Unhinged (1982)

Short (1:16). Open-matte 4:3. Nice synth score. Perky shower scene. Atmospheric rain. Car crash. Mrs Penrose is American Gothic spooky. Some weird dialogue ("Next time...") that goes nowhere. Mother doesn't like to be kept waiting... wooo! A Northern version of The Glass Menagerie's Amanda Wingfield in a wheelchair. An awkward dinner. Piano and dominoes. Peeping Tom. A rogue tooth under the bed! Nocturnal orgasmic heavy-breathing. Onanistic double-perky shower scene. Why haven't we seen the third friend? Walking on your own through a wood when you're a supporting actress is a bad idea. Don't go in the shed! I told you not to walk through the woods! Back-story. What is it about the salt-cellar that's so freaky? Mother is reminding more and more of the Wicked Witch of the West as time passes. Piano but no dominoes. Peeping tom again! More rain and thunder and heavy breathing. Our heroine investigates. A gun, a knife and some toys. Tom makes his bug-eyed appearance. More back-story. Missing girls? The third friend makes her re-appearance. More heavy breathing. The third friend leaves us. Searching in a thunderstorm. Don't go in the shed! Eew, body parts and jars of eyeballs! Running and screaming. The gun. What the fuck? No, this is a knife! Raining blood.

I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea and not a great deal happens until the end but I really liked this film's feeling of Northern Gothic decay and its crazy ending.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

Letterboxd Review

Prey (1978)

Totally worth it just for Sally Faulkner's portrayal of Jo the hysterically deranged, man-hating, vegetarian lesbian. Notable scenes? Where they dress the alien up in a women's dress and makeup and then play hide and seek. When Jo goes fucking batshit over some dead chickens. The very strange, slo-mo, fight in the muddy, swan pond. The final sex and death scene.

I liked this even more than Warren's later film, Inseminoid.

Letterboxd Review

Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

This review is for the Severin Blu-Ray (UK edition) with German soundtrack and English subtitles in the film's native ration of 1.66:1, which leaves narrow black bars at the sides of the picture.

Vampyros Lesbos starts with a sexy, trippy striptease with the beautiful Soledad Miranda (playing Countess Nadine Carody) writhing away to an organ (fnarr, fnarr), whilst Linda (Ewa Strömberg) and her boyfriend Omar (Andrés Monales complete with "Just for Men" styled hair) ogle from a table. With her hallucinatory dance act the Countess places Linda under a spell and, in the following days, haunts her dreams. Sexy, vampyric shenanigans ensue.

The bones of the Dracula story are tucked away under layers of sex and psychedelia. Linda meets with the Countess to discuss a property left to her in a will rather than the purchase of a house in the novel. She hires a boat to get to the Countess' island instead of a coach to the castle. Then we have the haunting of dreams, the locals warning Linda not to visit the island, a Renfield type character, Linda Westinghouse instead of Lucy Westenra and Doctor Seward (who is a bit of a dick). You get the idea. I think Franco must have been reading the, admittedly pretty dry, book and thought "hey, it's the 1970! Let's sex this up! Nicole, bring me my mescaline".

The relationship between Linda and the Countess is not based on any form of hypnosis but is the result of Linda's frustrated love-life and the Countess' need for more than just blind obedience. Watch the first bedroom encounter between the pair and note that Linda's expression is not of someone under control but that of someone who is nervous and excited. The scene is very similar to a famous scene in the uncut Hammer Dracula (1958). in fact the control in this film tends to come from the male characters, although there are the  Countess' previous victims to consider, who are reduced to dolls in the strip scenes. The Countess later admits her love for Linda when she says "But then I met Linda. Now I'm under her spell". If it wasn't for the gratuitous tits-and-ass I'd never call Vampyros Lesbos an exploitation film and most definitely not a horror film. This is as much a love story as Lady Chatterley's Lover!

The photography is beautiful with deep landscape shots cutting to macro shots of insects. Sure we get loads of zoom shots, but would it be a Jess Franco film without them? The colours are vivid; full of bright reds, deep blues and burnt oranges. They really give the film a Mediterranean feel. Where most vampire films use black as the predominate colour and red as a highlight, Franco reverses this and black is used sparingly, but when used it stands out wonderfully. There are a few shots that are really out of focus but these are few and far between and seem to be the fault of the focus-puller during Franco's frequent zooms.

The soundtrack? It's like distant conversations picked up by a ham radio enthusiast, looped, distorted and played back alongside some R&B/jazz Hammond organ and trippy sitar. Not just one of the classic exploitation soundtracks but one of the greatest film soundtracks of the 1970s.

The performances are, on the whole, excellent and above Franco usual standard. Miranda is great; at times fragile and then cold and aloof, whilst Carody (as Linda) is suitably naive and insecure at the start but slowly develops into a strong assertive woman. Michael Berling is excellent as the patriarchal and controlling Seward.

