It's Movie time!!!! 7 - No one remembers the original premise.

As I've been playing a lot of "Prison Architect" recently, it's become a necessity to have something on in the background while I wait for money to build up and/or for the inmates to kill each other.

                                                           (1977 Theatrical poster)

An embarrased looking Christopher Lee stars alongside an equally embarrased looking Robert Vaughn (although arguably Vaughns role is less embarrasing) in this B-move romp about an alien invasion.
The people of the planet Alpha, situated in the constellation Orion arrive in our solar system and begin abducting people to perform experiments on. The abductees are then returned to Earth, but as the Alpha people (who call themselves the Legion of the winged serpent) are powerful telepaths, the abductees have been implanted with a post hypnotic suggestion to commit suicide shortly after their return.
Professor Duncan (Vaughn) is a UFO researcher who takes an interest in the sudden spike in UFO sightings and abductions, and believes an invasion is coming, and he is right!.
The aliens leader Ramses (Lee) explains that their secret mission is to find a new homeworld for their people, as their solar systems star is about to go nova.
Earth suits the aliens needs, however as it is already occupied by humans, the Intergalactic league of races, represented mostly by large headed aliens originating from Zeta Reticuli, will oppose them, so Ramses must deal with them before he can put his evil plot to make all humans commit suicide, via the use of a telepathic dommsday weapon, into action.

Despite this film being obviously filmed on a low budget, it somehow manages to be enjoyable in a "I turned off my brain" sort of way. I quite liked the way the story included various bits and pieces from UFOlogy and stories from alledged abductees.



Overall - 7/10

                                                 (Theatrical poster for 1962 English dub)

 In the year 1985, glorious Communist revolution taken over world!, and with petty things such as capitalism put firmly in the past, mankind works toward make benefit for glorious planet Earth!.
During a project to irrigate the Gobi desert, an alien artifact is found, which proves that the Tunguska event was actually the result of an alien spacecraft crashing on Earth.
The worlds leading scentists find that the artifact contains some sort of message, and originated from the planet Venus, so, the scientists embark on a mission into space on the spaceship "Kosmostrator" to make contact with the Venusians in the hopes of establishing a peaceful relationship.....however, they get a bit more than they bargained for....

This film was made in East Germany in 1960, and thus the original version contains much more communist related material than the english dub does, however the film itself is a very interesting one, albeit somewhat scientifically inacurrate and fantastical.
Even amongst all this communism and speculative fiction, the films main message is an anti war one, told via a simple "fantastic adventure" type storyline. 

Overall - 7/10

                                                               (2014 Theatrical poster)

David is a film archivist who finds that his wife is having an affair, his initial reaction is one of anger but he seemingly refrains from carrying out his violent urges and returns home to his son Billy.
In the course of his work he finds out that the house he lives in was connected with some unsolved murders for 100 years ago. When his wife doesnt return hime, he calls the police, and, sure enough, her body is later found at the bottom of the local canal.
Overwrought with grief, he embarks on a series of erratic behaviours, including claiming to have seen ghosts in the house and at the canal, and blames his wifes death on the haunting.
The question is, was it ghosts who killed his wife?, or is he insane?

Yeah, this isn't a half bad film, albeit a little slow paced, and figuring out what has actually happenned keeps you guessing right to the end. 

Overall - 7/10

                                                               (1996 Video release)

This failed TV pilot takes place in some unspecified future time where the Earth has become so overpopulated that the human race has began reaching out into space and colonising planets.
Several years before the film begins, one of the first colonies, Cynosura, declared its independance from Earth and began its own aggressive expansion (we are helped to realise that the Cynosurans are definitely the baddies because they dress in black uniforms and behave like nazis, whereas the good guys generally wear white or blue uniforms).
The story introduces us to a group of six eager space cadets, who are assigned to the Democratic Republic of Earth corvette "Surprise" for their training cruise. The cadets are drilled by a tough veteran space captain and his equally tough executive officer, however when they begin what they think is a training exersize in the Maraz system, they find themselves under attack by a Cynsuran attack fleet, which has been sent to exterminate the colony on Maraz so they can claim the planet for themselves.
The Captain and the XO are killed in the battle, and it is left up to the cadets ingenuity to defeat the bad guys and save the colony.

I can see why this TV pilot failed, as it borrows a hell of a lot from other sci-fi shows of the time, and has a lot of mid 90s cliches. the special effects are of poor quality for the time, and the acting is terrible, with the good guys being whiter than white saintly figures and the bad guys being little more than comic book villains.
The series itself, had it been picked up, could have gone on to be an interesting drama along the lines of something like "Space: Above and beyond", but only if it shed its "young adult" type of writing style, but alas, the pilot failed to impress, and the series never happenned. 

Overall - 5/10

Its movie time!!!! 6 - The Rebooted Sequel.

