The motivation for doing the film was threefold. First, I wanted to make the movie for years. Second, all of us younger sorts needed film on ourselves, and this would make a neat portfolio piece for everybody. And third, I wanted to do a tribute to Gene Lourie and Jack Arnold, both of whom I knew, and both of whom were very, very ill. Jack had had a leg amputated, Gene had had several severe strokes, and I wanted to do something that would make them laugh and understand we loved their stuff. As we were doing it, there was the thought that this might lead to pitching the project as a ‘real’ movie, if anybody got the jokes.

“So within the original parameters, what we started to do could’ve been shot in about eight or nine days, so, three or four weekends, over the summer of 1984.

“Originally, the idea was to do a film that would visually emulate something you’d see at 3.00am on a UHF channel: black and white, scratched, grainy, muddy sound. We shot on Super-8 film stock, primarily for cheapness (16mm would’ve cost about four times as much), but also because the image would roughly match the grainy, dupey 16mm stock footage. I killed the colour-burst on the videotape early on, though our film footage (except for the effects shots) was on colour stock. I never wanted to shoot on tape, since it would have looked like tape, not film.

“My then-partner John Brancato and I got a job writing Spider-Man for Cannon. During that time, Cannon announced a project called It Ate Cleveland, which was the same spoof concept, but it had nothing to do with our film; no one had seen it. I did discuss our project with one of the execs there, trying to convince them that ours would be funnier, or at least get better press because of the cast (a la Cannon’s House of Long Shadows). I didn’t think their script was funny, but I knew the market for giant-monster spoofs was slim, and if they did one, ours would be dead in the water. As it turned out, they didn’t do theirs, of course. And naturally, I poured my Spider-Man money back into finishing our monster movie.

“Overall, there were about 18 days of shooting, though a lot of those were days in which we’d shoot for two hours then quit. The animation effects took about four or five months. That version was essentially finished in late 1984. We had the first screening at a now-gone place in West Hollywood called EZTV. Agar was there, Robert Shayne, and about forty people. Shayne was in his eighties, nearly blind and hard of hearing, sitting right in front. About a half-hour into it, he turned to his wife Betty and said (loudly enough for everyone to hear), ‘Is there a plot to this?!?!’ That got a laugh, and it should have told me something. But we got laughs at the right places, and people clapped and cheered when the boys helped Ken Tobey on with his old monster-fighting suit. As far as that version of the concept, it was finished.

“In the wake of that was: ‘Okay, what now?’ We were all jazzed that this could be a ‘real’ movie, that we could pitch it to a company and do it on some sort of real budget, with 35mm film instead of Super-8, real crowds instead of stock shots, and so on. I sent a few copies out and got nice reactions. Leonard Maltin wrote back an encouraging letter (from which I pulled a quote for our box years later). Joe Dante got a kick out of it and said, ‘You ought to cut it down to 20 minutes and send it out on video.’ That hurt, because it indicated it was too long (and he was right). Joe, as you know, later did the same sort of film within Matinee, using Bob Cornthwaite as a scientist.

“Off and on, we pitched a professional remake of it to several places, with near-success, only to have the rug pulled out from beneath us each time. Soon after the one-hour version was finished, we had a very ‘up’ meeting at CAA, one of the hottest agencies in Hollywood, with a fledgling agent named Richard Lovette, who went on to be the company president. He wanted to package us and the project with one or the other of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker boys from Airplane, who were going their three separate ways. He asked how soon I could deliver a feature-length script and I - foolishly - said, ‘Two weeks.’ I should have said six, or eight, or whatever. But I hurriedly did an expanded script based on the material we had, and frankly, it wasn’t very good as a script. Lots of gags, but not a lot of plot or character.

“A while later we pitched it at New World, which would have been perfect. The executive we dealt with, Tony Randell, was the guy who thought of using Raymond Burr in Godzilla 1985, and Tony got the jokes. The production head was Steve White, a brilliant, funny guy, who in fact was an old mate of Ron Wilson’s back in their improv comedy days. And it was going to happen - except that another executive at New World, Margaret Lescher, thought a sequel to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes would be a better shot. They did that instead, and from many aspects, she was right. That was a funny movie, and spun off into a profitable TV show for them. Pissed us off, though.

“We were about to make it at Trans World, where the script coverage (the classified in-house synopsis and analysis) was very positive. Their head of production was Paul Mason, who also got the jokes. His first gig was writing the script for the US inserts for King Kong Vs Godzilla. Paul was receptive, and among other things, suggested Marie Windsor for a role, which was right in line with my thinking. Instead, Trans World did Killer Klowns from Outer Space. You notice a pattern here?

“There was a producer who’d worked with Crown International, Mike Castle, who had me and John Brancato rewrite the script. I don’t know how serious he was in pitching it. Via Mike, there was yet another producer, an older guy named Vernon Becker, whose most notable credit was Dagmar’s Hot Pants for AIP, and Nocturna, which… well. He thought it would be a perfect vehicle for Don Ameche as the old monster fighter. ‘He’s the right age, and he just won the Academy Award!’ I felt he was unclear on the concept. The point wasn’t that the character was old, the point was people like Ken Tobey would bring the same air of verisimilitude to the project as John Wayne brought to The Shootist.

"Another pair of guys pushed it for a while, Bill Blaylock and Peter Rae, who had made Grandview USA with Jamie Lee Curtis, which was a terrific little film. Again, I rewrote the script to incorporate their suggestions, we cut a promo trailer from the footage we had - and again this went nowhere. And Luigi Cingolani, the guy who produced Spaced Invaders, had it for a while, wanting to do the monster effects in CGI, which was just then coming to the fore. I thought that was way too high tech for the concept and by that time I didn’t want to rewrite the script for the tenth time. He hired a young guy named Robert Coffee to do a rewrite. He’d done uncredited work on a Troma film, Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD. He came up with some funny gags, but off-point as far as I was concerned. And that went nowhere. I didn’t end up using anything Robert added, but he was a nice guy. I later suggested him as a writer and he got a magazine gig or two.”

In choosing the footage from films and trailers, did you know what you wanted and where to find it, or did you ‘browse’ movies looking for clips that could be used in some way?
“I knew that most pre-1978 trailers and a lot of older features were in the public domain, and figured this would be the only way to get some ‘scope’ to what was otherwise a little backyard film. A friend of mind, Eric Hoffman, had a collection of about five or six hours’ worth of 16mm monster trailers, and I borrowed them all and transferred them to tape, figuring how to use it in conjunction with new live action or effects shots. Some of the stuff was generic, like crowds fleeing or things exploding, but the best stuff was specific action which indicated possible funny variations. For instance, there’s a bit in the Gorgo trailer where the ranting religious nut with a signboard gets trampled by the crowd. Okay, a line of voiceover and it becomes: ‘Scientology! Scientology! Get your free personality test - Aaaggghhh!’

"Likewise the crowd fleeing over the bridge in Reptilicus. We did a shot of Ron as the sheriff calmly directing the frightened crowd in the correct screen direction, right to left, to match the stock shot, and set up the gag with one line of dialogue (‘Stay calm! Everybody! Over the bridge!’). In that shot, by the way, I’m one of two guys running in the background carrying a sofa. We shot that in an alley behind the effects guy’s house, and someone had thrown the couch away. It just struck me as goofy that two guys in a crowd would take the time to steal furniture at a time like that. There was a lot of military footage from the 1950s, which was designed to be in the public domain from get-go. So a lot of our fleeing crowds, the atomic bomb, cannons, tanks, was courtesy of the US Government.

“The good part about shooting in black and white was that the stock footage became slightly less obvious, but only slightly. That changed in The Naked Monster, of course, since we were dealing with colour. Abe Lim, who was the colourist and a good film maker in his own right - he made the film Roads and Bridges - did a yeoman job balancing the 10,000 different colours and film stocks. I don’t know that the haphazard mismatching of types of stock shots would work in any other type of film. Here, at least, there was a precedent. Stock footage from that era is usually incredibly obvious, like in Invaders from Mars and Plan 9.

“I went overboard, the equivalent of over-writing with imagery. I’d see a stock shot and then ask the effects guy to do a monster-turn to match it, often, with no particular funny thing in mind, just more destruction. While we were editing, it was Ron Wilson’s comment that got me back on track. He said, ‘It’s not funny. It’s just the monster knocking over another building.’ So at that stage - late 1984 - we cut the running time down by about 15 insufferable minutes.”

By the same token, how did you know when the film was finished? Were there intermediate cuts produced during those decades that you weren’t happy with?
“For kicks, about 1992, I slop-edited a version of the old show together using the original colour footage, although the FX shots were still in black and white. I wanted to see if it looked any good. That stuff was from a VHS copy done at a photo store, and looked dreadful. And by the time I dealt with Cingolani’s company, Cinergi, I felt like I was letting myself fall in love with the same woman over and over again, Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football. Every time, every damned time. Never again. I just tried to put the project out of my head and moved onto other things. By then I had a stock footage business, I was doing documentaries like 100 Years of Horror and Flesh and Blood, and I needed to move on. Several of the older actors had died, like Bob Shayne and John Harmon, which was disheartening. Ken Tobey was 67 in ’84 when we shot his footage and his back was already in bad shape. By 1994, he was using a walker. So shooting a remake was just impossible, at least with the cast I wanted - my original cast. I considered trying to colourise the animation shots, but by then the effects guy and I weren’t talking, and getting him to generate new footage was as much out of the question as paying $5,000 a minute to colourise old Super-8 black and white film.

“I drove by a place called Super-8-Sound every day on the way to work, and stopped in one afternoon. I saw a sample reel of stuff they’d done, transferring Super-8 film to tape on a high-end Rank Telecine apparatus. It looked great, as good as 16mm, so I decided to re-transfer all of the old footage. I already had the heart of a movie in the original footage, and the cast of veteran character actors I wanted. I had the notion to reunite the three principals for some new scenes, and I’d shoot all-new effects. I’d spent several thousand dollars on the transfer, and additional dough on toys and props and miniatures, having gotten all three to shoot for a week at SAG low-budget scale. As it turned out, my pals Ron and John abruptly decided they were busy after committing to it. Brinke stuck with her word, and I rewrote the new material around her character. Other gags that I’d envisioned giving to Ron and John’s characters, I just did with two anonymous guys (most of which I ended cutting out, anyway.)

“I paid JR Bookwalter a small chunk of change for the use of editing facilities, long enough to sync all the sound back up to the BetaSP video masters. Every goddamned line had to be individually placed, since we recorded with a separate audio recorder (or, later, a video camera) and it never, ever stayed in sync with the film image. Even know, there are plenty of places where the sync is a little wonky.

“Editing was always going to be a problem, because I didn’t have the equipment. I slop-edited the VHS copies together at home, but that’s problematic. This was before you could buy cheap editing systems. But when my friend Dave DeCoteau introduced me to Charlie Band and I started working for him; that gave me access to their editing system, which was absolutely first rate, high end, and cost nothing. I did a lot of the effects there myself, through trial and error. The errors are usually apparently in the final film. Given that a system like that usually rents for about $200 or $300 an hour and I worked on the movie for months, I got quite a deal.

“When I made the distribution deal with Chuck Adleman of Anthem Pictures, I asked if we could use his editing system to cut the 100 minutes down even further. His editor, JT, pushed the buttons, I gave the orders. In four hours, we cut out 16 minutes. Cutting the longer of Gloria Talbott’s two scenes hurt, because she was such a funny, bright woman. Of course, I hated to lose effects shots, like the whole Titanic and submarine sequences, but they just slowed the story down - such as it was. I didn’t really think the job was finished until I saw the finished DVD box. I’ve still got this sight gag I want to do with Kevin McCarthy. No, stop. I’m done. Finished.”