For gorehounds there is very little blood in Vampyros Lesbos and for those wanting tits-and-ass, there's frequent boobs and bush, one sub-softcore moment and a couple of very nice stripteases - the second being quite brilliant as the Countess slowly removes her clothes and dresses her living doll in them. Just don't watch the film expecting a Jess Franco sex frenzy.

The quality of the picture is very good with strong colours that pop off the screen without being over-saturated. The sound is clear and without noticeable hiss and the subtitles seem accurate.

A story of control versus love and sexual liberation. Seductive, sexy, beautiful and quite brilliant.

"The Queen of the Night will bear you up on her black wings"

Letterboxd Review

Ascension (2014)

Ascension is a mini-series telling the story of 600 volunteers sent to colonise a new world orbiting the star Proxima Centauri. There's a problem though - Proxima Centauri is over 4 light years from Earth and it will take several generations to reach their new home. The series starts 50 years and one generation into their 100 mission.

There have not been many true Generation Starship stories portrayed on the screen and, being a fan of Brian Aldiss' "Non-Stop", I was looking forward to watching this one. So what makes this different to Battlestar Galactica and  Pandorum? For a start the volunteers leave Earth in 1963, the time of the Cold War, of Mutually Assured Destruction, and pre-civil rights. Secondly there a BIG twist. I won't give it away but it is entirely fitting with the time period.

Ascension is not Hard Science Fiction, nor on the other-hand is it truly Space Opera. What it is, is Social Science Fiction. How would a group of people socially evolve given that they are small in number and are removed from any of the usual forces that promote change. For example one of the largest causes of change within society is technology: from the telephone, to paperback books, to transistor radios, to the pill, to home computers, to the internet, to mobile phones. All of these have fostered changes within society and if technology stagnates then so too will society. We need external forces to drive us to get better, to improve, to evolve. Unfortunately because the show is a mini-series of 6 episodes, they are limited in how much of this they can show. There are themes of male entitlement versus burgeoning feminism, body image, free will, and equality but these are subservient to the main story arc.

So how does it look? Terrific. The opening few minutes left me a little nonplussed as it seemed to be taking place in a large hotel rather than a starship with all the women wearing ball-gowns and the men in naval uniforms, but then the viewpoint moves. The camera pulls back through the corridors and maintenance floors to a central hub, up vertically through several floors, up through a dome to the outside of the ship and into space. A stunning shot. The inside of the ship has that 2001/Silent Running aesthetic which is great - very 60s.

Ascension may not be the perfect Generation Starship series I've been waiting for but it is a very interesting attempt within a limited format. I really liked it.

Sense8: Season 1 (2015)

Odd statistical anomaly:  Andy Wachowski, as well as sharing my name is exactly one day younger than me!

Sense8, a dodgy title that reminds me a little too much of the abundance of i's, e's, and x's in product names a few years back. I just don't like the substitution of numbers and letters for another letter; just call it Sensate. I suppose it could be worse, it could be "iSense8 eXtreme"!

So what's it about? A group of eight unconnected people become linked; sharing each other's thoughts, emotions and skills. Is this the next step in humankind's evolution and who is the shady organisation tracking them down? Sense8 was created, directed and written by the Wachowskis (The Matrix, Cloud Atlas) and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5).

The first few episodes are quite bitty, which, I guess, can't be helped when introducing eight characters from eight different countries. That's fine though as all the background detail is intricate and you really start to become involved in their lives. You can tell it's all leading somewhere but you're not entirely sure where and knowing J. Michael Straczynski's penchant for huge sprawling story arcs you know it's going to be an interesting journey. The episodes are quite slowly paced with occasional action set-pieces to get your juices flowing. There is no rush, and that makes a real change these days when programmes seem to be continually scared of being cancelled and throw blood and John Woo style gun battles at you like there's no tomorrow. Don't get me wrong though, there are some stunning foreign location fight scenes, gun play and car chases in this otherwise character-lead sci-fi drama.

The main characters are well fleshed out and likeable. Some of them have obviously useful talents (shooting, unarmed combat, lock-picking, hacking), but others may not be quite as obvious. The "bleed-through" from one character's life to another's is really well handled and leads to some interesting crossovers. There is a considerable LGBT slant to some of the characters, in particular a transgender relationship allowing Lana Wachowski the means to address the media and public reaction to her transition. This is not at all preachy and intrusive, but welcome and very moving.

This brings me on to the, ahem, sexual content. Sense8 is highly sexual - there are dildos, masturbation, straight and gay sex. Also, because of the shared conciousness, it also brings up some interesting ideas about gender fluidity. Sense8 is admirable for the normalising of gay sex and intimacy.