Films, yeah, theyre good for passing at least 90 minutes of time. Heres some more time fillers I've watched since the last installment....

                                                             2013 Theatrical Poster

 Some bored rich people indulge in their hobby of kidnapping women of the lower classes and making them fight to the death for their entertainment. Off screen, 46 of the 49 "competitors" have already been eliminated from this years games, leaving the final 6 to bitchslap each other into oblivion in return for the last woman standing being allowed to go free.
Yeah, er, not exactly an original story, as it ends up being pretty much the same as any "fighting tournament" type film youve ever seen, and the twist of having it be an all female fighting tournament doesn't really add much new stuff, other than making the "not-fighting" scenes include lots and lots of fee-fee related stuff.
The evil rich people are straight out of a comic book, being OTT in their wickedness, the successful female fighters form the stock characters of "the virtuous hero", "the bloodthirsty baddie", "the sweet innocent type" and so on and so forth, lots of violent (and somewhat physically impossible for the average person) finishing moves and the films ending, which involves yet another plot twist, is fairly predictable.

I dunno, for a bit of no brainer time wasting blood and guts action, its not a bad film, but as a groundbreaking piece of cinematic action, it falls over several hurdles before it limps over the finishing line.

Overall - 6/10

                                                                1971 Theatrical poster

Many thousands of years ago, the evil witch-queen, Tera, was drugged into a state of suspended animation by a group of priests while she lay in her sarcophagus, practicing her evil magiks. The tomb was sealed and her right hand, after being severed from her body, is thrown to the jackals to prevent her from dying and entering the afterlife. Unfortunately for the priests, the hand is still alive, and manages to escape.
In the present day, a group of archaeologists unearth the tomb. Breaking its seals, they enter and speak the name of the queen, whose name has been purged from history, save for one forgotten carving on the tomb wall, which had not been scrubbed off by some incompetant scribe. They open the sarcophagus, only to find Teras perfectly preserved body inside, still breathing and with blood flowing from the stump of her right wrist.
Years later, the lead archaeologists daughter has grown to become the spitting image of Queen Tera, and she finds she is involved in a plot to ressurect the queen, but for good or evil?.

This is pretty much your standard Hammer Horror type film, but not to the standards of either the Dracula, Frankenstein or even Hammers own "Mummy" films. The extremely attractive Valerie Leon plays a dual role as Tera and Margaret, and genuinely pulls off her role very well.
The story is a little "ho-hum" though, but not by any means boring.

Overall - 8/10

                                                              1972 Theatrical Poster

Following on from the BBC TV series of the same name, "Doomwatch" recieves its own feature film (a common practice at the time).
Dr. Del Shaw from the "Department for the observation and measurement of scientific work", better known as "Doomwatch", arrives in the remote island community of Balfe.
Originally tasked with compiling a report on the enviromental damage sustained in the area following a recent oil spillage, Dr. Shaw becomes suspicious when he sees severely deformed people in the otherwise quiet and somewhat backward village, and locals explanations about inbreeding stop being convincing after a few incidences of people becoming violent and irrational, also doesn't help their case when some dead bodies start turning up.
Could an old military waste dumping ground out at sea hold the key?......maybe.

This is a pretty run of the mill "science gone wrong" type of story, but what makes this films premise different is that it doesnt feel the need to go OTT with special effects and science fiction explanations as to why things are happenning, althouh I'd wager if the film makers had a larger budget they'd probably have liked to jazz the film up a bit (NOTE - the original TV series was notorious for having bargain basement special effects, as were numerous BBC programs at the time).
That said, this films very simple cinematograhy and easy to understand mystery/thriller type plot makes for good viewing, even if it looks dated in the modern age of lens flare and CGI explosions.

Overall - 8/10

It's Movie Time!!!!! 5 - The Franchise continues.

Time for some more crap, maybe...


Muck (2015)

A group of over sexed millennials end up getting stuck in the marshes of Cape Cod where they are attacked by a group of albino psychokiller cannibals.

*unnnnggggggh* yeah, this is your average run of the mill "psychokiller attacks people for some reason" type film, and this one tries to add a twist by having all the cast constantly talk about sex, while the feamle cast spends their time in between being semi-nude, topless or completely naked. I should add that all of the female cast work/worked for Playboy magazine, hence why the films premier took place at the Playboy mansion.
Kane Hodder plays the leader of the psychokillers, thats about it for highlights, this is definitely one of those films where you really need to switch your higher cognitive functions off in order to get anything out of it.