There must have been some dark nights of the soul when you thought the thing would never be complete. How did you overcome these?
“There’s a big, famous mansion in central California built over a period of several decades in the 19th century. The sole heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune, a dotty old lady, was told by her spirit guides that all the souls of all the Indians killed by bullets from Winchester repeating rifles were uneasy, and would come and get her and kill her when she finished building her mansion, since her family fortune was tainted with their blood. Being a sensible soul, she figured out a way around this by never finishing the house. She had contractors, carpenters, designers and plumbers work on it continuously, adding wings, adding floors, putting in hallways and doors that led to nowhere, as long as they kept building. It’s a crazy tourist site. They call it the Winchester House of Mystery.

“When I started shooting again in 1994, Brinke dubbed it the Winchester Video of Mystery. ‘As long as Ted keeps shooting, he’ll never die.’

“The biggest series of disappointments was during the time we were pitching it and then getting let down. I’d go through times when I was flush and spend money on it, then slow down to a crawl when I was low on cash and needed to move on, then come back up to speed when more money would roll in, but after I made the decision in ’94 to use what we had, I never had any real downs, just some patience severely tried.

“Had we ever been able to do it with any sort of budget, I would not have had to do most everything myself: the camerawork, the budgeting, supervising the transfer, making the effects, editing, and so on. That was trying, because there’s only one of me.”

What aspects of the film have changed the most over the course of its epic production?
“It’s in colour, for one thing. Some people say it was ‘funnier’ in black and white, like Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. I came to the conclusion that b/w would work against it in the marketplace - if it ever got there - and that it’s a comedy first, a tribute to the period second. The music is changed; now it’s almost all from the Ronald Stein Perma Music library, with which I was associated with for a couple years. And I had a wonderful sound mixer, Maui Holcomb, who did the best anyone could do with the audio.

“The length changed, of course. I ended up with a film I thought I was happy with, at 100 minutes. After a screening in Boston, that changed. Now it’s 86, and that’s closer to the mark. It’s still too long for some people, and others loved it at 100 minutes.

“I wish I would have had Ron and John, because there’s more I could’ve done with the odd relationship between the three characters. As Wayne has pointed out, they’re the heart of the story, and when you cut away from them, you start to lose people. As it is, Brinke then becomes pretty much the sole star of the middle third of the film. She can be such a good actress when given the chance and the material. I have always loved working with her, which we’ve done a dozen times over the years, me on screen for her documentary, her on screen for me, or as writing partners. Unlike other writing partners she’s had, with me, she’s actually made money. And unlike other partners I’ve had, I always love being with her.

“The effects changed, obviously. Although they’re certainly dorky, they’re a lot more sophisticated than the original stop-motion, primarily because I was dealing with video imagery and could do split-screens, mattes, and so on. There’s more interaction between the monster and the rest of the world - he picks a guy up like Konga did with Michael Gough, there are shots with him and a real background and a foreground miniature, I could key-in fire and explosions, and so on. We were limited on the first version by the medium. I did do some simple double-exposures with the Super-8 version, explosions, smoke, and so on, but you couldn’t really manipulate the images that much. And I did have fun making my own rubber monster suit. I aspired to the level of expertise seen in a typical Bert I Gordon movie. If you set your sights low enough...

“I need to tell you this silly thing. When we first started, Cathy Cahn (who played the sheriff’s secretary) asked me, ‘How are you going to do these monster effects?’ Little me, oblivious to the idea that not everyone was immersed in fanboy sci-fi movie tech talk, launched into an explanation, ‘Well, we’re considering stop motion, since it would be right for the period we’re spoofing, but I’m leaning more to a man in a suit, since we can generate footage faster.’ And she looked at me like I had two heads. ‘Is that going to be scary?’ ‘Well, of course, since it’s a comedy, we have some leeway, but if we use a man in a suit, we can do perspective shots and can use bigger models, and we won’t have to create miniature sets, so a man in a suit is probably the best.’ And she just shook her head, with this incredibly blank, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ look on her face. Finally I got it. When I said, ‘man in a suit,’ she was visualising some giant guy in a suit and tie running amok. The Amazing Colossal Businessman. Which was pretty funny.”

Was there anyone or anything you were hoping to include in the film which you weren’t able to use?
“I’d called Jeff Morrow when I was first coming up with gags and cameos for the script. He demurred pleasantly, since it was a non-union project. In any case, at that time in his life he had a grandfatherly beard, and I’m not sure anyone would have recognised him. Whit Bissell was another. I sat down with him and had a pleasant conversation of about an hour at his home, but he didn’t feel he was physically up for acting in anything. Forry Ackerman had suggested Ann Robinson, who was a doll and I did use her, but he also suggested Susan Cabot, whom I never contacted. My rationale was, she was never in a giant monster movie; maybe next time. That was too bad for me, because I would have gotten to meet her before her son bludgeoned her to death. Ah, me. Later on during the reshoot, I came up with scenes for Kevin McCarthy, and had Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze in mind for two soldiers on the patrol in the woods to hunt for the monster. Miller was ill at the time and I really didn’t think Seymour Krelboin without Walter Paisley was that big a draw, not that Jonathan Haze isn’t a nice guy, which he is. But I didn’t need it for the story. Out it went, but it’s in the supplemental material. There was a silly sight gag I wanted to do, which of course had little to do with anything - the monster steps on the empty flatbed of a truck and skids, then careens down the street like a skateboarder, then wipes out.

“The ‘big budget’ version also had a completely different ending. The A-bomb is used in the same way electricity is used in the film as it is; it doesn’t kill the monster, they just think it’s dead. I came up with an idea (John Goodwin made the initial suggestion) that Colonel Hendry should have a secret weapon he’s been hiding all these years, a Jules Verne type device. I dubbed it the X-112, after some over-the-counter nicotine-based speed we used to buy in the Army in Germany, when funds ran low at the end of the month and you couldn’t afford real drugs. Hendry and the boys take this leaky, delta-winged, flying thing and fight the monster, snaring him with a net and flying to a nearby volcano. He ejects the boys and flies himself, the X-112 and the monster into the volcano - ka-boom. Everyone stands around the airfield at night, sad, eulogising him (although General Mann keeps forgetting his name). Listen to the second half of the This Island Earth track on the old Dick Jacobs album Themes from Horror Movies and you can here the music that inspired the last scene. You’ll ‘hear’ the scene where Hendry’s X-112 suddenly comes into view. He’s not dead after all. He did the impossible. Of course. Hendry’s still alive.

“But enough was enough, or too much, according to some people.”

What were the differences and similarities between making this film and making one of the documentaries for which you are better known?
“The monster movie predated all of the clip shows I did. In fact my first compilation show, Monsters and Maniacs, came out of those Eric Hoffman 16mm trailer reels, along with a one-hour reel of Hammer stuff I got from Bill Longen of Trailers on Tape. And Brinke’s the hostess, with Ron Wilson as a masked killer in one sketch.

“Work-wise, it’s pretty much the same procedure. You look at the existing footage, put your thinking cap on, and figure out ways it should cut together, and what you need for interstitial material. (A great word, that. It means ‘between the stitches.’ I never knew that until I had to call the Turner headquarters for some clips, and they said ‘You have to talk to the Interstitial Department.’ I thought it was a surgery clinic.)

“I did a couple of patchwork jobs for Fred Ray (who’s a great guy, and I really should have had him in my movie, in the place of... well...), The Alien Within and bits of Fatal Justice. Same deal - look at what’s there, figure out what’s the most time-effective and cost-effective way of linking scenes, shoot it and cut it together.

How has The Naked Monster been received by audiences and critics?
“Most of the reactions have been very nice, very favourable. They get the jokes: Washington Post, DVD Talk, DVD Savant, Journal Now, CD Universe, IMDB, Green Briar Picture Shows.

“The major exception was a marathon sci-fi fest they had in Boston. A guy had seen it in a festival in Seattle and they actually requested it - then scheduled it for 1.30 in the morning, about 10 hours into an all-weekend marathon. The reactions on their website were about 90 per cent excoriating. Too long, cheap, stupid, unfunny, waste of time, unwatchable, and essentially, I was damned for wasting their valuable time. I thought, ‘Jeeze, I made this for sci-fi fans, and these people hated it. It’s got to be shorter.’ More than any personal worry I had about the length, that was the clincher. They’d run it in the annual Manchester fest, too, but again, it was a late-evening thing, 10 or 11 at night, and most everyone was apparently bagged or half-asleep, not exactly the best way to watch a comedy.”

What precisely does Ted Newsom do? Actor? Director? Editor? Have you got any sort of career path?
“I always figured I’d start acting again in my ‘middle age,’ since I was never a leading man type, and too young to be a character actor. I like it - no heavy lifting, no worries except hitting your marks (!) and remembering the dialogue. I had a blast playing a serial killer for Ron Ford in Dead Season, and have done three films for Fred Olen Ray just this year: head of the MIB, an English bobby, and a Cushing/Price style witchfinder, all in bikini comedies. And last year I started shooting a film with Brinke Stevens I call Idle Pursuits, a screwball romantic comedy aboard a ship, with elements of Bringing Up Baby and The Lady Eve. She plays a double role, and is as sweet and nerdy and sexy and nasty as I’ve ever seen her. I figured, I wouldn’t get a lot of chances from other people to play Cary Grant (in horn-rim glasses), so I’d better do it myself.

“I’m working on a Sinbad script with Ray Harryhausen, and that’s taking a long time; he lives there, I live here. I re-narrated the series Victory at Sea recently, which was a gas. It’s a brilliant show.

“Career path? It twists and turns. I thought I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up: make monster movies. Now that I’ve done it a number of times, a number of ways, it’s not enough. Now I’m not sure what I want to do when I grow up.”

What is your background? How did you get involved with films and film-making?
“I always liked telling stories one way or the other. I drew when I was a kid; taught myself how to read, essentially, by reading comics. Loved movies and realised that that might be a neat thing to do when I grew up. Dabbled in theatre in my teens and twenties, off and on since. Moved to California with my dad when I was about 23, because, y’know, they don’t make a lot of movies in Portland, Oregon. Or Reno, Nevada. Had no relatives in the industry, which was a drawback. Got married, started writing for newspapers and magazines, became a magazine editor for a couple years, then I partnered with John Brancato, convinced him we should write movies, and started back on the road to perdition. Got divorced, got sober.”

Finally, what are your memories of making Flesh and Blood, the Hammer documentary which was Peter Cushing’s final credit?
“That, surely, is another story, for another time. I’ll say this, though: I’m re-editing the show for UK distribution even now. And as long as I keep working on it, I’ll never die.”

Jon Niccum wrote the excellent noir fantasy shortTime’s Up, Eveand also contributed to the screenplay for Steve Balderson’sStuck!. He kindly answered a few questions by e-mail in March 2011.

How did you first hook up with Steve Balderson?
“In my former day job as Entertainment Editor of the daily paper here in Lawrence, Kansas, I originally wrote an interview feature about Steve's Firecracker. We started corresponding quite a bit after that.

“At some point he saw a film I had written called Merriman's Circle, which is about an elderly woman who believes she's being terrorised by a car that keeps appearing on her cul-de-sac. He then invited me to be the third writer on Stuck! But before that film got made, he got the funding to make Watch Out, and he asked me to play the fanatical father of the lead character (Matt Riddlehoover). That ended up being a really fun shoot, and I got to take part in some very memorable scenes. Even though I'm primarily a writer/producer, I actually got recruited for some cool acting gigs after that.”

You are credited with ‘contributions’ to the script of Stuck! - what did you contribute?
“Steve believed the original script (the debut by Frankie Krainz) was too long and read too much like a stage play. I cut out at least 30 minutes. And I massively rewrote the opening scene - and much of the interaction throughout between Daisy (Starina Johnson) and her mother. The rest was just tightening, clarifying plot points and adding little details in the dialogue. I feel proud of what I contributed, but I still think of it as Krainz's project.”

