Zombies, Ghosts and Clones

Our three films this week consist of the usual diverse mix ...  so here we go.

First up is a recent film called The Island. I'd somehow missed this up until now, but Sam had remembered it mainly because it totally rips off a novel called Spares, written by a friend of ours called Michael Marshall Smith. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about that: 'Michael Marshall Smith's 1996 novel Spares, in which the hero liberates intelligent clones from a "spare farm", whose clients are told they are not conscious, was optioned by DreamWorks in the late 1990s but never made. It remains unclear if the story inspired The Island, and so Marshall Smith did not consider it worthwhile to pursue legal action over the similarities. Paramount (once sister studio to DreamWorks after its parent Viacom purchased DreamWorks in late 2005, then spinning it off again in 2008) was in talks to option the novel after DreamWorks' rights expired, but declined after The Island was released. Marshall Smith considers it unlikely a Spares film will ever be made.'

It's actually not a bad movie and comes over as a sort of descendent of Logan's Run, where a couple (Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson), apparently living in some futuristic world where everyone is fit and perfect, find out the truth about their 'world'. There's a sort of lottery running, where the winners get to go to 'The Island' - a paradise place where only the select few live - Earth being contaminated and dying above ground.

Of course, it's nothing of the sort, and in fact all these people are paid-for clones of people in the 'real' world topside who are called upon for spare parts when their doubles need them. Going to 'The Island' means that they are basically killed for their body parts.

The film looks good and has had a lot of time spent on the sets and effects. It's an entertaining watch, and so is such a shame that it's all tainted by allegedly being based on someone else's novel.

Next up is The Changeling. Not the recent film of that title, but a brilliant little ghost story from 1979 starring George C Scott. I saw this at the cinema many, many years ago and I remember it scaring the bejeezus out of me. This may even have been the last film to actually scare me!  And it really is that good.

Scott plays a composer, John Russell, who, after the death of his wife and daughter in a car accident, comes to stay in an old mansion ... which of course seems to be haunted by the restless ghost of something.

Events come to a head, and Russell starts to investigate further, delving into the past of the house, and finding out just what might be haunting it.

It's a brilliant tale and well told. The scares are not so much the jump out of your seat kind, but a slow, slow build, which end in you feeling so nervy that a ball slowly bouncing down a flight of stairs is enough to send you running for the light switch!

There's some classic moments too with a children's wheelchair which have been re-used and echoed through the years in films as diverse as Boo and Session 9.

If you've not seen it, then I heartily recommend The Changeling.

Finally, a zombie flick called Night of the Comet. I'm really not sure about this at all, as I don't think it is a zombie flick.  There are some zombies in it, but you seldom see them (when you do, the make-up is terrific though) and it's mostly about a couple of dumb American teens (Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney) who manage to survive the destruction of all life on Earth, and who end up joining forces with a DJ (Robert Beltran) to try and survive.

It's trying to be Last Man on Earth, The Breakfast Club and Night of the Living Dead all at the same time, and it doesn't do any of them very well. It's also trying to be funny, and fails at that too ... I dunno ... I'm probably not the target audience for it anyway. I know many of my horror afficionado friends like it, and Sam quite enjoyed it ... but for me it failed to really make any impression (apart from the fleeting zombie makeups).  It's managed to gain a bit of a cult following, and so like many cult films, perhaps it's this trashyness which appeals.  Not for me though.

The Official Doctor Who Fan Club

Doctor Who fandom goes back a long way ... much further than perhaps people realise. We did a series on the history of fandom for our fanzine The Frame many years back, and determined that there was a fan club for the very first Doctor, William Hartnell. But the purpose of this review is to look at a new book which has been self-published by Keith Miller, all about the early days of fandom in the seventies, when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor. Thus a thirteen year old boy from Edinburgh decided to write to the BBC and see if he could start such a thing ... the secretary of the Doctor Who office, Sarah Newman, agreed, and there then began what can only be described as an incredible few years, during which Miller produced newsletters, contacted merchandisers, visited the studios, and even was party to some early fan politics.

In the book, Miller reproduces all the editions of his fan newsletter, and intersperces them with the correspondence he had with all the parties. In a way it's a shame that none of Miller's actual outbound letters are here, just the ones he got back, but such was the technology of the day, that I guess there wasn't a way he could keep copies of everything he sent - and why would he think to anyway! They're probably in a musty file somewhere in the BBC's Written Archives centre though. These responses paint a fascinating picture, and moreso of Sarah Newman and her unswerving support of the young Keith Miller.

She is nothing less than a miracle worker. Arranging to have the newsletters printed and despatched by the BBC, supplying publicity photos and envelopes, agreeing to reverse charges phone calls so he could speak to her ... and all of this on top of her normal job!  In a way, if Miller had not been only thirteen, this could be a real sequence of love letters! She is encouraging and supportive, giving him advice on how to handle things, keeping the other fans away who were trying to overthrow him, and generally being the rock on which the club was built.

It's hard to believe the BBC today - or any organisation at all - behaving in this way towards an enthusiastic fan. But things were much simpler back then, and Newman must have taken a lot of risks to help Miller in his endevours.

Along the way we learn that Frazer Hines was at one point due to be in 'The Three Doctors', that Jon Pertwee smoked and was vain - complaining whenever the fan newsletter didn't, in his opinion, feature him enough - and yet despite this, made time for Miller when he visited the studios. One of the most poignant elements in the book is a reprinted letter from Roger Delgado which Miller received from him ... saying that the Master won't be around for much more ... and then of course Delgado died in a motor accident. Miller goes on in a footnote to explain how a fan visited his house and stole the original letter from his scrapbook whilst unattended - an act which is pretty unforgivable!

The process by which the Newsletter was made is archaeic by today's standards, being typed on stencils which were then Roneoed to produce the final printed sheets: the Roneo being a machine which squeezed ink through the holes in the stencil and imprinted them on the paper. There's more about the process here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph. I know it as my friend Owen Tudor had one in his garage and many of the fanzines that we produced in the late seventies were produced using it (Beka and Colony in Space being two that spring to mind). But Miller included art in his magazine, made by tearing and pricking the stencil with a pin - painstaking!  It wasn't until around 1977 that photocopying started to become available, and this ushered in a new age of A5 and A4 fanzines, all made with typewriter and Letraset lettering ... but this was years away from what Miller was doing.

The book is a fascinating collection of letters and information, all dated and interesting. It makes me want to dig out some of the stuff I have in files somewhere and put them together as well ... Like Miller I am a hoarder and have most of everything somewhere.