Overall - 3/10


Exam (2009)

A group of eight people attend what they believe is an aptitude exam for a high flying executive job at an unknown company, however, things may not be as they seem, as the exam room is furnished with an armed guard, and the invigilator (Colin Salmon) lays down the following "rules":- #1. Do not attempt to speak to the guard, or the invigilator, #2. Do not allow your test paper to become marked or spoiled in any way, #3. Should anyone choose to leave the room, they may do so at any time.
He then goes on to state that any breach of these rules is punished by immediate disqualification from the test, and states that the test consists of one question, and they have 80 minutes to complete the test. He then asks if anyone has any questions before leaving.
The candidates (all nameless) turn their individually numbered papers over to reveal that there is nothing written on them, save for their candidate number.
Thus begins a "locked room" mystery where the candidates have to figure out what it is they are supposed to be doing with a nice mix of looking at group psychology dynamics.

Yeah, this is a pretty nice film all things considered. Even though the ending is easily figured out by eagle eyed viewers fairly early on, the interesting bit comes from how the group figures out what is going on and how to deal with it, with numerous dead ends, false starts and personality clashes thrown in to keep you interested.

Overall - 8/10

Warlords of Atlantis (1978)

A scientist and his entourage travel by ship to an area of open sea so that he can test his new diving bell invention, supposedly to investigate fish shoals, however, they instead chance upon the lost continent of Atlantis, and find out that its inhabitants arent really terribly friendly.

Er, yeah. This particular period in film history is resplendent with examples of fantasy-action-drama such as this, and unfortuneately, this film isnt one of the best. A fairly thin plot which struggles to really pick up the pace is however offset by some impressive practical special effects. Dunno if the reason for the poor story was due to budget reasons or due to being a good idea pulled off badly, but it ends up being a forgettable film.

Overall - 4/10


The Day  (2011)

A group of people in some sort of post apocalyptic setting take refuge in a farm house from gangs of rampaging cannibal raiders. Problem is, they've walked right into a trap, cue bloodletting and other general violence as the two factions vie for superiority and a horde of phat lewt.

A forgettable post-apocalyptic horror/action film that tries to be "arty" by having the enitre thing shot in washed out/bleak/monochrome filters. Also manages to conform to the current "in vogue" cliche of showing that whenever women engage in melee combat with men, not only do they kick ass, but they are also better than literally anyone they come up against.
Violence for the sake of it, angst, forced swearing, little to no plot of interest, yeah this one isnt going down as a classic of this genre.

Overall - 4/10

Video Game Review - Apache: Air Assault (Xbox 360)

Ive been buying cheapo video games again!

Apache: Air Assault is a 2010 action flight simulator game, developed by Russian game developers Gaijin Entertainment and published by Activision.

I picked up my copy for a measly £4 from the Doncaster branch of CEX , and, having immensely enjoyed the "Strike" series of games, I thought it would be a groovy idea to climb into the cockpit of an attack helicopter and rain hellfires, hydras and 30mm cannon ammo down on some assholes once again.

I wasn't disappointed :)

The games story line takes place over a fictionalised modern day setting, following the adventures of "Taskforce-191"; a multinational (mainly US and UK) anti-terrorism taskforce that uses attack helicopters in conjunction with air cavalry to combat terrorists and drug cartels in the Middle East, South America and former Soviet states.

As the games title suggests, your main vehicle of aerial pwnage is the Apache attack helicopter, you get to use various different versions of it, ranging from the "standard" US issue AH-64D "Longbow", to the UK version, the Westland AH-1 Apache (although in practice, the differences between the two are purely cosmetic).

The campaign missions have a series of objectives to be completed, such as destroying an enemy stronghold, destroying transport columns, protecting friendly buildings or providing air cover to ground forces while they clear out buildings.
In this respect, the game becomes a little repetitive, with many of the missions seemingly being more difficult versions of ones you've already done.

The games controls are difficult to master, being as they operate in pretty much the same way as a real helicopters controls would do, with one stick performing double duty by controlling altitude/air speed and direction, and the other stick controlling pitch and yaw.
The game has two distinct flight modes, "Training" keeps your chopper within "safe" pitch/yaw limits (one of the games achievements rewards you for performing a barrel roll, which can't be done in training mode), whereas "Realistic" sees your chopper performing some extremely unsafe/suicidal maneuvers with no safety margins. For novice players, "Realistic" mode, coupled with the difficult to handle control system, will see them crashing whenever they try to fly, however, the flight sim experience is one of the best I've seen for a helicopter game on a home console.

As this is an action game, there is, of course, combat to be done. The Apaches main armaments consist of a 30mm cannon for anti personnel work, Hydra "dumb fire" rockets for explosive ground support against lightly armoured vehicles,  Hellfire ATGMs for anti armour work and Stinger Air-to-Air missiles for use against nay aircraft you come across.