You and Patrick Rea have collaborated on several short films: how do you think the two of you have progressed over the course of your work together?
“We've made five short films together - two of which we co-wrote. We also have written two features together that will eventually be made by us or someone else. I think we've progressed in the sense that each movie we've made has been radically different from the previous one.

"Zero the Counter was a psychological thriller inspired by the premise of what might have happened if serial killer Ted Bundy had picked up fellow serial killer Aileen Wuornos. It was shot entirely outdoors as a road movie. Next was the more intimate, interior think-piece Merriman's Circle. Then we followed that up with the dark, dark comedy Paint Shaker which is about a workplace shooting in a hardware store. That was co-written with Jai Nitz, who's a well-respected comic book writer and a Bram Stoker Award winner. We then did a light supernatural comedy called Misfortune Smiles which has a hilarious lead performance by Jeff East of Superman fame as a charlatan fortune teller whose crystal ball actually starts working. The most recent is Time's Up, Eve which is an odd hybrid of neo noir and Val Lewton-style horror.”

What was the initial idea behind Time’s Up, Eve and how well do you think the film achieved this?
“Patrick had the premise and first draft - complete with a soul-stealing menace pursuing a woman around an abandoned city. It was called Time's Up, Will and was to be shot in black and white. But it was set in a post-apocalyptic future. Once we started collaborating, Patrick suggested we change the lead character to a woman, and I suggested we actually set the film in the 1940s.

“Of course, the ‘40s twist added all kinds of challenges. But I think the visual look and feel of the project is astounding. A big part of that is due to the cinematography of Hanuman Brown-Eagle, who approached each shot as if it were a painting. Structurally, I feel the piece works quite effectively. I've had a number of critics mention the movie creates the type of complex atmosphere that you normally only find in a feature, but it does so in an economical 11 minutes.”

What has the reaction to Time’s Up, Eve been like?
“Of all the projects I've been involved with, it's the most universally liked - despite the fact it’s arguably the oddest one we’ve done. It seems every week we've got it playing in another film festival. So far it's been winning some kind of award every time it screens.”

What’s next for you?
“We are rolling cameras on 21 April 21 2011 on Rhino. Patrick is directing a pilot-length script co-written by myself and Jai Nitz. It's a crime drama about a former professional football player (American football, not soccer) who's become a college-town drug kingpin. He takes in a protégé, but eventually the relationship becomes volatile and deadly. The film stars Malcolm Goodwin, who has been in films such as American Gangster and who is starring in the new TV series Breakout Kings, and Keith Loneker, who is in movies such as Lakeview Terrace, Out of Sight and Leatherheads. We've been working on this project for more than two years, and I can't believe it is mere weeks away.

“Aside from that, Patrick and I wrote a sci-fi thriller called The Mirror Watcher that ideally we hope to start shooting in the fall of 2012. I've learned some lessons from both Patrick and Steve Balderson that you actively have to be working on at least two projects ahead. That's how filmmakers like them can consistently be delivering the goods.”

Lieutenant Uhura herself - Nichelle Nichols - spoke over the phone to me on 7th February 1997. Bizarrely, the interview wasn't because of anything to do with Star Trek - it was to promote a CD reissue of an old album of hers! A version of this interview was published in SFX.

Your album Down to Earth is just out on CD. Are you worried that people might think your album is a novelty record?
"I don't know. I have no feeling about it. It's an original album that I did years ago and I'm delighted that they want to put it out, but whatever their reasonings are, only God and they know. I had no idea that they were doing that."

What do you think of the singing talents of your co-stars?
"They're entitled."

Do you consider yourself a singer or an actress?
"I started my whole career in musical theatre which means I was a dancer, I was a singer, I was an actress, I built sets, I directed! And it's just coincidental that the acting took off first over everything else. So I'm not a singer or an actress first. I'm just what I am. I'm a singer, I'm an actress, I'm a dancer, I'm a writer. That's what I do. And I'm very, very glad that people care enough about it to send me thousands of fan letters and to allow me to live as well as I do. And that's what I've always been all my life."

Touring with Duke Ellington must have been a big thrill.
"It was incredible. I was 14 years old and in a big musical in my home town, Chicago. And Mr Ellington came to see the show and asked to meet me. Two years later, when I was 16, he came back to town and asked me to create a ballet for one of his musical suites and to perform it. I did, and I toured with him for that American tour. And at the end of the tour, the band singer got sick and I went on a couple of times for her. It was totally incredible."

Was there ever any thought of doing anything other than entertainment?
"No. I was very blessed in always knowing what I wanted to do and what I wanted it to be, and by the grace of God I've been able to succeed in my chosen career."

You're obviously identified with the character of Uhura.
"Yes. Isn't that great?"

Has that been a help or a hindrance to your career, to be identified with one character?
"It's not a help or a hindrance to anyone. It's what you do with it. I think all the people in the show will always be known as those characters. And what characters to have attached to your name in life! The show is such a phenomenon all over the world. It's simply been an incredible experience."

At what stage in the '60s did you start to realise that Star Trek was becoming a phenomenon?
"Almost immediately, I realised that the scripts were marvellous, and above the average of anything that was on television at that time, and probably since. That did not mean that you realised this is going to be a big hit. As a matter of fact, we were concerned for it immediately, because it was too good. Good stuff was getting cancelled all the time, and a lot of tripe was still on."

It was cancelled after three years...
"Then its great popularity came in the re-runs."

Did you enjoy the films?
"Oh, I enjoyed the films immensely. We did six major motion pictures of a television series that we'd done ten years before."

Which is your favourite of the films?
"Two, four and six in that order."

So you agree that the even-numbered Star Trek films are the best?
"Exactly. They should skip seven and go directly to eight."

What do you think of First Contact?
"I haven't seen it but I understand it's very good."

You're the only one of the original main cast who hasn't appeared in a spin-off series. Have you been asked? Would you like to?
"I was asked and turned it down. I just didn't like what they were doing with Uhura, so I decided not to do it."

If the right script came up, would you do it?
"I'm an actress. I'm available for work, if the role is right."

The episode 'Plato's Stepchildren' had that notorious, ground-breaking kiss, the first inter-racial kiss on American television.
"Seems silly now, doesn't it?"

Was there a lot of opposition from the network?
"The network were very concerned about it, but to their credit, they went ahead with it. We got some of the largest fan-mail, and all of it was wonderful."

The irony is that it was banned for about 20 years in this country.
"You're kidding? You guys were further behind than we were!"

Over here Star Trek is still seen as a children's series.
"I don't get fan mail from children, from England. I think anybody with any intelligence sits down and sees the show, sees it's not a kids' show."

But we're talking about TV networks.
"Oh, well I was saying 'people with intelligence'! I thought we were talking about people with intelligence! Oh, no, that's not fair."

Apparently there are two schools of thought on Uhura's first name. Has it been clarified?
"It's been clarified. Uhura never had another name during the series. One of the fan writers wrote 'Upenda' - which means 'peace' in Swahili, I understand - not officially, but in some of their fan writings. And it sort of took hold. But when they were going to do the official history of Star Trek in a published book, the writer called Gene and asked him was 'Uhura' her first name or her last name? Gene said, 'Well, Nichelle and I never decided.' We always leaned towards it being her last name because it's taken from the Swahili 'uhuru' which means freedom. So it would sort of be like the same as 'Freeman.' So he said, 'You can make it her last name.'

"The writer said, 'What about her first name? I've come up with one in Swahili. It's Nyota.' Gene said, 'I can't give you that permission because Nichelle and I named her together, and she has rights to that, so you'll have to call her and get her permission.' So he gave him my number, and he called me and I laughed and was delighted. He said, 'I have a name and it's Nyota.' I said, 'That's quite beautiful. What does it mean?' He said, 'It means "star".' I said, 'You can have my permission!' So I have since said that her name is Nyota Upenda Uhura, which would mean a free-floating star: 'star of freedom and peace'. I like that."

Star Trek wasn't the first show you did with Gene Roddenberry, was it?
"No, he had a series called The Lieutenant, and he gave me my first guest star role in episodic TV."

Was that a cop show?
"No, it was the marines. Gary Lockwood was the Lieutenant and he was in the Marine Corps. In this particular episode, I come with my boyfriend who is a marine and has been transferred down South, and we're not thrilled about that. When he gets there, the first thing he sees - and he's a very intelligent, highly rated marine, and highly respected, and so is the other guy, the white guy. And the moment they see each other, they try to kill each other, which is totally against their nature. So the Lieutenant forces them to work together and to solve their problems. And I was in the middle of the whole thing."

I know you've done a lot of work with NASA.
"Yes, I did. In '78-'79 I recruited the first women and minority astronauts for the space shuttle programme. So that was historic and that was just great."

Do you follow the space programme?
"Yes I do. Not as they're sort of an everyday occurrence now. We adjust to magnificence and greatness so easily! And we take it for granted. Yes, especially if someone I know is on, or if it's a special mission."

I guess a lot of your time must be spent at conventions.
"There are quite a few. Last year I didn't do so many because I was busy with my career. But I'm remounting my one-woman show, Reflections, in which I become twelve legendary woman entertainers. I'm doing several concerts and I've agreed to do several Star Trek conventions this coming year, to work them into my schedule.”

Are any of the women in Reflections people that you met?
"Reflections is my reflection on the women I grew up respecting and who influenced my artistry and my life. And yes, many of them I met. And some of them became friends, like Pearl Bailey and Sarah Vaughan. And I had met the great Josephine Baker when I was just a kid. It was when I was at Chicago doing that show, when I was 14, her show came to town. And Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt - who's a dear friend of mine - and Ella Fitzgerald. My mother babysat for her son when we first moved to California. These are just amazing. And then of course, the great Billy Holiday, who I never met but I love her music. And of course Mahalia Jackson who I grew up around the corner from in Chicago. I used to hear her before and after she was Mahalia Jackson."

Are you still making records?
"My company, Always Productions has put out two, three CDs but they were fan-oriented. Then I signed with Crescendo Records a year or so ago. They put out a CD, a really nice one, and it's still doing well."

Finally, you were also in The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space.
"Oh, that was wonderful! It was such a tongue-in-cheek, dear thing. They're still talking about it might go to a series. That would be wonderful. It was so much fun doing."

How did you get involved?
"They called my manager to see about my availability and tell us about the role. At first I turned it down, and they said, 'Well, can we send her the script?' My manager brought the script over to me and said, 'I think you'd better read this.' I read and I just loved it. I couldn't stop laughing. It was wonderful."

website: www.uhura.com

Brian O’Hara, director of the fabulously OTT monster comedyRock'n'Roll Frankenstein, answered one of my famous e-mail mini-interviews in January 2003.

What was the original inspiration for Rock'n'Roll Frankenstein, and how closely did the finished film turn out to what you initially envisaged?
“The original inspiration came when I was in a bar late one night with my friend Vito Cannella. We were tossing ideas around and he mentioned the premise of creating a Frankenstein monster with the body parts of dead rock stars. I immediately was drawn to the idea and saw the humor if the monster was equipped with incompatible genitalia - and naturally, Liberace came to mind. I told Vito I was going to write a script and I'd give him co-story credit. The finished film closely resembles what I had written. As for the actual visuals, I give all credit to Jay Hillman, the DP on R&R F. I really like the look of the movie and I think Jay is incredibly talented.”

What sort of budget, shooting schedule and post-production period are we talking here?
“The budget on R&R F was about $275,000. A significant portion of that went to the blow-up to 35mm (we shot in super 16mm). Our original shooting schedule was 23 days and a few months later we shot for five additional to get pick-ups and reshoot some out-of-focus footage caused by a defective lens. I edited the film at home on a D/Vision computer (couldn't afford an Avid). From the end of shooting until a final 35mm print was struck it took about a year.”

