Ben Shillito wrote was a credited writer on bothJust for the Recordand Dead Cert. In October 2010 he kindly agreed to an e-mail interview about his work on both movies.

What is your background in writing, before your involvement with these two films?
“I've been writing since I was old enough to hold a pen, and until recently almost everything I wrote was deeply odd. Reading back over some primary school compositions, an activity which my mother forces upon me almost every Christmas, I find my early writings near-Lynchian in their determined surrealism. Many of them feature cats in prominent roles, which illuminates a long-held pseudo-phobia of mine.

“By the age of eight I was writing Doctor Who scripts in my school note books (mostly revolving around Sabalom Glitz and carrot juice, but still featuring cats), and by the time I got to university I was earnestly churning out unpublishable novels practically every weekend, filling the halls of residence with the sound of secondhand-typewriter clatter. After graduation, I was set on an academic career (providing I could decide whether to do my PhD on Salman Rushdie or Discworld), but things went wrong when I developed (seemingly from nowhere) a crippling depression and had to be hospitalised, medicated and therapied back into the land of the living.

“Depression dragged on, as depressions are wont to do, until finally, in 2005, I decided that sitting in a shitty bedsit smoking roll-ups and pondering slashing my wrists was unprofitable, and that I should instead recast myself as a British answer to Kevin Smith, and I started reading about screen-writing, and devouring Faber & Faber's screenplays. While my first few efforts shared the earnestness of my written fiction, they were over-wrought and too padded with abject referentialism, deeply in debt (practically in slavery) to Lynch, Kubrick and Jarmusch, among others.

“It was a Sight and Sound article on Rodriguez and Tarantino that straightened me out, and got me thinking about film as an entertainment medium as well as a rarefied art form and message-delivery system. The next piece I wrote was a tight, twisty, 90-page noir thriller called Saltwater, and that script brought me to the attention (via various honourable intermediaries) of Steve Lawson.”

How did you get involved with Jonathan Sothcott and Steve Lawson?
“Steve was an aspirant when I met him. An actor building a career, using his substantial business background and connections to help finance a high-concept action thriller called The Rapture. Impressed by the script for Saltwater, Steve offered to help me make it and we shot a five-minute promo with Frank Harper and Danny John-Jules, but when The Rapture became a farrago to rival Heaven's Gate (but without the sole redeeming feature of a damn good script, which is what had saved Cimino's flabby opus), Steve and I parted company.

“For the next year I kept plugging away, managing to corral some actors and film students together to shoot a very low-budget quantum-physics essay called Strings, which ultimately suffered from the cutting of corners and didn't come together in the edit. It was while I was in the doldrums of trying to cut Strings that I heard from Steve again - he and producer Jonathan Sothcott had made the wise decision to walk away from The Rapture, and to focus instead on Just for the Record, a script based (in large part, at least) on Jonathan's experiences in the micro-budget film industry, and which seemed to speak to both of them at a point where they were reeling from The Rapture and somewhat embittered towards the business of show.

“The concept of the film, a screwball skewering of the pomp and pretensions of no-budget film-makers, was strong enough to attract some middle-drawer British talent, along with a lot of Steve and Jonathan's industry chums and chums-of-chums. With a start date fixed, and Steve having decided to direct the piece, I was asked to help Steve ‘tart up’ the script, which I duly did, under Steve's guidance.”

What was the Just for the Record script like when you were first shown it and what were you able to do with it?
“Since the project's original writer, Phil Barron, was still onboard, my involvement with the re-drafting was minimal. Steve and Jonathan would give their ideas, I'd try to map them out, and then everything was sent over to Phil, who did the actual work. Some of the more bizarre elements were reduced or removed (never ask about velcro-baby, that's my motto), but when the script came back it was 170 pages long and full of action set-pieces, including a running gag in which members of Andy Wiseman's documentary crew kept getting killed in front of him. (Along with velcro-baby, we never discuss the aggravated rape of Brad Pitt and Sylvester Stallone which fell about halfway through that draft.)

“It took a few mighty swings with an axe to repurpose that draft for the screen, but it was managed, and when we started shooting I was ‘associate producer and script editor’, which effectively means ‘secretary and punctuation-monkey’. As filming went on, more and more chums-of-chums were getting added to the cast, and I quickly took on the role of cameo-generator and on-set dialogue tweaker. My only substantive contribution to the script before shooting began was the creation and writing of Danny Dyer's character Derek LaFarge, but as time went on I was called upon almost every day to tuck myself away on set and ‘write a scene for [insert actor's name] as something like a [insert film-making role] with [insert illness, quirk or toilet problem]’.

“Although ultimately most of this stuff was cut, including a hilarious turn by Danny Midwinter as a faux-Jamaican porn-star and Jamie Foreman as a disco-dancing videographer, I was ultimately granted a writing credit in recognition of the LaFarge character and some dialogue for the likes of Sean Pertwee, Steven Berkoff and Billy Murray, although those characters were already in place in earlier drafts. Two lines remain of which I am proud: the karate sensei's Ro-wen-tah monk speech, and Alice Barry's final line about bottom love. Other than that, meh.”

What did you think when you first saw Metrodome's sleeve design for JFTR?
“The JFTR sleeve came to my BlackBerry from Steve, forwarded from an original message from Jonathan. The design was attached as a jpeg, and the subject of the message was simply 'You're not going to believe this'. Suffice it to say, we didn't believe it. My response contained the word 'mendacious' - most other personnel used stronger language. Arguments followed. Many consumers were deceived. Enough said.”

The 'story/idea' credits of Dead Cert are totally unclear: what were the respective contributions of Lawson, Sothcott, Garry Charles and Nick Onsloe to the screenplay?
“The unclear credits are due to various contractual issues, and there is one thing in this answer that I have to skirt around for professional reasons. As frankly as I can put it - Garry Charles wrote a (very good) screenplay called Infernal, in which gangsters from the bare-knuckle boxing world go up against suave demon gangsters who own a fucked-up demon nightclub called Infernal, which the human gangsters must infiltrate to save one of their own after a thrown-fight arrangement goes sour. It was pacy, clever, and had some lovely moments, and it was sent to Steve and I at exactly the point we had begun discussing doing a vampire film, possibly with gangsters in it.

“Rather than risk ripping off Garry's work, we elected to option the script and repurpose it, changing the demons to vampires, and re-shaping the story. The characters of Frankham, Livienko et al were my work, and were developed over the course of several story conferences between myself, Steve and Nick Onsloe, an actor who is something of an encyclopaedia of bad ‘80s action and horror films. Between the three of us, we mapped out the shape of the story, then I went to work populating that framework with characters and scenes, working out the beats and scripting.

“After two quick drafts, we took it to Jonathan Sothcott, who brought his love of Hammer to the table, helping to develop the Livienko character's mythological underpinnings (a strain of Norse mythology from the poetic Edda, sadly lost from the finished film) and to construct a Van Helsing character in the form of Steven Berkoff's character, who was brain-stormed into existence over lunch with Mr Berkoff in a Docklands brasserie.”

What are the big differences between your original Dead Cert script and the shooting script, and between the shooting script and the finished film?
“The differences are many, and significant, but for the most part each revision was at least a partial improvement. Trying to write for a committee of people who all want story credit for their (very different) ideas is not easy, but in the actual writing I was left mostly alone, and then asked to revise elements for the next draft. In the very first draft, Freddy Frankham was a supporting character and Dennis Christian the lead, but the onus of the heroic sacrifice fell too heavily on Frankham, so their roles were inverted.

“The questions of Dennis's death and resurrection were batted back and forth a dozen times, and it was eventually settled on that he was addicted to Bliss, the Romanian party-drug, and that this contributed to his resurrection, partly to set up a plotline for a possible sequel. Sadly, this didn't make the cut, replaced instead with a shot of him being bitten by Dave Legeno's character during the central fight scene.

“A key change was the removal (at the producer's insistence) of any kind of subtext to the film. Originally, the Paradise/Inferno transition was meant to be far more significant, and the characters were to pass through an almost literal purgatory before deciding to act, with their understanding of the situation informed by the context of the Edda poem and of Berkoff's character's experience in the opening scene of the film (as scripted) - a mini-movie set in 1987, in which the hurricane hits Britain with the arrival of Livienko, and the Hiemdahl brotherhood are wiped out simultaneously in a surgically-precise strike by the vampires, with Berkoff's Kenneth Mason the sole survivor.

“This scene survives in several bitty flashbacks in the finished film, but its loss made several key thematic elements indistinct: Mason's relationship to femininity as a source of evil (his own daughter having been the vampire he killed in 1987 informing his relationship to the girls of the strip-club, and Frankham's pregnant wife), his loss of faith (the opening established him as a CofE vicar and academic) and the efficacy of religious symbols in dealing with vampiric evil in a secular world.

“As conceived, Eddie Christian's cunning criminality in the first act (in a lawless Paradise of his own making) was to be replaced by self-doubt in Purgatory (at his brother's funeral, and in several scenes in which he silently deals with his illness) and by a transformative re-emergence as a remorseless and still-cunning monster in the Inferno. Paralleled with the establishment of our key association of vampires with the aristocracy, and the suggestion that they are no better or worse than the rich feeding on the poor, Eddie Christian's journey was considered too subtextual, and heavily altered, with the explanation ‘Let's leave delivering messages to the Royal Mail.’

“As it stands, there is no reference to Eddie's illness until the middle of the third act, and the mental gymnastics required of the audience to process his earlier behaviour in light of this revelation are simply impossible to parse, especially given the context of this scene. To put it in Chekhovian terms, in the third act Eddie Christian fires a gun which the audience has not been shown in the first act, so the reverberations of the explosion are not felt on any dramatic level.

“The remaining changes, and the ones which I find most disappointing as a writer, were mainly on-the-fly alterations made by actors or creative personnel on set, which I personally feel never contributes anything to the film. In fact, actors' improvisations are almost always detrimental to the overall film, as they can end up critically compromising dramatic or thematic through-lines, or altering the meaning of an entire section of plot.”

What do you feel you have learned from your experiences on these two films?
“Looking at my work now, as compared to my work a year or two ago, a lot of what I have learned seems to be quite negative, but I don't personally regard these as negative experiences. My loathing for improvisation was solidified by the problems I saw it cause on Dead Cert, when entire scenes had to be re-thought on the fly because an actor changed something in another scene, but I think what I need to learn from that is not ‘restrict the freedom of actors’ but ‘make the script better’. When an actor has a problem with a line, it's as likely to be because it isn't written into the character properly as it is simply a matter of ego or showing off. Having said that, when an actor as good as Steven Berkoff or Dexter Fletcher comes in and doesn't change so much as a comma, then you know you must have done something right.

“I have learned a lot about character, and the importance of structure, and about the need for every line to be perfect. Outside of the professional lessons, I learned a lot about the British film industry and how things work (or rather, don't), and possibly got an insight into just why the Brit industry is in such a parlous state. But the main thing I have learned, and this is as true in film as it was in my previous, academic, career - Goldwyn was right. Nobody knows anything. But it's still fun.”

What projects are you working on now?
“I have recently finished three scripts: a fairytale adventure called Hamelin (co-written with journalist Ben Mortimer), a rollicking ‘60s-style spy yarn called Sleeper Bid, and a very dark and twisted Poe adaptation called The Red Death. Sleeper Bid was a commission job, and is likely to go into production in the next 18 months, Hamelin is doing the rounds looking for a buyer, and The Red Death is possibly to be my directorial debut, maybe next Autumn or in 2012 (assuming the Mayans weren't right, in which case I'm completely wasting my time).”

When Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was showing in the UK, SFX ran a big feature and between us we talked to pretty much everybody involved. One of the interview gigs I was able to land was Lane Smith, Perry White himself. Lane talked to me by phone on 16th February 1996. He passed away in June 2005.

We're all big fans of Lois and Clark over here.
"You know, I ran into somebody this morning who told me it was the number one American show in a lot of places in Europe."

It's probably number two over here.
"Is Baywatch number one?"

I think The X-Files probably is. Season three of Lois and Clark starts tomorrow.
"I see, so it's going to be about four months before you get into this wedding stuff and everything."

So they do marry then!
"Well, they marry, but are they really married? It's one of those type of deals."

How did you get the role of Perry White?
"It's kind of interesting because I wasn't crazy about doing a television series. I was doing right well in the movies and everything and they sent this script over. I thought, 'Well, I'll go over and I'll do something outrageous. They'll never buy it in a million years, but I'll do it.' I went over there and auditioned and they called back in an hour and we started making a deal."

Are you a Superman fan yourself?
"Not really, no. I never really watched it. I call this series 'the golden goose' - it's strictly a money job as far as I'm concerned. That's what television's all about. I much prefer doing movies. In fact I just finished a little movie with Emilio Estevez called The War at Home and hopefully I'll be able to do a couple of movies during my hiatus period."

When Lois and Clark started, did people expect it to be as successful as it has been?
"What happened with the show was that it got wonderful reviews because it's tongue in cheek. So it got these critical people all saying that they thought it was a terrific show, and it was doing okay. Then after the first year what they essentially did was turn it into kind of a cop show: Lois and Clark solving crimes. They're really like two detectives or two cops. They made it much more action-orientated. They put Superman in the Superman outfit much more than he was. It was really an old-fashioned format that they turned it into, and it took off. We are consistently in the top 20 over here, and most of the time it beats out all the competition on the 8-9 time slot that we have on Sunday, which is like the prime time of the prime time. That's the biggest hour of the week."

When the series started was there any worry about taking an icon as potent as Superman and reinventing him?
"I think that's the only reason it got on the air, to tell the truth, because it was reinvented. I don't think anybody was interested in doing a Superman series with the old format. The woman who originally created the show, she had this idea about Lois and Clark and their relationship. You see, the first year it was more of a character-driven show. I guess everybody knows - at the end of the first year they fired everybody and turned it into an action adventure show which has really made it take off. But the show wouldn't ever have gotten on the air unless there was a whole new tack taken with it."

How consciously do you try to make your Perry White different from other ones?
"Oh, I've never even seen the Superman stuff. I just try to create an outrageous character. He's bombastic and two minutes later he's a softie. But the main thing I tried to give him was a sense of humour about himself and a sense of humour about the world. I wasn't remotely interested in other people. It's a comic strip, and I don't think anybody's ever done justice to Perry White. They've usually been straight men who've played the part, and my main thrust is having a lot of fun with it."

Would you like to see more episodes where Perry becomes integral to the main plot?
"Well, that was the first year. I had my own storyline every third or fourth episode, and since they've turned it into a cop show that's not likely to happen now. Like I say, I call it 'the golden goose'. I just go in about two days out of every ten and laugh all the way to the bank. I don't mean to be cynical about it, but that's what happened to me, when they turned it into an action adventure. It lost the sense of character that it had before as a show."

So clearly you were happier with the first season.
"I had more to do, yes."

The great strength of the show is that it's tongue-in-cheek. Do you have to be careful not to go overboard into broad comedy?
"Well, I try to do comedy. As long as you're real you can push the envelope a little bit, you can get outrageous with it. When you have someone who's a superman you can take a lot of license with stuff."

Was it difficult adjusting to the new Jimmy Olsen in season two?
"Justin Whalin is a terrific guy. It was a little funny because the other Jimmy, Michael Landes, we had our whole relationship worked out and all that, but that went by the boards with the new format. So it wasn't that big a transition."

The other TV series that our readers will know you from is V. You played a corrupt senator, yes?
"Many, many years ago, yes."

What was that like to work on?
"Actually, the guy running this series now, Bob Singer, was the executive producer of that series. After they fired everybody, he came in and became our executive producer. That was fun to do. That was the first television series I ever did."

You've done a few fantasy movies, like Prison and Bridge Across Time. Do you approach fantasy stuff differently?
"You know, I took a right-hand turn after I played Richard Nixon in William Bernstein's The Final Days and I concentrated mainly on comedies. I did five movies in a row that were comedies: My Cousin Vinny, The Son-in-Law, The Scout, The Distinguished Gentleman with Eddie Murphy, and The Mighty Ducks. I just went towards comedy, and this series is part of that. I also did another series in the last five years called Good Sports with Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neill."

My Cousin Vinny and The Distinguished Gentleman were both directed by Jonathon Lynn.
"Wonderful director. He was a terrific director to work with, We had a wonderful relationship. We had a terrific time on My Cousin Vinny. Of course, The Distinguished Gentleman was one of these great big, massive budget deals, and everybody gets a little uptight on those things."

Have you seen the Anthony Hopkins version of Nixon?
"Yes. You know, I love Anthony Hopkins. I think he's a brilliant actor and he gives a brilliant performance, but I think he was miscast as Nixon. I think the big difference is that we tried to show Mr Nixon as he might see himself. And I think what they tried to do was Oliver Stone's version of Nixon. Ours was a much more subtle approach to it all, I think. He went off with the facts. He invents stuff, Oliver Stone. But it's drama, it's good drama to watch. We were more along the lines of a docu-drama. We tried to make this as close to reality as we could."

Another true story that you did was Challenger. I can imagine that must have been quite difficult.
"Well, it was. It was very interesting for me because when I was a young man, when I had to do my stint in the army I was put on a civilian status job and sent down to Santiago, Chile. I was down there when we got our very first satellite into the air and tracked that very first satellite. So here I was many, many, many years later, down in Houston at the Control Centre. It was quite emotional for me, because I was in on the very first step of the space program. And of course, it was sensitive because all of those people had been killed essentially because of this O-ring factor that everybody had been warned about and ignored. That was the horror of it."

My CV for you starts with Man on a Swing in 1974. Was that your first movie?
"Oh no. I don't know what you've got there. I did movies before that. I started my professional life in 1960 in New York. I was based there for many many years, 18 years almost. I did films with the first ten years - '60-'70 - I can't think of the ones. But I was basically a stage actor for many years, based in New York. I had a big break there; I did the lead in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I ran in for almost two years. Then I went back about eight years ago and I did David Mamet's Glengarry Glenn Ross which won the Pullitzer Prize and everything."

You've played a lot of authority figures: mayors and senators and policeman. Are you happy with that sort of type-casting?
"I don't know. I have a presence and an authority as an actor. I look at each role as a little bit different. I'm a character actor, but I try to create a character. You look at the role I played in My Cousin Vinny, you don't see the same actor doing The Distinguished Gentleman or The Coach. I try to make every character that I do different. I try to mould myself into the part."

Director: Graham Fletcher-Cook
Writer: Graham Fletcher-Cook
Producer: David Dayan Fisher
Cast: Annie Burkin, Billy Wright, Frank Boyce
Country: UK
Year of release: 2015
Reviewed from: online screener
Website: www.bloodandcarpet.com

Blood and Carpet is only 72 minutes long, and you will spend most of that time saying to yourself, “Well yes, it’s very good – but it’s not exactly what I’d call a horror film.”

And then, about ten minutes from the end, writer-director Graham Fletcher-Cook sticks his leg out and trips you up. And then he does it a couple of times more before the credits roll. And afterwards you will sit there and think, “Well crikey, that was a terrific horror film.”

Which is a very, very impressive trick to pull off. Because it involves two separate achievements. Fletcher-Cook has to keep our interest through the best part of an hour as we watch something which, irrespective of its quality, doesn’t seem to be what we were promised. And he has to then turn everything around in a manner that is narratively consistent and cinematically satisfying.

So here’s what you get. Overweight, amiable rocker Lyle (Billy Wright, a former homeless druggie who has done a magnificent job in turning his life around – and a courageous effort in admitting it) and his wife, emaciated beehive blonde Ruby (an absolutely blistering performance from Annie Burkin, also in Fletcher-Cook’s post-apocalyptic short Plastic) have got a dead body upstairs in the bathtub. Also a large bloodstain on their living room carpet that is not going to come out. Hence the title. While Ruby sorts out matters downstairs, Lyle sets to work sawing up the deceased.