Your copilot can use the cannon independently, but control of the missiles comes down to you. Now, whereas the Hellfires and Hydras generally hit what you aim them at, the Stingers are another story.
You see, the problem is is that the AA combat portions of the game are frustrating as hell, being as 99.99% of the time, your Stingers will fail to hit, much less destroy whatever you use them on, and you spend a hell of a lot of time jockeying for position with Mi-35 Hinds (the export version of the Soviet era Mi-24 Hind) in the hopes that you can catch them with a "ripple fire" of Hydras or a good couple of hits from your 30mm, which is made harder by the odd fact that you cant seem to climb fast enough to get above them into the best position to fire. (It should be noted that Air-to-Air combat between helicopters in real life is extremely rare, with less than a hand full of reported incidences of it actually happening)

The other thing is that although you are given a certain number of "lives" to allow you to continue if you get shot down, the games AI likes to respawn you in rather odd places, which, I have found quite often leads to the bad guys "spawn killing" you in a hail of RPG fire before you have chance to maneuver away from the respawn point...cue a lot of me shouting "oh for fucks sakes!" after I get spawn camped into oblivion.

Outside of the campaign mode, there is "Free flight" mode, which allows you to pilot other choppers featured in the game, such as the Hind and the MQ-8 "Fire Scout" drone in mock battles.
There is also an online portion of the game, as well as a co-op mode.

All in all, Apache: Air Assault is one of the better combat flight sims available for home consoles, although its not perfect, it is still pretty good, and worth picking up for the cheapo.

Final score: - 8/10

Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: Rogue (2014)

Been a while since I waxed lyrical about a "current" video game (yes, yes I know, the game came out in November 2014, but for me, that's "current") and being as I managed to pick up a second hand copy of this game el cheapo, I thought it was a groovy idea to give it a go.

So yeah, the 7th entry of the Assassins Creed saga (well, on the 360 anyway, not counting the next gen stuff) takes place BEFORE the events of Assassins Creed 3, AFTER some of the events of Assassins Creed 4 and BEFORE some of the events of Assassins Creed 4 and even manages to cram in some events in "present day"....(brain...confuzzled....emergency..shutdown...in...progress...arrgh!).

*ahem*, anyway, the main story takes place during the years 1752 to 1760, roughly covering the period in and around the Seven Years War , a war in which the major powers of Europe decided to have a little argument over which parts of Northern America belonged to who (nobody really won this war, a series of treaties were signed, gentleman's agreements were put into place, and a lot of the outcome of the war was binned a short time later )

SOoooooooo, as per the usual premise of these games, you, as the protagonist in the present day, use the Animus device to "relive" the memories of the past through the eyes of someone who lived in it, via accessing genetic memory, which, since AC4, is now no longer limited to your own personal genetic history.

As the same un-named employee of Abstergo Entertainment (A wholly owned subsidiary of Abstergo Industries) that you played in AC4, you are tasked with reliving the memories of Shay Patrick Cormac, an American born man of Irish descent who lived and took part in the events of the Seven Years war. You are tasked with doing this as the Abstergo Entertainment building appears to have come under attack by a computer virus, released when Cormacs memories were accessed, and as such, they need to be reconstructed in order to find the cause of the cyber attack...apparently.

Shay begins his life as a junior member of the Assassins order, under the tutelage of Achilles Davenport, however pretty soon, Shays rebellious streak and strong sense of moral righteousness lead him to becoming disillusioned with the Assassins cause, particularly so when a mission he is given ends with thousands of innocent people getting killed due to poor planning and a poor understanding of the forces that are being dealt with.

Its at this point the game really begins, as Shay sets out to right wrongs in his own way, which ends up having him fall in on the side of the Freemasons..sorry, the Illuminati...sorry, the Templars, and become an important figure in the North American cell of that organisation.


Yeah so, once again, AC:Rogue is a "journey of discovery" type game, same as all the others, offering a nice alternate history slant on recorded events, I like this, its one of the reasons that I keep playing the AC games and regard them highly.
As has become the norm for the AC games now, Shay must spend a lot of time gathering resources in order to renovate run down areas of his home town of New York, and these resources are gathered by taking to the high seas with his tricked out ship, The Morrigan, and "liberating" them from hostile powers, such as the French, the Dutch and the odd Assassin controlled ship.

Play takes place over a large map, covering the areas in and around the Northern Atlantic, including some parts of the Canadian coastline and the Arctic. Being as this area is generally very cold and icy, your ship is eventually fitted with an icebreaker prow and swimming in the freezing waters is generally discouraged, however theres plenty to do while your sailing around, as icebergs can be rammed to collect goodies, enemy ships can be attacked and boarded for loot, and unmapped areas can be explored for further loot and goodies, then of course there are the various hunting and fishing challenges you can partake in for bonuses and crafting items.

And here's where I get to my first complaint..... the storyline of AC:Rogue is fairly short, and the developers have placed a much, much greater emphasis on the "side" activities.
Yep, there are now 200 animus fragments to collect, as well as 50 Templar/Treasure maps, viking swords, native artifacts, cave paintings, "prosperity" markers and blueprints which are required to fully upgrade both your ship and your personal equipment, oh, also, there are a selection of sea shanties for you to collect for your crew to sing.
Then of course there's "legendary" sea battles to take part in, fortresses to capture, warehouses to loot, assassin hunting missions and other various puzzles and object gathering tasks that you need to do in order to fully complete the game.