Clearly the film has received very mixed responses: why do you think festivals as far apart as Korea and Argentina have welcomed it while some of those closer to home have rejected it?
“The reason why R&R F wasn't screened at film fests in the USA? First of all, the USA doesn't have the tradition of festivals which screen horror and fantastic films as many European countries do. And I wasn't going to waste my time (or money) submitting to Sundance and that ilk. So what you have left in the USA for a film like R&R F is the ‘underground’ fests. While R&R F is considered offensive by a certain number (probably a majority) of people, I thought this would serve me well in getting accepted to underground fests. Ironically just the opposite happened. Why? Because R&R F unapologetically ridicules ‘the gay lifestyle.’ It turns out the people who organise these underground film fests are either gay or are politically correct types who are absolutely appalled by a movie like R&R F. None of these people have a sense of humour.”

Where did you find your cast and crew?
“I called individuals I knew and asked them to recommend crew people and often times these people wouldn't or couldn't work for the low pay I was offering so they would in turn recommend other people. It took a while, but eventually we were able to assemble a talented and hard-working lot.”

What film-making experience did you have before starting on RnR Frankie?
“For nearly 20 years I've worked mostly as a picture and sound editor (starting out cutting porn flicks.) I've also made a few bucks writing screenplays. And I was a director-for-hire on another feature, but it was such an unpleasant experience I won't even go into it.”

You can't live off one film forever, so when can we expect a new feature from you?
“I haven't a clue. I'm broke and no one's offering me any money to make a movie. If I do get a chance to make something else, out of the scripts I have sitting on the shelf the one I'd pick is called Dance with the Devil. It's about a nun who becomes a topless dancer in the course of investigating the murder of her wayward twin sister.”

As executive producer on Pumpkinhead IIIand IV, Karri O’Reilly was my guide when I visited Castel Studios in Romania. Annoyingly, several interviews that I did on set disappeared due to a defective cassette but Karri’s was one that I was able to repeat, chatting on the phone in July 2006 after both films had wrapped. (Picture shows (L-R), Karri, script supervisor Alina Apostu and DP Erik Wilson. Photo by Sorin Gociu.)

Why are Pumpkinhead III and Pumpkinhead IV being made now, so long after Pumpkinhead II?
"Well, I think somebody figured out they could sell them! I wasn’t involved in the decision to make those movies but in a little bit of the development once I got hired to show-run them. Because that’s what I do: I show-run for hire. Brad Krevoy at Motion Picture Corp obviously had an inkling of how to do this since his company produced the second one, Pumpkinhead II. It wasn’t until he started getting into it that he realised he could sell them to Sci Fi Channel because the first one, and I guess the second one too, made reasonable ratings on Sci Fi Channel. So Sci Fi was interested and contacted Brad, I believe, about doing some more."

How did you get involved?
"I had done some work for Motion Picture Corp in the past. In this world, everybody knows each other; there’s really only about forty people who work on movies, it seems. They knew me from other work I had done so they asked me if I wanted to go to Romania and show-run for them. ‘It’s for Sci Fi Channel, it’s in Romania.’ I was: yeah, yeah. As soon as they said ‘Pumpkinhead’ I was on a plane before any of their other words were out."

You were already familiar with the franchise, then?
"Oh yes, if only from a fanbase. When the first Pumpkinhead came out, I was a senior in High School. When I really became aware of the first movie I was a film school student and working at a video store. That’s how I knew Pumpkinhead: it was the movie you recommended when everything else was out - but Pumpkinhead was always out because it was so popular."

Was it always a given that Lance Henriksen would be involved?
"Lance was a given. Well, I was told he was already onboard when I went to do it. It was a little bit of a surprise when I called his agent: ‘Okay, so I understand we have a deal for Lance,’ and I was trying to figure out what dates we could use him. And his agent was like: ‘We don’t have a deal. I talked to a couple of guys months ago. We don’t have a deal yet.’ Then it was: ‘Oh? Hi, my name’s Karri. I’m producing the Pumpkinhead sequels. We’d like to use Lance. Let’s make a deal...’ So we did make the deal ultimately but it wasn’t as locked as they had told me."

Could the films have gone ahead without Lance’s involvement?
"I guess theoretically they could have - but why would anyone want to do that? It was certainly not our intention, I know it was not Sci Fi Channel’s intention and he just brings so much to both movies."

Was there an attempt to get the original actor for Bunt Wallace?
"There was an attempt but because of a lot of reasons, primarily being scheduling and financial, it just didn’t work out. Although ultimately in the cut of the movie of Pumpkinhead III now, several of the cast members from Pumpkinhead will be in it because we reuse a little bit of the footage in flashbacks."

Where did you get your other cast from?
"Almost everybody else came from the UK, which is one the caveats, the way these movies were done. We had to hire as many British people as possible since it is a British co-production. Our brilliant UK casting director Carolyn McLeod brought Doug Bradley to the table. That’s how he got involved. She also found our two female leads, Tess Panzer and Lisa McAllister, who are wonderful, and Lynne Verrall who plays Haggis, who is wonderful, and all of our supporting cast from the UK. Doug Roberts who plays Bunt in this movie came from the US and he’s somebody I’ve worked with several times in the past and I just knew he would be perfect. Jake saw a picture of him and talked to him and agreed that he was just great."

Why were Jake West and Mike Hurst picked to direct?
"Jake was attached when I came on board. I believe he came to the project at Karen O’Hara at Sci Fi Channel’s suggestion because she had seen Evil Aliens. He was already on board and the script for III was already in place when I became involved. He originally was going to direct both III and IV but Sci Fi Channel did not approve the script for IV - which by the way is excellent and I loved it and I wished we could have done it; at some point maybe they will. It could be Pumpkinhead V because I loved it.

“But anyway, they were looking for something that fitted more the Sci Fi formula and at that point Jake decided that he really couldn’t prep two movies and direct two movies, especially when he hadn’t written the fourth one. At this point he was already in Romania so there was no way. That’s when Brad Krevoy brought Mike Hurst into the picture: Mike, who had written several things for Sci Fi Channel before, knew the formula and certainly had proven his chops, as it were, as a low-budget action director. That’s how we got Mike involved and he was great too. And boy, you could not pick two people more polar opposites in their directing styles than Jake and Mike."

What are the differences between the two of them?
"Jake really came to it from a background of working with a much, much smaller crew, like eight or ten people. Because of that, and because of his editing background, Jake knows he’s going to build the movie in the editing room. He’s very concerned with making sure he has enough coverage, as most good directors are, but he really knows that the cut’s going to happen for him in editing. He storyboarded most of the movie, worked everything in the movie out and I think that gave him a good reference to work by. But he knew he was after performances and he knew that later on the cut would come and the editing process for him would be a little bit longer.

“Mike, on the other hand, comes pretty much straight off doing two, not studio movies but what I would call ‘full crew movies’ - back-to-back. He understood how the machine worked instantly because he had been through it a lot more than Jake had - not that Jake couldn’t handle it, he certainly did. But Mike’s the type of guy who does overheads, he does shot lists. He knows exactly how that movie’s going to cut together, more or less, because he shoots more ... traditional coverage, I guess you would call it. I certainly wouldn’t call it simpler. He did as many shots as Jake did, but Mike knows what that’s going to look like when he’s there shooting. And yes, he’ll tweak it in editing and yes, his editor is also really very good and has come up with some interesting different things.

“And Mike also acts as his own first AD, he is very much a presence on set. He goes: ‘Great! Cut! Next! Camera here, looking this way. B camera, you’re up in two shots; don’t go far.’ Whereas Jake was: ‘Okay, wow. Where shall we....? I guess, um, we’re doing this one next. Erik, would you put this dolly here, maybe?’ It was much more traditionally paced, a traditional British pace. Everything was lovely: ‘We’ll do it and we’ll move it here and we’ll have a camera rehearsal and everything will be great.’

“Mike Hurst does not do camera rehearsals. You stand in the shot, he tells you where to go, you shoot the first rehearsal. He adamantly does not believe in camera rehearsals because the actors stand where he tells them to stand. He will work with them intently on what the words are, what the character is - but you’re going to stand where his shot list tells you to stand. And Jake, for him, I think the joy was having the luxury of a full crew and producers and people other than himself who would help him wrangle. He really loved the rehearsal time and the development of how the actors would bring what to it.

“For someone like Doug Bradley, it was quit a nice thing to have happened because Doug Bradley brought a lot to the table - as did Lance and all the other actors. But it was nice that with Jake they had a little bit more of a play, they were working it out, they were working in the environment more. And Mike was like, ‘No, you gotta stand there because it’s a two-shot, the coverage is going to be here. That’s where you stand.’"

What were the instructions like from the Sci Fi Channel? Was there a rigid story structure to adhere to?
"Ironically, that’s what this whole week has been about. Had you asked me in Romania, I would have said, ‘Yes, they’ve been pretty good. Their notes have been pretty good.’ They had definite opinions about what they wanted. We did have to, on Pumpkinhead III, shoot a teaser opening where we showed the monster, at their request. It wasn’t really until editing that this has become an issue, and really not until we were like, ‘Great, we’re almost picture-locked,’ that we got: ‘No, the act break has to end with the creature coming up.’ For us, it didn’t really reflect the whole movie because all of us doing the movie are doing it for the theatrical version and the DVD, and at the same time trying to serve Sci Fi as well. We definitely are cutting for a theatrical. It just means we might have to abbreviate act one shorter than we would have done otherwise."

So might the theatrical/DVD version be a different cut?
"Well, yes and no. The credits will be different: that’s how I’ve preserved most of the movie I can for the Sci Fi Channel cut. The image of the movie will be the same, the credits of the movie will be different. In my opinion, that’s how you protect the movie. You don’t have to hack stuff out of the movie."

Is Part III scheduled for a Halloween 2006 broadcast?
"It will be around Halloween, yes, we still think we’ll be delivered then. And I can hint that there will be at least an extremely limited US theatrical premiere, prior to the airing on the Sci-Fi Channel. I believe it will be one benefit screening, in Ohio oddly enough. I’m not sure whether Sci-Fi Channel have signed up on that yet but I’ll find out. But we have to, for SAG reasons, have at least one screening first." [Karri subsequently informed me that the Ohio screening was well attended, benefited a local film school and even featured an appearance of the Pumpkinhead stunt head, shipped over from Gary Tunnicliffe’s workshop - MJS]

What about the UK?
"I think there may be a theatrical distribution for it. Right now, I know they’re in discussions with a couple of companies. I just had to look over some delivery requests for a company so I think that deal is going to go forward. Certainly they want theatrical delivery elements so I guess that means they want a theatrical release. But yes, we hope that they will release it theatrically in the UK."[Sadly didn’t happen, although there was a UK DVD release from Sony - MJS]

Is the broadcast date of Part IV dependent on how well Part III is received?
"I think that’s always been the case even if it’s not contractual. I think if Pumpkinhead III does well there’s a shot that they’ll want to have it for the next sweeps period which is probably January. It’s really up to them. We’re going to deliver them Pumpkinhead IV by the end of the year; it’s really up to them when they air it. I forget what the contract is but it’s like, if they don’t air it within 90 days of our delivery it still can come out on video before they air it."

What advantages or problems came from shooting in Romania?
"Shooting in Romania was awesome. It was the first time I’d ever done a movie in Eastern Europe, or Europe, or not North America, in my life. It was great. I can’t wait to go back. I loved it. I felt the crew was excellent. They brought so much more to it than a movie this size would ever have almost anywhere else in the world. The art department was amazing, the stunt people were amazing. The stunts we had in the movie were a million times better than we ever would have had in the US. The same goes with art department and pyro and wardrobe and anything else.