Sense8 has themes of identity, empathy, gender, sexuality, trust, and personal and species evolution. there are touches of The Matrix; shared conciousness; dreams as reality; reality is an illusion; solipsism; simulation hypothesis, but if there is one overall theme it is that we are all flawed and it's our friends, our partners, our lovers that seal over the cracks and make us whole.

Some technicalities are glossed over, for example, how can a person who is two places at the same time, move in both places, which have different dimensions and layouts, without bumping into things. I guess this is what suspension of disbelief is for - just go with it and don't over-analyse the science; this is more about the "why" and not the "how".

The first season finishes with a terrific, action packed finale where every character has a part to play. The plot may have been a little obvious and contrived but I didn't give a shit. A fun end to a really interesting gender/identity drama. Good on ya Lana and I really hope Netflix picks this up for a second season.

Plus any programme that quotes Conan the Barbarian has got to be good!

"Conan! What is best in life?"
"Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women."

Girl Rising (2013)

Trite, simplistic and cloyingly; Girl Rising takes poverty and the disadvantaged boils them down to soundbites for the middle-classes. It's beautifully shot and the girl's stories are interesting and emotive but the film is completely overloaded with artifice that it completely removes any impact. The mix of documentary style and scripted scenes reminded me of that current breed of nasty docu-soaps like Born in Chelsea and Geordie Shore; not the best reference when listening to tales of young girls trying to rise above oppression and the patriarchy.

The world is broken but unfortunately films like this won't fix it. What it will do is massage the guilt of Guardian readers, who will set up a £3 a month direct debit and then fall asleep on their Egyptian cotton sheets. What these girls need is rioting in the streets, organised resistance, the removal of religious influence, the overthrow of corrupt governments by their citizens, the removal of 3rd world debt, stopping the stripping of national resources by rich multinationals, and education unfettered by doctrine, gender, religion, tradition and wealth.

I really wanted to like this film but struggled to get through it. A completely fictional film or a pure documentary would have worked far better than the glossy falseness of Girl Rising. As an example of how up-it's-own-arse this film can be, at one point Meryl Streep asks "What does it mean to split a girl? Is it like tearing a photo down the middle, while each half witnesses the making of a ghost", no Meryl, that's not what it means.

Meryl Streep = $65,000,000
Selena Gomez = $16,000,000
Anne Hathaway = $15,000,000
Salma Hayek = $85,000,000
Alicia Keys = $60,000,000
Chloe Grace Moretz = $12,000,000
Liam Neeson = $75,000,000

Just how many houses and cars does a person really need? I wonder how many schools $328,000,000 could build and how many scholarships it could create?

One of the girl's stories involved the myth of Icarus so I thought I'd share a reading by one of my favourite poets, Kate Tempest.

I've been chugged in my own home!

Original letterboxd review

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

A film whose reputation is built on two things. One: the short and completely batshit crazy performance by Desiree Gould as Aunt Martha. Two: the final twist ending. Does the film offer more than just these two scenes?

Unusually Camp Arawak really does look like I imagine an American summer camp to look like. For one, unlike many of the other camp slashers, it's full of kids, and I mean kids, not twelve 20 somethings acting like 16 year-olds.

The kills are telegraphed in advance so we know what's going to happen and anticipate the action. They are however efficient, imaginative and of high quality.

Some of the campiest (excuse the pun) camp outfits ever seen in a slasher. We've got muscle shirts, crop-tops, tight satin shorts, denim cut-offs, fishnet t-shirts. The whole film is is chock full of homoerotic scenes and the sexual politics, although incredibly fucked up in one particular scene, can also be quite interesting (macho males dressing and acting like the very people they hate and deride). There's also some great proto-mullets.

Worst thing: the open mouthed madness at the end. It's hard to discuss this without a MAJOR spoiler but if they'd shown a little vulnerability instead of insanity a huge problem that a lot of people have with the film would have been fixed.

So is the film better than just the two things? Most definitely yes. It's well paced, the acting is okay for the most part, the killings are superb. Sleepaway Camp is a great addition to the summer camp slasher film sub-genre.

Best thing: Felicia Rose's stare, She really is terrific and I can see why she's so popular at horror conventions.

Original letterboxd review

Miss Representation (2011)

A documentary covering a subject dear to my heart. I have spent the past few years de-programming my daughter of the image of women portrayed by the media. Thankfully she's grown into a strong, independent and clever kid who knows that she can be who or what she wants to be - a fire-fighter or police officer at the moment.

It does have its faults though. Far too many talking heads, and subjects are covered at a whirlwind pace. Overall though an interesting, educational film that all young women and men need to watch; I know I'll stick it on Ellie's watch list.

Original letterboxd review