Yeeeaaaahhhhh......

My second complaint is that the game seems to be somewhat glitchy from time to time, thus far, I have found the following:-

1. Sometimes when you have sailed somewhere, if you get killed, you and your ship respawn in the middle of the land area where you died. While initially, this is a little funny as your ship majestically sails over land, it soon becomes annoying when you want to get back on the water and continue whatever it was you were doing, but the game now sees "water" as a barrier and "land" as the sea, resulting in your ship sinking as it tries to "sail" back to water and then respawns on land, rinse and repeat, ad nauseum. In order to escape this, I found that getting off the ship and then swimming or taking a lake crossing to another town causes a save point to trigger, which then deposits your ship in that areas dock and allows play to continue unhindered. This is a pain in the posterior and shouldn't happen..Grr!
2. For some unknown reason, if you are using a wireless controller with the vibrate function turned on, every time an alert is triggered your Xbox instructs your controller to turn off. At first everyone who has reported this problem assumed it was something to do with the controllers battery being low, but no, its not, its down to some really weird foible of the programming which equates the "vibrate" command with "power off controller"... The problem is easily remedied by turning off the vibrate function, but unless you know this, it leads to being killed a lot as you get swarmed by a load of assholes while you furiously hit the "Big X" to switch your controller back on, only for it to turn off again as soon as one of said assholes hits you....Grrrrr!
3. As with all of the AC games, from time to time, Shay sometimes cannot climb or step over things when you really need him to, such as when chasing sea shanties or chasing after someone...its fucking annoying then when you have to hang around and go back once the thing has reset...Grr!, also, sometimes instead of jumping/climbing over a wall, you'll squat down on it Spiderman style and stick there until you release the sticks/buttons. This usually happens at the worst possible times...double Grrr!

The games combat system has also been changed slightly, with more emphasis placed on "counter" attacking enemies using your sword and racking up long strings of "combo kills", in a similar manner to the "Arkham" batman games, and also the tactical use of Shays new grenade launcher weapon. Less emphasis is now placed on the "sneaky sneaky" aspect that was the main aim of the Altair/Ezio era AC games.


So, do I like AC: Rogue?, well, yes and no.

YES because its still a good enough game, despite its various shortcomings, short campaign missions and over reliance on "collectables".

NO because of the glitches, and the feeling that the game is just a reskinned version of AC4.

If you've never played an AC game before, Rogue is not a good starting place, as you have to be somewhat familiar with the AC games as a whole to understand what you're supposed to be doing and why.

Medieval Mayhem! - Ironclad (2011) & Black Death (2010) - SPOILER ALERT

Oh look, I watched some films that were made within the past 5 years...that doesn't happen much!.

So, having watched Lindybeige's videos, where he takes a look at these films and critiques them for their appalling historical accuracy (The phrase "Useless floppy apron" had me pissing myself laughing for a considerable amount of time), I decided to watch these films myself, seeing as how i am not adverse to a bit of good old blood and guts action.

Ironclad

So, the opening blurb tells us that in the year 1215, King John I signed the Magna Carta, which is generally thought of as being a good thing, however almost immediately afterwards, Pope Innocent III declared the document null and void and ordered King John to reclaim his country from the rule of the Barons, thus sparking the "First Barons War".
The film itself deals with a heavily fictionalised and somewhat anachronistic version of the siege of Rochester castle, which did actually happen, although the film would have us believe that a mere 20 defenders held off a horde of over a thousand "Danish mercenaries" (the film basically depicts them as being Vikings, even though by 1215 there were no Vikings, but at least it doesn't go down the route of having them with big horns on their helmets), and makes out that King Johns forces had access to some substance similar to napalm to use in their attempted assaults...oh, and for some reason, the river Medway seems to have the power to appear and disappear at will, or at least, at the convenience of the films director.

So to start with, the title of the film seems to have been chosen in order to evoke mental images of fearless knights fighting the good fight etc etc, however throughout the film, only the main "good guy" character, the Templar "Thomas Marshall" is the only one to don a suit of armour, and even then its not until over half way through the film, and even then its just a helmet and quilted overcoat he puts on anyway, which he then wears for all of about 2 minutes as he rides his horse out of the castles stable towards the keep (a distance of about 50 feet) whilst swinging a flail/morning star type mace at the horde of not-vikings who have managed to get in through the gates, seemingly to little effect (they gang up on him and pull him off his horse in the end, because charging a single horse into a mob of blood crazed enemies is a bit stupid, and if this weren't a film, he would have been unhorsed and killed within seconds of hitting the mob).

Another familiar trope common to this sort of film is the "religious person breaking their vows" trope, which the chaste Thomas Marshall manages to do about two-thirds of the way in by having the sexy intercourse with the lady of the manor, the inevitability of which had been set up right from the moment they walked in through the castle gates.