Framing this is a scene in a prison cell of a lawyer (Julian Firth: Bedazzled remake, Agent Cody Banks 2, and two different Ian Fleming biopics!) speaking with a prisoner whom we neither see nor hear. So the main story is one giant flashback. But who is in that cell? Lyle? Ruby? Someone else?

Lyle is a big lug, a teddy bear of a guy, but his brother Melvin (Frank Boyce: Tony) – who insists on being called ‘Stan’ – is very different. Melvin is a nasally voiced, arrogant, wheeler-dealing little shit who thinks he’s the big man in town. A scene at their mother’s grave shows us how disparate the two siblings are. Melvin isn’t married and actually comes on to Ruby, although this is clearly less about any genuine attraction, more about a chance to cuckold his brother.

Aaron Ishmael is a young chancer in the pub, unimpressed by Melvin’s grandstanding. Huggy Leaver (Gangsters Guns and Zombies, Gun of the Black Sun) is the barman who breaks up the pair of them. Nicola Stapleton (Urban Ghost Story) is Ruby’s single friend who has just got a gig as an Avon Lady (historically accurate: Avon launched in this country in 1959). Andrew Tiernan (Le Fear II, The Bunker, Snuff-Movie, Man Who Sold the World, Dead Cert, War of the Dead) is a vicar who witnesses the graveyard contretemps. And Stevenage mod revival band the Petty Hoodlums appears as themselves, performing on stage halfway through.

The whole thing is set in the 1960s, recreated to perfection through the production design of Maike Crampton and the art direction of Jeanette Monero (I’ve seen 1967 cited in reviews but no specific date is given). Crampton is also credited with hair and with costumes, which were sourced from a number of retro boutiques for authenticity. Monero was also DP and gets an additional credit for directing ‘second unit’ which may refer to a colour sequence of Ruby and Lyle’s 8mm holiday footage. As a rotoscoper and compositor she has amassed gigs on such blockbusters as Avengers Assemble, The Hunger Games, John Carter, Kick-Ass and Paddington.

Whoever did what, the point is that this is an absolute spot-on recreation of the era (including some great footage on a vintage Routemaster). Too often, films and TV shows set in 20th century decades make the mistake of thinking everything they show must be from that decade. But people keep things and pass things on. These characters are working class EastEnders who grew up during the war and have lived through post-war austerity. Much of what they own is clearly pre-war, exactly as it should be.

Barny Stoppard (Under the Skin) provided the visual effects, about which I can’t be precise but I suspect much of it involved digitally removing background anachronisms. Actor Dean Batchelor gets a nonspecific ‘story consultant’ credit. Chris Burton was the editor and Mark Monero composed the soundtrack, which also includes songs by the Magnetic Mind, the Electric Mess and Jake and the Lawlessmen. Monero (presumably the DP’s hubby) is an actor whose CV goes right back to a bunch of Grange Hill episodes in the early 1980s, and then progresses through a six-year stint on EastEnders, Sid and Nancy, a James Bond game and a Matt Smith episode of Doctor Who.

Producer David Dayan Fisher is another (British) actor whose credits include National Treasure, 24, Charmed and The Dark Knight Rises. The supporting cast includes Bill Fellows (Bloodlust, Zombie Women of Satan, Until Death), Shona McWilliams (Le Fear II, When Evil Calls) and Sammy Williams (Attack the Block).

Like a number of the crew, Fletcher-Cook is primarily an actor (he has a small on-screen role), in his case boasting screen credits back to the 1970s. He also was in Sid and Nancy, as well as such notable titles as Absolute Beginners and Stars of the Roller State Disco. Although for our purposes his most significant credit is Elisar Cabrera’s pre-BHR feature Demonsoul. He is the brother of Dexter Fletcher (known for distinctive roles in Bugsy Malone, Dead Cert and all points inbetween). A third Fletcher brother, Steve, has an acting CV encompassing numerous TV gigs from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s but seems to have now packed it in. GFC has previously directed a few shorts including the aforementioned Plastic (starring Dexter), Lucky Dip (with Boyce) and a 2010 production called Ham and Mustard which, from its one-line synopsis, sounds like a precursor to this debut feature (so don’t go and look it up!).

What is really remarkable here, quite apart from the historical accuracy, is that in defiance of accepted wisdom, there are no sympathetic characters here. They’re all pretty awful in one way or another, with their contemptuously grating Larndarn accents and insincere shakeyer'and-slityerfroat East End faux-camaraderie. From the lawyer to the vicar to the barman, there’s not a person here that anyone (anyone from north of Watford Gap, at least) would want to spend any time with in real life. So skilfully does the production recreate its time and place that one gets the distinct feeling some of these characters know people who know people who know the Krays. And most of the rest probably think they do a good job because they arnly kill their own, an’ they lav their mum. Cor blimey etc.

And yet, somehow we are drawn into Ruby and Lyle’s world. A world of constant chain-smoking, no seat belts, borrowing a shilling for the meter, mods and rockers, unequal wages and no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. And within this world, we take an interest in the couple, even sympathise with them. There’s a very real relationship between Lyle and Ruby, best demonstrated in a heart-achingly tender bedroom scene which ought to have casting directors beating a path to Billy Wright’s door.

That said, obviously we don’t feel any sympathy for Melvin, who’s an appalling little prick-weasel. But all credit to Frank Boyce: he makes the character a rounded, believable prick-weasel when he could so easily have been a one-dimensional cartoon prick-weasel. That’s a tough one to pull off.

Shot over ten days in May 2013 for under £3,000, Blood and Carpet premiered at the Marbella Film Festival in October 2014 before hitting Vimeo On Demand in February 2015. An absolutely storming achievement by GFC and all his colleagues on both sides of the camera, the film manages to recreate the past without relying on nostalgia, resulting in a quite unique movie that comes thoroughly recommended to mods, history buffs and British horror fans alike.

MJS rating: A

Director: Roy William Neill
Writer: Frank Gruber
Producer: Roy William Neill
Cast: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Dennis Hoey
Country: USA
Year: 1946
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Classic Entertainment)

Terror by Night was the penultimate of the fourteen Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies. By this time, the actors had been playing the roles for seven years and were firmly established as the premiere Holmes and Watson, but the quality of the movies had declined, as is always the case. This one runs a scant sixty minutes, makes no pretence to any connection with any Conan Doyle story and frankly is a disappointment, especially in its resolution, although it has some fun performances from a supporting cast of Universal Studios character actors.

Instantly recognisable among these are moustachioed Billy Bevan (a former silent comedian for Mack Sennett whose other credits include two Bulldog Drummond pictures, Dracula's Daughter, two Invisible Man films, the 1933 A Study in Scarlet, the 1941 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Man Who Wouldn't Die, The Return of the Vampire and The Picture of Dorian Gray) and weasel-faced Skelton Knaggs (The Invisible Man's Revenge, Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome, Dick Tracey vs Cueball, Isle of the Dead, Bedlam and of course House of Dracula).

All the action, bar a prologue, takes place on a train travelling from London to Edinburgh. Lady Margaret Carstairs (Mary Forbes, who was a different aristocrat in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes seven years earlier and also had a bit part in Sherlock Holmes in Washington) is onboard with her drippy son Roland (Geoffrey Steele) and a fabulous diamond brooch. She is convinced that an attempt will be made to steal the diamond en route so she has employed Holmes to accompany her. Inspector Lestrade is also aboard, ostensibly on a fishing trip but really to keep an eye on what goes on. Series regular Dennis Hoey (The Mystery of the Marie Celeste, Tod Slaughter's Maria Marten, Tarzan and the Leopard Woman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, She-Wolf of London) turns in a terrific performance of dogged incomprehension which lifts the movie a notch or two

When the diamond does in fact disappear - Roland Carstairs being murdered in the process - Holmes orders their carriage to be sealed and begins grilling his fellow passengers. These include the furtive Mr and Mrs Shallcross (Gerald Hamer, also in Sherlock Holmes in Washington, Pursuit to Algiers and The Scarlet Claw, plus Bulldog Drummond's Bride; and Janet Murdoch), glowering mathematics professor William Kilbane (Frederic Worlock, also in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, Dressed to Kill, Pursuit to Algiers and The Woman in Green, plus She-Wolf of London and the 1941 Jekyll and Hyde), faux-glamorous Vivian Vedder (former Miss New York and Coca Cola advertising girl Renee Godfrey) who is accompanying her mother (in a coffin in the guard's van) and who sometimes slips from her cut-glass accent into inadvertent Cockney) and an old friend of Watson's from his time in India, Major Duncan-Bleek.

Alan Mowbray, who plays Duncan-Bleek as a charming buffer not unlike Bruce's Watson, had already acted opposite two other Holmeses: he was in the 1932 film version of William Gillette's famous Sherlock Holmes stage play, starring Clive Brook, and the following year played Inspector Lestrade opposite Reginald Owen in A Study in Scarlet. British-born, he doesn't appear to have made any pictures in this country but started working almost immediately that he arrived in Hollywood in 1931, his credits including Charlie Chan in London, The Night Life of the Gods, the first two Topper films, Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, The Man Who Knew Too Much (as Val Parnell!) and The King and I. Mowbray is best remembered today as one of the founders of the Screen Actors' Guild.

The problem with Terror by Night (a half-accurate title, in that the action does at least take place at night) is that instead of a Sherlock Holmes story we have a straightforward whodunnit with a single, isolated location and a bunch of suspicious characters. And although Holmes does eventually unmask the murderer/thief it's all done in a rather haphazard way which is at odds with the startlingly logical deductions that mark out the character in the original stories (and the more faithful spin-offs). Holmes is convinced that the crime is the work of Colonel Sebastian Moran, an associate of the recently deceased Professor Moriarty, for no more reason, it seems, than that this is a fiendish crime and could only have been committed by a top criminal.

In a completely unsatisfactory bit of plotting, Holmes accuses one of his fellow passengers of being Moran without any apparent evidence, to a polite denial, and though the film's finale is the villain's attempted escape, proving the great detective correct, there is absolutely no indication of how he arrived at this conclusion. The only bit of deduction in the whole movie is when Holmes examines the coffin in which Vivian Vedder's mother reposes and spots that there is a curious anomaly in the dimensions.

The entire film was clearly designed on the cheap - and not just in the script department. After the prologue showing Vivian Vedder ordering the coffin and an opening scene on a short section of railway platform, the only sets are the carriage, the dining car and the guard's van (called a 'baggage car' in deference to American audiences), the latter of which is a surprisingly large and unrealistic room. There is back projection of rushing landscapes outside the windows, though most shots avoid pointing in that direction, but otherwise there is absolutely no sense of movement. Clearly these sets were built on a studio floor instead of being built up on springs and rocked by stagehands. Otherwise, the uniformity is broken only by a moderately exciting, if arbitrary, sequence in which Holmes is thrown out of a door by an unseen assailant but manages to hold on, breaking a window to climb back in. The broken window, incidentally, offers neither a draft nor the roar of the train wheels.

Nevertheless, what it lacks as a detective story, the movie almost makes up for in terms of characterisation, with a particularly entertaining comic subplot between Watson, trying to do some investigating on his own, and the abrasive Kilbane. One interesting point is that, in the dining car, Watson and Duncan-Bleek have a curry which reinforces their bond of shared experiences in India; this must have seemed quite an exotic dish to audiences in 1946.

The undertaker in the prologue is played by Harry Cording, who met pretty much all the great monsters in a career that encompassed The Black Cat, Charlie Chan in Paris, Son of Frankenstein, Tower of London, The Invisible Man Returns, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and no fewer than nine of the Rathbone/Bruce pictures. Also in the cast are Leyland Hodgson (The Mummy, British Intelligence, three Mr Moto pictures, two Invisible Man movies, The Adventures of Captain Marvel, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Bedlam and four other Sherlock Holmes films) and Colin Kenny (whose career kicked off with two Elmo Lincoln Tarzan films in 1918 and stretched through to the mid-1960s, incorporating Bulldog Drummond Comes Back, a couple of Charlie Chans, The Invisible Man Returns, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Manchurian Candidate!).

Frank Gruber wrote this and the final Rathbone/Bruce picture, Dressed to Kill, as well as Bulldog Drummond at Bay, a stack of westerns and episodes of 77 Sunset Strip. Cinematographer Maury Gertsman also lit Dressed to Kill, Rondo Hatton-starrers House of Horrors and The Brute Man, The Creature Walks Among Us, How to Make a Monster, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake and Mr Ed! This public domain movie looks perfectly acceptable on a Classic Entertainment triple bill disc along with Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon and Dressed to Kill.

There are plenty of worse films than Terror by Night out there, in fact it's a fun way to pass an hour. It's just not really a Sherlock Holmes movie.

MJS rating: B-

Director: Roy William Neill
Writers: W Scott Darling, Edward T Lowe, Edmund L Hartmann
Producer: Howard Benedict
Cast: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Lionel Atwill
Year of release: 1943
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK DVD

This was the fourth pairing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson and the first of eleven such films directed by Roy William Neill (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man). It is ostensibly based on 'The Adventure of the Dancing Men', one of the stories in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, but apart from the central problem being a substitution cypher which uses little stick figures, there is no connection. There is no Moriarty in 'The Adventure of the Dancing Men', no Inspector Lestrade and certainly no secret weapon.

Transposed to wartime present day, the film starts in Switzerland where a disguised Holmes successfully spirits away scientist Franz Tobel (William Post Jr) from under the noses of some Nazi officers. Tobel has invented a new type of bomb-sight which not only needs to be kept away from the Germans but could greatly benefit the RAF. It is a moot point whether a bomb-sight, strictly speaking, counts as a 'weapon' but I suppose Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Aiming Device just wouldn't have pulled in the crowds.

Determined to keep his invention's workings secret, even from the British government to whom he is selling it, Tobel splits his prototype into four parts which he sends to four eminent scientists/engineers in London to replicate. Only Tobel knows the identities of all four so they can't collaborate, though he leaves a list of their names with his girlfriend Charlotte (Karen Verne), written in a curious 'dancing stick figure' cypher.

Professor Moriarty (the wonderful Lionel Atwill) abducts Tobel and takes the coded message but Holmes retrieves the writing from indentations in the paper underneath. Three of the scientists have already been fingered by Moriarty and it becomes a race to see who can decypher the fourth line of the message first. It proves particularly troublesome because it appears to be gibberish. There is an absurdly simple explanation for this, but it's all rather arbitrary.

The appeal of a film like this lies not in its fidelity to the Holmes canon or the character himself, but in the glorious 1940s earnestness of it all (offset by Bruce's bumbling teddy bear of a Watson). Dennis Hoey (The Mystery of the Marie Celeste, She-Wolf of London) makes the first of six appearances in the Rathbone/Bruce series as Lestrade and Mary Gordon (Hans' wife in Bride of Frankenstein) makes the fourth of ten appearances as Mrs Hudson. Also in the cast are that great (and appropriately named) character actor Holmes Herbert (who played different roles in six of these films as well as appearing in The Mummy's Curse, The Ghost of Frankenstein and British Intelligence), Universal regular Michael Mark (The Black Cat, The Mummy's Hand, Son..., Ghost... and House of Frankenstein but best known as little Maria's father in Frankenstein), George Burr Macannan (White Zombie, Supernatural) and a bunch of busy supporting players.

Writer Edward T Lowe also wrote House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Tarzan's Desert Mystery, The Vampire Bat, three Charlie Chans (...in Paris, ...in Shanghai and ...at the Race Track) and three Bulldog Drummonds (...Escapes, ...Comes Back and ...'s Revenge). W Scott Darling wrote The Ghost of Frankenstein and Edmund T Hartmann wrote the Olsen and Johnson comedy Ghost Chasers and one other Rathbone/Bruce/Neill picture, The Scarlet Claw. Cinematographer Les White's other credits include Sherlock Holmes in Washington, Invisible Agent and The Monster That Challenged the World.

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon is a jolly wartime romp which may not please Holmes purists but is great fun for the rest of us to watch. If it can be said to have anything in common with its source material, it is that the mystery centres around something as absurdly simple and frankly dull as a substitution cypher decoded by the tried and tested method of counting how many times the symbols appear and assuming that the commonest is E, the next most frequent is T, etc. This may have been something amazing in the 1890s, may even have still been a revelation in the 1940s but it's bloody old hat nowadays. My advice: don't worry about the simple solution, certainly don't worry about the archetypal McGuffin, just sit back and enjoy the wonderful chemistry between Rathbone and Bruce and a corking performance (is there any other sort?) from Lionel Atwill.

As it is a long time since I have watched any of the other Rathbone-Bruce Sherlock Holmes pictures, I can't say how this one compares with the others so the MJS rating simply reflects the movie in its own right. The quality on this Classic Entertainment triple bill (which also has two later adventures, Terror by Night and Dressed to Kill) is pretty good with no major problems.

MJS rating: B+

Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg
Writer: Paul Bales
Producer: David Latt
Cast: Gareth David-Lloyd, Dominic Keating, Ben Syder
Country: USA
Year of release: 2010
Reviewed from: UK disc (Revolver)
Website: www.theasylum.cc

The UK sleeve of the latest Asylum feature is magnificent: dinosaurs! dragons! the Palace of Westminster alight! a giant octopus attacking Westminster Bridge! some sort of robot-thing! Sherlock Holmes himself! and Ianto off Torchwood! Much is promised. Fortunately, most is delivered in a storming steampunk romp which puts to shame many bigger-budgeted, more faithful Holmes pictures.

Which is why it’s a shame that the only quote they could come up with was “in an extraordinary league of its own” (credited to ‘blockbuster.co.uk’) which has the unfortunate effect of suggesting this film is similar in some way to notorious 2003 turkey The League of Extraordinarily Bad Special Effects. Trust me, it’s not. It’s everything that The League of Excruciatingly Poor Acting tried to be and failed.

This is, for one thing, entertaining, which the bigger film certainly wasn’t and, despite its tiny budget, this has better effects and better production values all round than The League of Exceptionally Bad Scripts. It also helps that Caernarfon looks a lot more like 19th century London than Prague could ever manage. And that the Asylum’s film doesn’t star past-his-sell-by-date old twat Sean Connery.

But I’m damning with feint praise here. Almost anything would be better than The League of Explain to Me Again Why I’m Watching This Shit (you can tell I really don’t like it!). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes - to use the eventual full on-screen title - is a belter, easily one of the Asylum’s best.

The title is an oddity worth noting as the production was shot under the working title Sherlock. The trailer calls it Sherlock Holmes but the DVD and titles call it Sir Arthur... (with the possessive credit in much smaller type, of course) although it’s just called Sherlock Holmes again at the end of the credits. The dilemma, of course, was to cruise as much as possible on the back of the near-simultaneous Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes without making people think this was a film they had already seen.

So this is kind of a mockbuster but only in the sense that War of the Worlds was, not in the more literal and obvious sense of Transmorphers or Snakes on a Train.

Though not adapted - even loosely - from any Conan Doyle story, the script by Paul Bales includes a few nods to ‘the canon’. The characterisations of Holmes and Watson are pretty spot-on and while the plot itself is (let’s be honest) bonkers nonsense, the fantastical steampunk setting gives this hugely likeable film a degree of leeway which it might not be able to afford if it had a more conventional story.

For a low-low-budget feature (about $150,000, give or take, from what I can piece together) this looks mightily impressive and does a great job of recreating Victorian London - which is why the one or two anachronisms and Americanisms which do creep in jar annoyingly. For example, the credits play over CG cityscapes of 19th London, one of which is a railway station. But the engine briefly seen in front of the station is very, very obviously an American railroad engine.