“The alternative side of working in Romania is: you have some actors who are wonderful actors and look amazing but ultimately have to be looped for the movie. No matter how great they are, you know you’re going to loop them. And that’s unfortunate, not only for the production because you always want to have good actors but for the actors who really did give a good performance, they just are not native English speakers. That’s the big drawback. Occasionally you would get, as we called it, ‘Romanian surprises’. Any time I hear the sound of a car almost starting I’ll think of Romania. We did have picture car vehicle issues. Things didn’t quite run as reliably as you would like. Sometimes you would look at a picture car, you would open the hood and you would go, ‘I didn’t know a car could run with half the engine gone...’ But overall, it was lovely."

Were the movies brought in on schedule and on budget?
"Yes."

Do you save a lot by shooting two movies back to back?
"I think in some ways you do. As much as other people involved with the movies thought you could do two movies for the price of one the reality is that on a movie like this you can do two movies for the price of, oh, one and a half to one and three quarters. You save in the prep and we obviously saved with the monster because we only had to build it once. Whereas even right now the suit is showing its age. Somebody better write Pumpkinhead V by 1st August if they plan to use that suit again. No-one does, but you never know.  I’m sure as soon as Pumpkinhead III airs, someone will call me and say they want to order some more up and can we still use the suit. But: no. There are other advantages to it too. Other than Lance and Lynne Verrall we didn’t have any carry-over actors but if it was a different type of sequel we could do it. I think the main reason is it helps us to make the financing easier."

What has the response been like so far, either from fans or the industry?
"Amazingly positive, even on the fansites. Because, trust me, Jake West and Mike Hurst read the same fansites every single day. Because when we first started Jake would come running in, giddy as a little schoolboy, saying, ‘Look, look, look! Fangoria today! Look, look!’ I think everyone has been a little bit sceptical because of Sci Fi Channel’s involvement to some degree which can be understood. But when they started seeing the people that were involved they were a little more like: okay, we’ll give it a chance.

“I think the original movie holds up today and I think the new movies will hold up to the fans. Of course there’s stuff where the fans are like: well, theoretically the mythology would be like this... I think Jake especially has been very true to the mythology of Pumpkinhead. Gary Tunnicliffe did a fantastic job and delivered a really good Pumpkinhead creature and really good gore effects. Everybody has tried really hard to make these movies for the fans of the movies as opposed to the people who want us to make a 90-minute movie as cheaply as we can for the DVD market.”

At the end of 2011, Neil Oseman very kindly sent me a copy of his supernatural, demon-busting fantasy Soul Searcher so that I could include it in my bookUrban Terrors. And in January 2012, after I had watched the film, Neil provided these answers to one of my e-mail mini-interviews.

What convinced you that your short film of Soul Searcher merited remaking as a feature?
“During the making of my previous feature, The Beacon, one of the actors suggested it. He had seen the Soul Searcher short and thought it was a really good idea that could be expanded on. This was before Dead Like Me and Reaper were on TV, so the idea of a trainee Grim Reaper really hadn't been done, apart from Terry Pratchett's take on it which was tonally very different.”

How did you assemble your cast and crew?
“The usual stuff - advertising online, calling in favours. The film was almost shot in 2002 so we had a lot of the cast and crew in place before we had to postpone due to budget problems. When we got it up and running again in 2003 we had to recast some roles because people were doing other things. There were probably four solid days of auditioning all told. Although we shot in Hereford - the back of beyond - most of the cast were from London since there just weren't any screen-trained actors locally. The crew were local though and they were all really excited by the idea of a film being made in Hereford - and a really ambitious fantasy-action one to boot.

“When it came to post-production people were working on their particular visual effects shots, music or whatever all over the country and sending me the results digitally. Some of the key post-production people I never met face-to-face until after the film was completed.”

What was the hardest part of making the film? And what was the most fun?
“It was all very, very hard! The first few days in particular were very tough, trying to adjust to the nocturnal shooting schedule, plus I was editing a corporate video during the daytime so I wasn't getting much sleep at all. It was also very hard to face all the compromises of a shoot after having the film in my head for a year or two, because of course in your head it's always the perfect film.

“Shooting the miniature train for the climax of the film was also a huge challenge. We were filming it outdoors at night because we couldn't afford to hire a studio and loads of black drapes, and we built a 25 metre long earth embankment for the train to run along. But when the modelmaker delivered the train it just kept derailing. Then the power tripped out. And it started raining. And at about one a.m. we had to dig up this embankment and put all the earth back where it came from in the pouring rain without having shot anything. A few weeks later we tried again and got the shots in the can, but that first night was incredibly depressing.

“Filming the martial arts fights was nice for me because the fantastic choreographer, Simon Wyndham, effectively directed those sequences for me, so I got to relax a bit on those nights and enjoy watching it all going on.

“My favourite part of the project was the editing. No logistical challenges, no rain or cold - just the creativity of it of turning the raw footage into a story. I also had a great time doing the sound design, going around with a microphone recording all sorts of weird noises and assembling them into a big, rich soundscape.”

How closely does the finished film match what you originally set out to make?
“Pretty closely, I think. There were lots of compromises due to the limited budget and the many problems we encountered during shooting, but the tone, the energy and the fun of it come through as conceived and the shots all match my storyboards very closely.”

How was the film received by audiences and critics?
“Quite positively overall. There were some people who went into it expecting to see something of the same quality as a multi-million dollar Hollywood movie, and of course those people were disappointed, but by and large people saw past the budget restrictions and enjoyed it.”

What is the current status of Dark Side of the Earth and what else are you working on?
“The Dark Side of the Earth has been in development for quite some time. We've shot a really slick five minute demo scene - which cost more than the whole of Soul Searcher - and we've got a couple of name actors attached. Right now we're trying to get a name writer on board to polish up the script before we approach some major players.

“At the time of writing I'm in pre-production on a short film called Stop/Eject, a fantasy drama about grief and time travel, and I have a couple of other shorts in the pipeline. The Dark Side of the Earth is a massive project that will take a long, long time to get off the ground so it's important to me to keep making small films in the mean time to stay in practice. You can keep up-to-date with my filmmaking exploits online at neiloseman.com.”

Director: Norman Benny
Producer: Ferry Angriawan
Cast: Uci Bing Slamet, Torro Margens, Windy Chindyana, Fikri
Year of release: ?
Country: Indonesia
Reviewed from: Hong Kong VCD (Universal Films & Video Co. Ltd)

Sometimes even I admit that my preferences are odd. There are many, many classic films that I have never seen. The Magnificent Ambersons, Chinatown, Taxi Driver... You see, I could see them any time I wanted to, pretty much. I’m sure that Mrs S has got them all on video somewhere. And anyone, everyone else has seen them.

But this! This is an Indonesian TV movie so obscure that it’s not even mentioned in passing anywhere on the web. This film has never ever been documented in the west. And I’ve found a copy and I’ve got a chance to see it and review it. So, you know, Taxi Driver can wait.

There’s a lot of talk in this film, which has Chinese subtitles (but no English) and one of those odd dubbing soundtracks where, presumably because they don’t have access to the music and effects track, the old voices can be heard under the new ones. Quite possibly this is a bootleg. Whatever, it’s difficult to follow, but I’ll try.

We open on the lovely Silvi (Windy Chindyana) out for a bicycle ride, who is nearly raped by a couple of lads but is rescued by a passing motorcyclist, Gino (Fikri). The two become, as you might expect, very close. Gino is (I think) an author - Silvi has a pulp romance novel by ‘Gino S’ called Impian Seorang Istri - but is also some kind of demon buster and is practising magic which gives him power from his glowing palms. He sometimes looks things up in an old book entitled Khab Ilmi Tarak Setan.

Silvi lives with her mother Nancy (Uci Bing Slamet) and father, and in a series of flashbacks we see how, when Silvi was a baby, she was kidnapped by Karpo. Now Karpo is a big, ugly guy but clearly known to Nancy because one of the flashbacks shows the two arguing. Karpo is also some sort of Satanist and spirits baby Silvi away one night to sacrifice her on his evil altar, between two stone columns, down by the lake. Nancy follows him with a rifle and blasts the ceremonial dagger out of his hands, then is rescued from his wrath by a passing stranger who has the same magical powers that Gino evidently has. And Karpo is never seen again.

Some time later, Silvi is introduced to some friends of her parents - and the other couple’s son turns out to be one of the attempted rapists from the first scene. Silvi runs off to be with Gino, leaving Nancy a note, and the two young lovers go down by the lake where they see strange lights in the trees and uncover two familiar-looking stone columns. Unbeknown to them, they are being watched by... Karpo.

Later that night, Nancy investigates some strange sounds in the house and is confronted by Karpo. He is just as big and now even uglier. Twenty years of... whatever... have left him with white skin, long, straggly hair, tattered robes, sunken eyes, long, black fingernails (possibly explaining this film’s title, which means something like ‘Disciple of the Devil’s Claw’) and smudgy pink lipstick(!). He really does look a sight, and astoundingly similar to Charles Ogle in the 1910 version of Frankenstein - though surely that must be coincidence.

Using his magic forces, Karpo throws Nancy off the balcony onto the ground below, and then does the same to her husband who comes to investigate, before literally vanishing in a puff of smoke. At Gino’s, Silvi is asleep while Gino works on his computer and a thunderstorm rages outside. Karpo appears nearby and causes a sword hanging on Gino’s wall to detach itself and hurtle at his head, but Gino catches it in his teeth! The young couple race on Gino’s motorbike to Nancy’s house and Silvi sees her parents’ broken bodies.

Karpo reappears at the home of the friends we saw earlier and blasts them and their no-good son before Gino and Silvi turn up. The two magical dudes face off against each other amid lots of glowing green smoke before Big Ugly disappears again. The youngsters race to the lake where Gino and Karpo again fight it out with bolts of light from their palms and a little bit of wirework. Just when it seems that the bad guy has got the upper hand... Silvi appears magically between the stone columns and uses her own magic (eh?) to blast Karpo. As he lies on the ground, screaming, the sun comes up and he burns away into nothingness.

Pemuja Cakar Iblis is okay but a lot less spectacular than I was hoping for, with just a few bolts of power flying around. Production values are about what you would expect for an Asian TV movie (this is a ‘Televisi Mistri’ from Virgo Putra Film) and the talky, romantic plot betrays the story’s origins as a novel (by Abdullah Harahap). The direction and acting are mostly okay and the cinematographer sure loves his coloured gels.

But the most memorable thing is the character of Karpo. Torro Margens plays him like what Ed Naha once described as “Abenazar in a bad production of Aladdin” - spending 75 per cent of his time laughing evilly and the other 25 per cent screeching evilly. It is the most absurd, over-the-top performance I’ve seen for a long, long time and makes the otherwise quite dull film vaguely enjoyable.

The Inaccurate Movie Database has two directing credits for Norman Benny - Makelar Kodok and Ranjang Yang Ternoda - and mentions editorial work on Lady Dragon 2/Angel of Fury, Rage and Honor II and Sam (Cyborg Cop) Firstenberg’s Blood Warriors (though a lot of sites actually credit Firstenberg and Benny as joint directors). Other credits I can trace for him include Makelar Kodok Untung Besar (presumably a sequel), Kisah Cinta Nyi Blorong, Perwira Dan Ksatria and Pemburu Teroris.

Uci Bing Slamet was also in Pengakuan Seorang Pelacur (do let me know if any of these titles mean anything to you, folks!) while Windy Cindyana’s credits include Akibat Bebar Sex, Penyimpangan Sex, Gadis Metropolis 2, Gairah Tabu, Godaan Cinta and a 1999 horror film called Bergairah di Puncak in which she apparently played a character called ‘Selvi’.