If you're interested in the early days of fandom, and are intrigued to see what the first (probably) regular Doctor Who fanzine looked like, then this is your chance. I suspect that a thirteen year old Keith Miller would have had kittens at the prospect of his work being as professionally printed as this, and with a colour cover to boot! These days we are so spoiled with the ability to print on demand ... but this takes you back to the smell of ink and oil, and to the enthusiasm of one fan to write about and share his favourite show.

The Official Doctor Who Fan Club: Volume 1: The Jon Pertwee Years is available here: 237 page, A4 book: http://www.odwfc.com/

Spoofs

Two films to discuss today, and while they were made years apart, they share a theme of spoofing and lampooning other films.

First up is something of a considered classic. Mel Brooks made Young Frankenstein back in 1974, and it spoofs the first couple of Universal films, Frankenstein, and The Bride of Frankenstein. What's interesting is that it was made in black and white and does a very good job of lampooning the originals. For me, the film is stolen by two performances. Firstly, Marty Feldman as the boggle-eyed hunchback Igor. Feldman turns in an inspired performance, with some great wisecracks, some excellent visual gags and a hunch which keeps changing sides. The other stand-out is Gene Wilder as Dr Frankenstein. As with his performance as Willy Wonka, Wilder nails it completely, and is brilliant as the somewhat bemused Doctor, trying to bring life to the dead. The monster is played by Peter Boyle, and Frankenstein's love interest by Teri Garr - who is indeed very lovely and excellent as Inga.

There's visual gags galore, including nods to the Bride's hairdo, a lovely pastiche on the Monster-meets-blind-man scenario (with Gene Hackman as the blind man), and of course a storm-wracked castle. There is a thanks credit on the film to someone having provided the lab equipment, and I wonder if it actually was the original equipment from the original films (a quick check on IMDB tells me that indeed they were).

While I enjoyed the film greatly, I feel it suffers a little from being too close to the originals ... by which I mean that some of the humour falls a little flat as it's basically just a funny retelling of the original rather than trying to do something new with the scenario ... and I guess that's the problem with comedies like this - how far do you go with the humour before you're no longer lampooning?

The second film is Vampires Suck, which is a modern spoof of the whole Twilight genre of fiction and films which are more about the romance than the horror. This is actually a pretty good and pretty accurate take on the subject. I have to admit I've not read any of the books, and only seen the first film all the way through (we could only get half way through the second film before our DVD player gave up in disgust - the film really was that bad!), however from what I remember, this pastiches the film pretty well.

Certainly the acting here is far superior to the films, and Jenn Proske as Becca is far more watchable and enjoyable than gloomy and boring Kristen Stewart in the original film. I loved the conceit of calling the vampire Edward Sullen, and generally all the tropes in the original film which were hoary and old hat there are nicely spoofed here, from the sparkling, to the superstrength through blood and werewolves. I loved that the werewolf boy Jacob has a tail and scritches his head with his foot, the endless mooning over the boys is well sent up, and the start (and end) of the film which has a group of 'Team Edward' teenage girls battling a group of 'Team Jacob' kids is hilarious. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer checks in, as does Lady Gaga and numourous other pop references which will no doubt date the film terribly.

Given how bad the original Twilight film was, I guess that any spoof has to be better, and this is the case. It's a fun film, and recommended for a night in with some beers.

Three Horrors

Three more films to delight and entertain, but in differing degrees ...

First off, a little thing called Street Trash that we caught on the telly recently. I'd not seen this before, but had heard thing spoken of it around the melting effects on show. So Sam and I cranked it up on the Sky recorder and gave it a watch. What a pile of rubbish!

Now I'm usually quite tolerant to 'good' bad films - those which have a bit of fun and bely their lack of budget with enthusiasm, but this was painful. I'm not sure it has a plot. The central strand seems to be about a shopkeeper who finds a crate of a liquor called Viper in a sealed area in his basement, and then decides to sell it for a dollar a bottle. Luckily there's lots of vagrants who use his liquor store and so bottles get bought (or stolen). However anyone who drinks it, then melts into a technicolour goo within seconds.

I will give them that the melting effects are neat - I loved all the colours which made a change from the usual blood red gore - but aside from this, the film has nothing to offer. There's boss vagrants abusing girls and women, other people running about, vagrants picking up girls and having drunken sex ... it's all a selection of random scenes and images which don't have a common thread. Which is a shame, as with a better script it might have been half watchable.

Another film that I spotted on the tellybox and recorded was Slither. This is a great monster movie about a meteor which crashes to Earth and releases a large alien slug-thing. This infects a local man who starts to mutate and change, and he in turn infects a woman who he then keeps in his hay barn. He feeds her raw meat and she blows up to the size of a balloon before exploding and releasing thousands of little slugs which head off to get into as many people as they can.

Before you can say Zombie Apocalypse, the infected are staggering about in classic zombie fashion, chasing after a small band of people who mange to remain human. Good to see Firefly's Nathan Fillion as the local police chief trying to survive to the end. It all ends with a climactic battle against the original infected man, who has become a sort of John Carpenter Thing-like monster, with tentacles and teeth and all sorts.

We had great fun with this. It's well made and acted, and hugely enjoyable. The effects are great, and the CGI slugs are icky and nasty. A fun way to spend an evening.

The third film is an oldie by the name of Dead & Buried. I used to have the poster for this pinned to my bedroom wall as I loved the imagery, but I don't think I'd ever seen the film until now. It's another sort-of zombie film I suppose, in which a hick town undertaker is able to bring the dead back to life to populate the town. It all gets a little out of hand, and the townsfolk start actually killing strangers to add to their number, and all this gets the local sherriff (James Farentino) somewhat confused. It's got Robert Englund in it, and was written by Dan O'Bannon and Roland Shussett who also wrote the screenplay for Alien ... it's good a good pedigree.

It's a fun watch but I found it confusing - you need to have a good memory for faces to recognise that people killed early in the film reappear later on as townsfolk with no mention or pointer to this fact. But the deaths are good and gory, and there's a scene I can't watch where a poor patient in hospital gets a syringe in his eye!

Overall it's well made, directed and acted, and moreover it's an original take. I've not seen anything quite like it before (or since) and like Alien, it's testament to the originality of the authors.  I suspect we need more films like this, and less remakes of films which were perfectly good (if not classics) in their original form.