This isn’t something that you have to be a bit of a geek to spot (like the CG ‘American’ submarines in Mega-Shark vs Giant Octopus which were actually Royal Navy subs). British and American steam engines look absolutely nothing like each other, apart from having wheels, and anyone who has ever been a small boy should know that.

On the one hand, this is nitpicking: it’s on-screen for no more than a few seconds as part of a larger image and has no involvement with the story. But it gave me the thirst for a neologism: 'nometgir'. A Nometgir is something which is wrong but of which it can be said that it would be ‘No more expensive to get it right.’ There are a couple of other shots of a (real) steam engine in action later on which were presumably shot at the Welsh Highland Railway, which has a terminus at Caernarfon.

While I’m nitpicking, the film starts with a prologue of an old Dr Watson (played by David Shackleton: Another Night, Secret Rage) in 1940, specifically 29th December 1940 which was, of course, the height of the Blitz. It’s a cheap-but-effective shot of squadrons of planes flying over London, explosions erupting below. But it is missing four things, all of which were in action throughout every single night of the Blitz: anti-aircraft fire, barrage balloons, searchlights and an ARP warden yelling “Put that bloody light out!” at the aged doctor who sits on the top floor of a building, attended by a young woman and gazing out through a lit window. Rachael Evelyn (John Carter of Mars, Ironclad) is credited as ‘Miss Lucy Hudson’, a nice touch which implies that she is the (great-?) grand-daughter of the original housekeeper.

Watson comments that it is the second time he has watched London burn - and somebody has really done their homework here because 29th December 1940 was not just the biggest raid on London up to that point, it was also the night that the Luftwaffe dropped far more incendiary bombs than ever before because they knew that there was a neap tide that night, meaning the River Thames was unusually low and it would be considerably more difficult for the London Fire Brigade to reach it with their hoses.

Even without showing a light, the top floor of a building is a bleeding dangerous place to be during an air raid. But Dr Watson takes this opportunity to recount to Miss Hudson an undocumented Sherlock Holmes adventure, which she dutifully transcribes. This nice little scene is let down a little in the logic stakes by Miss Hudson’s initial enquiry, after Dr Watson explains the set-up: “Who is ‘he’?”

Well, ‘he’ is the bloke I wrote all those famous stories about who lodged with your Gran for most of his adult life. I’m surprised that neither I nor your Gran ever mentioned him before...

And so we flashback to another very specific date: 19th May 1882. According to various Sherlock Holmes chronologies (which I have just googled) this would make the events of the Asylum’s movie the first case solved by Holmes after his first meeting with Watson in Chapter 1 of A Study in Scarlet, ahead of the first documented case, 'The Speckled Band' (there are two earlier cases in the canon but they are recounted by Holmes to Watson as events which predated their meeting).

This is all well and good, and ties in with the lack here of the celebrity which is often seen to surround Holmes in later stories, as well as nice little touches like a suggestion that Holmes, though a smoker, is not yet a drug addict. But, that said, the plot hinges on Holmes and Lestrade having worked alongside each other on numerous occasions and Lestrade has a quite unsubtle and obvious dislike of Watson (which is never explained, as far as I can tell). Certainly H and W seem like old pals, not newly minted friends.

Ah yes, the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson. On the commentary, writer Bales calls this a “Victorian bromance” and there is a definite - but gloriously subtle - homoerotic subtext here. There are just enough moments where Holmes and Watson hold eye contact that little bit longer than two pals normally would. It’s super!

There is no doubt that the casting of Gareth David-Lloyd adds to the subtext because, despite his Victorian garb and his trim moustache, he still seems like Ianto. Or at least, his relationship with Holmes smacks of Ianto and Captain Jack. Like Captain Jack, Holmes is mercurial, enigmatic, super-confident, dynamic, occasionally flamboyant and roguishly handsome. Like Ianto Jones, Dr Watson is stiffly formal, reserved, responsible and very, very loyal. It is impossible not to map the one relationship onto the other.

So here’s what I’m trying to figure out: am I reading too much subtext into this because of the casting of Gareth David-Lloyd, or did they cast Gareth David-Lloyd (at least in part) in order to add a deliberate subtext?

Anyway, we haven’t met Holmes and (young) Watson yet because first we have a scene on board a ship in the middle of the English Channel. We later learn that this was carrying tax money back from the West Indies which is a little odd because you would expect a ship like that to go to a West Coast port like Liverpool or Bristol. But that’s the least of the crew’s problems. It’s night-time and all seems well until someone screams that there is something in the water heading straight for them. There is much staring and peering but curiously no-one does what you or I would do in such a situation, which is change course.

The whatever-it-is then disappears and all seems well until - tentacles! Yes, it’s a giant octopus. In point of fact, it’s probably the same CGI giant octopus that was in Mega-Shark vs Giant Octopus. It drags sailors off the deck, pulls down masts and generally wrecks the ship.

When we finally meet Watson, he is performing an autopsy. Holmes breezes in and proceeds to identify the cause of death from tiny, almost imperceptible, apparently meaningless clues - as is his wont. It’s a nice establishing scene. Curiously, there’s no precise date on it although it must be a day or two later. In fact, we never get any more date or location captions.

Lestrade (William Huw, who was Tom in Merlin and the War of Dragons) has called in Holmes to investigate the disappearance of the ship, since there was no storm and no obvious cause of its sinking. There is a single survivor, who is in hospital and quite mad, which is why Holmes has called in Watson.

Somewhere around here, the plot starts to unravel, which is a shame as the film has barely started. But hold on for the ride because it’s great fun, if defiantly loopy.

Holmes, Watson and Lestrade go to a cliff top, accompanied by a local rock-climber (played by a local rock-climber) with the intention of abseiling down to examine the shipwreck. Yes, we have already established that the ship sank in mid-Channel, but let’s just roll with it because there is a smashing dialogue exchange here:

Watson: “I can’t let you do this, Holmes. It’s far too dangerous.”
Holmes. “You’re right. You should do this. After all, you have a military background.”
Watson: “I was an army surgeon!”

David-Lloyd’s restrained exasperation makes this a gem of a moment. And there are a few others scattered around the script.

Much to his concern, and entirely devoid of safety equipment except the rope tied around his waste, Watson descends the cliff. Filmed on South Stacks, Anglesey, there is some nice editing here as we repeatedly cut between a stunt double halfway down a real cliff and close-ups of the actor on a much smaller cliff. If the latter is not quite as vertical as the former, no worries.

Halfway down the cliff, Watson reports that there is no sign of the ship. He does however see someone in the water who seems to be struggling but, after Watson shouts down and receives no response, turns out to be merely a wave-tossed corpse. Watson then re-ascends, surviving the predictable last-moment rope-snap, and completely fails to mention the corpse, while neither Holmes nor Lestrade seems at all bothered at the absence of the ship’s remains (an absence which is not surprising as it sank several miles out to sea).

Basically, what we have here is a scene which is great in terms of character development, but adds precisely nothing to the narrative. Watson is prepared to climb down the cliff for his friend, even though it is plainly stupidly dangerous. Holmes presents a studied insouciance, more bothered about his pipe than his rope-suspended pal, but he has presumably made a careful assessment of the situation and deduced that Watson will be safe - then leaps into action when the rope frays. Meanwhile, Lestrade is determinedly indifferent and stand-offish. In character terms, this is cracking stuff.

But the scene drags on and on before eventually going nowhere at all. There’s all this preamble about looking at the ship but the ship’s not there and no-one cares. A dead body is there, which may or may not have some connection with the sinking, but that doesn’t even get mentioned. At the end of the scene, none of the characters know any more than they did at the start, and nor do the audiences. Narrative progression is precisely zero.

On the DVD commentary is the revelation that this scene was not in Paul Bales’ screenplay but was added by director Rachel Lee Goldenberg to replace one in which Holmes and Watson use a Victorian submarine to examine the wreck, while fending off sharks. (There are indeed sharks in the English channel, but not many. Presumably this would have been a smaller version of the CGI shark from Mega-Shark vs...) The sub scene was deemed too difficult and expensive, even for the ambitious Asylum (you’ll see how ambitious later) which is a shame. Not just because a sequence with a submarine and a shark would have been terrific, but because I can’t help feeling that there might have been something in what they found down on the wreck which would inform the whole plot and allow it to make sense.

Or maybe not.

This may also explain why the cliff scene is so painfully long: they had to replace a complicated scene with the same number of pages. Holmes and Watson are separated so there’s no opportunity for dialogue and, while David-Lloyd’s acting here is top-notch, there’s only so many times you can look at Watson’s terrified stare or a close-up of his foot knocking pebbles down the cliff.

It may be that the scene seems to drag because nothing happens. But my belief is that it drags and nothing happens.

A somewhat picaresque narrative proceeds from here, with progression between scenes usually determined by Holmes’ ability to identify any fragment of stuff as having only possible originated in one location.

First, we cut to the East End, represented surprisingly well by the streets of Caernarfon. Why this works - and this may be deliberate but I suspect it’s just serendipitous - is because in Victorian times, not everything was Victorian. It’s a common mistake, in the production design of historical films, to set everything in period. But look around you: not everything in 2010 (or whenever you’re reading this) dates from this year. Good Lord, I’m typing this on an antique desk in a 19th century house. Even my filing cabinet dates from the last century (1998 to be precise).

So the fact that this cinematic East End seems to be a mishmash of Victorian architecture and older is actually just right. Not quite as old, however, as the small Tyrannosaurus rex which attacks a young man as he is attempting to negotiate a business deal with a tart. It’s a very small T rex, obviously a juvenile (well, not really, but all will be revealed later).

Again from the ‘Director‘s Commentary’ (which also features associate producer/writer Bales and line producer Stephen Fiske) we learn that this was written as an Iguanodon but was changed to a T rex because The Asylum already own a CG T rex and didn’t have the budget to spring for a different species. This is interesting because of course T rex was unknown to science until the early 20th century while Iguanodon, as one of the first dinosaurs properly studied and described, was well known by the 1880s.

Look, I’m going to stick in a spoiler here, because it’s essential for proper discussion. A dinosaur in Victorian London has to be either the result of some form of time travel or a robot. This one’s a robot. If there was time travel afoot, a T rex would have made sense, even before its scientific discovery. But someone built this dinosaur. Presumably they built it at half-size so that it could get down narrow East End passageways and through doors.

By 1882, it had finally just been established that Iguanodon was bipedal, which left me thinking how brilliant it would be if some mad Victorian inventor had created a robot based on the utterly wrong quadropedal Iguanodon statue at Crystal Palace, the one with the spiky thumb bone placed on its nose like a rhino horn. It had also been well established by then that Iguanodon was a herbivore so quite how or why it would have savaged innocent East End kerb-crawlers is, I fear, moot.

What had certainly not been established - because it was only proven about a century later - is that bipedal dinosaurs carried their bodies horizontally with their tail held out straight for balance. As late as the 1970s, models and drawings of T rex and other bipeds showed them as tripeds: bodies held upright, tail supporting them like a kangaroo at rest as they lumbered across the prehistoric plains. It’s really only since Jurassic Park and Walking with Dinosaurs in the 1990s that the public perception of theropod dinos has changed to something analogous to a kangaroo in motion (only, obviously, without the hopping) so that the tail balances the body as the creature moves at high speed.

But to be fair, the fact that the inventor of this robotic juvenile T rex has correctly predicted its stance 100 years before the palaeological establishment doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter because it’s less astounding than that the inventor has predicted any kind of T rex twenty years before the first Tyrannosaur skeleton was even chipped out of a rock.

The next morning, Watson reads about this event in the newspaper over breakfast, dismissing the report as pure sensationalism. A description of the creature, presumably supplied by the terrified moxy who witnessed the attack, says it had glowing eyes and sulphurous breath. Yet, despite this understandable exaggeration, Watson subsequently refers to it as a dinosaur - a deductive leap of appropriately Sherlockian proportions (unless he has read ahead in the script).

But at this point, and running the risk of seeming like I’m doing nothing but complain about a film that I really enjoyed enormously, I must mention the worst scene in the film. It’s just a short, establishing shot of Baker Street, the camera following a young boy delivering newspapers (we actually get it twice in the film) and it has three utterly egregious mistakes, each of which is a nometgir: no more expensive to get it right.

Actually it’s four mistakes if we include the fact that young Tomos Jones has had his name unfortunately anglicised to Thomas in the end credits.

First there’s the costume. Underneath his waistcoat, the paper boy is wearing a close-fitting, round-neck, long-sleeved top which is utterly anachronistic in terms of both style and cleanliness. This is a Victorian urchin for God’s sake - smear some crap on him. Worse than that though is the way that he is delivering the papers. He’s doing it in the American manner. That is, each paper is tightly rolled and tied with string and he is nonchalantly flinging them onto doorsteps as he walks down the street.

No no no, a thousand times no! No British paper boy has ever done anything like that. Not in 1882, not in 1982, not now - and if newspapers still exist seven decades hence, they won’t do it in 2082 either. It’s one Americanism which has not seeped into British society despite its ubiquity in US movies and TV. Unlike teenage proms and trick or treating and other ghastly imports, throwing newspapers will never catch on here for the simple reason that, if any British paper boy did this, every customer would complain and he would be out of a part-time job before you could say “Where’s my bloody Daily Mirror?”

In the UK, newspapers are kept flat: either unfolded (tabloids) or folded once (broadsheets). A stack of them is then slid into the paper boy’s bag. No rolling, no string. You couldn’t roll most Saturday or Sunday papers anyway - they’re too stuffed full of supplements. And it would really screw up the free DVDs (although that’s not quite so germane in a Victorian setting obviously). Then - and pay attention, Hollywood - the paper boy walks up to each front door, carefully folds the newspaper and pushes it through the letterbox. So that the householder, coming downstairs, can simply pick up the paper off the doormat.

I’m really puzzled that nobody thought to mention this at the time. There were only about nine or ten Americans on the production: everyone else was Welsh or English. Didn’t anyone say to the director: you know, this isn’t how newspapers are delivered in Britain. And it would have cost no more to get it right, in fact it would have been cheaper because the production budget wouldn’t have had to shell out for bits of string!

But even this is overshadowed by a mistake which will, I suspect, have many Holmes purists frothing at the mouth. They have got the man’s address wrong.

If there is one thing that everyone knows about Sherlock Holmes, it’s his address. He lives at 221B Baker Street. But not this Sherlock, oh no. The number on his front door is 221.

And yet and yet, maybe not all Holmes purists will get apoplectic at this because, astoundingly, the Wikipedia entry on 221B Baker Street (which has presumably been written by obsessive Conan Doyle nerds) makes the same mistake, or at least the mistake which I infer from this as the best explanation for the wrong door number. I can only assume it stems from an American misunderstanding of how British addresses work.

Here is what Wikipedia says: “The number followed by a letter is a separate number in law and indicated an apartment on the 1st floor (US - 2nd floor) of a residential lodging house that was likely to have formed part of a Georgian terrace.” This is simply wrong. For starters, Sherlock Holmes does not live in an ‘apartment’ (what we could call a flat over here). He ‘takes rooms’ in a boarding house belonging to Mrs Hudson. And as such, he does not have a separate address. If you came and stayed in my back bedroom for a while, you wouldn’t have a different address to me. 221B is the number of the whole house, not the bedroom and sitting room on the first floor where Holmes spends his time.

If the building was numbered 221 and divided into discrete flats, Holmes’ address would be ‘Flat B, 221 Baker Street, London’. Note that the subdivision of the building is listed before the building itself, which is the opposite to the American way of forming addresses. In the USA, the address would be ‘221 Baker Street, Apartment B, New York’.

If you will allow me a little divulgence from the actual review (you may recall, I’m supposedly reviewing a film here), this raises the interesting topic of the differences between American and British house numbering. And it’s not unreasonable that Americans should find our system confusing because nobody in Britain understands theirs. A check of Wikipedia reveals that there are umpteen different numbering systems in the States but they are mostly based on geographical location, whereas UK house numbering is purely about relative position.

Most American cities have been built from scratch within the past 150 years or so, usually on a grid system which creates blocks. Sequentially numbered streets run in one direction and sequentially numbered avenues run perpendicular to them. As I understand it, the house number generally indicates how many yards the property is from the junction with the adjacent side-road. So 1234, 56th Street would be 12 yards from the junction with 34th Avenue. Or 34 yards from the junction with 12th Avenue. Or something. I don’t bloody know!

The point is that the numbers are not sequential. They’re in ascending order (I think) but they don’t naturally follow on and consequently, if it becomes necessary to add a new property onto a block, this can be done without worrying about other addresses. Because the address simply denotes a specific point on the ground, irrespective of what properties might be on either side.

British house numbering, on the other hand, is sequential. So when we read that, for example, Michael Jackson was born at 2300 Jackson Street, the reaction in the UK is to think, “Crikey! That’s a long street - it’s got 2,300 houses on it.”

In this country, our towns and cities haven’t been planned. They mostly started as Iron Age settlements, long before anyone had even found America, not even the Vikings. And over the ensuing 1,000+ years, these towns have expanded organically, chaotically, with odd roads built around odd clusters of buildings, then new odd buildings built alongside the odd roads when the old buildings fall/burn down. There’s no grid system and none of our thoroughfares are numbered.

A British street (or avenue or road or way or close or lane or...) starts with house number 1. Next door is house number 3, then house number 5 and so on. On the other side of the street, opposite number 1, is house number 2, then number 4 and so on. Odd numbers up one side, even numbers up the other. If one side has large buildings and the other small, or there’s a major interruption such as a park, then it is possible for the two sides to be completely out of sync with, say, house number 120 opposite house number 75. Where the two sides are roughly in sync despite the presence of a park or other interruption, that usually indicates that houses existed there once but have been pulled down. British streets can be quite long: my old address was number 405 and I think the road went up to about 600. But it would be extremely unusual to have a four-figure house number.

Sometimes, new houses will be added partway along the street, either because previously empty land is being built on or because a large building has been pulled down and replaced with two or more smaller ones. Because the British system is about relative position on the street, not geographical location, new numbers have to be inserted into a sequence which is already complete. And the way we get round this is - we stick letters on the end.

So, in a nutshell, the address ‘221B Baker Street’ indicates that Mrs Hudson’s house is two doors along from 221 Baker Street, but before you get to 223 Baker Street. Her neighbour on one side is number 221A and on the other is 223 (or, conceivably, 221C).

It’s nothing to do with apartments at all. Sherlock Holmes does not live in an apartment. (Of course, the address was fictional when the stories were written as Baker Street only had about a hundred houses at that time.)

And that is why the sight of a Victorian lad in a white, long-sleeved T-shirt, flinging rolled-up newspapers onto the doorstep of a house at 221 Baker Street rankles so much with me. None of those things would have cost any more to get right. Gah!

(By the way, if any wiki-geeks want to correct the entry on 221B Baker Street and use this as a reference, feel free.)

After breakfast, Watson and Holmes go for a ‘morning constitutional’. A cynic might think their chosen area is rather thickly wooded for central London but in fact London is a green city and there are plenty of densely forested parks within easy walking distance of Baker Street, so I’ll happy approve this decision. They observe that a park fountain is rather lacklustre this morning, compared with its usual height, just as a drunk bloke (Dennis Jones, recognisable as an extra in other scenes) runs past them, screaming about a monster.

Before you can say ‘prehistoric anachronism’, the T rex appears and chases the men through the trees. They eventually take shelter in a semi-derelict wooden building which apparently used to house the pump mechanism for the fountain - only it’s not there. The machinery has been stolen - which is why the fountain is only reaching half its normal height. I’m sure, like me, you’re wondering how the fountain is able to operate at any height if there’s no pump. You may also be wondering why a park fountain would require a separate building, some distance away, with a huge machine pump. There’s nothing like that near any of the fountains in any of my local parks...