One major bit of "artistic licence" in the film is the slow torture and death of William D'Aubigny (Played by Brian Cox) on orders of the King towards the end of the film, which is a right bugger being as that  the real life D'Aubigny survived the siege and died in 1236 after playing a big part in the second battle of Lincoln after King Johns death and the subsequent crowning of his son Henry III in 1216...a mere year after the time in which this film is set (I presume that after having his hands and feet cut off, then having his corpse fired from a trebuchet and splattering on the castle walls, he "got better").

So, is Ironclad a good film?, well, as a medieval sword swinging blood splatterfest goes, I'd have to say yes, despite it being riddled with historical inaccuracies, ridiculous plot developments, its a good example of one of those films you can put on and expect to get some level of entertainment out of without being bogged down with a ton of "talky" bits getting in the way of drawn out scenes of people getting limbs chopped off by improbably large swords and axes, and the inevitable blood splatter that follows.
As a film giving an accurate depiction of a recorded historical event and the world it took place in, then I'd have to say no.

Black Death

It is the year 1348 and the Black Death is sweeping the British isles, well, except that it isn't, and didn't reach full on epidemic levels until about 2 years later, but, despite this glaring historical error, that doesn't stop the heroic knight "Ulric" (Sean Bean) from going to a monastery and demanding that the Abbott (David Warner) furnish him with a guide so they can find a village that rumour has it has not been afflicted by the plague....er, ok.

Enter Brother Osmund, a novice/monk/friar (the film cant make its mind up exactly what he is, as he is referred to as being all three, even though this would both be impossible and somewhat stupid), who is a bit naughty in the fact that he has a secret girlfriend who he earlier sent to find this village so she would be safe from the plague...Ulric turning up gives him an excuse to leave the monastery and meet up with his bit on the side for sexy times etc etc, so he volunteers because apparently thats where he comes from and knows the way quite well, or something.

Nah, as it turns out, Ulric and his band of unkempt, smelly mercenaries are really looking for the village because apparently it contains a necromancer who is bringing the dead back to life, and God might not like that so they are going to hunt down and kill the necromancer because fuck you that's why.
In order to complete their mission, they have brought along a torturer and his highly anachronistic "iron maiden" like torture contraption, which is conveniently attached to a rickety looking wagon, so they can capture the necromancer and deliver him to the local bishop..I presume that will occur after they have killed him and he has then brought himself back to life or something...er, yeah.

So they travel across the countryside, via a forest which consists of nothing more than some very nice modern looking conifer trees which grow in perfectly straight lines, and have a few sword fights along the way before they finally find the village they were looking for...which turns out to be a haven for pagan heathens who don't believe in God.
Also along the way, Osmund finds out that his secret girlfriend seems to have been killed by the forest bandits, he blames himself and gets all dead guilty and shit, innit.



Ulric and his remaining men enter the village and are welcomed with open arms by the villages head man, "Hob", aka "The Lord Percy Percy", aka "Captain Darling", however despite being offered sanctuary and washing facilities (you know the villagers must be evil because they break the cliche of daring to wash both themselves and their clothing whilst living in medieval times) Ulric warns his men that evil is afoot so they must be on their guard.

So, the "necromancer" turns out to be a woman who is a skilled herbalist, and just uses the trappings of ritual and witchcraft to keep the yokels in awe of her super powers, plus also it helps that the village is miles away from anywhere else so the plague hasn't shown up there because they don't generally mix with outsiders.
Its at this point that the standard "religious person breaking their vows" cliche is used to get Osmund to not only kill his secret girlfriend (as it turns out, she wasn't killed in the forest, she just got beaten up a bit and the villagers found her and nursed her back to health, then the witch used her to try and get Osmund to come over to their side) , but to also turn him into an angry vengeance fueled killing machine.

Only Osmund and Ulrics right hand man Wolfstan manage to survive the inevitable bloodbath that occurs (once again, Sean Bean ends up getting killed in a film, surprise surprise) , Osmund returns home to the monastery, where Wolfstan, in voice over, states that although he never saw Osmund again, he heard stories that he had set himself up as something akin to a witch hunter and spent the remainde rof his days hunting down the woman who had bewitched him, killing lots of other women who had some resemblance to her in the process, but this was a good thing as he did it all in the name of God...oh, and God punished the evil pagan heathens by bringing the plague to the village, which promptly killed off anyone who was still living there (just before he dies, it is revealed that Ulric is suffering from the plague, thus bringing the disease there)

Yeahhhhhhh...again, this film is little more than an excuse to have people getting body parts cut off by big swords and axes, but, unlike Ironclad, it doesn't pretend to depict real events, or be a dramatic adaptation of events of historical note.
Also unlike Ironclad, the story is a rather poorly written  mish mash of plot holes sandwiched in between fighting and torture scenes, which ends on a rather dark note of having the young hero of the piece become Darth Vader and set about revenging himself on women via the excuse of being a witch hunter.