Dexter

We've just finished our Dexter Marathon on DVD, watching the first five seasons an episode a night. I'm very impressed.

Dexter is not a series I would chosen to have watched as I'm not a fan of things like the CSI series and NCIS and other cop shows like that. But Dexter isn't quite like those. Sam got the box set for Christmas, and I'm so glad I got the chance to visit what is arguably one of the best shows on television.

If you've not given it a try, then I recommend you do. Each season is 12 episodes long, something of an anomoly in American TV where usually a season has 22 or so episodes. The premise is simple: Dexter Morgan works for the Miami Police as a Blood Specialist - more specifically a Blood Splat Specialist - he can examine the aftermath of a crime and work out who was killed, by what implement(s) and how the crime was carried out by analysing the way the blood fell, pooled, spattered and trailed. He's also a serial killer himself ... but he only goes after the bad guys - those who are killers themselves and who have evaded justice thanks to technicalities in the law, poorly constructed prosecutions or soft judges. At least that's where he starts out.

The reasons for his 'hobby' are all part of the clever backstory, in which Dexter's mother was killed by criminals, and he was rescued from a pool of her blood as a baby by a policeman - Harry - who then adopted him as his own. Dexter describes his need to kill as his 'Dark Passenger' and he keeps it hidden from everyone else.

The series themselves each follow a basic arc - in that Dexter's colleagues at the Miami PD investigate some serial killer or murder, and this then develops into an often convoluted plot which gets deeper and darker as the episodes move forward. Suspects are found, sometimes they are then killed, and the real killer becomes apparent.

The first series follows a killer dubbed 'The Ice Truck Killer', the second is 'The Bay Harbour Butcher', the third is 'The Skinner', the fourth is 'The Trinity Killer' and the fifth is 'The Barrel Girls Murderer'. In each case, Dexter gets involved in the action both through his work for the Police, but also through the changes in his private life which involve his girlfriend, Rita, and her two children, getting married and having a baby himself. There's also his sister, Deborah 'Fucking' Morgan who talks like a man with Tourettes, but who has a heart of gold. The other regular characters are the other police: La Guerta, in charge of the group who is manipulative and self-serving, Angel, the cop who loves La Guerta, forensics expert Masuka who loves bad jokes, and Quinn, who develops through the series into love interest for Deb. There are others too who come and go as the episodes progress.

There is a revolutionary central performance from Michael C Hall as Dexter. He is completely believable, and his acting is flawless. This is part of the main appeal of the show, to see this character that you should dislike - he is a merciless killer - become someone you care deeply for a root for. You cheer when he offs his victims, and you don't want him to get caught. Hall plays it so well, that in the first episode of Season 5, where events cause Dexter to break down somewhat, your heart wrenches with him - Sam spent most of that episode in tears it was so effective and moving. I read that Hall won the Golden Globe for his performance and rightly so. Other standouts include Julie Benz as Rita, an incredible piece of character development from mousy shy girlfriend to strong, feisty wife. We were also very impressed indeed by John Lithgo in Season 4, playing the Trinity Killer. He is cold and complex and totally believable. A marvellous performance and, as Sam and I observed at the time, somewhat career defining, which is pretty good going for the man who made us laugh so hard in Third Rock from the Sun. Keith Carridine turned in a great role as Detective Lundy, first as the cop leading the investigation in Season 2, and then hunting the Trinity Killer in Season 4.

The series is compelling in terms of plot, acting, production and emotion. I defy anyone who has watched it all not to be moved by the opener of Season 5. It is truly a gem, full of brilliant writing, lines which make you laugh and smile, touches of humanity, and of grief, of deep seated trauma, and of people coming to terms with who they are and what they are on all sides.

Being Brood Bride

Three more films for your delectation this time ... and all fairly different in their own right.

First up is Spike Jonez's brilliant Being John Malkovich. It's the sort of film that you watch wondering whether it was written because the actor John Malkovich wanted to be in it, or whether it was written with an eye on 'insert generic actor name here' ... so it could have been Being Christopher Lee or Being Sylvester McCoy, depending on which actor eventually said 'Yes'.

The plot is nothing but insane. Craig Schwartz, an out of work puppeteer (John Cusack), goes for a job as a filing clerk in an office which exists on floor 7 and a half - the ceiling is all half height so everyone has to crouch and bend all the time when not sitting. His wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) is obsessed with pets, and their relationship is going nowhere so he tries to start something with another office worker called Maxine (Catherine Keener). Then he discovers a strange small door behind one of the file cabinets, and entering the tunnel beyond, discovers that it leads to the brain of the actor John Malkovich, where he can watch what John is doing for 15 minutes before being deposited on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Craig realises that he can make money with this, and so sells the chance to be John Malkovich for $200 a go to anyone who wants the thrill. Lotte goes through, and Maxine finds that she is attracted to John, but only when Lotte is in his head ... so Craig decides to pretend to be Lotte and takes control of John ...

Craig/Malkovich ends up making a new career as a puppeteer with new wife Maxine ... but of course happiness never lasts forever.

This is a crazy film with a mad concept at it's heart, but I love it. At one point John Malkovich goes into his own head and finds himself in a world totally populated with John Malkoviches (even the babies and animals have his face) and they all speak a language comprised of just one word - 'Malkovich'! You honestly couldn't make this up, and I am in awe of the writer Charlie Kaufman for coming up with such a surreal concept and making it work!

It's one to watch several times I feel ...

I'd never seen the next film, The Bride, which is odd as I tended to catch most of the horror in the '80s. This is a working of the Frankenstein story and stars Sting (yes, him off of The Police) as the misguided Doctor, and Jennifer Beals (her off of Flashdance) as the Bride.

There's some great performances in the film, most notably from Clancy Brown (The Kurgan in Highlander) as the Creature who forms a partnership with David Rappaport, ending up as a circus double act. This forms the core of the film, and is a lovely partnering with brilliant work from both actors.

There is pathos and humour throughout, and it's very well made. Sting is excellent also, bringing a lot of humanity to the role of the hapless creator. It's not what I'd describe as a masterpiece, but it's watchable and interesting.

Finally, a film which I first saw as a preview showing back in the day, with director David Cronenberg in attendance to answer questions afterwards. I'd not seen it since then, but The Brood still holds a certain fascination.

Oliver Reed plays a psychiatrist who specialises in illnesses of the mind - encouraging his patients to externalise their rage and confusion. Enter Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) whose wife Nola (Samantha Eggar) is ill and in therapy.  As the story progresses so a series of attacks by strangely deformed children increases, and of course we know that these things are all somehow connected.