Around this time we are introduced to our chief villain, played by Dominic Keating from Star Trek: Enterprise, the only actor to fly over from LA although he’s actually British. In fact he was born in Beaumont Leys, just up the road from here. We know he’s the villain because we’ve seen the trailer but we don’t yet know who he is. He’s just a bloke in a wheelchair with a bad cough (and it’s not often you see a wheelchair with a cough - aythangyew!).

This invalid is accompanied by an attractively formal woman who introduces herself as Anesidora Ivory (Elizabeth Arends, who was a cruise ship performer, appeared in an episode of Corrie and was in a stage play called Waitress for Godot!). Dressed like a Spanish widow who is secretly glad her husband fell off a boat, Anesidora holds herself upright at all times, neither smiles nor frowns and has pale skin which leads Watson to assume she is the patient, although she is actually seeking medication for the man in the wheelchair whom she calls her uncle. Dr Watson is somewhat smitten by the mysterious beauty and is all for asking her to the opera that very night until he receives a phone call from Holmes asking Watson to meet him in the East End that evening.

A note on the telephones seen here seems in order, especially as the script goes to the trouble of having Holmes comment on what a marvel they are. And in fact they would have been in 1882, a mere six years after the introduction of telephony to the UK. Holmes appears to be using a proper Victorian phone, with a cylindrical doodad held to his ear, except that he is not actually talking into anything! At this early stage, the mouthpiece was part of the main phone device. In 1882 the speaker’s mouth had to be near the wall-mounted mouth-piece. Holmes just seems to be rabbiting into thin air.

At the other end of the line, Watson is talking into a hulking great, 1940s-style bakelite device which is massively - and obviously - anachronistic. Now, here’s the thing. The commentary reveals that what Ben Syder is holding to his ear is actually a candlestick. I say bravo: terrific improvisation by props maker Keelie Shepard. But why stop there. All that was needed was a wooden box with a black-painted yoghurt pot stuck on the front and we would have believed that Holmes had a real Victorian phone with him. And then, since the two ends of the conversation are shot separately, why not reuse the same fake Victorian phone for Watson instead of giving him this thing that’s about 50-60 years too early?

Holmes and Watson’s investigations take them to a rubber factory run by (and apparently entirely staffed by) a suspicious character named Grolton (Dylan Jones, who also supervised the horses used on the shoot). Grolton says he sold a large order of rubber to an anonymous purchaser whom he never saw but when he grudgingly goes inside the building to find the invoice (following Holmes’ suggestion that the rozzers might be interested in certain matters of employment law in his factory...) what should turn up but that pesky T rex.

The beast seems to rip Grolton’s head off - an exterior shot shows blood splatting against the inside of a window - but when Grolton’s body is thrown through the (supposedly heavily barred) window onto the cobbles below, his noggin is intact, albeit his skin is peeling and he is very much dead. Our intrepid duo force their way in and confront the beast, running around the factory (actually an industrial museum) until Holmes injures his leg. Back in Baker Street, there’s a lovely moment where Watson washes the wound with the nearest available alcohol and Holmes’ agony stems not from the pain but from the improper use of a particularly fine brandy.

Finally, the investigation leads to a ‘castle’ (really a Tudor country house) where Holmes and Watson, after falling through a hole in the floor, find a static octopus and T rex - which, it must be said, is remarkably well-balanced as it stands silently. They also find what might at first be taken to be a steampunk automaton but actually turns out to be a powersuit. And this, without a doubt, is one the film’s strongest elements. Designed by Paul Curtis and constructed from leather painted to resemble brass, the suit is a magnificent creation - and wearable too! It has just enough gimcracks and gewgaws to really be a believable steampunk power-assisted exo-skeleton.

The person inside knocks Holmes around a bit before being revealed as... Dominic Keating (we still don’t know his character’s name and indeed won’t until a potentially confusing epilogue to the movie). This makes sense, as we have previously seen him in a wheelchair. What we have here, not to put too fine a point on it, is a 19th century version of Iron Man. This film was released only a few months before Iron Man 2 so this is surely not coincidental, although nothing is made of it, even on the commentary.

Instead, writer Bales says that the power-suit and its wearer were inspired by the legend of Spring-Heeled Jack. Which just leaves me scratching my head. Because there’s no connection or similarity at all. And that, my friends, is a huge disappointment. When I first heard about this movie and checked the cast list on the IMDB, seeing that Keating was credited as ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ got me terribly excited (that’s not his on-screen credit).

Spring-Heeled Jack is a Victorian urban myth of tremendous potential. From the 1830s through to the turn of the century, stories surfaced sporadically across England of a mysterious figure who could make extravagant, superhuman leaps over walls and onto rooftops. In some reports he was a man, in some he was dressed as a devil, and some witnesses claimed he was the Devil himself (or one of his demonic minions). There were reports that his eyes glowed red, many anecdotes had him breathing fire, everyone agreed he wore a long, dark cloak. Some people reported being physically attacked, others were shocked or terrified, still others considered Jack a naughty trickster.

Only one thing was unanimously agreed by all who saw Spring-Heeled Jack (and most who didn’t): he was a wrong’un.

A lot of stories were published about Spring-Heeled Jack, some recounting ‘genuine’ sightings, others works of melodramatic fiction which enhanced and fed back into the urban legend. It’s difficult to separate fact from fiction when there are no actual substantial facts.

On screen, Jack has only ever really appeared once, in Tod Slaughter’s 1946 Curse of the Wraydons, although the legend also inspired part of the 1924 German expressionist classic Waxworks. According to the IMDB, there was an American three-minute short about him in the late 1990s and I believe that Ashley Thorpe (Scayrecrow, The Screaming Skull) has a Spring-Heeled Jack short in development as part of his ‘Penny Dreadful’ series of digital animations. But a proper, big-budget (well, you know what I mean), feature-length, name-cast, steampunk tale pitting Spring-Heeled Jack against Britain’s greatest detective? That would be awesome!

It would, you know. It would. And it’s the sort of thing The Asylum could do. I’d be happy to write it for them tomorrow.

But this ain’t it.

There is no suggestion that Dominic Keating (as we are forced to keep calling him) has used this power suit to terrorise the population or to wreak mischief among honest, God-fearing folk or even to leap over high walls. He can only just walk in the thing!

So what is he up to? Gradually we now discover his nefarious plans and I must say that they are, without a doubt, the most random, unfocused, nonsensical criminal plans I have ever heard explained from the speakers of my TV set.

But before we get to that, something odd crops up in the dialogue: Holmes calls Keating ‘brother’. He actually addresses him directly as ‘brother’ several times. And Keating, in reply, calls Sherlock Holmes ‘Robert’.

Eh?

Leaving aside the ‘Robert’ schtick - as indeed the script does - our natural assumption is that Keating is playing Mycroft Holmes. After all, Sherlock only has one brother and we all know that Mycroft is cleverer than Holmes, although the industrious work of Keating’s character would be at odds with Mycroft’s languor. Mycroft has steampunk credentials, having been featured in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the superb comic, not the shitty film). In fact, there is a Mycroft Holmes/Spring-Heeled Jack connection because of a 1997 comic called Predator: Nemesis in which Mycroft helped to bring said miscreant to justice, discovering in the process that the high-leaping demonic figure is actually one of those extraterrestrial hunters.

But this character, according to the commentary, is not Mycroft. It’s some third Holmes brother never previously mentioned. Which is all well and good but we can’t tell that from the film. If Holmes would at least address his brother by name, we would twig that this is not Mycroft gone rogue, but he doesn’t. In fact, the constant use of ‘brother’ becomes tiresome and unrealistic. It’s the sort of thing that a sibling might do in a formal situation but to continue to use it when the brother in question is addressing you by your first name (or someone’s first name at least!) seems frankly rude.

Again, the commentary provides an explanation. Keating’s character was originally written as Holmes’ uncle. Now, repeatedly addressing an older relative in a formal manner would sound credible. If we mentally replay this scene with the word ‘brother’ replaced with ‘uncle’, that’s slightly better. The casting of Keating in the role (he was 47 when he shot this) made the director rethink the relationship and turn him from uncle into brother.

Which is fine for viewers who know nothing at all about Sherlock Holmes, but awfully confusing and misleading for those of us with a smidgeon of Holmes-ian knowledge. If there was at least a third-person reference to Mycroft, we would understand that this isn’t him. But no.

Meanwhile, names and relationships notwithstanding, what is he up to? Well, for starters he has Inspector Lestrade imprisoned and trussed up. He also has an unhealthy relationship with Anesidora who not only isn’t his niece, she isn’t even human. She’s another robot, like the octopus and the dinosaur, which explains her stiff posture and her unwavering expression. Arends really does play the part very well, and the brief glance of smouldering passion between creator and automaton is a powerful and disturbing image that briefly lifts this otherwise bonkers third act into the realm of impressive science fiction drama.

Oh, and she kills Sherlock Holmes. Shoots him dead. Right, that’s the end of him.

Poor old Watson gets strapped to some sort of torture apparatus as Keating explains the details of his plan, all of which is motivated by a sense of revenge against Lestrade. It seems that Keating is an ex-copper who worked alongside Lestrade but retired through injury. Since then he has noticed how Lestrade has been in the habit of taking the credit for cases solved by Keating’s estranged brother ‘Robert’. And so aggrieved by this is the elder sibling that he plans to attack London with a giant, flying, fire-breathing robotic dragon - and then blame that on Lestrade!

Let’s get this right. Keating constructed a giant, robotic octopus and used it to steal a shipload of tax money which he then spent on making a giant flying dragon, including the purchase of an enormous quantity of Grolton’s patent specialised rubber. He also built a half-size robotic dinosaur which he used to attack Grolton to prevent Holmes seeing an incriminating receipt for all that rubber. And he set the dinosaur loose against the whores of Whitechapel and their clientele and he even set it on his own brother, on whose unwitting behalf this grand vengeance was being orchestrated. Furthermore he built a power-suit and a life-size automaton realistic enough to fool a medical doctor and with which he has some weird, Coppelian relationship.

Somewhere along the line he also stole a pump from a park fountain. Which seems odd because you would think that someone capable of manufacturing amazing machines like these would be able to build a simple bleeding pump.

Now he is going to fly over London, inside his own robotic dragon, with the still bound-and-gagged Lestrade in the cockpit beside him for some reason, destroying iconic buildings and causing a general conflagration the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1666. Which, for some reason, will be blamed by everyone on Lestrade.

And on top of all this, he has placed a bomb inside Anesidora and despatched her to Buckingham Palace, there to threaten the life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria with a big explosion, presumably also as part of his scheme to frame Lestrade in revenge for the Inspector’s sidelining of Sherlock Holmes in documented accounts of cases on which they have worked together. Got it?

It seems to me that the slight illogicality here - that an explosion at the gates of Buckingham Palace will actually have relatively little impact on a night when a dragon is setting fire to Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral - is somewhat dwarfed by the elephant in the room, which is this:

This whole plan is batshit insane! This redefines new levels of batshit insanity. You know those caves in South America that are home to colonies of millions of bats and are just coated inside with bat guano to a depth of several metres? Even that amount of batshit cannot convey how utterly and completely batshit insane this plan - and hence, let’s face it, the film’s essential plot - actually is.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the dragon. A giant, flying, steampunk, robo-dragon attacking London is exactly what we want. It’s a sort of thematic cross between Reign of Fire and the climax of Doctor Who: ‘The Next Doctor’. For some reason the dragon actually looks robotic unlike the super-realistic giant octopus and Tyrannosaurus rex (and spooky-faced aspiring dominatrix).

I also love the crazy hybrid between a hot-air balloon and a helicopter with which Sherlock Holmes gives chase after he has emerged miraculously (if not unexpectedly) alive and freed the surprised Watson. While Holmes flies up and away in the ‘airship’ which his brother somehow also found the time to build, Watson sets off for central London on horseback. Which is optimistic because Anesidora has not only got a good head-start, she’s travelling by train. Granted it is, apparently, a little branch line, but it’s still trundling along at a good speed and not going to need to stop for some hay.

As the dragon and the heli-balloon do battle above London, Anesidora strides calmly towards Buckingham Palace, although as she seems to be walking along an unlit, unpopulated country road it’s somewhat unclear from which direction she is approaching. She’s certainly not strolling up the Mall.

The gates of the palace are guarded by four soldiers in uniforms which score points for authenticity but lose them again for lack of consistency. Two of the soldiers actually have speaking roles and challenge the approaching woman, albeit not with “Halt! Who goes there? Friend of foe?” which, as every schoolboy knows, is what British soldiers are required to shout when on guard and approached by an unknown person. Perhaps these particular palace guards were confused by some prior disagreement over which regiment was actually supposed to be guarding Buckingham Palace that night, since the officer (who, for some reason, has no chin-strap on his bearskin) is wearing the uniform of the Coldstream Guards while the private alongside him is very obviously in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards.

No, I’m being unfair when I say ‘obviously’. This is not something that most people, even most British people, will notice. And I suspect that whichever Welsh theatrical costumier supplied the uniforms probably didn’t have a particularly extensive range of Royal Guardsmen tunics. We’ll let this one go.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Watson stops Anesidora. There’s actually quite a nice character arc there. Watson is initially attracted to the mysterious femme fatale when she visits his surgery, then saddened to find that her ‘uncle’s’ relationship with her is distinctly unavuncular, then horrified to learn that she is an unthinking automaton capable of the motions of love but not the emotions, and finally forced to destroy her in his duty as an upstanding Englishman.

Meanwhile, in a ludicrously ambitious sky battle which is nevertheless thrilling, exciting and enjoyable, Holmes eventually defeats his brother, parachuting to safety as the heli-balloon crashes, while the impact of the dragon on the ground fatally injures Keating but apparently leaves Lestrade relatively unscathed, even though logic tells us that only the former would have been able to actually hold onto something as the reptilian steampunk aircraft plummeted to Earth.

In the first of three epilogues, Holmes mentions to Watson, over breakfast back in Baker Street, that his first name is actually Robert. What? No it isn’t - it’s Sherlock. Many were the Victorian gentlemen who were known by two names that were actually a double-barrelled, unhyphenated surname: Conan Doyle for one. But England’s greatest detective isn’t called Something Sherlock Holmes. He’s called Something Holmes. Or are we to think that he is one of those people who choose to use their second Christian name instead of their first? Is ‘Sherlock’ a middle name or the first half of a double-barrelled surname? Frankly, who cares? This revelation seems utterly pointless and doesn’t enhance the film one iota. It could be the least exciting revelation of any movie epilogue ever.

Next we leap forward to December 1940 where geriatric Watson finishes recounting his tale to Lucy Hudson and then expires peacefully. And if Miss Hudson had any sense, she would take that as her cue to grab her gas-mask and head down to the nearest shelter.

Finally, we jump forward a short time to a brief churchyard scene. As Miss Hudson visit the grave of Dr John Watson, another figure passes by in the background. A stiffly formal, vaguely Spanish-looking woman. It is Anesidora (or at least, an Anesidora), unchanged since we last saw her some six decades ago. And she is placing flowers on the unintentionally cheap-looking grave of ‘T Holmes’. Which is our first clue, moments before the credits roll, that Keating’s character was not Mycroft. And moments later the credits do indeed confirm that he played ‘Thorpe Holmes.’ Which also explains why, in the eight-and-a-half-minute Making Of, Keating introduces himself with, “I’m Dominic Keating and I play Thorpe.”

And what a Making Of! In less than nine minutes we get comments from (or at least have identified for us) all five main cast members, line producer Steve Fiske, 1st assistant camera Bryan Olinger (subsequently promoted to DP on Mega Piranha), robo-suit designer Paul Curtis, director Rachel Goldenberg, ‘creative consultant’ Roy Gerard Calder, costume designer Nikkie Alsford (Dogging: A Love Story), passing journalist Brian Raftery, production assistant Dilwyn Parry Jones, bit-part actors Dennis Jones and Dylan Jones, sound recordist Ben Forman (Silent Night Zombie Night, Haunting of Winchester House), Steadicam op Luke Rocheleau (Juko’s Time Machine), make-up artist Ruth Pease (Psychosis) and 1st AD Alexander X Hutchinson (temporarily promoted from his regular Asylum gig as 2nd AD) who gets more on-screen comments than anyone - possibly because he was one of three people who shot this Making Of - and just never stops complaining. He doesn’t like the film, he doesn’t like the schedule, he doesn’t like Wales. Miserable bleeder.

Sherlock Holmes was shot on a tight 13-day schedule in and around Caernarfon in September 2009. HMS Pickle, a charity-owned replica of a schooner which served under Nelson at Trafalgar, is the ship that gets attacked by the octopus. Dinorwig Quarry Hospital (miscredited as ‘Dinowig’!) was used for Watson’s surgery and the adjacent National Slate Museum provided a great location for Grolton’s rubber factory. Thorpe’s lair was Gwydir Castle while Glynliffon Mansion and the Faenol Estate also provided scenery. Basically, as an advert for Gwynedd tourism, Sherlock Holmes scores admirably. The area looks lovely and full of fascinating industrial heritage. A trip to Anglesey was required for the cliff top scenes filmed on South Stack cliffs.

Mere hours after wrapping, most of the Transatlantic travellers caught a plane back, leaving the director and cameraman to spend a couple of days in London getting establishing shots and effects plates by pretending to be tourists videoing their holiday. A final day of ‘second unit’ photography in Malibu, including the ultimately pointless body-in-the-sea shots, was line produced by Chris Ray.

Three directors of photography are credited: Bryan Olinger (despite his Making Of credit as 1st AC), Scott Wheeler (of effects house Tiny Juggernaut, who are The Asylum’s regular VFX providers) and Paul Saunders (previously 1st AC on The Terminators and Transmorphers 2). With the ever-cheerful Alexander X Hutchinson as 1st assistant director, the vacant 2nd AD role was taken by Shelley Tyson, fresh from You-Know-Who’s musical-horror-western Eldorado.

Much of the logistical credit for Sherlock Holmes must go to Helen Pritchard, credited as ‘UK production manager’ who supplied supporting cast and background extras through her Clic Agency and also helped with locations etc. She was also a key figure in The Asylum’s previous Welsh-shot feature, Merlin and the War of Dragons.

Of the three leads, two are well-known. Outside of the Hub, Gareth David-Lloyd has done TV work in stuff like Rosemary and Thyme and Casualty and has been attached to a mooted British sci-fi feature, Casimir Effect. Away from the Enterprise, Dominic Keating has had recurring roles in Heroes and The Immortal, appeared in Species IV and Beowulf, and way back when he was in stuff like Inspector Morse and, indeed, Casualty. But Ben Syder is a genuine discovery. Born in Prestatyn, he has been acting since 2006, has done some stage work and some student shorts but this is his feature debut. It takes a while to get used to his mannerisms but once he (or it might be me) settled down, he came across very well indeed.

Catriona McDonald, who appears briefly as Mrs Hudson, was in another intriguing Victorian fantasy, Newgate, about which I have never been able to discover very much. A few of the other speaking cast were also in Merlin and the War of Dragons. ‘Additional FX’ are credited to Latitude Effects (aka Erica Steele and Mark Atkins of Ghost Show Pictures).

Writer Paul Bales is one of the partners in The Asylum, where he “handles the day-to-day operations of the company, administration and finance, and domestic sales.” His other scripts for the company include Legion of the Dead (which he also directed), The Da Vinci Treasure, 100 Million BC and Megafault. Director Rachel Lee Goldenberg wrote and directed one of The Asylum’s more atypical features, Sunday School Musical(!) and was 1st AD on the likes of I am Omega, Alien vs Hunter, Monster, 2012: Supernova, The Seven Adventures of Sinbad and Princess of Mars.