Torro Margens was in Perawan Rimba/Jungle Virgin Force, Keluargaku Sorgaku, Kisah Cinta Ratu Pantai Selatan, PadaMu Kubersimpuh and the TV series Melangkah di Atas Awan, Tirai Kasih Yang Terkoyak and Saat Aku Mencintaimu. He also seems to have dabbled in directing. But I’m buggered if I can find out anything about ‘Fikri’ who plays bike-riding, demon-busting Gino.

Another obscurity unearthed. Still never seen Taxi Driver...

MJS rating: C

Director: Wolfgang Büld
Writer: Wolfgang Büld
Producer: Wolfgang Büld, Nick Coe
Cast: Fiona Horsey, Paul Conway, Jaye Macauley
Year of release: 2003
Country: UK/Germany
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Salvation)

Ladies and gentleman, charge your glasses. The toast is: Penetration Angst, a work of unparalleled brilliance which is, without a doubt, not only one of the most entertaining British films which I have seen for a long time, but indubitably the weirdest.

Coming from Salvation, and with a sleeve emblazoned with the catchy copy line ‘DEATH SEX!!’, I wasn’t sure what to expect here. Death, yes; sex, of course - but I was surprised to find myself laughing out loud at an extremely black comedy. Penetration Angst is one part Evil Clutch, one part Pussy Talk, one part I Spit on Your Grave - with a side-order of Tod Browning’s Freaks and a dash of Little Shop of Horrors.

Helen (Fiona Horsey) is a virgin, unable to face having sex since the time when, as a nine-year-old, she walked in on her mum indulging in a very violent BDSM session. When her slimy boyfriend Jack (Phil Hayden) rapes her, something very odd happens. At the moment of orgasm, Jack ... well, he disappears. Apparently up Helen’s vagina. All that’s left is a pile of his clothes. Understandably worried, she goes to see a gynaecologist (James Crichton) and when he rapes her too, the same thing happens to him. The one person who doesn’t want to rape her, or even have consensual sex with her, is drippy Dennis (Paul Conway: The Last Horror Movie) who carries a torch for her.

Helen runs away from the home she shares with her creepy, voyeuristic stepdad (Jon Hurn: The Zombie Diaries), whose confinement to a wheelchair doesn’t stop him groping her, and a few months later she’s working the streets of London as a whore. The tricks she turns help to satisfy her vagina - which not only causes her stabbing pains but can be vaguely heard to plead, “Feed me!” - and she lives off the money left in their wallets after they disappear ‘up there.’ Dennis is in London too but he passes her by without recognising her. For the middle act of the film, their stories run in parallel.

About 25 minutes in (and here’s something I never thought I would write) this film about a man-eating, talking vagina becomes significantly weirder with the introduction of conjoined twins. Attached side-by-side the length of their torso - four breasts, four legs, two arms, and yes we do get to see them naked and it’s an impressive bit of make-up from Paul Hyett (I Zombie, The Descent) - the sisters could not be more different. Sonia (Beth Steel) likes drinking in pubs, picking up men, having a laugh; Sylvia (Amy Steel) is quiet, bookish (we see her reading James Herbert’s Once), interested in art - and a virgin. Dennis and Sylvia become an item, to Sonia’s derision, but it all goes horribly wrong during a frankly hilarious love-making scene which culminates in copious quantities of blood.

Dennis and Helen have now swapped lives: he is a wanted criminal, walking the streets, while she finds happiness - although there’s one thing she won’t let her husband do. Then in the third act, the film becomes a British crime caper, as Dennis hitches up with stripper Pinky (Jaye Macauley) to pull a bank job on the Isle of Wight. Helen and her new husband are honeymooning on the island, and the two couple’s paths cross in a strange, deadly - and extremely funny - way.

There’s a crazy mishmash of ideas here but an excellent script somehow holds them all together. A movie just about a killer vagina could be pretty boring, but a roster of increasingly unpleasant and/or bizarre characters keeps things interesting and lively. Much of the black humour is extremely inventive and clever, one of the highlights being a gross-out scene when a man’s tongue is stretched to ten times its normal length. Performances from the largely neophyte cast are generally good, especially the wickedly funny Sweet sisters, and the camerawork is excellent (cinematographer Uwe Bohrer shot Jorg Buttgereit’s infamous Nekromantik!).

Where has Penetration Angst come from? Wolfgang Büld has apparently been making films, occasionally in Britain, since the late 1970s, and this was shot in London and on the Isle of Wight in late 2002. But with little advance publicity or word of mouth, this is one of those films that seems to have sprung fully-formed from its creator’s forehead - so let me be the first to recommend this truly extraordinary movie to you. It’s not the searing gothic fetish psychodrama that a glance at the packaging might suggest, but a hilarious horror-fantasy-crime-farce like you’ve never seen before, featuring blood, sex, violence, sleaze, a sunburnt penis and a rabbit who is more significant than you might expect. Watch it and be amazed.

(Salvation’s DVD includes a trailer, a stills gallery and some behind-the-scenes footage, but these didn’t work properly on my review copy which also froze when it reached the end credits. This is a shame as apparently the behind-the-scenes stuff includes a hilarious meeting between the film crew and Nigel Mansell.)

MJS rating: A

Addendum: Since I originally wrote this review, I have been very pleased to help orchestrate the UK theatrical premiere of Penetration Angst at Leicester Phoenix Arts, which was attended by the director and some of the cast. Wolfgang Büld subsequently directed two further terrific slices of darkly comic, off-beat cinema, with some of the same cast and crew: Lovesick: Sick Love and Twisted Sisters. Penetration Angst was retitled Angst when it was eventually released in the USA.

Director: Steve Balderson
Producer: Steve Balderson
Cast: pretty much everyone in Steve Balderson’s address book
Country: USA
Year of release: 2006
Reviewed from: screener DVD
Website: www.dikenga.com

Steve Balderson is American cinema’s best-kept secret. Away from the cheap glitter of Hollywood, in deepest Kansas, Steve has made two simply brilliant movies, Pep Squad and Firecracker, which have been smash hit festival faves. For his third feature, young Mr Balderson has done something, ah, completely different.

The premise is simple, and bear with me even if it sounds like bollocks, because it’s not, it’s really not. Steve e-mailed several dozen friends and acquaintances with a simple question: “What is sexy?” He invited them to leave a message on an answerphone. Then he took all those messages, edited them together and added some visuals.

In other words, what we have here is 95 minutes of (slightly tinny) people discussing sexiness over various still stock photos. It shouldn’t work, should it? It could have so easily been terrible. Or perhaps Steve could have gone through the messages and realised that there was nothing there to work with and the experiment was a failure. In fact, for all we know, he could have tried this five times before with different friends and/or a different question before he got something that works. With an avant-garde project like this, you never know whether it will all come together or whether it will crash and burn.

It did not crash and burn. On the contrary, Phone Sex is a triumph. Here is that rarest of things: an avant-garde film which is both interesting and entertaining.

The responses vary wildly. Some people read out prepared statements or lists, others improvise on the phone. Some list the aspects of a person which can be sexy, some suggest famous people who were sexy, some just cite concepts or ideas that are sexy. For some people, the response is purely personal, for others they’re clearly searching for some greater, broader generalisation - although ultimately everything in the matter is personal of course. Pop singer Josie Cotton kicks off proceedings with a rather rambling attempt to actually define the word ‘sexy’.

Some calls are short, some long, some people ring back later with other ideas. Most, but not all, are quite clean. What come through above all is the sheer variety of responses; the only three things that get frequent citations are (a) confidence, (b) “my voice” and (c) Steve Balderson (which probably embarrasses the director no end but hey, I’d have kept those in too!).

Actually what comes through more than that, if I can contradict myself, is the way that people open up their souls to Steve, or at least to his answerphone. There’s some incredibly candid admissions here and a great deal of poetry (not literally). Choosing the right question to ask, in order to generate a detailed and interesting response, is a skill - it’s one I try to practice on this site. Clearly, with those three carefully chosen words, Steve has tapped into something that is just right, that works brilliantly. He could have asked “What do you find sexy?” or “What is the sexiest thing you can think of?” - but neither of those would have got the same responses.

Of course, we don’t know how many other calls Steve received which he couldn’t use, or to what extent he has cherry-picked the good stuff from the 90 or so included here. But that doesn’t matter. That’s his job as film-maker. Let’s face it: he didn’t have to write a script for this one, or direct any actors, or worry about lighting or costumes or make-up or sets or special effects or should we use DV or should we stick with 35mm? The skill in evidence here, and the talent, lies in the way that these messages have been selected, edited, arranged and interspersed with the occasional clip of automated answerphone voice. This isn’t just some random collection of sexy wackiness (or wacky sexiness) cobbled together. It’s been made, and made extraordinarily well.

The visuals, which is obviously what makes this a film rather than just a CD, are stock photos, mostly tinted or toned, which sometimes depict what is being described and at other times seem more tangential. The rostrum camera (I’m sure it’s not done with a rostrum nowadays, but you know what I mean) is constantly, sedately moving, panning, zooming. After all, this is supposed to be a movie.

Some of the callers identify themselves, some don’t. Steve’s address book, it must be said, is pretty eclectic and the people who call him are, almost by definition, an eccentric bunch. Here you’ll find actors, writers, musicians, artists, drag queens and some of those people for whom one can never find a more specific term than ‘performer’. They naturally give a much more elaborate and hence interesting view of what is sexy than might be gleaned from my address book or yours, but also sometimes a view which is disturbing or insecure - there’s a scary pathos to be glimpsed behind some of the forced eccentricity. Some of the callers, it must be said, sound like they have been smoking, drinking or otherwise ingesting various substances before calling. On the other hand, maybe they naturally sound like that.

Possibly because I’m British, or maybe just because I move in different circles to Steve, most of the callers are people I’m not familiar with. All their names are in the end credits and also on the website where most of them link through to biographical notes. Among those I did recognise are horror actress Tiffany Shepis (NyMpha), the ubiquitous Lloyd Kaufman, Russ Meyer starlet Tura Satana, ex-Gogo Jane Wiedlin (whose limited but deeply wonderful acting CV includes scene-stealing roles in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Clue and Star Trek IV), magician Penn Jillette and porn legend Ron Jeremy. But it should be stressed that not knowing who these folk are doesn’t matter a jot.

Phone Sex is much more than a weird-for-its-own-sake novelty and much more than just a video installation piece (though it could be shown as such). It’s a remarkably entertaining, intriguing and thought-provoking feature film which will go down well at festivals and could well become a cult hit. It further cements Steve Balderson’s reputation as One to Watch.

And you know what? Just the idea that a friend of mine has Penn Jillette, Ron Jeremy and Jane Wiedlin in his address book is, frankly, awesome.

MJS rating: A

Director: Gary Fierro
Writer: Justin Tacchi
Producer: Gary Fierro, Justin Tacchi
Cast: Conor Timmis, Jesse Murphy, Derek Meinecke
Country: USA
Year of release: 2008
Reviewed from: US DVD

So I said to him, I said to Howard Philips Lovecraft, I said, “Howard,” I said, “Hey Howard... why the long face?”

Please yourselves.

Sooner or later, everyone makes an HP Lovecraft film. Although there are authors who can probably claim more film adaptations of their work - Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle - the lasting success of those writers is based on established character franchises or a small number of significant, much-adapted stories. Lovecraft is different in that he created a loosely linked oeuvre without any popular characters or stand-out tales so the huge number of HPL-based films is spread right across the available literary sources. Lovecraft is also unusual in having a definable style so there are, in addition, plenty of movies which owe an obvious debt to the author without specifically adapting any of his work.