Eggar gives a chillingly believable portrayal of a woman on the brink, and Reed is great as the cold and clinical pyschiatrist. The deaths are nasty, and there's elements of the alleged children in Don't Look Now and Communion (aka Alice, Sweet Alice) in the yellow raincoats worn by the killers.

It's a creepy film, somewhat let down by the ending, which fails to really tie up all the loose ends, and leaves you feeling a little dissatisfied. Overall though, it's a good slice of early Cronenberg - made after Rabid, and when the director was given more money to play with!

Whiteout Vampires

Three films for this blog today ... two of them vampire movies, and a third which stars the same person as one of the previous two ... don't say this blog is never thought out.

First off then, the latest in the Underworld saga, being Underworld Awakening. I think I need to draw a veil over the third film in the franchise which was poor and unengaging, and we all knew the plot anyway as it was the backstory to films one and two ... and it didn't have Kate Beckensale in it as well which was a major minus point.

Film four picks up where film two ended, with our vampire heroine Seline (Beckinsale) being kidnapped and kept - literally - on ice. It's not long before she is rescued and determines to find out what happened to her lover ... in the meantime she seems to have picked up a daughter, the first true hybrid of Vampire and Lycan ... and of course all sides are interested in that.

The film suffers from the lack of a good male lead to counter Beckensale, and in particular a good Lycan ... it is interesting to see Kristen Holden-Ried from the TV Series Lost Girl playing a Lycan werewolf here, given that he plays the same monster on television. Overall it's a great adventure, full of lovely visuals and great performances. I think this is in part due to the 3D in which it was made. Even though we watch in 2D, the additional depth that the director is looking for in his shots results in a more imaginative use of the camera, and some lovely set pieces.

I enjoyed the film a lot, and I'm sure we'll revisit it soon.

Next up is something of a lost treasure. I was unable to find a copy of The Keep on DVD to buy but a friend had an off-air copy recorded when it was shown on television, so I was able to revisit it. It's based on a tremendous F Paul Wilson novel of the same name, and directed by Michael Mann, better known for pop videos and adverts. The cast is brilliant, with Ian McKellen and Gabriel Byrne playing put-upon doctor and German officer. The plot is fairly original for this type of film: a platoon of German Nazi officers decide to occupy an old Keep in Rumania, not realising that the place is a trap for an ancient vampire which is being held there. The creature is set loose when one of the crosses keeping it in check is removed, and it then starts to kill the soldiers, gaining strength and solidarity with each murder, while beguiling the doctor with promises if he will help it escape ...

It's an eerie and evocative film thanks to Mann's superb camerawork, and there's one sequence where the vampire is depicted as a swirling creature made of smoke and fire which defies belief - that this was made in  1983 is incredible, the effect is brilliant and I've not seen anything quite like it since.

It's let down by some poor plotting towards the end, and perhaps a lack of sympathy when a second Nazi officer arrives and starts murdering the innocent village people (not the pop group) to try and uncover the identity of the killer ... and then there's a Highlander-like 'one' - a mysterious stranger who arrives to stop the vampire from emerging ... Not bad, but ultimately a little puzzling. However it is a great film, and well worth seeking out. It's all apparently available on YouTube if you can put up with seeing a whole film in that format.

Finally, a 2009 thriller called Whiteout, starring Kate Beckinsale. Here she hangs up her vampire PVC and becomes a US Marshal investigating some killings in Antarctica. The film is a pretty straightforward whodunnit, where, in good old Agatha Christie style, the possible suspects are all killed off one by one.

In style it's a little like 30 Days of Night but without the vampires, or John Carpenter's The Thing but without the monster. As such it falls a little flat, as it needed something more than a man with an ice pick as a villain. But it's an entertaining watch, and some of the cinematography is very good.

The settings are nice, and there's a great sequence where they find something buried beneath the ice (see the similarities to The Thing) but it turns out to be a crashed plane.

Personally I wouldn't want to be out in all that ice and snow ... watching the film makes you chilly indeed.

Crowds and Cosplay

Back from the massive London Comic Con at the weekend and just about recovering. Boy it was big. On the Saturday we were told that they had reached the fire limit for the venue and so it was one in, one out. And that meant 50,000 people were trapped inside the massive warehouse which was one of the Excel Halls. The adjoining hall was taken up with the queue ...

The crowds!

Sam Stone and I were guests of Lady Elsie and Major Tinker from the Victorian Steampunk Society, and they kindly gave over one of their tables for us to sell some books. Their own tables were heaving with all manner of brilliant trinkets and baubles, all steampunked of course. If you're interested, have a look at http://thevss.yolasite.com/ for more information.

As Saturday got busier and busier, the sheer number of people in costumes started to become overwhelming. I would say that perhaps 75% of the people who attended came in some sort of costume, from a cardboard box (I'm not joking) to some of the most imaginative and sophisticated costuming you could get, every aspect was represented. Most I had no idea about as it was all coming from Manga and Anime and comics, but some I recognised, like two girls dressed as Alice from the American McGee Alice computer games, others dressed as members of Ouran High School Host Club, and folks from Silent Hill, Batman, Doctor Who, Spiderman ... and as I say, just about everything in between.

Fantastic cosplay as Harley Quinn

It was totally groovy to see the excellent Chris Stone and his lovely lady Stephanie there again. Steph was wearing her very sexy Black Cat outfit, while Chris was totally perfect as Austin Powers. They certainly got a lot of photographs taken of them ... Shagadelic baby ... yeah!!

Amidst the throng it was good to see some independent films being showcased. I'm looking forward to seeing Noel Clarke's new science fiction film Storage 24, and it was good to see Noel there again promoting the title. Another which looks great is Iron Sky, another science fiction yarn in which Earth is invaded by Nazis from the Moon ... when I get to see these I'll add some reviews here.

We managed to chat a little to a few of the guests. Sam and I are enjoying watching Grimm at the moment, so it was good to see the star of that show, David Giuntoli there. Another nice chap was Raphael Sbarge from a show called Once Upon A Time. We need to find that and watch it! The cast of a new Cbeebies drama called Young Dracula were there as well - something else to watch out for. And cult favourite Elvira made an appearance and was every bit as stunning and charming in real life!  Danny DeVito was there promoting his new film The Lorax (in which he voices the title character) but the film company were in security overdrive and the best I got was a glimpse of the top of his head and a few photos when he did a limited signing (120 posters for the lucky people who got the white wristbands!)