So what works and what doesn’t on The Asylum’s Sherlock Holmes? Well, the performances are all pretty good where the actors are given something to work with. There’s a good chemistry between Holmes and Watson, William Huw makes the most of the often thankless role of Lestrade, Keating doesn’t ham up his loony villain role as much as the part perhaps deserves - and Arends, as noted, makes a clear impression.

The effects are, on the whole, great. I mean, they’re not Industrial Light and Magic. But dollar for dollar they’re pretty damn good and certainly good enough for a film of this ilk. Some big Hollywood piece of crap could do the same and it would be ten, maybe a hundred times better - but that would cost a thousand, maybe ten thousand times more. And take a couple of years. And employ so many people that the producers would need the rights to a whole other song for the additional three minutes of credits while endless lists of computer programmers’ names scrolled past an empty auditorium.

Goldenberg’s direction is all right. I guess, given the ultra-tight schedule and other logistical restraints like shooting in (effectively) the middle of nowhere. There are small moments when the direction shines, but there are bigger aspects where it falls down and Goldenberg must take responsibility for the changes to Paul Bales’ script and how they affect the finished movie.

For example, replacing the submarine sequence with the cliff sequence is reasonable and there are some nice character touches in that scene - but it makes no sense in terms of investigating a ship that sank out of sight of land. The body in the water element of the scene appears from nowhere and goes nowhere and the whole sequence, as previously mentioned, comes to nought.

This is me, pretending to be Holmes, on the actual Caernarfon location where the film was shot!

Similarly, Goldenberg’s decision to make Keating’s character a brother seems to have consisted of simply crossing out ‘uncle’ in the script and writing ‘brother’ in with a biro. No thought has been given to either how that affects the dialogue - brothers would address each other by first name - or what ramifications it might have in terms of conflicting with the cultural baggage of Sherlock Holmes. Just one additional line of dialogue that alluded to Mycroft and established that this isn’t him would have sufficed. Paul Bales can’t be blamed for this; he was in LA while all this was going on.

And that scene of a paperboy throwing a rolled-up newspaper onto the doorstep of 221 Baker Street still rankles with me. Because it is so wrong in so many ways, not one of which would have required additional expense or time. Just care.

Having said all that, what Paul Bales can be held responsible for is the completely arbitrary and nonsensical plot. Sherlock Holmes stories are lot harder to write than you might think because they have to be incredibly clever. It’s not enough to slip in little references to the canon if the actual plot doesn’t hang together in a way that befits the character. I’m entirely undecided on whether extending the world of Holmes into a steampunk fantasy milieu makes plotting easier or more difficult, possibly both. But I do know that the script’s attempts to justify and explain Thorpe’s actions don’t hold up at all, either in terms of making sense or as a solution to the preceding mystery elements. Embracing the fantastique does not negate the requirements of cause and effect. I wouldn’t want to deny us all the pleasure of a dinosaur, a giant octopus, a brass power-suit, a robot woman and a heli-balloon vs robo-dragon battle above the Thames - but perhaps it might have been better to simply make Thorpe an eccentric madman rather than try to justify his surreally unjustifiable actions.

But let’s be clear about one thing. Despite its faults, I absolutely loved this movie. Having watched it, I was quite happy to watch it again a few days later for the commentary - and there are not many films to which I will extend that courtesy. This is a rip-roaring, action-packed, science-fantasy adventure: hugely enjoyable and daft as a brush. And kudos to The Asylum for filming it in Britain. God knows that Holmes has been badly served over the years by some bloody awful films, many of which shuffled him to America and/or the 20th century to save on collar-studs and gas-lamps. This film shows that even on a tiny budget, some degree of historical verisimilitude can be managed.

As well as the commentary track and Making Of, which I was glad to see Revolver kept for the UK disc, the extras include a trailer and a couple of minutes of bloopers which includes, for once, something genuinely funny. It’s an overhead shot of Holmes in the heli-balloon basket (not actually used in the film) which has to cut when a piece of the camera actually falls off and lands on the hapless Syder’s head. Has to be seen to be believed.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the UK sleeve differs significantly from the US version. Both have the Palace of Westminster in flames and a giant octopus attacking Westminster Bridge, but for the UK a two-shot of Syder and David-Lloyd has replaced the three-shot of those two fellows plus Keating. More to the point, the dragon and the T rex both appear twice. Bit since the octopus doesn’t attack Westminster Bridge, the image is already an exaggeration so what the heck, chuck a few more reptilian robots in there. And even more to the point, the dark background to the original one-sheet has been abandoned in favour of a sort of blue-grey sheen which makes this look just that little but more like the Guy Ritchie film. (Which I haven’t seen and I’m not really bothered about, whereas I pre-ordered this from Amazon the moment I found out it was getting a UK release.)

MJS rating: B+

Directors: Kim Jee-Woon; Nonzee Nimibutr; Peter Ho-Sun Chan
Writers: Kim Jee-Woon; Nitas Singhamat; Jojo Hui, Matt Chow
Producers: Oh Jung-Wan; Nonzee Nimibutr, Duangkamol Limcharoen; Jojo Hui
Cast: Jung Bo-Seog, Kim Hye-Soo; Pongsanart Vinsiri, Suwinit Panjamawat; Leon Lai, Eric Tsang
Year of release: 2002
Country: South Korea; Thailand; Hong Kong
Reviewed from: Thai VCD

New to Asian cinema and not sure which country’s films you want to explore? Why not try this convenient sampler movie, a horror anthology comprising three segments of 40 minutes or so from three Pacific countries. Applause Pictures (Hong Kong) and Cinemasia (Thailand) had previously collaborated on the dramas Jan Dara and Montrak Transistor, and for this movie South Korea’s Bom Productions was brought into the fold.

The first story is Memories, written and directed by Korean hotshot Kim Jee-Woon whose directorial debut The Quiet Family was ‘remade’ by Takashi Miike as Happiness of the Katakuris. Jung Bo-Seog (Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors) stars as an un-named man who is starting to go mad since his wife (Kim Hye-Soo: Dr K, Eternal Empire) disappeared and can see her ghostly apparition (a stylistic nod to Ring’s Sadko). At the same time, the wife (neither character is named) wakes up on the street and wanders around, trying to work out where she is and indeed, who she is.

This is a very stylish, slow-paced film - it opens with an agonisingly slow closing-in shot which barely merits the term ‘zoom’. While it’s fairly obvious that there is some sort of Carnival of Souls deal going on with the wife, the resolution is suitably shocking and unexpected and really very nasty.

Nonzee Nimibutr, who directed the Thai segment The Wheel, was an award-winning director of TV commercials and pop videos before scoring a smash hit when his second feature Nang Nak outgrossed Titanic at the Thai box office. Internationally, he has established a reputation as a producer, being the man behind both Bangkok Dangerous and Tears of the Black Tiger. For Three, he co-wrote a story with Nang Nak art director Ek Iemchuen but the finished screenplay was written by Nitas Singhamat.

The Wheel is based around a Thai theatrical troupe, highlighting the intense rivalry between the lowly masked players and the respected puppeteers, and the tradition that puppets must not be used by anyone except the puppetmaster who created them.

Puppetmaster Tao suffers agonising visions after his wife and child are drowned while following his instructions to “drown the puppets”. After Tao also dies, mask actor Master Tong (Pongsanart Visiri) sees his chance to take over the puppetry and move up a caste. He tries to remake the puppets and claim that they are new ones, but the curse holds him in its sway, destroying not only him but also the troupe’s young stars/lovers through the supernaturally orchestrated jealousy of his son/apprentice Gaan (Suwinit Panjamawat: Tears of the Black Tiger).

Puppets are always scary. From the ventriloquist’s doll in Dead of Night through to Chucky in the Child’s Play movies and beyond, those grinning, lifeless mockeries of real people can, when well-handled, scare the life out an audience. The puppets in The Wheel are traditional, scary-faced Thai demons and though they never ‘come to life’ they exert a terrifying influence over those who seek to control them. With some gruesome, ghostly goings-on and a shadowy, night-time setting, The Wheel is easily the scariest of the three segments in Three.

The Hong Kong segment, Going Home, was originally announced as being directed by Teddy Chen (Purple Storm) but in the end he received only a ‘story by’ credit (along with Su Chao-Pin). Detective Chan Kwok-Wai (Eric Tsang: Project S, Gen-X Cops) and his young son Cheung (Li Ting-Fung) move into a semi-derelict apartment block, the only other occupants being the mysterious Yu Fei (Leon Lai: Wicked City) and his wheelchair bound wife Hai’er (Eugenia Yuan). Cheung is perturbed by Yu’s young daughter, a little girl in a red coat (a nod to Don’t Look Now of course) but his father tells him not to be silly.

When Cheung goes missing, Chan naturally makes an enquiry of his only neighbour and finds himself trapped by the deluded Yu whose wife - though he has conversations with her - is not so much paralysed as dead. But there’s a lot more to the story than a simple Psycho knock-off: Yu is suspicious of western medicine and is using traditional Chinese medicine to cure/revive Hai’er. Like all the best ghost stories, Going Home has not just a simple twist at the end but a succession of increasingly horrific/enigmatic revelations.

Peter Ho-Sun Chan is the director (with, interestingly, an Australian DP, Christopher Doyle: Rabbit-Proof Fence, Psycho remake). Chan helmed He’s A Woman, She’s a Man, was named as one of Ten Directors to Watch by Variety in 1998, and more recently produced the superb HK/Thai horror flick The Eye.

There are rumours that Three, following its success at a couple of film festivals in London, may be heading for a UK theatrical release, but I jumped the gun on this one and picked up a Thai VCD, which has a decent widescreen transfer, though it naturally suffers from typical VCD artefacting and The Wheel in particular is overly dark. But it was only a fiver, though I’m going to spend as much again anyway when/if this comes to my local cinema. Being the ‘International Version’, this disc has good English subs (though there are a couple of spelling mistakes in them) and also includes a trailer for Three (which interestingly shows the films in the order: Memories, Going Home, The Wheel) plus trailers for The Eye (in Thai) and Michelle Yeoh’s action fantasy The Touch (in English).

[Three was followed by a second anthology, Three... Extremes which was released first in the west. Consequently the US release of this film was retitled Three... Extremes II. - MJS]

MJS rating: A-

Director: Terry Becker
Writer: Charles Dennis
Producer: Wesley E De Pue
Cast: Jennifer Billingsley, Judith McConnell, John Considine
Year of release: 1974
Country: Philippines
Reviewed from: UK rental VHS (AVR)

Never judge a book by its cover, but a sleeve can tell you a lot about a video. Firstly, the title is given as just Thirsty Dead on the front and spine instead of the correct The Thirsty Dead (as on screen and indeed on the back of the sleeve). Both front and back of the sleeve proclaim the film to be “a surgical nightmare” and while you could argue that there are nightmarish elements, there is not a hint of anything surgical. And the main picture of an unshaven bloke swigging blood from a laboratory flask - God alone knows where they got that or what it’s supposed to be!

The Thirsty Dead, like all great horror movies, begins in a seedy Filipino night club where a go-go dancer is gyrating wildly (and frankly, rather amateurishly) in a cage for the amusement of sailors and other patrons. This is sassy Claire (former Miss Pennsylvania and daytime soap star Judith McConnell - or Mc Connell as the credits have it - from The Doll Squad) who hears an announcement on the radio about a rumoured Hong Kong-based white slave operation (“For the second time in 48 hours, a young woman has disappeared from the streets of Manila.”) moments before she is kidnapped.

The police are baffled: “Seven girls in a month. All young, all attractive. No motives, no clues, no ransom notes, no bodies.”

Next we meet Laura (Jennifer Billingsley: The Spy with My Face) who is an “airline stewardess” according to the sleeve though that’s not stated in the film and who has an amazing head of Farrah Fawcet-style hair. She is telling her boyfriend Francisco (Rod Navarro: Armalite Commandos and the 1955 classic - probably - Bim, Bam, Bum) why she won’t marry him and moments after they part she too is grabbed by hooded mysteriosos. Taken through the sewers out of the city then up a river into the jungle, she joins three other young women: blonde teenager Ann (Fredricka Myers), oriental Bonnie (Chiqui de Rosa) and our old friend Claire, who is frankly looking forward to being a white slave in Hong Kong.

But they’re not off to Honkers. Instead the girls' captors drop their robes revealing themselves to be bald, mute, loincloth clad men who shepherd the women through the jungle. There are a great deal of ‘walking through the jungle’ shots in this film...

In a secret network of caves deep inside a mountain live a community of beautiful people who are immortal and who spend their days making jewellery and pottery. They are led by High Priestess Ranu (Tani Guthrie: Daughters of Satan) and High Priest Baru (John Considine: When Time Ran Out, Doomsday Virus, Fat Man and Little Boy and, um, Free Willy 2), the former High Priest having somehow died 500 years ago. He is called Raoul or Ramon or similar (difficult to make it out) and now exists as a disembodied head in a red glass box atop a stone table.

The people are all garbed in simple, pastel-coloured dresses and smocks - though Baru also has a pale blue cloak with a huge stand-up collar - and with the extensive use of hopelessly unrealistic cave sets, the whole film consequently looks alarmingly like a 1960s Star Trek episode.

Claire, Ann and Bonnie are all going to join the group of young women whose blood is used to keep the immortals alive. The girls lie down on stone slabs and a nick is made in their neck from which blood is collected in a cup. A magic leaf heals the nick and the blood is mixed with the essence of the leaf then drunk. Laura is offered the chance to join the immortals because she looks exactly like the one that the prophecies talked about yada yada yada but she turns them down, much to the shock of Baru and Ranu. Laura wants to stay with the other three but Baru shows her what will happen to them; they will rapidly wizen and age and then die.

Laura, Ann, Bonnie and (against her better judgement) Claire escape with the help of a wizened old crone named Eva (Mary Walters) and receive shelter from a jungle village - but Baru finds them and takes them back. However, he is starting to be swayed by Laura’s arguments about how immoral the whole set-up is. Baru says that they worship only beauty but Laura says that their actions make them ugly. So eventually Baru decides to help the girls escape by freeing the locked up old crones. (Eva has died by this time. “She was 28,” says Baru. “Brought here five years ago.”) The sight of unkempt troglodytes attacking beautiful people in pastel outfits is very reminiscent of the Morlocks and Eloi in George Pal’s version of War of the Worlds.

Claire doesn’t want to escape, she wants to become immortal: “I’m pretty. I’ve got a good body. They’ll take me.” Laura chases her through the stone tunnels until Claire falls into a pit and dies. Baru then leads the other three to the outside, but when they pass the ‘ring of age’ (some markings on the rocks) he starts to age rapidly by the miracle of lap dissolves and the girls leave him. They eventually make it to a road and flag down a passing jeep, but a subsequent police helicopter search shows nothing on the mountain which is unclimbable anyway. Or is it?

What a load of tosh this ‘International Amusement Corporation’ production is. The promise of a nasty horror movie is betrayed by the daft sub-Shangri-La plot (Blood Cult of Shangri-La is actually given as an alternative title by some sources, as is Blood Hunt). It’s competently enough made and the acting’s not too bad, but frankly it’s just not very interesting, with the high point being Claire’s ambivalent attitude to her kidnapping. The legendary Vic Diaz (Beast of the Yellow Night, Night of the Cobra Woman, Wonder Women, The Big Bird Cage) turns up at the end as a policeman and was also production co-ordinator, but even that’s not enough to make me recommend this movie.

This seems to be the only feature from director Terry Becker, who also helmed episodes of M*A*S*H, Mission Impossible and short-lived musical-spin-off sitcom Anna and the King. Charles Dennis (Double Negative, a TV movie of Svengali and The Jayne Mansfield Story, also a novelist and actor) wrote the screenplay from a story by Becker and Lou Whitehill (Wonder Women).

Cinematographer Nonong Rasca also shot Superbeast, Night of the Cobra Woman and Daughters of Satan while art director Robert Formosa worked on Black Mama White Mama, Savage Sisters and The Twilight People. Make-up artist Cecile Baun went on to do prosthetics for both Platoon and Hamburger Hill! The most impressive name here is composer Richard LaSalle, whose other credits include The Mermaids of Tiburon, Twice-Told Tales, The Time Travellers and for TV: Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, Planet of the Apes and Wonder Woman!

The Thirsty Dead is utterly typical of mid-1970s Filipino fantasy movies - except that it has a lot less blood than many of them and no nudity whatsoever. It’s okay, nothing more, though it might look better on DVD as this ex-rental tape is a lousy transfer of a lousy print. Incidentally, many sources shoe-horn this into the vampire genre because of the eternal-life-from-blood-drinking theme, but it should be stressed that the characters are not particularly thirsty and they’re certainly not dead.

MJS rating: C

Holy crap - did I really meet and interview Julie Strain? Yes indeed, at the 1998 AFM where she was hanging out with her husband Mutant Turtles millionaire Kevin Eastman and other cool folks.

How did you get mixed up with Scott Shaw and Donald Jackson?
"Well, I’ve been doing films with Donald G Jackson for about six years now. He was one of the first directors to hire me when I had bad hometown hair and I couldn’t act. So I still keep working for him because he believed in me then and he still does. The films are great and they’re really campy and they’re really wonderful, completely different from anything else I’ve ever done. The great thing about Don is that he’ll put you in an environment, he’ll tell you the basic premise of what’s happening in a scene - and he’ll just say action. So in your own words and at your own level, out comes what you’re trying to say. It sounds so much more real than something that’s scripted sometimes."

Is it a creative team process?
"Yes, big time. We shot some of the movies at my home in Beverly Hills and it was great because Don had hurt his back that day so I was like the director for the day. I got to run around and tell everybody, ‘Shh!’, ‘We’re rolling folks!’, ‘Shut up!’, ‘Okay, chilli’s almost ready!’ I served people all my food and I stopped and made them eat in the middle. Actually I think it was spaghetti with a hot Italian sauce. We just had a ball."

Tell me about your character in Rock’n’Roll Cops.
"In Rock’n’Roll Cops... see, I’ve done four movies since then."

Do they all start to blend into one another?
"Kind of, a little bit. Actually, one of the scenes in Rock’n’Roll Cops is where I’m a fortune teller and they come in to arrest me because, I believe, I did not have a permit to be fortune-telling at the time. It’s very campy and crazy. I brought all these effects from my own home and I made it up as we went along. I was working with Jim Zorn the actor. There was this one sculpted thing I had with a little doodad on the end and I told him it was ‘the Witch’s Tit’ and for me to tell his fortune he had to lick the Witch’s Tit. So he did and it was really great."

What about Guns of El Chupacabra?
"In Guns of El Chupacabra, I am Queen Bee and my husband Kevin Eastman is King Allmedia and we have this very, very large chair at home. It’s like a king’s chair but the seat is this high off the ground. So we’re sitting in that chair and we send Scott Shaw off on a mission to battle the Chupacabra."

You’re pretty tall, aren’t you?
"I’m six foot one and worth the climb! If you get tired you can stop for a rest halfway up."

Is that an advantage or a disadvantage?
"For me it’s been an advantage because I’m a real mover and groover and shaker in this business. I’m not scared to do movies that contain nudity. I’m not scared to stay in this genre. I have other girls who are busty which also could limit someone and they think after two B-movies sometimes: ‘Okay, that’s it. I’m moving onto A-movies.’ Then they can’t pay their rent for three months and they come back and borrow money from me. So I’m showing my tits to pay their rent, basically.

“But the height thing has only been of benefit for me. I didn’t realise it when I started but I kind of created my own niche. I am the chick that they call when they want a gun-toting amazon-bitch-Barbarella-merciless-bitch with a machine gun. Vampires, witches, sorceresses, double agents - that’s what I do and I like to headbutt people in fights and kick them and spit on them and bust them in the balls."