Much of Lovecraft’s work is simple in narrative structure, relying on atmosphere for its effect. As such, he is an eminently suitable source for a short film, which brings us to this 20-minute version of the 1927 short story ‘Pickman’s Model’. The original tale (which is included here in a series of nicely designed and very readable text screens) is basically a monologue, delivered by an artist named Thurber to a companion named Eliot, although chunks of it are actually recounted dialogue from maverick painter Richard Upton Pickman himself.

Justin Tacchi has done a sterling job of trimming back the mono/dialogue, deftly removing unnecessary verbiage and dated idioms (the film is set in the present day). Jesse Murphy plays Thurber with suitable unease while Derek Meinecke has the small but important role of Eliot, given a little dialogue here. Thurber’s visit to Pickman is framed as a flashback, with Murphy/Thurber sporting a goatee for these scenes. Pickman himself is played by my mate Conor Timmis (Kreating Karloff) who is clearly having a ball, teetering on the edge of over-acting as he channels the likes of Karloff, Lugosi and Price.

The photography by Tacchi’s cousin, director Gary Fierro (who also helped with the script) is particularly impressive during the scenes of Pickman and Thurber examining the canvasses in the former’s cellar, using just the light from a handheld lamp to create a beautiful chiaroscuro effect. Pitch black shadows hide everything but the two men and their specific subject of enquiry, the room and all the other paintings disappearing completely into a stygian – frankly Lovecraftian – darkness. There’s one particularly lovely shot of Thurber where Pickman leans in over his shoulder then steps back, effectively materialising and disappearing like ectoplasm at a seance.

Under beetle eyebrows, Timmis walks the tightrope of madness that characterises so many of Lovecraft’s protagonists. It’s just a shame that the lighting effectively conceals much of the work by make-up artist Norman Bryn (Kreating Karloff, Cloverfield, I am Legend) to make the actor look suitably stressed, strained and strange. On the other hand, the actual paintings (by Fierro) benefit from the low light which enhances their spookiness and allows the audience to imagine them even more horrific than they are.

If there’s a fault with the film it’s in the script which captures the characters, setting and atmosphere perfectly but seems to skim over the central point of Lovecraft’s tale - which is photography. I’ll spoiler protect the next couple of paragraphs for those unfamiliar with the story but I do recommend you read the source material before watching the film. Or maybe watch the film, then read the story (as I say, it’s on the DVD) and then watch the film again to see how your understanding is enhanced, especially around the ‘punchline’ which is one of Lovecraft’s most famous lines but, bizarrely, not actually spoken here.

The crux of the short story is that Thurber believes great artists paint from life whereas hacks simply paint from imagination. Any decent artist can churn out paintings of, say, a vase of flowers but a great painter will actually study a real vase with real flowers and somehow capture the essence of that reality. Pickman specialises in paintings of horrific fantasy scenes: grotesque subhumanoid creatures, often interacting with the real world. His technique marks him out as a realist but how can this be when his paintings are fantastical? Pickman admits to Thurber that he uses a camera to capture locations, thus providing realistic backgrounds and settings for his paintings. When Thurber leaves, he takes a scrap of paper from the cellar and later, on examining it, finds that it shows not just the background to a painting but also the demonic subject. The final line of the story is: "I had vacantly crumpled it into my pocket... but by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life!” Hence the relevance of the title: Pickman uses an actual model.

This script has no mention of photography - although it does retain Thurber’s observation that Pickman is a ‘realist’ painter - and in the final scene Thurber passes Eliot a piece of paper without a word. Despite Derek Meinecke’s shocked expression, there is no way to understand the significance of the paper without that crucial final line of dialogue (or some variant thereof). Lovecraft wrote in an era when it was still possible, without seeming clicheed or trite, to build a short story towards a revelation in the last line. The whole of ‘Pickman’s Model’ builds towards that horrific climax, gradually increasing the foreboding and fear as Thurber describes the paintings and pontificates on the nature of realist art. It really is, in a true (but decidedly non-comical) sense, a punchline. Yet in Pickman’s Model the film it’s not there and we are left to surmise the revelation - which we can really only do if we already know the story. Without some discussion of Pickman’s use of photography, the film’s climax just doesn’t work. Atmosphere yes, characters yes, sense of all-powerful evil and nameless dread yes. But for some reason the actual plot point towards which Thurber’s account of his meeting with Pickman - and hence the whole story - inexorably leads has been muted past the point of comprehension.

The above caveat notwithstanding, Pickman’s Model is a terrific little film and all involved can be proud of their work. It’s suitably creepy and unnerving, it looks thoroughly professional and it’s just the right length. It has been well packaged onto a DVD that includes a 20-minute Making Of, a featurette on Bryn’s make-up, the story itself, a trailer, a slideshow and a commentary by Fierro, Tacchi and Timmis. This is an excellent example of Lovecraftian short cinema and I look forward to seeing more work from those involved on both sides of the camera. (HPL obsessives will know that ‘Pickman’s Model’ has been adapted for the screen at least four times before including a Chilean version and a 1971 episode of Night Gallery.)

MJS rating: A-

Director: Robert Cappelletto
Writer: Robert Cappelletto
Producer: Edward Morillon
Cast: Barret Walz, Maurice McNicholas, Tom Lodewyck
Country: USA
Year of release: 2009
Reviewed from: screener

Despite the title, this isn’t actually an adaptation of ‘Pickman’s Model’ (which was adapted a couple of years ago as a short by Gary Fiero). Although it borrows some elements from that story – basically an artist named Robert Pickman who paints pictures so unutterably horrible that they create revulsion and horror among those who see them – the film also lifts from the later HPL tale ‘The Haunter of the Dark’ which was likewise about a painter. The DVD sleeve acknowledges ‘Haunter’ as the source material although on-screen the source credit is a rather odd ‘Dedicated to the works of HP Lovecraft.’

Pickman (Barret Walz: Jigsaw) here is a jobbing palette-hack, living in a slightly dingy garret with dripping pipes and an eastern European landlady (Joyce Porter: The Art of Pain) who likes him because he always pays his rent on time. Pickman is depressed and on medication prescribed by Dr Ambrose Dexter (Maurice McNicholas), a minor character in the original story - although it’s not clear whether these drugs are the cause of his morose state or an attempt to cure it.

One night, Pickman is awoken by a bright sunrise above an abandoned church which he can see from his window and, breaking an artistic draught of several weeks, sets to work feverishly banging out dozens of charcoal sketches. When he tries to sell a painting of the church to a local art dealer, Pickman learns that he has somehow unconsciously copied the style and subject of Goodie Hines, a notorious local serial killer, now incarcerated, whom he would have heard of if he wasn’t such a recluse.

Drawn to visit the empty church, he finds an angular box containing a (very briefly glimpsed) glowing sphere; this is straight from the story and is referred to in Lovecraftian literature as the ‘Shining Trapezohedron’. His next canvas is a scene of unspeakable horror and depravity which terrifies his landlady, who wanted Pickman to date her niece but now threatens eviction. While further hideous paintings emerge from Pickman’s subconscious, Dexter takes an interest because he is treating Goodie Hines (Tom Lodewyck: Incest Death Squad, Carnivorous, erm, Incest Death Squad 2) in the local loony-bin. Hines also painted hideous images like Pickman’s just before he went on his killing spree but no-one outside the police and hospital authorities has seen them – so how can Pickman, who had never even heard of Hines, ape his style and subject matter?

Pickman’s Muse is an atmospheric and at times creepy film but I think it’s aimed rather too solidly at the core audience of Lovecraft obsessives who will either have a clearer idea of what precisely is going on or less concern about it. Pickman hears voices but are they in his head or is he actually being spoken to by The Old Ones? Or is that meant to be ambiguous? There also are a few really odd sequences like a scene outside the church where he spots what appears to be a small octopus nailed to a cross.

Walz gives a very impressive performance as Pickman, subtly descending into madness. Unfortunately he is acting opposite McNicholas’ almost cartoonish Dr Dexter, played with a perpetual grimace and bulging veins like the character is on the continual verge of an aneurysm.

The DVD sleeve promises ‘deleted scenes’ and ‘extended scenes’ but on the menu there’s just the former although both are right in a sense. This is a seven-minute sequence of Dexter researching the church’s closure (in 1921 after the discovery that it was being used by an arcane cult) and breaking into Pickman’s apartment, culminating in a scene of Dexter talking with his colleague (Mike Dobray) in a parked car. This last scene is in the finished film but slightly shortened to remove dialogue references to the stuff which no longer immediately precedes it.

And here’s the odd thing; something which I have never experienced before. After watching these extra scenes, I not only understood the film a great deal more, I found that I had enjoyed it more too. For example, the movie as stands has a stand-alone, inexplicable reference to ‘starry wisdom’ which will no doubt have the HPL fanboys wetting their pants but is meaningless to the rest of us; this is expanded upon in the deleted/extended scenes.

Normally deleted scenes have been deleted for a good reason but honestly, these should have been kept in. The film’s only 75 minutes long, it could take another few minutes easily and the suitably enigmatic and unspoken plot would be a bit less enigmatic and a bit more spoken. We still wouldn’t really know what is going on but we would at least have a clue. Some of our unknown unknowns would have become, if not unknown knowns, at least known unknowns.

Writer/director/editor/cinematographer Robert Cappelletto handles both actors and camera well, drenching his interiors in colours which are appropriately painterly and bleaching his exteriors almost to the point of monochrome. The spooky music is by Willy Greer, founder of online radio show Horror Holocaust, who also scored Dan Gildark’s Cthulhu a couple of years ago.

MJS rating: B

Writer: Alan Moore
Cast: Jon Glover, David Tate, Norma Ronald
Country: UK
Year of release: 1983
Reviewed from: UK video (Nutland)

Okay, sports fans. How many films can you name based on stories by Alan Moore? Well, there’s V for Vendetta and From Hell and The League of Explain to Me Again Why I’m Watching This Crap. And if you’re reading this in 2008 or later you can probably add Watchmen to that list.

What has been entirely forgotten is that Alan Moore’s first screen credit was produced as far back as 1982. It’s 70 minutes long (though the packaging claims “approximately 90 minutes”), it’s British and it’s a (just about) animated sci-fi adventure with ray guns, spaceships, aliens and a talking dinosaur. It’s called Ragnarok and it’s extraordinary.

Calling this production ‘animated’ is stretching the definition of the term because it is told through a series of still drawings, rostrum-filmed in varying degrees of close-up and edited together to tell a story. There is the occasional addition of a death-ray, an explosion or a flashing light but in the animation stakes this falls somewhere between Bleep and Booster and Mr Ben.

Ragnarok himself is a sort of space-roving law enforcement character or ‘Regulator’ who seems to be judge, jury and executioner, somewhat in the manner of Judge Dredd. He has a spaceship called the Sunscreamer, equipped with a computer named VOICE, represented by a digitised image of a woman with long hair. Our hero has a variety of large guns and grenades as well as body armour and a helmet.

His companion is Smith, a flying (well, floating) blue alien who looks like a cross between a manta ray and a jellyfish. Smith communicates through a sort of electrical crackle, Ragnarok speaks English, but they seem to understand each other. Smith can also fire some sort of energy ray from his pointy tail.

The ‘film’ is divided into three parts, the first running about half an hour and the others about twenty minutes apiece - and there are clear differences in the drawing style between all three. In ‘The Shattered World’, a grizzly space prospector named Weegee is collecting minerals from an asteroid, accompanied by his talking cyber-mule Sparkplug (who dreams of transferring his electronic brain into a pleasure droid - and yes, he does make ‘hee-haw’ noises). Weegee’s partner Charlie is messily gunned down in cold blood by the villainous Daddy Bonus and his two henchmen, Razormouth (who has a metal jaw) and Jittercat (who has a head like a leopard).