Sam with Honey Sempai from Orun High
School's Host Club

Among the games on display was a cool thing called Lollipop Chainsaw, which had zombie cheerleaders roaming the halls ... they gave me a foam chainsaw and a lollipop! There was also a game called Dead or Alive 5 which looked fun - I signed the sig board they were building and got an 'I'm a Fighter' badge as a reward. Always nice to get free stuff. A new Transformers online game was being promoted, as well as an Aliens Colonial Marines game which was for Adults only.

Overall my impression was that the place was stuffed to the gills with teenagers having fun. All dressing up and enjoying themselves. The predominant fandom was perhaps cosplay, and within that, anything went. Manga and Anime ruled, and games came second, with television and film trailing a little. Books ... well books were nowhere to be seen. I suspect that most attendees were hooked on books with pictures ... and so books with words that made pictures in your brain were not really top of anyones agenda. Which is a great shame.

The event was superb fun though, and very well attended. There were panels and signings taking place the whole time, and lots to see and do. I don't envy everyone all the queuing to get in though! My thanks to Bryan Cooney for his kindness to us, and for a fabulous event!

Here's some more pics!

Danny DeVito

A very cute kitteh



I've no idea whatsoever who these people were



American McGee's Alice cosplay



R.I.P. Blast from the Past

Many, many years ago, when I was knee high to a Judoon, me and my friend from school, David Butterworth, made a whole pile of films together on super 8mm. We were the classic do-it-yourselfers, making all the sets, costumes, props, visual effects, lighting, camerawork, editing and titles ourselves. This would have been 1975 through to about 1977 ...

The results were placed in boxes and put in cupboards as super 8mm film gave way to VHS and camcorders, and then to digital and SD cards ... projectors long since vanished. But we were very proud of our films. So proud in fact, that one of them we sent off to Blue Peter, and got a very nice letter back from the office, saying how good they thought they were, but they couldn't feature us on the show. I did get a Blue Peter Badge though, that I still have to this day!

We did clay animation, using plasticine, obviously inspired by Morph (which was at the time on Vision On if my memory serves), we made an animated picture film, inspired by the Tod Browning film Freaks which had not seen, but which had beguiled us through the pages of several books on horror films. One summer we built our own Dalek and that then starred in several films, in which an android battled with the Dalek in the streets of sunny Tolworth ...

There were also a couple of horror shorts, both inspired by films we had, and indeed hadn't seen at that time. The sequence is all blurry to me now - I just can't remember - but at around the same time we had joined the Gothique Film Society in London, and among the films we saw there were DeathLine and perhaps even Freaks. I know we saw The Texas ChainSaw Massacre at some point, and Alien had a big impact back then as well.

Recently, I unearthed the box that all these films were kept in, and was overjoyed as I'd not seen them for perhaps 30 years and thought that maybe my friend David had taken the original copies - and unfortunately I lost touch with him many years ago and have no idea where he is now - even a Facebook search has not found him. 

At the same time, my brother was talking about getting a load of family 8mm films (showing things like the oil from the Torrey Canyon disaster on the beaches of Cornwall in 1967, as well as myself and brothers and sister as kids in the garden, on the beach, at Butlins and so on) converted to DVD, so I took the opportunity to get my own films transferred as well.

Thus for the first time in 30 years or so, I have been able to revisit them.

Here is the first I have tidied up. I cleaned up the edits a little, removing jump frames, and added some music which unnervingly fits it very well indeed.

Here, then, is R.I.P.



Here's some notes on the film for the interested:


It all started with the shots in the graveyard. I woke up one day and it was very foggy out, so I grabbed the camera and rode my bike down to Surbiton Cemetery. There I walked through the gravestones filming. It was very creepy, and I was pleased with the results, so we decided to make a film which could use them.

The hand bursting through the earth was David B's but I can't remember how we did the effect now. The shots of the zombie (whateveritis) approaching the house were filmed in Fire Bell Alley in Surbiton. There was a row of abandoned houses there, and I had noted them before as being a possible place to film. So one evening I took the camera up there and filmed the sequence. There is no front door on the house as they were all decrepit.

The sequence in the house was filmed at David B's house and was the rising stairs to an attic room.

The final effect, with the eye falling out, worked really well. I can't remember which of us came up with the idea, but we used half an eggshell as the 'socket', and an egg yoke as the eyeball. Thus when David tipped his head to the side, the 'eye' would fall out in a suitably gross manner.

Overall I'm very proud of R.I.P. I think it still stands up pretty well as a short film, and several people have commented how the grainy and marked super 8mm film makes it look more effective.

If I can get more of my old films cleaned up, then I'll post them as well so that people can enjoy them. They're not masterpieces, but a piece of my childhood that I'm happy to have back again.

Sleepwalking to the Sematary

Some old films this week, and a new-ish one ... just depended what we saw as we trawled one of the discount DVD websites.

First up is Pet Sematary, based on the Stephen King novel of course, and starring Dale Midkiff (who?) as Louis Creed and Denise Crosby (fresh from playing Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation) as his wife Rachel, who move into a house which backs onto a spooky graveyard where pets have been buried ... and beyond the graveyard and on top of the mountain is a further burial place, where what is buried comes back.

The film stands up pretty well all told, though Midkiff lacks the presence of, say, Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Crosby does a better job at keeping it together when first their cat, and then their son, Gage (Miko Hughes), is killed by one of the oil trucks which barrel past their front door at a rate of knots. Given that they know this is the case, we could not understand why they didn't put a fence up the moment they moved in - an obvious thing to do given that they had a toddler and that the trucks went past at all hours of the day and night.

Helped by friendly neighbour Jud Crandall (played by The Munsters' Fred Gwynne), Louis takes his son up to the old burial place, and seems surprised when he comes back as a murderous Chucky-like presence, killing first Jed, and then Rachel. Given that the cat was hardly pleasant following its resurrection, poor Louis really wasn't thinking straight at all. The ending is pretty neat, with some good and gruesome effects, and a somewhat bleak outlook.

Watch out for a cameo from Stephen King as the vicar at the burial of Gage as well - one of those moments to make you smile.

King also cameos in the next film, Sleepwalkers, another tale scripted by himself, but not, as far as I remember (and I know people will correct me) not ever released in prose form. This time we have Alice Krige and Brian Krause as mother and son - the Bradys - but they are really monstrous werewolf-like creatures who drain the blood from humans in order to survive and stay young. There's an insestuous relationship between the two also which is fairly eye opening but it's all handled very well.