Are you in Paging Dr Praisewater?
"Yes, I’m also a fortune teller in that movie. There was a couple of fortune-telling scenes in each of those movies and just some really, really great moments. While I was a fortune teller in, I believe, Rock’n’Roll Cops, we’re standing in my kitchen and I told Kevin Eastman, who is one of the rock’n’roll cops. He didn’t believe me. There was a fortune teller, so I said, ‘You know what? I know you fell off a horse when you were eight years old. I know when you were three years old you fell in the kitchen and you lost a testicle on a cabinet door.’

“So later on we’re doing a photo-shoot during that movie where my friend is the all-American photographer and I got to style her and do a photo-shoot. Kevin comes out to her and says, ‘Could you ever love a guy with one nut?’ He’s not a trained actor but I swear he brought a tear to your eye. It was the most magical, amazing scene. Then I got up for my scene, all unrehearsed and off the top of your head, and we came to each other and go, ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ And we slow-danced and slow-danced around in a circle, then we worked off."

What’s it like working with your husband?
"It’s great for me because I’ve always been alone in the past. You go on location, you go on movies, it’s great and it’s rewarding. Then you come home and you close the door and you’re by yourself. There’s nobody to share it with, there’s nobody to cuddle with. Now that I have Kevin, my life is a dream come true. He comes on all my movie sets. He comes everywhere with me. He’s here today at the AFM - the lovely AFM, Loews Hotel, Santa Monica! He gets up at four in the morning and he packs my lunch and he makes my coffee and turns on the heater and just makes it so that I can really concentrate on just being talent and doing the best job that I can. My loved one’s right there so I don't even have to worry about him. So I just embrace the love and joy and creativity. It’s a drug you can’t buy!"

With Kevin moving into acting, are you moving into comic books?
"Well, I am going to be an animated character in the movie Heavy Metal FAKK2, which he created. And I have been on the cover of Heavy Metal magazine a few times this year. And all the top artists in the world are painting me. I was on Olivia’s book cover this year which would actually make a great cover for SFX. It’s like a screaming banshee."

How are they creating your character in Heavy Metal FAKK2?
"Well, she’s animated and it’s going to be 2D with some 3D effects. We’re working with Columbia Tristar, we’re working with Cinegroup in Canada, we’re working with a group in Germany who’s helping us with the movie - so it’s really their problem. Ours is to do the voices and go out and represent the movie and be the best I can be. We actually did build the costume and I did a photo-shoot for Penthouse magazine which should be coming out soon."

You’ve been in a few mainstream movies, like one of the Naked Guns.
"Naked Gun 33 1/3, Beverly Hills Cop 3, Steven Segal’s Out for Justice, Repossessed with Leslie Nielsen. All the different movies. I love doing cameos in big movies. I really, really enjoy that. That’s something I love but if someone was to walk in here today and hand me a 120-page script that I had to do with Nicholas Cage, I would not want to walk onto a set with a hundred people with all these big dollars floating for every minute of filming and they figure out that they don’t like my style of acting. Because in this genre, I look good and I don’t have to be a brilliant actor. I’m getting better all the time, but these people love me for who I am and I feel safe, and it’s my home team and I’m staying."

What have you got lined up next?
"I’m going to be on the cover of Crack Whore magazine... No, but what’s that animated show? South Park. They were teasing that one of the kids’ moms was on the cover of Crack Whore magazine and it’s my favourite joke. But coming up, I just signed a two-picture deal with Roger Corman, so I will be doing a movie called Millennium Queen for him this summer and another movie to be named later. I also should be working on a movie called The Independent which supposedly will have Jerry Lewis and Janeane Garofalo in it.

“I’ve been offered a movie for this summer as well with Joe Montagna. I have my sixth Andy Sidaris movie to do which is going to be called The Full Python - not The Full Monty but The Full Python! If that’s not funny... But there is a snake involved because it’s a flashback to an older movie he did that had a snake. There’s the Heavy Metal movie, I’ll be doing the voices on that. And I’m in lots of magazines right now. And I’m also a photographer: I coach a class at UCLA called Fine Art and Photography and it happens to be the highest rated class in the school’s history. I’m really not sure if the fact that the students get to shoot me nude has anything to do with that! You be the judge.”

Website: www.juliestrain.com

Director: Johnny Tabor
Writer: Garry Charles
Producers: Jesse Baget, Lisandro Novello
Cast: Danny Glover, William McNamara, Andrea Monier
Country: USA
Year of release: 2014
Reviewed from: UK DVD

Day of the Mummy is a film that works extra hard at being rubbish. It’s not enough that the direction is amateurish, the script is lousy and the acting would need to improve considerably to reach the level of being merely shoddy. It’s not enough that the film is a dull non-story about one-dimensional characters on an arbitrary quest that goes nowhere, with the promised mummy not even hinted at until nearly an hour into the 77-minute run-time. No, someone said hey, let’s go the extra mile and make this movie actually annoying. Let’s have an irritating, pointless gimmick throughout the film that makes it a genuine chore to sit through, no matter how forgiving/stoned you may be. Yes, that will work.

This, because absolutely no-one demanded it, is a found footage mummy movie. As a mummy movie, it’s crap. But as a found footage film… it’s still crap.

After a camcorder-shot prologue, a second prologue (a, what, ‘logue’ I guess) introduces us to Jack Wells (William McNamara: Montgomery Clift in a Liz Taylor biopic, plus David DeCoteau’s punctuation-heavy My Stepbrother is a Vampire!?! and Argento’s Opera), a Happy Shopper Indiana Jones who is supposedly some sort of ladies’ man despite his very obvious beer gut.

A millionaire named Carl (Danny freaking Glover) appears on Jack’s laptop via some sort of Skype-like system to explain the parcel that Jack has just received. Carl wants Jack to join an expedition to find a particular mummy which is reputed to have been buried with a massive jewel. For no sensible reason, he has sent Jack a pair of spectacles that include a tiny camera which will allow Carl – and the unlucky DVD purchaser – to watch everything that happens. There is also a little earpiece doodad which will allow Carl to talk to Jack. And presumably some sort of microphone so that Carl can hear what’s going on.

And so the entire film, barring an epilogue, is seen from Jack’s point of view.

Except of course, as a conceit this just doesn’t work at all. The idea seems to have been dreamt up by someone who doesn’t wear glasses and doesn’t realise that a spectacles-wearer has a certain amount of peripheral vision (even more so when the specs have plain glass and the person has good eyesight). So for example, while much play is made by Carl of the fact that Jack is looking at the token female member of the expedition, that can only work if Jack is staring unsubtly straight ahead at her breasts rather than sneaking a sidelong glance.

However, it’s not enough to have the whole thing shot POV, because apparently these magic glasses also allow Carl himself to appear in a little box at the bottom left of the image. This serves no purpose: Carl never moves, and Jack can hear him anyway, but I guess they had Danny Glover booked for the whole morning so they figured they’d film him some more. The effect is to make something irritating even more annoying. On the plus side, this stupid, pointless gimmick does at least distract one from the paucity of the story and the production values.

It also means that, despite being second-billed, McNamara disappears from the film after that prologue, except for a couple of shots when Jack removes his glasses. McNamara’s voice is there, but mixed into the audio so badly that Jack sounds no more present in the scene than Carl does.

The whole thing is utterly pointless. Well, pointless from a narrative point of view. The fact that Jack is wearing his glasses has no bearing on the simplistic, linear plot in anyway. The fact that Carl can see what is going on and converse with Jack matters not a whit since none of their conversations ever rise beyond the level of bland chat (although without them the running time might drop below the magic 70 minutes). Bizarrely, we are not told whether his travelling companions know he has this little camera, nor do they puzzle over why Jack keeps talking to himself, apart from one arbitrary scene halfway through.

Having established that said token female team member (Andrea Monier, who was in the sequel to Are You Scared) is an independent young woman who wants nothing to do with overweight lothario Jack Wells, she suddenly decides to creep into his tent and jump his bones. On this one occasion, she asks who he’s talking to and he jokingly tells her it’s a voice in his head. The matter is never touched on again.

Anyway, Jack and Token Girl and three male team members, plus an Egyptian guide, travel into the desert to find this tomb where the pharaoh is buried, or something. None of the characters has any actual character; they’re barely one-dimensional. And although we are told their names, I’ve forgotten them already.

After assorted inconsequential, uninteresting run-ins with gun-toting Islamic radicals, they find a cave and head inside. This is where the ridiculous idea of the hi-tech spectacles passes into the realm of utter stupidity since Carl keeps up his contact, meaning that whatever transmitter/receiver is embedded in these glasses works through hundreds of feet of rock.

Well, there’s some sort of cave-in and one of the male team members gets his arm stuck under tons of rock. And the others rescue him by grabbing him and pulling really hard … which would, oh God this is dumb, either shred all the flesh from his arm or dislocate his shoulder. They find the body of the guy from the prologue who conveniently has some sticks of dynamite in his shirt pocket. Gee, I wonder if those might come in handy later. And they find some sort of inner sanctum chamber full of small, lit candles.

And eventually – e-ven-tu-al-ly – a skinny mummy turns up, roaring and running around (“That thing’s too fast to be human,” is among many asinine lines in the script) and attacking people and generally doing all the things that mummies traditionally don’t do. You know, the mummy is the dignified, restrained one in the classic monster pantheon. He has waited millennia to return, he shuffles, he goes for a little walk, hahaha. He doesn’t jump around with a scary face looking to eat people like a post-28DL zombie. So basically, when the mummy does finally show up after nearly an hour of badly made tedium, he doesn’t exhibit any of the qualities that people who like mummy movies are looking for. Damian Leone provided the special make-up effects, which don't look too bad per se - and at least it's not a CGI mummy - but it's just not the mummy that the punters want.

It all wraps up in some way and there’s a pointless epilogue about Carl in which it is obvious that Danny Glover and the actor playing the US Government official interviewing him were never in the same room at the same time.

Day of the Mummy is really poor in almost every respect. I said above that the 'found footage' angle doesn't serve any narrative purpose - but it does serve a budgetary purpose. Things don't have to be lit properly (although the caves are still suspiciously well illuminated) or framed properly. It's cut-price film-making and it shows. Ryan Valdez is credited as cinematographer so presumably that was him, rather than McNamara, holding the camera.

But it does star Danny Glover. And I’m sure you’re thinking: how the hell did they get him to appear in this shit? This is Danny Glover, man. From Lethal Weapon and The Color Purple and Predator 2 and A Rage in Harlem. Although to be fair he was also in 2012 and Battle for Terra and something called Bad Ass 2: Bad Asses and something called 2047: Sights of Death and something called Day of the Mummy, no wait that’s this, and something called The Ninja Immovable Heart and Bad Ass 3: Bad Asses on the Bayou and Jesus Christ the man has been in a lot of shite.

Danny Glover may be a well-known Hollywood name, but he’s also a jobbing actor and that’s why he has amassed more than 160 IMDB credits over the past 35 years. He will work if you pay him. And that’s how this film got him. They offered him SAG rates for, I would guess, half a day – and frankly you or I could afford that. It’s easy money for Glover. He doesn’t have to rehearse or interact with any other actors. He doesn’t have to learn lines. Hell, he doesn’t even have to stand up. All he has to do is slip into a smoking jacket and cravat, sit in front of a green screen (later to show an obviously fake wall of bookshelves), memorise each line of dialogue in turn and say it a few times into the camera. He can stop for a drink or a piss. He can keep his own trousers and shoes on. He could be wearing boxer shorts and novelty slippers below that desk for all we know.

That’s how a lot of Hollywood works, even the people you’ve heard of, that you assume are famous millionaires because they are (or have been) in magazines. If you pay them the going rate, in advance, and treat them professionally, they’ll record your answerphone message for you if you want.

The rest of the cast is people you’ve never heard of, who had to actually travel to Venezuela (where this was shot, because presumably nowhere in the USA has sand and rocks) and interact with other people. None of them have been in anything interesting except for Brandon deSpain, the guy in the mummy costume, who was also wrapped up as the second title character in Frankenstein vs the Mummy.

This is the sophomore feature from director Johnny Tabor, whose debut Eaters was shot in 2012 (as Folklore) but seems to still be awaiting release. However as he was apparently asked to helm this movie, he may not be responsible for the bigger problems inherent in the premise. That suggests the motive force behind production was, I guess, the producers. One of these is Jesse Baget who directed the vastly more enjoyable Wrestlemaniac a few years ago. Baget also produced The Black Water Vampire (which shares several cast with this flick), Werewolf Rising, Frankenstein vs the Mummy, Mischief Night, Paranormal Movie and All Hallow’s Eve. Not a bad selection of cheapo-but-probably fun horror movies. On the other hand he also directed a family comedy called The Three Dogateers which, judging by the poster, could be the absolute worst film ever made. For anyone who thinks the Air Bud movies are too sophisticated and was depressed to learn they didn’t make a third Baby Geniuses picture – here’s what you’ve been looking for.

The other producer on Day of the Mummy (and The Three Dogateers) is Lisandro Novello, who co-produced a couple of Tabor’s previous pictures but mostly earns his crust as a ‘set production assistant’ (a runner) on big budget stuff like The Dark Knight Rises, Earth to Echo and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.

The one name I did recognise (apart from Glover’s obviously) was the writer – because he’s British. Garry Charles is rather unfairly associated by the IMDB with Summer of the Massacre, arguably the worst modern British horror film not directed by Richard Driscoll. Charles didn’t actually write Bryn Hammond’s classic, he adapted it into a ‘novel’ (which presumably consists of the sentence ‘The crap serial killer ran away through the ferns squealing.’ repeated over and over again for 80 pages). He did write an unreleased, probably unfinished, remake of Summer of the Massacre starring Zara Phythian. Since then he has written some shorts and some self-published novels as well as getting ‘original story’ credit on Dead Cert and a shared screenplay credit (according to the IMDB) on the forthcoming Cute Little Buggers. Fair play to the guy: he’s got more produced credits than me, and quite possibly he was given restrictions on Day of the Mummy that prevented him from giving it a proper story or characters. Or maybe that was his choice.

I don’t know who is responsible for Day of the Mummy being rubbish, nor do I care. It just is.
A final note of props to whoever designed the back of the UK sleeve, which shows a massive army of mummies advancing across the desert, the leading ones being shredded by a machine gun. Instead of, you know, one mummy running around some Venezuelan caves screaming. Awesomely deceitful marketing. Bravo.

MJS rating: C-

I interviewed Ann Robinson - the star of the 1950s movie version of War of the Worlds, not the Weakest Link presenter - at the Sixth Festival of Fantastic Films in Manchester on 23rd September 1995. A short version of this appeared in SFX a couple of months later.

You're best known for War of the Worlds. How much control did producer George Pal have over the film, and how much did director Byron Haskin have?
"George Pal had total control, and he was there on the set every day. You never met a more charming man in your entire lifetime - what a lovely gentleman. I miss him dearly. I miss both of them. Byron Haskin was a wonderful director. I think he was chosen because he had been a cinematographer, and was very experienced in science fiction, and they worked very well together. The two of them had their heads together all the time."

George Pal started off doing animation.
"Puppetoons! I grew up with them."

Did he have a lot of say in the movie’s special effects?
"Oh, he was in control of everything. He was a great artist. He did his own storyboards."

Were you familiar with the HG Wells novel before you made the film?
"I didn't read it until after the film, but it didn't seem anything like the film. Now after I've been to London, it would probably be better if I read the book again. Now I can picture everything a little better. This is my first trip to the United Kingdom, and I'm thrilled to death."

You're enjoying it here?
"Oh, I'm absolutely enthralled. It's so much fun. I don't mind being a tourist at all, and a gawker. I just walk around. They said, 'What's the first thing you want to see when you get to London?' and I said, 'I want to see Whitechapel - Jack the Ripper!'"

I don't think he's still around...
"No, he's not still around, but I saw Ten Bells and I'm going back there on the 30th September for the anniversary of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes - they were both murdered that night."

So you're a bit of a Jack the Ripper fiend?
"Oh, I love it! Catherine was last seen there, in Ten Bells, before she ventured out into the night and was murdered."

What's the appeal of Jack the Ripper?
"I don't know: the mystery, the darkness, the fact that it was never solved. It's just horrifying. It's very personal, every time you hear something on the news about some poor woman being found. We had a couple of 'Jack the Rippers' in Los Angeles, mutilating women and throwing them naked onto a hillside. It was terrible. Two of them were found very close to my neighbourhood. As I was driving my children to school one day, I looked up on the hill - there was a body of a woman lying there. I couldn't believe my eyes. She was nude; he had killed her and thrown her out of a van. Horrifying, but fascinating."

So what's your personal theory on Jack the Ripper?
"I have that wonderful movie at home with Michael Caine, and I taped it. They seem to have used some process of elimination to work out that it must have been some doctor to the Queen. It was interesting how they eliminated everybody else and just added up all the facts. I don't know if it was her nephew or not, even though he did have some skills in dissecting, because he was a hunter."

Do you go to a lot of conventions?
"Yes I do, and they're so much fun because all the fans have sort of brought you alive again. After I leave here in two weeks, I'll go home and repack, and go to Chicago, and then come home and go back to New York. So I'll be back in Greenwich Village for Halloween!"

The other interesting thing on your CV is Rocky Jones - Space Ranger. That's one of those 1950s US TV series that's not known over here at all. What can you tell us about that?
"Let's see, who was in that? Richard Crane, Bobby Lydon. I played twin sisters. It was just a serial for children. We shot it in three parts so when you put all three episodes together you had a completed movie, if they wished to distribute it. I played Juliandra, Suzerainne of Herculon and her evil twin sister Noviandra, who was kept in a dungeon. She would destroy the galaxy if she were ever turned loose, and she escapes one day, of course. Absolute panic everywhere."

Was it fun to do?
"It was wonderful, wonderful because I had wonderful costumes, and things were glamorous. And when I was Noviandra I used to say I was a cross between Agnes Moorehead and John Barrymore. I did everything but snarl and twist my moustache. It was so hokey, it was wonderful!"

You're a Hollywood child, aren't you? Did you always want to go into acting?
"Yes. All my life. When I was a very small child at the matinee one time, they were having a talent contest. I was three or four years old; I couldn't dance. So I got up on the stage and I tap-danced with my right foot. I just kept tapping my right foot on the stage, and they literally took me off with a hook: ‘Get rid of that little girl!’"

So what was your first acting role?
"I was on the set of A Place in the Sun. I was an extra and George Stevens the director asked, 'Who has a Screen Actors Guild card?' and I said, 'I do!' So he said, 'Well, stand there at the door, and when Elizabeth Taylor walks through say: “Hello Angela.”' So that was my first speaking part."

You were in the 1954 film version of Dragnet, weren't you?
"The TV series came first, and it was so popular that Jack Webb made the film, his first feature-length movie. I played the part of Officer Grace Downey the police woman. The part had already been cast. My reading was a courtesy reading, because he was such a lovely man. He said, 'You've come all the way out here, Ann. It has been cast, but we would like to hear you read.' So I thought, 'What have I got to lose? It's all over with.' So I read my lines exactly like he spoke, just in a deadpan monotone, and he loved it, so he paid the other girl's contract and hired me. Her agent was furious, but she got a commission."

When you were making War of the Worlds, was there ever a sense that it shouldn't have been updated to 1950s America, but kept in Victorian Britain?
"No, because it wouldn't have sold. It just would not have been commercial. You have to have something that's recognisable. People are not recognisable, but places have to be recognisable. Of course they did have clips of Europe - the Eiffel Tower and things - but it was just much more commercial. You didn't have to go on location if you could just shoot down City Hall, LA. That was their main reason. At that time, people wanted to be frightened. The Thing had come out, The Day the Earth Stood Still had come out, and these were all frightening movies. It was just easier to do it in the United States."