Alerted by VOICE, Ragnarok comes to the rescue, first killing seven of Daddy Bonus’ other henchmen elsewhere on the asteroid. Most he guns down but two of them drift off into space when Ragnarok switches off their gravity boots. The bad guy has hung Weegee upside-down without functioning life-support on his space-suit in an attempt to get him to reveal where the logbook is, which is what Bonus needs to jump the claim. Our somewhat amoral hero despatches Jittercat and Razormouth and rescues Weegee, leaving Bonus in a similar predicament. The ‘twist’ (which is given away in the sleeve blurb!) is that the asteroids are the remnants of humanity’s original home-world, which was destroyed by war a million years ago. It had a strange name like Dirt or Mud... you can see where this is going.

‘Gates of Hell’ finds the Sunscreamer answering an automatic distress call on the planet Yatan where an interdimensional gateway has gone wrong. Ragnarok and Smith find the world in ruins with only one living being - a sentient Tyrannosaurus named Arang or Hran or somesuch. Hran has a little jacket, a plumed helmet and a refined English accent - and he can throw things around and blow them up using only the power of his mind. It seems that he came through the gateway from a universe where dinosaurs didn’t die out but became the dominant species on Earth and subsequently throughout the galaxy. He has killed and destroyed everything on Yatan and now seeks no less than complete control of the universe, but first he has to get off the planet so he needs Ragnarok’s spaceship.

Guns and grenades have no effect on Hran and even Smith’s energy ray only irritates him. When our heroes think they have finally killed the beast, they race back to the Sunscreamer which takes off, blasting Hran with its engines as he tries to stop them. An epilogue shows two salvage men picking up the same distress signal from Yatan and deciding to head down to the planet, despite a recent official announcement that no-one must land there. This leads into...

...the third part ‘Sacrifice’ which is set on the Regulators’ homeworld of Kobar. We get to see other Regulators although the only ones given names are John Brittlemask (who gets killed) and a young woman named Slow Jane who serves no narrative purpose whatsoever. In charge of them all is a large, elderly woman named Mother Blood who has a grey bun, a permanent snarl and a scar across her eye which switches sides between drawings.

Hran has escaped Yatan and made his way to Kobar where, once again, no-one and nothing can stop him. Ragnarok lures the dinosaur onto a spaceship called the Void Angel with the intention of piloting it into a black hole, thereby ending the unstoppable threat of the loquacious, telekinetic tyrannosaur. But Smith stows away aboard the vessel, knocks out Ragnarok and puts him into an escape pod before piloting the ship to destruction himself.

“Why did he do that?” Ragnarok asks Mother Blood later. “He wasn’t even human.” “Perhaps he loved you,” suggests the matriarch. “Perhaps aliens can love after all.”

It should be evident from these plot synopses that the stories are extremely simplistic pulp sci-fi with no real character development or thought-provoking concepts. None of these would pass muster as a 2000AD ‘Future Shock’, that’s for sure. The final musings on platonic cross-species love seem completely out-of-place after seventy minutes of shooting first and asking questions later.

All the voices for these three adventures - which don’t have separate opening and closing title sequences - are supplied by Jon Glover, David Tate and Norma Ronald. Glover and Tate were both regulars on Week Ending and the former also did a lot of voices for Spitting Image while the latter is probably best known to sci-fi fans as Eddie the Computer in the radio and TV versions of Hitchhiker’s Guide. Ronald was in The Men from the Ministry and had a semi-regular role as Straker’s secretary in UFO.

There is no director listed and Moore is credited only with ‘stories’ not script so it’s not clear whether he wrote this or just came up with the ideas. As he was very much at the start of his career, just a jobbing writer, I suspect he wrote all the dialogue himself. The character was designed by no less a personage than Bryan Talbot, who also drew the cool image on the video sleeve. The actual illustrations on screen are by Dave Williams, Raz and Ham Khan (who I believe are Argentinean), Don Wazejewski, Mark Farmer and Mike Collins - some of whom went on to become big names in the comics field, working for DC, Marvel and of course 2000AD. The only other person credited is David King, who wrote the music (Alan Moore knows the score!).

This bizarre video - essentially an on-screen comic - was produced and released (in March 1983) by Nutland Video Ltd, a company based in Southend-on-Sea. The film has a 1982 copyright date on screen but a 1983 date on the box. The company also produced two rather more genteel videos along similar lines. The Adventures of Gumdrop was based on a series of children’s books by Val Biro about a vintage car and was narrated by Peter Hawkins. Tales of Bobby Brewster was based on a series of books by HE Todd about a young boy and his oddball adventures. There is an advert at the end of Ragnarok for these two videos along with two completely incompatible titles also released by Nutland: Seven X Dead, a retitling of the 1974 US horror film The House of Seven Corpses starring Faith Domergue and John Carradine; and a 1981 US football comedy with the jaw-droppingly awful title The Kinky Coaches and the Pom Pom Pussycats.

A hilariously bland voice - presumably the owner of Nutland Video, whoever he was - reads out the details of all four videos in a monotone that applies the same level of excitement to the phrase ‘When they play... everybody scores’ as it does to describing a vintage car. Seven X Dead is pronounced ‘Seven Times Dead’ and Faith Domergue is pronounced ‘Faith Domergoo’. Nutland’s slim catalogue of titles also included Claude Mulot’s Franco-Italian thriller The Contract, a collection of four cartoons called Zilch! (which may have been more of the rostrum drawings subgenre) and a single episode of Spectreman, the packaging for which included a free Spectreman mask!

Despite its importance as an early work by one of the world’s top comic writers, Ragnarok seems to be completely unknown. The only reference to it anywhere on the web is on Bryan Talbot’s own site where he says: “I met the Nutland Video guys when they did a presentation at a Society of Strip Illustration meeting and I proposed they do a Science Fiction animated feature. I recommended Alan Moore as writer (he was relatively unknown then and looking for work) and he created the character Ragnarok and wrote the script. I designed the character and did the cover illo and logo.”

I picked up this tape from a dealer at the Festival of Fantastic Films in 2007, proving that however dead VHS may seem there are always discoveries to be made. I wonder who owns the rights to this now. It would be an interesting item for some enterprising DVD label to release on the back of the publicity for Watchmen.

MJS rating: B+

Director: Anthony Currie
Writer: Anthony Currie
Producer: Nicolas Stiliadis
Cast: Frank Stallone, Bruce Pirrie, Elizabeth Edwards
Year of release: 1987
Country: Canada
Reviewed from: UK VHS (Hi-Pressure Video)

While there was undoubtedly a great deal of crap made during the 1980s, there were one or two gems lurking within the mire. Some people thought that a cheesy title and a plastic spaceship was all that was needed to make a spoof of, or homage to, 1950s B-movies, but the films that worked best were the ones where the makers actually cared, crafting characters and storylines that we would care about in turn.

One thinks of Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee in The Return of Captain Invincible, or of Return of the Killer Tomatoes (well, I think of them anyway). Here’s another of my favourites, the unjustifiably obscure The Pink Chiquitas. Sly Stallone’s brother Frank, a singer/actor in his own right, stars as private dick Tony Morita Jr who drives a white ‘59 Cadillac convertible with enormous cow-horns on the bonnet. He’s hip, smart and cool, has a string of Olympic medals, and gets all the girls - in fact within a couple of minutes he’s receiving head from a bimbo hitch-hiker (Heather Smith, who may or may not have also been in Screwballs and/or Ozone) while being chased by mobsters!

Morita hides out at a drive-in (showing Zombie Beach Party III) in the hick town of Beansville where we are introduced to nerdy TV weatherman Clip Bacardi (Bruce Pirrie, who went on to direct a spoof paranormal investigation show called The Fifth Quadrant) and his date, librarian Mary Ann Dubrowski (singer/model Elizabeth Edwards) as well as Deputy Barney Drum (Don Lake: Bill’s dad in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, also in Terminator 2 and Short Circuit 2) who is in charge while the sheriff is away. A pink meteorite hurtles overhead and the drive-in empties as everyone drives off to look for it.

Clip finds a tiny fragment which he thinks is all that’s left after atmospheric burn-up, but the bulk of the meteorite is intact and is discovered by teenage intern Stella Dumbrowski (Cindy Valentine: Teen Witch) - who incurred Clip’s wrath for competently handling the weather reports at Channel 3 while he was on holiday - together with her date Dave (TJ Scott, a stuntman in the Police Academy movies) and their friends Anita and Ken. Stella and Anita become sexually rapacious and the next morning Ken and Dave’s bodies are discovered beside the now empty meteorite crater.

An Indian doctor (Harold Baehan) turns up along with a nurse who is Dave’s sister Helen (Claudia Udy: Edge of Sanity). Tony Morita sets out to investigate, helped by Deputy Barney but hindered by corrupt Mayor Ernie Bodine (John Hemphill) and haunted by his late father Tony Morita Sr (Stallone again). Mary Ann decides to run for Mayor opposite Bodine and this is just the first of a sequence of events which sees the women of the town gradually take over, both socially and sexually, led by the now glamorous Mary Ann and TV anchorwoman Trudy Jones (McKinlay Robinson). Outrageously gay cameraman Dwight Wright (Gerald Isaac) tries to join the women in drag but they discover him. Eventually all the men are wandering around like zombies and only Morita, Barney, Dwight and Helen are left to save the town.

The problem is the meteorite, now ensconced in an old mine, which is some sort of sentient being and is telepathically controlling the local women. Eartha Kitt is credited as the voice of the meteorite (called ‘Betty’ in various literature but never given a name on screen) but all she does is her famous purr, though she does duet with Stallone over the end credits. As the controlled women throw off the shackles of male domination, they all start to dress in pink - which was very big in the 1980s - and Tony’s investigations reveal that a similarly pink meteor was reported centuries ago by Spanish explorers, heading for the Amazon. Love interest Helen is kept immune by having transistor radios strapped over her ears.

The Pink Chiquitas is unpretentious, well-crafted silliness. It knows its limitations and never tries to exceed them, hence it works and works well. There’s no nudity, swearing or violence and the sexually liberated ladies of the town are portrayed cheasily but never cheaply. That’s a tricky balancing act but the film pulls it off.

Most of the unnamed ‘pink chiquitas’ are simply eye candy who never had any other credits, but among those with real careers are: Lolita Davidovich (Gods and Monsters), Topaz Hasfal (Cyberjack, Bordello of Blood), Susan Haskell (One Life to Live, JAG), Marcia Levine (Bionic Showdown), Jane Sowerby (who played Chrissy Hynde in a 2000 TV movie called The Linda McCartney Story!) and former Miss Canada Cynthia Kereluk. However, I’m not convinced that the ‘Sheryl Lee’ credited is the same one who was in John Carpenter’s Vampires and Twin Peaks. The cast of the entirely fictitious Zombie Beach Party III includes Nicholas Campbell (The Brood, The Dead Zone) and Sharolyn Sparrow (Death Wish V).

Producer Stiliadis (who was also the cinematographer) went on to make Gladiator Cop and Red Blooded American Girl I and II. Visual effects supervisor David Stipes had previously worked on Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and went on to work on The Flash, Arena and all TV versions of Star Trek from The Next Generation onwards. But what of one-time writer/director Anthony Currie? What ever happened to him? Where is he now?

Well, the fact that this film received two Genie nominations (the Canadian equivalent of the Bafta) for sound and sound editing leads me to believe that he is actually top sound editor Tony Currie, among whose credits are the BeastMaster TV series and Cronenberg’s Spider and Naked Lunch. It’s a shame he never made another film as writer/director because he clearly knew what he was doing.

(The film’s American video packaging manages to not only place the action in ‘Beamsville’ instead of Beansville but also misspells the main character’s name as ‘Mareda’!)

MJS rating: B+