Charles Brady targets young Tanya (Madchen Amick off of Twin Peaks) as his next meal, but plans are thwarted by Sherrif Ira and his cat Clovis (probably the star of the film!). For it seems that the monstrous Sleepwalkers are scared of cats, and that their scratch can make the beings steam and die.

It's interesting to note the use of CGI in the film in some of the transformations and effects. This is 1992, and I find myself wondering what the first commercial film that used CGI was (Wikipedia tells me it might be Westworld in 1973 which is interesting). Jurassic Park was 1993 ... so what is on show here is actually very basic for the time.

It's an enjoyable film, well made and well acted by all concerned. I enjoyed spotting not only King, but author and director Clive Barker (Hellraiser), and directors Joe Dante (Gremlins) and John Landis (An American Werewolf in London) in bit parts as well.  Certainly one worth revisiting.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a film that perhaps is overlooked in favour of Bram Stoker's Dracula, coming as it did a couple of years later. Where the Dracula remake had a stand-out performance from Gary Oldman as the Count, so Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has an impressive turn by director Kenneth Branagh as the misguided Victor, and Robert deNiro excells as the monster. DeNiro actually manages to steal most of his scenes, turning in a sensitive and very well judged performance.

Letting the side down a little is Helena Bonham-Carter as Elizabeth who overacts somewhat and has the most incredible rats' nest of a hairdo. She does better when transformed into the Bride at the end, just before the whole place goes up in the traditional flames.

I enjoyed the film a lot, and there is much to appreciate in it. It's something of a shame that it seems a little overshadowed by other fare of the time.

Finally, a more recent offering comes with Boo, a haunted hospital tale which manages to be quite creepy and scary. The idea is fairly basic - a group of teenagers decide to play around in a deserted hospital one halloween, not realising that it is actually haunted by a fairly vengeful ghost who wants to escape by taking over the bodies of the teens.

The effects are good, and the acting is passable though not wonderful. What stands out most is the location - we're certain we saw the same building in an episode of Dexter recently, and that it's been used elsewhere too. Somewhere like that is a total gift to a filmmaker, and if used well can really reap rewards. I'm reminded of Session 9, where they had a similarly brilliant location, but the film itself was somewhat disappointing.

What you have to do with this sort of film is put your brain on idle and just go with it. If you try and think too hard it all falls apart - like what was with the dog which gets skinned? What was the relevance of the necklace the lead girl was wearing? And why did the bodies melt and explode once they died?  It's something of a gorefest with people melting all over, and there are some nice chills of ghosts appearing unexpectedly. The film references Halloween and other great shockers, and I suppose was intended a an homage to them as well as being fun in its own right.

It's not as effective as, for example, Trick R Treat, but it does a lot better on the scares and makes more of the location than other films I have seen. Well worth looking out for a boozy night of horror.

Time, Goblins, Ghosts and Bandits

Four more films watched recently, and this time they're all pretty different from each other.

First off, a new science fiction movie which could be referred to as 'high concept'. In Time presents a scenario where the world has moved to using time as currency. Everyone has a digital clock imprinted in their arm at birth, which only starts ticking down once you reach the age of 25 ... and then you have only one more year to live, unless you can earn more time through working. People can give each other their time - clasping hands can transfer time from one to the other - and this doesn't have to be willingly done, allowing various lowlife scum and gangsters to steal time from others. You pay for everything through time taken off your counter, and if your counter reaches zero, then you just drop dead there and then.

This is quite a hard concept to get your head around, and raises all manner of ethical questions, but the best way to approach a film like this is just to go with the concept and not worry too much about it. And the film is certainly worth the effort. Justin Timberlake (yes, the pop singer bloke who once went out with Britney Spears) stars, and he is superb as Will Salis, a down on his luck worker in the poor district, who unexpectedly finds himself the recipient of 100 years donated by a wealthy man who commits suicide. Will decides to try and change the system, and travels to the wealthy quarter where he meets the daughter of a millionaire businessman. Together they try and stay alive while sharing time with those who need it ... but the government has this covered - as the poor become wealthier, so their taxes and costs increase so that relatively, they are in exactly the same position. It's how they control the masses, and ensure that the rich stay rich, and the poor die in poverty. Millionaires live forever, and they want to keep it that way.

It is nice to see Johnny Galecki (Leonard in The Big Bang Theory) in a very different role, and Amanda Seyfried as Sylvia Weiss, millionaire daughter is also very good - believable in the role of a girl who 'goes native' with Will and totally buys into his cause.

The effects are well done and believable and overall the film is really enjoyable and thought provoking as to how using time as currency might really work, and what the downsides might be. I think we may add this to our collection (this was a rental watch) as we'll want to see it again someday.

Next up is a new horror called Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark. I didn't realise that this was based on a 1973 TV Movie of the same name, and doing a little research, it seems that the original film might be superior. The new one is produced and written by Guillermo del Toro because he saw the earlier film as a child and it made a big impact on him. Unfortunately putting Katie Holmes in as a lead is not a good idea as she comes over as wooden and unemotional throughout. Guy Pearce as the father does a little better, but the film is driven by the child, Bailee Madison as Sally. What is strange is that the film has a child lead, is pitched in part like a Disney feature with animated titles, and has a 15 certificate, but starts with a scene where a man trips a maid down some stairs and then uses a hammer and cold chisel in her mouth to knock out her teeth so that he can offer them to something which lives in a furnace in the cellar. The scene is hard to watch, and I had to look away when the chisel scraped across the girl's teeth as it's forced into her mouth ... hardly 15 year old fare I thought. Then at the end, when one of the characters is dragged into the furnace, we see (and hear) legs snapping backwards as they are bodily pulled in. I thought at first I had mis-seen this, but no, it is gruesome and gory and conceptially very nasty indeed.

But enough of my pondering on the acceptible age for someone to watch a film ... if I had my way, the Care Bears Movie would be Restricted for everyone! The plot follows this perfect family as they settle into the old pile they have bought to renovate. There is something nasty in the wainscotting though which turns out to be an unexplained infestation of little goblin creatures who are evil and vicious and who wield Stanley knives, razors and awls and attack people. They whisper about Sally joining them, and it seems they eat children's teeth as well ... they are excellently realised through CGI and are very creepy. Sally is initially quite taken with them (as she has no other friends and doesn't want to be in the house anyway) but soon realises that they are no good at all.