Good film?...no, not even as a bit of mindless flighting and bloodsplatter entertainment.

Comedy Spotlight - Carry On....

The "Carry On.." series comprised of 31 feature films, a TV series and a number of stage productions that were immensely popular in the UK starting from the late 1950s up until the late 1970s.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, who has lived in the UK since the beginning of the 1960s will have seen at least one of the Carry On films. In more recent years the films seem to have become a staple of bank holiday and weekend schedule fillers for the ITV network, although the BBC has shown some of them at some point.

Once regarded as the epitome of home grown British comedy offerings, recent years have seen the Carry On films being regarded somewhat unfavourably amongst critics, although it must be said that most of the complaints about the films seem to stem from criticism of the franchises later entries, which mainly favoured jokes based on bodily functions, sexual innuendo and objectification of women, as well as some elements of absurdest humour.

I, like most people of my age, first discovered the Carry on films via television, as the final film in the original series "Carry On Emmanuel" was released in 1978, a full two years before I was born, and the attempted reboot in the form of "Carry On Columbus" was released when I was 12, and being as it had a 15 Certificate, I was not able to watch it until it was released on video.

I have to say that my opinion of these films has changed somewhat over the years. When I was younger, I found the films to be somewhat hilarious due to their cheeky and titillating nature, however as I have gotten older, their constant repeats on TV has hammered home the fact that the films are a relic of a bygone age, and now many of the jokes in them are extremely dated,  and with many of the films bordering on being little more than poorly written soft core porn films.

For what they are, they represent a series of cheaply produced comedy films hailing from an era where cinema was still a strong entertainment medium and required film studios to come up with large amounts of commercial output for profit. As Television began to overshadow cinema, the quality of production on the films was noticeably much lower, and the films format changed in order to continue attracting adult audiences, with varying degrees of success.

Most of the films' humour comes from them pretty much being a feature length "sitcom" style format, characters are introduced, along with their foibles, fun is poked at them, stuff happens, there is a happy ending.
Some films produced in the mid 60s also attempted to parody popular film styles of the day, Carry On Spying lampooned the numerous spy films of the 60s, while Carry On Cleo mocked big budget historical epics, however they never really strayed from the tried and tested "sitcom" format.
The films also drew heavily from the vaudeville theatre circuit, and featured many stock characters familiar to theatre audiences such as the nagging wife and her henpecked husband, the dirty old man, the naive young promiscuous woman etc.

The films themselves can be broadly categorised into four "eras"...

1958- early 1963 - The "Family Entertainment" Era.
Films made in this era - Sergeant, Nurse, Teacher, Constable, Regardless, Cruising, Cabby




In the 1950s, television had yet to supplant radio and cinema as the preferred entertainment medium of the masses. So, as it stood, on a night time or on weekends, whole families would make their way to cinemas expecting to receive several hours of entertainment for the cost of only a few shillings. This, coupled with the decline of the theatre, meant that film companies were struggling firstly to produce material to fulfill audience expectations, and secondly to make material that would reap a reasonable return on their investments.
The 1950s saw an explosion of the so called "B-movie" genre, which more often than not would end up being a cheaply produced bit of filler produced in order to provide an afternoons entertainment to mainly working class families. As these films were cheaply made, they more often than not featured very simple and unchallenging plot lines on subjects that the audience could relate to. Westerns, sci-fi, war films and dramas were all made that fit in this category, however it wasn't until 1958 that producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas who had already worked together extensively on other films, teamed up to produce the first film in the Carry on series, "Carry On Sergeant". This first film set the format for nearly all the films that followed, as it cast B-list (ie, cheap) comedy performers into roles and made use of their talents by having them act in material that was relatable, in this case, young men doing national service and all the pitfalls and problems that came along with doing the two year mandatory military service required by the state at the time.
It also set the standard for writing for the remainder of the series, in which the producers assembled a large team of gag writers and required them to quickly churn out scripts that could be made on a modest budget and be entertaining without being too corny. Using this format, it enabled at least two films to be written and shot in a year, ensuring that audiences would have something to watch and the producers would be able to quickly sell their films to distributors.
The film was a great success and was soon followed up with Carry On Nurse, which was themed around the goings off behind closed doors in a hospital. Again, this film was successful as it managed to balance light entertainment style comedy with a romance story.
The successes kept coming in the form of  "Teacher" and "Constable", however the next film in the franchise, "Regardless", marked a change in the format.
"Carry On Regardless" departed from the usual sitcom style in favour of a series of related sketch comedy set pieces, centering on people who worked for an employment agency. The film itself ended up being successful, although as it didn't follow anything resembling a set plot line, much of it ended up on the cutting room floor for timing reasons.
The next film in the series "Cruising", was the first film to be made in colour, and returned to the traditional sitcom format, following the misadventures of two young women who go on a Mediterranean cruise looking for a change in lifestyle and also looking for love.
The final film in this era was "Carry On Cabby", which returned to being filmed in black and white, as the previous film had many cost over runs due to the expensive colour film it used. "Cabby" was a simple story about the owner of a taxi firm who neglects his wife and then ends up having to compete with a rival taxi firm who enjoys much success due to the fact that it only employs attractive women as drivers. It was at this point that the "light entertainment" style humour began taking a back seat to more adult oriented humour....