Some people see these '50s alien invasion movies as allegories for the Cold War. Was there ever any sense that you were making an allegory?
"For communism? No, I don't recall that. Oddly enough, George Pal always began and ended something with The Bible. All his pictures had a religious undertone. God was always there, protecting us."

How do you feel nowadays when you see the movie?
"It's astounding how well it holds up. The only thing is: I had to laugh, because I had very very short, bright red, poodle-cut hair. That didn't look very much like a library science teacher, whatever a library science teacher is supposed to look like. They thought my hair, because of its style, would date the picture, so they put this hideous wig on me - two or three separate hairpieces. The bangs were separate, the backs were separate. They dyed the sides of my hair. Forty years later, the thing that dates the picture is my hair! And the cars - the automobiles dated the picture. Everybody's got short hair. That's the thing George Pal said to me when we had the twenty-fifth anniversary. He said, 'Ann, I made two mistakes. One, I didn't leave your hair alone. And the other one, I should have done the ending in 3D like I wanted to.’

"You see, when the bomb blast goes off, he wanted everyone in the theatre to reach behind the seats and put on their protective glasses so they'd be protected from the radiation and the glare of the atomic bomb. And suddenly at that moment it would be 3D when the bomb went off. Paramount didn't want to do it, thought it wouldn't be commercial enough."

Thanks a lot.
"Oh, one more thing that you don't know. In every George Pal picture, there's a Woody Woodpecker, and you have to find it. Because he and Walter Lanz were the best of friends. In Destination Moon, you see a big Woody Woodpecker, and in When Worlds Collide, you see it on a ball and you see it on the girl's scarf, but in War of the Worlds it's impossible to find. But I know where it is. It's in the beginning of the movie. It's there, exactly where a woodpecker would be.”

website: www.annrobinson.com

Who was the first actress to play Lara Croft? Angelina Jolie? Some busty model paid to wear a costume at conventions? No, the original Lara Croft was a petite British actress named Kate Shannon who provided the voice for the first Tomb Raider game. Kate is a professional voice artiste (the idea that the character was voiced by a secretary in the games company is an urban myth) and I was able to interview her on 30th September 1998 when she was recording The Gemini Apes. This was a BBC radio sci-fi play - an ‘audio movie’ - directed by Dirk Maggs and starringChristopher Lee, which was broadcast on Christmas Day.

How did you get involved with The Gemini Apes?
"This came through my agent. Dirk had heard of me, obviously because of Lara Croft, but also through a couple of friends who worked with him when he did Superman."

Have you done much radio?
"I’ve done an awful lot of cartoons. I’ve done a fair bit of radio but my speciality is cartoon voices. I’m doing one at the moment called Supermodels, which is for a company called BRB. I’m playing a black vegetarian called Yasmine, as well as her very aristocratic mother. Most series are about 52 episodes and I go all round the world, usually in American accents. The most fun I had was when we did Robin of the Forest and I got to play Maid Marian, a little girly thing, and Will Scarlet, which I did as Keanu Reeves: ‘Yo, dude!’ A really laid back guy."

How long have you been doing cartoon voices?
"Oh golly. About eight years now. I really love it. It’s good fun."

How did you start?
"I started because of a friend of mine, Mark Bradley, who’s a composer. He does all the music. He’d been doing documentaries, then he got involved with cartoons. He’s done a load of stuff for the BBC and all over the world. He got myself and Stuart Milligan, who played Superman, involved. And we recommended people we knew, so it’s like a little family. There’s about eight of us. We hardly see each other any more now, we just hear each other on the headphones. Everybody’s recorded separately because we’re all doing other stuff. We see each other at Christmas and that’s about it."

Give me a few titles that you’ve worked on.
"There’s Robin of the Forest, The Supermodels, Willy Fog. There’s one about The Untouchables, a mouse thing: Elliot Mouse."

Are these American cartoons?
"Some of them were made originally in Japan and now they’re all coming from Spain. They’re sent directly to us, then we dub them all in American accents and they’re sent all over the world. Occasionally they’re sold to the BBC, like Willy Fog and a couple of other things, but often we never get to see them again. They disappear."

What about radio?
"I haven’t done any for a while because I’ve been doing the cartoons and doing a lot of theatre and working a lot in Europe. I’ve done quite a lot of radio, mostly classical stuff. So it’s nice to do something like this, doing an actual motion picture!"

Have you done any films?
"I have. Again, I’ve been concentrating on theatre, but I did a short film for Channel 4 which actually won Best Picture at the London Short Film Festival last year. That was called The Ring. That’s done very well, and my lover in it is now in EastEnders playing Beppe. I did one at the beginning of this year which should be released in November, called Cousteau on the Beach, again for Channel 4."

How did you get the role of Lara Croft?
"I’d actually worked for the company about three times before, and it was just another job, initially. It was called Cool Design in Derby. I’d done Machine Head for them in Swagman. I knew all the guys there, all the guys who were designing it. So we talked through ideas, we talked about making her English. They sort of wanted Helena Bonham Carter but not quite that prim. So we worked with that, and every time I went back her figure was more voluptuous! They’d added a little more oomph to it."

Did they expect Tomb Raider to be as big as it is?
"Not really. They knew it was a good game. It was very sophisticated and she was such an interesting character. But the way it kind of mushroomed: everyone was just completely astonished and obviously extremely pleased. I know that DreamWorks are trying to pinch the guy who started the design. He went over for about six months and was paid obviously a lot of money, but he was very unhappy and now he’s back."

How many hours of voice recording do you do for a game like that?
"That one was actually more, because of the discussions involved, but the actual recording didn’t take more probably in total than a day. But I had to go back a few times because they kept changing their mind, changing the script. I’ve still got the original script and at some point I shall auction that for charity. So there’ll be a lot of schoolkids saving up their money, I guess."

They’re talking about a film.
"Yes, they are. Also I heard that a girl’s actually changed her name by deed poll to Lara Croft. Because she’s actually got the body, which I don’t have. And she wants to make a pop record. It’s a phenomenon."

Apparently Lara Croft is now in a car advert in France. Did you know about this?
"Really? No. It has amazed me that it’s continued to be so successful. Every time you pick up Time Out or the Evening Standard, there’ll be some mention of her or a picture. It’s quite amazing."

Are you benefiting from the success, or was it a flat fee?
"It was a straight job, unfortunately for me, or I could be enormously wealthy! But obviously a lot of work’s come from that. A lot of interest and stuff that maybe I wouldn’t have done before, which is great."

Are they planning another game?
"I think so. There was talk of a love interest, but I don’t know if that will work or not. I think the idea is that she is so dynamic and independent."

The next obvious step would be a Tomb Raider cartoon series.
"I’m not too sure. I think it would very much depend of the financial deal and worldwide distribution. I think it would be a great idea. I think it would work extremely well."

Have you heard anything on casting the film, or have you got any ideas?
"I’ve heard rumbles but I don’t know. I can’t think of some who’s actually got those attributes, apart from probably Pamela Anderson. Maybe you could just cut off her head and put somebody else’s head on or something!"

What have you got coming up?
"I’ve just opened a comedy club in Brixton called Top Dog Comedy, which is going very well, so I’m very happy with that."

Do you perform there?
"No, I run it. It’s my idea and it’s great because I can use all the comedians I really admire. At the moment, we’ve got a post-Edinburgh season. We’ve got the guy who’s just won the Perrier, which is great. But I’m also working on theatre projects; I like to balance the two.”

Nathan Shumate’s terrific website Cold Fusion Video Reviews has been going about as long as mine has. In 2010, Nathan collected some of his always astute and entertaining reviews into a book, The Golden Age of Crap. Which seemed like a good time to interview him.

How did you select the 77 films reviewed in your book (and why that number)?
“The number doesn't have any particular significance. I had decided on the theme for the book (movies which gained their audiences on VHS through the '80s and '90s), and went through the movies I had reviewed to find a good cross-section of interesting reviews from the time period. I put the number of reviews in the subtitle so that people would know this isn't supposed to be a comprehensive guides to the B-movies of the period; it's a smattering of the high and low points.”

How much rewriting did you do from the online versions of the reviews?
“In some cases, not a lot. In others, I revised drastically. The overall thrust of my rewriting was to make the reviews make sense in chronological order.”

Isn’t there a danger that you might alienate some of the B-movie makers that you know by featuring their work in your book?
“It's a danger I'm willing to face! Seriously, though, I don't cast personal aspersions on any of the directors in the book (aside from Albert Pyun, and he's probably used to it by now). I have tremendous respect for genre workhorses like Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski; that doesn't mean they don't turn out an unimpressive movie now and then. And they've all got pretty thick skins anyway; after all, for most of their career people have been looking down their noses at them because the area of the movie industry in which they work isn't ‘respectable’ or ‘legitimate’."

How much effect, if any, do you think online film reviewers have on audiences and on the industry?
“I don't think that mainstream movie releases are much affected by movie reviews, online or otherwise. I mean, Transformers 2 got a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it grossed over $400 million domestically. But with movies from the ‘long tail,’ where there isn't a massive TV ad campaign and Happy Meal tie-in, more fringe-oriented reviewers that their audiences have grown to trust can make a relatively big difference.”

What is the absolute worst film you have ever reviewed?
“There are several contenders for that title, unfortunately. I think I'll have to go with Killers in the Woods (2005), an amateur shot-on-video project that was really nothing more than an incompetent faux-snuff fetish film: the main character meets a woman walking through the woods, they ad-lib some dialogue, he strangles her, lather, rinse, repeat. I tried to dissuade the filmmaker who contacted me about taking a screener, but he kept insisting on sending it to me. So I don't feel sorry for him.”

And what is the most notable response you have had to a review?
“A few years ago, I tracked down a cartoon feature I remembered faintly from seeing it on TV in my preschool years. It turned out to be the early anime Jack and the Witch (1967). In my review I included an account of what little I had remembered of the movie and how I tracked it down, and over the next couple of years several dozen people wrote to thank me; they had had similar maddeningly vague memories of the movie from TV viewings in their childhood, and when they googled what little they could remember - often a scene in which one character chants, ‘Into the machine! Into the machine!’ - they found my review. It astounded me how many people retained trace memories of a single viewing of that movie, each half-believing that they had dreamed it all because they had never heard of it since.”

website: www.coldfusionvideo.com

Hiram Jacob Segarra is known as ‘Hy’ or ‘Iggy’ to his friends, the latter because of his terrific performance as the stoned grave-robber/lab assistant of that name in Brian O’Hara’s hilarious Rock’n’Roll Frankenstein. Hy/Iggy answered an e-mail interview for me in January 2003.

How did you land the role of Iggy in Rock'n'Roll Frankenstein?
“It's strange how that happened. It was a Friday night in early July of 1997, and I just got out of where I was working at the time, and I was in a hurry, because I was going to a concert at this great club a few blocks away called ‘Tramps’ (which doesn't exist any more) to see British guitar great Robin Trower. I ran into a girl I know who worked for casting agent Stanley Kaplan here in New York City as I was crossing the street. She told me that there was an audition for a lead role in a movie that was right up my alley, and that I should call Stanley for the details. I told her that I was in a hurry, but thanks for the information. All I had in my mind was that I didn't want to be late for the concert, which was great, by the way!

“Anyway, the whole weekend went by, and I didn't give the audition another thought until Monday, when I remembered what happened and gave Stanley a call. I got director Brian O'Hara's phone number, called him, and he made an appointment with me for that coming Wednesday. I went up to his office, and he gave me a page of the script to look at for a minute or two, as he set up the camera in another room. I went inside, did the reading the way I thought it should be done, with Brian standing behind the camera, reading another actor's dialogue. We finished, he thanked me for coming up, I thanked him for the opportunity, and went home. I didn't give it another thought, as I've done these kinds of auditions many times.

“Anyway, so a few days pass, and Saturday comes up, and I decided to give Brian a follow-up call to see how I did. He told me that I had the job! He was planning to call me soon, he said, possibly after the weekend. Needless to say, I was thrilled, and couldn't wait to get the whole script, so that we could get to work. A few days later, Brian showed up at my job with the 98 page script for Rock’n'Roll Frankenstein. I was riding home on the subway that night with a couple of friends of mine, and we were cracking up at the script. It was brilliant! I was so psyched! I told them, ‘I AM IGGY’!”

What are your best and worst memories of making the movie?
“The whole event was the best acting experience I've ever had, being a lead actor, even if it was in a low budget independent film. Getting ready every day to go meet the van to take us to the day's location was so amazing. I never wanted it to end! It was a very eye-opening experience for me. I learned a lot about the process of movie making from this one role. In fact, I don't look at movies the same way any more; I'm always analysing how things were done. I'm like, ‘Oh yeah, I know what they did here,’ and explaining to people how movies are made because of it!!

”The best part was, I was treated like a king from the very first day! In fact, after a couple of hours of filming, I stepped out of the recording studio we were shooting in to get some fresh air. Right away, someone from the crew came outside to ask me if I was alright, and if there was something that I wanted, or needed. Man, I wasn't used to treatment like that! But I'll tell you something - I sure got used to it pretty fast!

“To tell you the truth, I'd have to think very hard to come up with a bad memory when it comes to the making of Rock’n'Roll Frankenstein. The closest I can come is when we started filming in September of 1997, and we were going pretty good, really getting into it, and then, after so many days, out of the blue, Brian told us that we had to stop because of lack of funds. We (the four principal characters) were pretty upset about it. I couldn't believe it - I get a lead role in a really great movie, and we have to stop! And we didn't know if we would ever start up again. However, things did get straightened out eventually, and we resumed filming for good in January of 1998. That would have to be the low point. But that's it!”

How does a principal role on a low-budget movie like RnR Frankie compare with the small roles you've had on big movies like Vanilla Sky and A Beautiful Mind?
“Well, on one hand, while it's exciting to be in a big, Hollywood Oscar winning production like A Beautiful Mind, working closely as I was, with world famous actors like Russell Crowe, and top-notch directors like Ron Howard (who both, by the way, complimented me on my work), the scene was cut considerably from the original footage that was shot. I did a lot more in the scene than was shown, and had a lot of (improvised) lines that the public never got a chance to hear.

”Whereas, on RnR Frankie, although the footage was edited, of course, I was still a big part of the movie, and I'm the only surviving cast member at the end of the film! (Sequel, anyone?) I had the chance to take the role of Iggy that was in the script, and develop him into a real character. That's what a serious actor just loves to do. I would rather have major roles in independent films than tiny roles in Hollywood productions (although my goal is to have more and more principal roles and make it big in this business).”

What did you do in Godzilla?
“I was in a bar scene, when it was announced that Godzilla was making his way to the city. At first, I was given a female partner in the scene, and we were reacting to the news as it was coming in on the TV, but then the director took away my partner and had me sit on a stool on the inside of the bar, with the camera right in front of my face. I was sure it would be fantastic exposure. Then, in another scene, I was part of a group of about five or six people who were running down the street in the rain, with Godzilla in hot pursuit. But don't look for it in the movie - they cut it all out! Oh well. I got over it - it didn't turn out to be the blockbuster that they thought it would be anyway.”

How come you've played two different members of Kiss on Saturday Night Live? (Are you going to play the other two sometime, go for the full set?)
“That's funny, right? What happened is, in September of 1999, I got a call from Brian Siedlecki, the casting director at the time from SNL, and he asked me if I would like to play Gene Simmons in a skit that was called ‘Millennium Moments’ - it was supposed to be about things that never really happened. He said that he thought that I would look very much like the real Gene if I shaved off my beard. And he was right - I shaved it off, and I kinda do look like the real Gene Simmons (who's Jewish like me, too - maybe that had something to do with it?).

”Anyway, they asked me for all my information: shoe size, shirt size, etc. They went out to these S&M shops in Manhattan, shopping for my exact measurements! I liked the costume so much, I told them that I didn't care if they paid me or not - I just wanted that outfit! Unfortunately, they said it had to go back into wardrobe, although it was bought specifically for my use. They said that I shouldn't worry - it would still be here for me for the next time I came on the show!

”Anyway, it turned out to be a photo shoot, and I was standing there as Gene, and to my left there was a guy in a robot costume, much like the robot in Lost in Space. To my right, there was a woman and two gentlemen dressed like people from the 1890s. So they started taking the photographs, and I was posing like Gene, sticking my tongue out (I do have a long tongue like he does), and being generally mischievous. I started terrorising the woman standing next to me! The photographer was laughing and saying, ‘Yes, yes! Keep going!’ - It was a lot of fun.

”Then in April of 2001 I was called again, this time by Josh Payne from SNL. They were doing a parody of this cable show called The Wedding Story, where they have couples who are about to be married, and they tell everyone how they met, and all about the preparations for their upcoming marriage, etc., etc. The guest host on Saturday Night Live that week was Renee Zellweger (I worked with her before on the film A Price Above Rubies, where I played a Rabbi). In this skit, she was marrying Will Ferrell's character, who happened to be in a Kiss copy band.

"He was playing Gene Simmons this time, so I was chosen to play lead guitarist Ace Frehley. It was very funny, and very memorable. By the way, I was the only one in the band who actually looked like the person I was supposed to be representing! As far as what you mentioned - yes, I would love to play the two remaining band members (I'm a drummer and guitarist, anyway). I'm waiting for them to call me back, so that I can do it! That would be great!”

Where is your acting career (hopefully) taking you?
“Hopefully to bigger and better parts. I'm a very versatile character actor, not only changing the way I look with different costumes and hairstyles (sometimes with a full beard, or only a moustache, or even clean shaven; hair up, down, etc.), but I also do several ethnic character accents. It's impossible to live here in New York City and not pick up on all the different languages you hear, especially if you already have a talent for mimicry, like I have.

”For instance, there's a cable show I do here in the city called Apt. 17JJ, which is a comedy improv show, where I created many different characters, such as: Achiram Yaakov, the biker Rabbi; Lingam Tandoori, the Hindu deli owner; Aquinando Parranda (or ‘Chelito’), the Guatemalan salad bar chef; Toh Ching Gao (or ‘Mr Lee’), the Chinese restaurant owner; ‘El Nino’ - and many other characters! In fact, we're shooting two new shows this coming weekend. Apt. 17JJ airs every other Saturday night at 11pm in Manhattan on (Time Warner) Cable Channel 67.

”I just want some agent representation, and the chance to be sent out for more principal parts in major motion pictures. A good regular role in a TV series would be nice, also. I don't care, as long as I have steady work that's substantial and creative. I know that I have a lot to offer in this business, and I just want the chance to show what I can do. Hopefully, with a little luck and some more hard work, that will happen.”

website: www.stairwaytohiram.com

Director: Brian O’Hara
Writer: Brian O’Hara
Producer: Sean O’Hara
Cast: Jayson Spence, Graig Guggenheim, Barry Feterman, Hiram J Segarra
Year of release: 1999
Country: USA
Reviewed from: VHS screener

There have been some damn strange takes on Mary Shelley’s tale over the years, variants that would make even her liberal eyes pop out of their sockets, which just goes to show how universal and adaptable the Frankenstein story is. But few have been as far from the original - or as entertaining - as Brian O’Hara’s Rock’n’Roll Frankenstein.

Cigar-toting music mogul Bernie Stein (Feterman) falls out once again with his latest signing and decides that what he really needs is a pop star that he can control completely. He needs to build one for himself. Fortunately, he has his nephew Frankie (Spence) on hand, replete with well-equipped Mad Scientist Lab, necrophiliac tendencies and stoned, oddball assistant named (great touch!) Iggy (Segarra).