The film is enjoyable in a horror hokum sort of way, but eventually the characters start acting totally irrationally - your daughter has been attacked by what she claims are creatures in the house, she is crying and screaming, and you are also advised to get out of the house by someone else who was attacked ... so what do you do? Drug your daughter and take her back to the house to stay another night ... madness!

I also don't get the title at all. The creatures like the dark, and so if anything it should be Be Afraid Of the Dark ... or Don't Go In The Dark ... I cannot for the life of me see where Don't Be Afraid of the Dark comes from as that is exactly what you should be!

After a slew of goblins, next up are ghosts in The Awakening, an elegant ghost story in the tradition of The Devil's Backbone and The Orphanage, both of which it remixes into a tale of a boy's boarding school haunted by the spirit of one of the students. Enter intellectual and sceptic Florence Cathcart (played excellently by Rebecca Hall), who is encouraged to come and investigate a 'real' ghost by Robert Mallory (Dominic West). Overseeing the boys is Matron (Imelda Staunton), and Florence starts to figure out what is really going on - convinced that there are no real ghosts present and that the sightings and happenings are due to some human hand.

The film is very watchable, and the central performance from Hall is brilliant. There are a lot of touches which seem to come from other films - the snooker ball bouncing down the stairs echoes a similar moment with a child's ball in the 1980 George C Scott film The Changeling, and the aforementioned The Orphanage is recalled by the secret room behind the cupboard. The only scene which seems to make no sense in context is where Florence falls in the lake after losing her cigarette case and is rescued by Robert. The editing here is confusing - perhaps deliberately so - and the whole scene adds nothing to the narrative (save that the missing case strangely finds its way back to her room). The ending of the film is delightfully vague as to what has happened ... leaving it up to the viewer to decide.

I enjoyed it a lot. It has a style and approach which is excellently maintained, and the images of the screaming ghost boy are very well done and provide for some good jump scares. Certainly something to see if you like a more intelligent horror film.

The final film is a strange one. A Korean western called The Good The Bad The Weird. This stars Kang-ho Song (who played the priest in Thirst) as The Weird, a criminal who steals a treasure map. On his tail are The Good (Woo-sung Jung) - a bounty hunter out for the money on the Weird's head - and The Bad (Byung-hun Lee) - a brilliantly vicious and intense performance and probably the best in the film. The movie is certainly action packed, from a fight on a moving train, through various traders markets, and ending with a very lengthy chase across a desert with cavalry, bandits, and assorted others all on horses and motor bikes and cars with guns and arrows and mortars and machine guns, all firing at each other as they race across miles and miles of desert for what seems like hours. This section is certainly impressive but goes on way too long.

Overall it's a cinematic experience which mixes action/adventure with a Korean flavour and is fast and furious with the action. I liked the characters and the way they interact, plus the cinematography and the lighting design - very different from a Hollywood film. Definitely one to seek out.

Welcome to Twin Peaks

We recently watched the whole of the 1990-1991 Twin Peaks series from David Lynch and Mark Frost, including the 1992 film Fire Walk With Me at the end ... I had sort-of enjoyed the show when it was first aired, but remembered feeling at the time that it lost its way, and so I was interested to see how a proper re-watch would pan out. Sam had not seen it at all, only catching a couple of episodes on the initial run, so again she was intrigued by the whole idea and looking forward to watching it.

For those who haven't seen it, the show was basically a weekly soap opera, but one where there was an undercurrent of supernatural happenings throughout. There are a great many characters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Twin_Peaks_characters), and the show jumps from the stories of one to the other to the other. Sometimes characters will go weeks without appearing, sometimes they get just one scene as the show concentrates on someone elses' story for a time. If you're interested in a full rundown of the plot and other details then have a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Peaks.

For our re-watch, I decided to take notes, episode by episode, to try and remember some of the key elements as they happened ... the show is so detailed and complex, that to try and rely on memory alone would be near impossible. Be warned that some of this blog might not make total sense to anyone who has no idea what Twin Peaks was all about ... but to try and explain it all would take far longer than I have to write about it!

First off, I was surprised that Killer Bob actually makes an appearance in the very first episode! I had thought that this revelation would be kept back, but no, there he is ... The strangeness continues with Agent Cooper's dream at the end of episode two ... and this starts to suggest at the themes that will be explored as the series unfolds.

The show seems to be about the death of Laura Palmer, found wrapped in plastic on the shore of the local river. Who killed her and why forms the core of the initial set of episodes, and they are gripping and interesting as Cooper, an FBI agent brought in to investigate as there have been some similar killings elsewhere, gets to grips with the townsfolk of Twin Peaks, all of whom have secrets of their own which they do not wish to be made public. Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, is a brilliant character, watchable and interesting, and he forms the lynchpin (excuse the pun) to the series.

Episode 8 has a different title sequence, and is longer than all the others at 130 minutes according to my DVD timer but 90 mins apparently (the rest are around 45 minutes). I guess this is because the episode opened Season Two of the show, but watching them back to back you get little evidence of this. The previous episode ends with Cooper being shot, which seems in reflection to be a 'season ending' act ...

Things ramp up and up as the series progresses, until episode 13, where we learn that 'Bob', the apparent killer of Laura, is a spirit which can inhabit a human body and control it. The 'Bob' spirit was a familar to 'Mike', which inhabits the body of the one-armed man, in order to help Cooper track down his former familiar and stop him. The question is, though, who did 'Bob' inhabit to kill Laura.

In the next episode, we learn the truth as Leland Palmer, Laura's father, brutally kills Maddy, Laura's cousin who looks just like her (and is played by the same actress). This is an incredible sequence, brutal and far above the somewhat cosy soap-opera trappings of the series. It brings you up short and leaves you desperate to find out more.

Episode 16 sees Leland brought to justice, but 'Bob' makes him dash his brains out in the cell ... leaving him dead, and Bob still on the loose. It's a brilliant end to the 'Laura Palmer' sequence of episodes and investigation.

Episode 17 picks up three days later as Leland is cremated. Unfortunately from this point onwards, the show really loses its impetus and drifts for episodes at a time, seemingly going nowhere. The episode feels directionless and marking time. Several plots drift on - the whole Nadine regressing to a teenager one feels like they didn't know what to do with that character, and we see the start of another pointless subplot where James is chatted up by a married blonde in a bar leading to another murder conspiracy in later episodes.