Iggy and accomplices are sent out to raid the cemeteries of the world for parts of deceased rock giants which Frankie can then patch together into what will surely be the ultimate rocker. They get Jimi Hendrix’s hands, Buddy Holly’s feet, Elvis’ head - finally all that’s missing is, well, a schlong. Who else’s could they use but Jim Morrison’s legendary trouser snake, apparently preserved in a jar in a bizarre collection of such things? But, in the grand tradition of useless assistants, Iggy drops the jar and grabs another one instead, belonging to someone called Ace. Unfortunately, that’s ‘Liber’ Ace!

The resultant creation, known as simply ‘The King’ (Guggenheim), is a triumph of the unholy arts and is trained to be a rock star. Gradually his fame takes off, but he does seem to prefer the piano to the guitar. Worse than that, he prefers men to women! Confused and scared, the King tries to make it with chicks but instead starts hearing voices - voices from down there.

Of course, Uncle Bernie is only interested in making money from The King, while Frankie is distracted by his, um, tendencies - and Iggy is still zonked out of his skull. This would be a touching, sad story of loneliness and confusion - if it wasn’t so funny. In an era when even mainstream films are attempting to gross-out their audiences, many film-makers have forgotten that grossness alone isn’t enough. Grossness has to be presented with intelligence, even wit, to actually be funny, and that’s where Rock’n’Roll Frankenstein scores.

This is not a film for the easily offended, but nor is it just mindless stupidity. Written, directed and produced with care and skill, R’n’R Frankie is laugh-out-loud funny while retaining the core element that makes the Frankenstein myth such an enduring tale. A largely neophyte cast are excellent, playing the comedy straight and thereby making it all the funnier; special mention to Segarra who makes Iggy, potentially a one-note stoner, into a fully realised, sympathetic character. Hugely enjoyable, deeply politically incorrect (good!) and highly recommended, this is a film that everyone should see at least once.

Rock’n’Roll Frankenstein was released as a Collector’s Edition DVD from EI Independent Cinema, including a ‘making of’ featurette and commentary from O’Hara and friends.

MJS rating: A

Director: Steve Balderson
Writers: Steve Balderson, Susan Traylor, Anslem Richardson
Producers: Steve Balderson, Jennifer Dreiling
Cast: Susan Traylor, Anslem Richardson, Mark Booker
Country: USA
Year of release: 2015
Reviewed from: online screener
Website: www.dikenga.com

Here is how to make an El Ganzo cocktail. Take one measure of Jodorowsky, one measure of Bunuel. Pour over crushed Balderson. Serve with a slice of Kubrick. And a paper umbrella.

Yes, we’re off down Mexico way for the latest feature from the indefatigable Steve Balderson, the best thing to come out of Kansas since Dorothy’s farmhouse. I actually got sent a screener of this three months ago, and normally I watch Steve’s films the moment they arrive in my in-box, bypassing whatever is in my TBW pile. On this occasion however, Steve sent me two screeners – Hell Town and El Ganzo– with a recommendation that I leave a gap twixt the two, as they are very different films. I followed that wise advice - and then a whole load of other things came along and filled the gap, leaving El Ganzo atypically unwatched.

Well, I’ve watched it now and, just like most of Steve B’s films, I absolutely Larry loved it.
It’s sort of an archetypal Balderson picture, partly in that it’s nothing at all like the previous one. But it also addresses themes which permeate much of Steve’s oeuvre: themes of identity and discovery, a journey undertaken by an individual, couple or group to find out who they are.

In this case we have Lizzy (Susan Traylor, previously in Firecracker, Stuck! and The Casserole Club), who journeys to the El Ganzo hotel, walking the last few miles after the minibus taxi she was in breaks down. At the hotel, she meets travel photographer Guy (Anslem Richardson, who was a cop in The Amazing Spider-Man 2) and the two pal up, not least because they’re the only two Americans around (apart from bellhop Billy, played by Mark Booker who also composed the wonderful score). Guy seems a normal, well-adjusted fellow, He has a boyfriend back home and constant travels have put a strain on the relationship, but on the whole he’s a personable, friendly chap.

Lizzy, on the other hand, is a bit … well, kooky. Not in an attractively eccentric sort of way, but in a distractingly not-quite-with-it sort of way. Why does she keep asking Billy to look for her suitcase when she turned up at the hotel with no luggage? Why does her claim to be a writer for the same travel magazines that guys takes snaps for seem so inauthentic? Something’s not right here

How not right, and in what way not right, is something that you will discover as the movie progresses. I found myself considering all sorts of theories. Was this a Carnival of Souls gig? Was it a Sixth Sense thing – had Guy actually interacted with any other characters? Or was I letting my imagination run away with me? Would the answer be more prosaic?

Well, nothing’s ever prosaic in a Steve Balderson film. I’ll say no more than that.

What matters is not the offbeatness of the story which, like much of Steve’s work, is a quarter-twist from ‘reality’ – no, it’s the characters. El Ganzo is a two-hander and it’s no exaggeration to say that both actors are absolutely superb, completely inhabiting their characters. Without any crass infodumps, but also without being gratuitously enigmatic, Steve B and his cast present us with two very, very real people that we feel we know (as much as they know each other) but about whom we will discover much more.

Watching Traylor and Richardson is a master class in screen acting. Look, I do the odd bit of acting but in all honesty it’s not much more than larking about in front of a camera for mates. I won’t be winning a BAFTA any time soon. Watching this film really hammered home to me how much skill is involved in acting: skill that is often in short supply in the sort of films I watch, or is present but overshadowed by more exploitable elements like blood, boobs and explosions. Real acting has a subtlety to it that can’t be put into words.

There’s one particular scene in El Ganzo which has stuck in my head. Lizzy is sitting in an empty church. Guy comes in and sits in the pew in front of her. Anslem Richardson delivers a monologue, Guy addressing Lizzy without turning round. While he speaks, Susan Traylor silently trails her finger back and forth along his arm, resting on the back of the pew, that one tiny movement telling us reams about how Lizzy is feeling, about herself and about Guy. And, it just occurred to me, Richardson’s non-acknowledgement of her touch, which Guy can surely feel – he doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t glance back - tells us reams about Guy and his thoughts towards Lizzy. In its own small, subtle way, this is a magical scene, a microcosm of the film overall.

Steve, Susan and Anselm are jointly credited with the script, indicating a considerable amount of improvisation, or at least workshopping. Steve’s direction of the film is immaculate, assisted not only by magnificent performances but also the terrific cinematography of Daniel G Stephens (The Far Flung Star, Occupying Ed, Hell Town).  Of particular note is the use of the hotel itself; it’s simple, geometric architecture adroitly used to frame many of the shots. The local environs are also photographed to impressive effect: little shops and cafes; a sculpture garden of giant abstract heads; beautiful, deserted, sandy beaches.

When Steve moves away from the setting to concentrate on scenes which, in lesser hands, would be static and talky, he breaks up the sequence of events with fineky judged editing, so that sometimes we see one part of a conversation while hearing a different bit. This only adds to the otherworldliness of the film. Wrapping up all the visuals is Mark Booker’s music, much of which has a sparse minimalism that put me in mind of The Blue Nile, but which also occasionally breaks into festively abrasive Mexican trumpets. It complements the imagery and the story and perfectly.

Don’t imagine for one moment, however, that El Ganzo is style over substance. Not a bit of it. This is style supporting substance. It’s just a difficult substance to sumarise and describe. This isn’t a simple boy-meets-girl story, it’s not even really a romance, it’s just a beautiful, wistful, warm, sincere tale of two people who, in finding out about each other, discover a little about themselves.

Wistful: that’s the adjective that keeps coming back to me, that I knew I would need to use in this review somewhere. This is a wistful film. It’s absolutely full of wist, Bags and bags of the stuff.

In other words, it’s about what has been, what could have been and what might be, as well as what is. And really, aren’t all our lives a bit like that? But it takes an artist of Steve Balderson’s calibre to make us think wistfully about our own lives like this, and for each of us to find out that bit more about who we are.

One final note, and then I’ll let you get on. The Hotel El Ganzo is a real place. It’s a fabulous hotel by the look of it, with a strong artistic feel running throughout both the building and the experience of staying there. I can quite see why it would appeal to young Mr Balderson. But, just a few weeks after this film was shot, a hurricane ripped through the place. The hotel is currently closed for repairs, and much of the surrounding area has been ripped up, knocked down or otherwise changed. Steve’s film captures the location as it was and preserves it, a level of wistfulness that no-one could ever have expected.

My rating of his film is almost superfluous, but once again I hold off from an A+ only because I don’t want to believe that Steve Balderson’s career has peaked.

MJS rating: A

Director: Ellory Elkayem
Writer: John Claflin, Daniel Zelman
Producer: Frank Hildebrand
Cast: Thomas Calabro, Dean Stockwell, Kristen Dalton
Year of release: 2000
Country: USA
Reviewed from: Festival screening (Cannes 2000)

Ellory Elkayem must have a real love of bug movies. He first came to attention with a highly acclaimed short film about giant spiders, Larger Than Life, and is currently shooting another oversized octoped story, Arach Attack (later retitled Eight-Legged Freaks), for Devlin and Emmerich's Centropolis Entertainment. Inbetween, he made his feature debut with this smashing TV movie about killer cockroaches.

The little fellas in this case are an unpleasantly large and particularly nasty African species which turn up on an island off the coast of Maine. Not only are they killers, but they lay eggs inside their victims. Unfortunately the only person with a clue about what is going on is Dr Ben Cahill (Thomas Calabro: Chill), a man deeply distrusted by the rather inbred islanders as a 'summer home' interloper. Only the local teacher (Kristen Dalton) and the town sheriff (Dean Stockwell from Quantum Leap) are prepared to trust him.

In a subgenre which might seem to have been done to death, the script by John Claflin and Daniel Zelman finds new and clever ways to scare the heck out of the audience, mixing gross-out imagery with genuine tension and fear, while Elkayem's direction is far better than one would expect on such a minor title. Among a largely unknown cast, Stockwell is his usual reliable self, and Calabro does a great job of playing an outsider battling the dual threat of ignorant locals and deadly invertebrates.

They Nest (aka Creepy Crawlers, not to be confused with They Crawl aka Crawlers) delivers scares, shocks and squirms in equal measure. It won't ever be a cult classic, but it's well above average and shows that a committed director with a good script can inject new life into hokiest of cliches. And though the film is played seriously, watch out for the scene in the hamster maze - possibly the funniest spoof of Aliens ever filmed.

MJS rating: A-

Director: John Allardice
Writers: Curtis Joseph, David Mason
Producer: Paul Hertzberg
Cast: Daniel Cosgrove, Tamara Davies, Dennis Boutsikaris
Year of release: 2001
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK video (Metrodome)

There are Big Bug Movies (like Them! or Spiders) and Little Bug Movies (like Phase IV or They Nest) and they are both scary in their own way. They Crawl (aka Crawlers) is a Little Bug Movie and if you don’t shout, “Oh, gross!” at your TV at least half a dozen times while watching this then you have a stronger stomach than I, my friend.

Daniel Cosgrove (Valentine) stars as Ted Cage, investigating the mysterious death of his younger brother Brian. The police believe Brian was just a drug dealer who accidentally burned down his apartment, but Ted finds evidence that he was involved with a sinister cult, Trillion, and also with some top secret military research. Tamara Davies (Area 52) is Gina O’Bannon, the cop who believes him, and Dennis Boutsikaris (In Dreams) is Brian’s university professor. Meanwhile, the police are investigating a series of bizarre murders, apparently carried out by the Trillion cult - but we know that roaches are somehow involved.

Director Allardice’s background is as a Visual Effects Supervisor with Foundation Imaging, so one might expect that he would let the effects swamp the story, but in fact for the most part this is a tense thriller, with just enough background weirdness to keep the viewer hooked. It’s almost like an X-Files episode - a good X-Files episode, that is, when they used to do monster-of-the-week shows.

The deadly power of the roach hordes is glimpsed once or twice before the third act, when the action starts to really build up, leading to an absolutely barnstorming denouement that is pure ‘wow!’ In fact, it’s almost a shame that this final idea is over and done with so quickly; there’s a whole other movie there (They Crawl II?).

The acting is strong from all the leads, with some effective supporting characters, notably Ken Lerner (Principal Flutie from Buffy) as a coroner and Grace Zabriskie (Sarah Palmer from Twin Peaks) as Ted’s mother. There are cameos by Tone Loc (as a gangster), Mickey Rourke (as a cultist) and Dollman himself, the great Tim Thomerson (as a bug exterminator). Writers Joseph and Mason also wrote one of Jim Wynorski’s latest, Project VIPER. The bug effects are mostly CGI care of Foundation Imaging, as one would expect, although a Roach Wrangler is also credited. They Crawl is a surprisingly intelligent - and enjoyable - Little Bug Movie.

MJS rating: B+

Director: Jason Impey
Writer: Jason Impey
Producer: Jason Impey
Cast: Jason Impey, Kaz B, Sarah Gardner
Country: UK
Year of release: 2015
Reviewed from: online screener

Jason Impey is something of a poster boy for the 21st century British Horror Revival. Self-taught, self-motivated, defiantly individualistic, Impey has built up an impressive body of work. His first two features (short film lash-ups aside) are both in my book Urban Terrors: Sick Bastard and Home Made. The latter forms the basis of this ‘new’ half-hour short, which Impey describes as the film he was aiming towards.

I put those quotes around ‘new’ advisedly. The thing is: Jason Impey’s filmography is a nightmare in terms of actually, you know, listing things in order. I believe (and I’m willing to be contradicted) that the original Home Made, shot in 2006, has been re-edited as Death on Camera and as Home Made Redux and as one third of anthology picture Killer Stories. Some form of the film was released as one of Gorezone’s cover-mounted discs and the entire 88 minute feature was posted onto YouTube, by Jason himself in September 2013.

Exploited is the latest incarnation of this tale and clearly the one with which Jason is happiest. It’s a mixture of old and new footage all starring Jason himself as Jack Hess (a clear nod to Last House on the Left). It all seems to fit together well: the fact that Jason has never, ever changed his haircut helps enormously with continuity!

The story is extremely simple and clearly reducing it down to 33 minutes is a good idea as this would be pretty tedious at feature length. Basically, Jack Hess is a guy who makes home-made horror movies – not unlike young Mr I himself – but has violent tendencies which come to the fore as he seeks sicker and more vile footage. (This is certainly not like young Mr I who is a respectable family man and a pillar of the Milton Keynes community.)

In essence then, what we have here is a series of vignettes of Jack Hess hassling, abusing and eventually killing young women, mostly viewed through his handheld camera (though this is not a found footage film). The whole thing is, on a superficial level, desperately misogynist – although to be fair, one boyfriend also ends up butchered. Eventually – somewhat predictably – one of the victims turns the tables.

The reason I describe the misogyny as ‘superficial’ is that the whole thing is obviously an homage to the sort of post-grindhouse, video nasty films that have influenced the director. This is most obvious in the music, but also the editing and camera angles and the general feeling of sleaziness which permeates the picture. This is what Impey has been working towards, in fits and starts, among all his other shorts and features, since 2006.

Does it work? Well, in the sense that it achieves what it sets out to do – yes, I suppose so. Impey is never apologetic about his cinematic oeuvre: he makes the sort of films enjoyed by the people who enjoy the sort of films he makes. He knows his market – and through Brain Damage and other distribution channels, his films have found an audience.

That said, Exploited unavoidably harkens back to Impey’s earlier work. While it was presumably cathartic for the director to finally exorcise his ghost (that’s assuming he can finally let this go, and does’t recut it into Exploited Redux next year), the film’s one-dimensional nature isn’t as satisfying as something like Lustful Desires, which seems more exploratory, less expositional. Exploited is narrated by Impey’s character (with an unexplained, and somewhat variable, American accent) but we’re not really given any insight into Jack Hess except that he vehemently hates women.

Jason Impey films are an acquired taste and I’d be lying if I said my admiration for the man’s work ethic and commitment is always matched by my appreciation of the finished result. Exploited isn’t the apotheosis of Impey’s work; a dozen titles already postdate it on his IMDB page (including his ghost-hunting horror-comedy trilogy with Eileen Daly). But it may perhaps mark a sea-change: Jason Impey moving on from that stage of his career to films more ambitious, more complex, more intriguing, possibly more mainstream, certainly more commercial - but hopefully no less iconoclastic. There’s only one Jason Impey and long may he plough his own furrow on the fringes of British horror.

MJS rating: B

At the 1998 AFM I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Shim Hyung-rae (aka Ray Shim), director of Yonggary. I had already reported on the film, running some behind-the-scenes photos in SFX, so I was surprised and delighted to meet Mr Shim in person. He gave me a wonderful interview (via an interpreter) and showered me with Yonggary items. I finally got to see the film two years later in Cannes. Part of this interview ran in Fangoria when the film was released in the USA as Reptilian.

Why is it the right time to make another Yonggary film?
“The reason is that Yonggary originally belonged to Korea but lots of people believe this is a Japanese film because Japanese movies have similar monster characters. So I want to let people know that the original 1967 movie - and this monster character - came from Korea.”

Is Yonggary a well-known character in Korea?
“Yes, lots of Korean people know Yonggary. When I was a young boy, I watched this film.”

Is this new film a sequel to the original, or a remake, or is it completely new?
“This is a new story and it is modernised from the original one.”

What is the storyline of the new film?
“Many years ago, a dynasty of monsters occupied and controlled Earth. After the monster dynasty was destroyed, humans controlled and occupied Earth, and after humans were gone, Yonggary controlled and occupied Earth. A document is discovered, a program which creates a space warp. Humans find this program document and the story starts to happen there. Then, when they’ve found it and operated the program, an alien being comes to earth from the stars - and Yonggary wakes up. And that’s where the story starts!”

What does Yonggary’s name mean?
“This is Yonggary’s original Korean name: ‘yong’ actually means ‘dragon’; ‘gary’ means ‘huge’. This is the monster’s original name - like ‘Gojira’.”

How important is this film within the Korean film industry?
“This is not just a Korean picture, it’s an international picture, but it’s supported by the Korean government. All the miniature work is shot in Korea. The government has contributed all the technological equipment and all the military equipment. The second unit shot in the United States to save money.”

What sort of special effects does the film have?
“The monster scenes are shot for real - miniature buildings and motion control monsters - but mixed with computer graphics. We are using the technical capabilities of forty people - two teams of twenty people each - working 24 hours a day. Each team works for 12 hours, so the production is rolling 24 hours a day, because we need this movie in five months. The budget is around 40 million. The special effects depend on the script.”

What stage of production is the film at?
“All the work on the monster is almost finished now, and all the military equipment is standing by and ready. We just have to set up the cast and prepare the schedule.”

Will you try to get some international stars in the cast?
“I am more interested in concentrating on production values. The casting is determined by the market, with meetings between the production side and the distribution side. They will come to a decision.”

How much interest is being shown around the world in the movie?
“A lot of interest. Most countries around the world are very interested. With any movie, every territory has a special interest in a particular type. Maybe the UK and Scandinavia, they don’t like action movies, but in Asia they like action. But Yonggary is a special movie, and has interested producers in the US, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia - I was surprised too! Everybody has an interest, even in territories where they don’t like action movies. But this film is not just bam-bam-bam action, it has family appeal too, so everyone can enjoy it.”

Are there plans to make more Yonggary films after this?
“Yes.”

How much time and money and effort has gone into making the Yonggary suit?
“The creation of the monster suit has taken one and a half years and a lot of money - a lot of money!”

Do the people making this film have experience of this sort of film?
“I have been working in films for maybe ten years, but I have never made a picture like this. But this is an international picture, so in each section of production we have hired the top people with the best experience.”

When do you expect the film to be finished?
“At the moment, our schedule is the end of this year.”