The series now goes into freefall, and apparently was losing viewers all the time. Which is not really surprising as the whole show had been about 'Who Killed Laura Palmer' and once you know ... it's all over. Apparently Lynch and Frost never wanted to reveal the answer - but I feel that too would have been a big mistake, leading to the show dragging on when all people wanted were answers. In a way, this is what happened to The X-Files ... continuing way past the point that it should have provided some closure and answers as to what was happening. Ideally, Lynch and Frost should have picked up the interesting 'Bob and Mike' plot, along with the Black and White Lodges, the backwards talking midget, the giant and the ancient man, and developed that, but instead that whole element is allowed to drift, backgrounded against the more petty and human concerns of the other characters. Windom Earle, Cooper's ex-partner, comes in as a new psychopath (they didn't really need him as they already had one body-hopping psycho) and starts killing more people in inventive Doctor Phibes-esque ways.

By episode 23, Josie Packard, who had started out as a strong businesswoman trying to keep the lumber mill alive, has become a weak subserviant nothing - completely unworked for and out of character with how she started out. Again, it's like they didn't know what to do with her. She ends up being killed, while Cooper again sees dwarfs and Bob, and inexplicably, her face then screams from a wooden drawer knob beside her bed!  This point is only returned to once (when someone seems to be talking to the walls of the hotel as he thinks she is trapped in the wood there) but is never developed or explained further.

The final episode at least attempts to draw some sort of closure to some of the characters' lives. It ends with Cooper having a nightmare chase through the red-curtained rooms of the Black Lodge, being confronted by visions, and having to bargain for Annie's life (a waitress he met and fell in love with during the latter episodes). When Cooper emerges, what we see in the mirror is Bob - Cooper has been inhabited by the parasitic creature. Cooper smashes his head against the mirror ...

Overall, the show has, I think, to sadly be judged a failure. Mainly because it seems apparent that Lynch and Frost really didn't know where to go with it once the initial Laura plot had played out. However, if you just watch the first 16 episodes, and then the final episode for the closure, then it is probably one of the finest pieces of supernatural television you will experience.

I love how it blindsides you all the time, presenting apparent clues and motivations which have no bearing on anything, how everyone is wearing a mask - no-one is quite who they appear to be - and this feeds into the underlying plot about body-hopping murderous parasites from another place. Watch out for David Duchovny (from The X-Files) playing a transvestite FBI agent, singer David Bowie in a cameo role, David Warner as Thomas Eckhardt later in the show and David Lynch himself as Cooper's deaf boss. Nothing quite like that had ever been done on television to that scale before, and I doubt ever will again.

It's easy to see why Twin Peaks gripped everyone on its first transmission ... the narrative is compelling and you want to watch next week to see how it develops. It's also easy to see why it lost audiences and was eventually cancelled - too much incidental prevarication, and not enough strong control of the overall themes and plot for people to be able to continue to connect and hook into it.

Watching the Fire Walk With Me film after seeing the series is an interesting experience. The film basically fills in a lot of what we already knew from the series - it's the final days of homecoming queen Laura Palmer - a butter-wouldn't-melt perfect girl to the world, but a drug-using, sexual predator to her close friends. It seems that Leland had been abusing her for years (or was it Bob?) until he finally kills her in a disused train carriage and dumps her body in the river ... it's not a great film to watch if you don't know the series, and doesn't add much to what the series has already revealed, but it's well made and entertaining.

I must give a final note to the music and title sequence. I loved the music from the moment I first heard it, and Angelo Badalamenti's score is still superb today. It's distinctive and really adds much to the cult feel of the show. Likewise the titles, which start with a varied thrush and then show the sawblades in the lumber mill working, and then shots of the scenery around Twin Peaks, the town sign, the mountains, waterfall and river. They are totally at odds with what the show was all about, and lead you into a false sense of calm before the storms which will unfold.

I'm glad we watched the series through, and as I say, it's certainly worth doing if you're a fan of supernatural and cult television ... just be warned about the latter half!

Blood and Bone China

I can't remember if I'd raved about this new vampire film before on the blog ... but even if I did, I'm going to do so again.

It all started life as a web series from a very talented and personable soul called Chris Stone ... the idea was to present a decent quality vampire story over several ten minute episodes. The result was Blood and Bone China.

The channel that the web series is on is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/BloodandBoneChina?ob=0, and there's a trailer as well:






The website for the production is here: http://bloodandbonechina.com/

Having completed the web series, obviously the next stage was world domination, and so Chris has edited the story into a single film presentation, and last night I was lucky enough to spot that Chris was offering free entry to people to see it ... so I duly added my name, and Sam and I then headed down to Stoke-on-Trent - where it is set - to watch the premiere of the film as the opening attraction to this year's Stoke film festival.

And it was worth the journey.

Chris has created something fascinating and original, which blends the old tropes of vampires with the tale of a man's hunt for his lost brother. Vampires are at large in Stoke, feeding on the unwary and dragging their bodies off to goodness knows where. Behind it all is Linus Hemlock (David Lemberg), the man behind the Hemlock pottery which makes perfect and strong bone china at knock down prices. His vampire slave, Victoria (Lara de Leuw), has been hunting, and her victims include Doctor ('I'm not a Doctor, I'm a vet!') Howell's (Anthony Miles) brother. Howell joins forces with feisty reporter Anna Fitzgerald (Rachel Shenton) to try and get to the bottom of the mystery. Along the way they are attacked by vampires, join forces with hunter Alexander Pyre (John James Woodward), meet up with a band of Steampunk Victorians, and battle creatures of the night in Hemlock's pottery. All great stuff.

What is incredible is that Chris has created this film on a micro budget - BUT IT DOESN'T SHOW! There is minimal CGI that I spotted (some neat eye effects towards the end), and some superb performances, great settings and location work. The camerawork is excellent, and the script which, while in places shows it's webcast roots with a little to much retelling of the plot, is generally first class.

There is a standout performance from - I think - Lewis Brindley as the young boy Aaron. He steals his scenes and gets the best laugh of the film. But everyone is really top notch. Kudos to Rachel Shenton as Anna, who manages to bring a modern girl kick ass sensibility to a Victorian reporter, and to John James Woodward for his creepy and yet brilliant vampire hunter.

I loved the final scenes - which I won't reveal here. They made me smile greatly, and for some reason reminded me of the Underworld franchise and the film Van Helsing for no reason that I can think of ...

Hearty congratulations to Chris and all his team for bringing this film to life. I can't wait to see what you turn your hands to next.