Late 1963 - early 1966 - The "Parody" Era.


Films made in this era - Jack, Spying, Cleo, Cowboy, Screaming

The final five films made in co-operation with Anglo-Amalgamated distribution ltd saw the carry on team depart from their usual send ups of every day life, and instead turn to lampooning popular film types of the era. "Jack" was a parody of period adventure films, "Spying" lampooned the various cold war spy thrillers of the 60s, "Cleo" had a pop at historical epics, "Cowboy" took on the Western genre and finally "Screaming" was an OTT pop at the various gothic horror films that were being pumped out by companies such as Hammer.
It was round about this time that the series' humour started to become much more "bawdy" in nature, becoming very reliant upon double entendres, innuendo and visual gags , losing a lot of its wit in favour of knob/fart jokes and thinly veilled sexual puns, that said, the films still remained popular in the UK, particularly amongst the working classes who had yet to purchase a television set.

Late 1966 - 1968 - The "Middling" Era.

Films made in this era - Dont lose your head, Follow that Camel, Doctor, Up the Khyber

 1966 saw a few changes, first and foremost, Anglo-Amalgamated decided that they no longer wished to pay towards the production or distribution of the Carry on films, mainly due to financial problems but also due to falling cinema audience numbers, but even more so because the new chairman of the board at Anglo-Amalgamated, Nat Cohen, disliked the Carry On films with a passion, and ordered them to be dropped.
With more and more family entertainment coming courtesy of the now much more affordable Television set, cinema began to fall out of favour amongst the film series core audience, so a rethink in format was required.
Having enjoyed some success with switching to a more adult oriented gag format, it was decided that the Carry On films would be aimed squarely at teenage/young adult audiences, thus allowing for more dirty jokes, sexual innuendo and so on.
As Anglo-Amalgamated had stopped distributing the films, a deal was struck with the rank organisation, which aimed to increase viewing figures by going for international distribution, however this came with a price. The first two films in the series dropped the "Carry On..." moniker altogether, as it as felt it would not mean anything to American audiences, plus it was also a moniker associated with Anglo-Amalgamated, who were one of Ranks biggest competitors.
"Follow that Camel" aimed to increase American viewers by including actor Phil Silvers in the cast, and he replaced a role intended for Sid James, who at the time was recovering from a heart attack.
"Don't lose your head" and "Follow that Camel" failed to engage American audiences, who simply didn't get the pun and innuendo laden humour, and they also performed rather poorly at the British box office, as people simply didn't know they were carry on films.
The next film in the series, "Doctor" saw the reinstatement of the "Carry On.." title, but was intended by Peter Rogers to be the last film made in the series. Unfortunately for him though, the film was a runaway success, so less than a year later, the cast was brought back in "Up The Khyber", which again was a runaway success.
By this time though, the films were starting to become laden with not only innuendo, double entendres and other lowbrow humour, they were also starting to show more and more semi-nudity, usually in the form of a scantily clad Barbera Windsor....things began to go downhill...


1969 - 1978 - The "Adult Comedy" Era

Films made in this era - Camping, Again Doctor, Up the Jungle, Loving, Henry, At your Convenience, Matron, Abroad, Girls, Dick, Behind, England, Thats Carry On!, Emmanuelle

The beginning of the 70s saw the film series hitting its lowest ebb.
On the one hand, the films were still enjoying a moderate amount of success at the box office, however on the other, critics of the carry on films had begun to notice the lower quality of the material, and the shoestring budgets the films were being made on.
The first film of this era "Camping", is probably the best known of the entire film series, not because it was a laugh a minute comedy fest, but simply because it was in this film that contains the infamous scene in which Barbera Windsors bra flies off, briefly exposing her breasts, other than that, the film is a simple low quality comedy about two men who are desperately trying to get their girlfriends to engage in sexual intercourse with them, but failing due to the girlfriends mothers. Sid James plays Sid Boggle, a role obviously intended for a much younger man. also, the film, which was supposed to show people on a camping holiday, was shot in winter, so most of the time the field that doubled as the camp site was swimming with mud and rainwater, and it was freezing cold...the cast weren't too impressed.
The films went on, producing more tired old gags, mostly revolving around sexually frustrated men in some fashion, however with the making of "At your Convienence", the "Carry On.." team dropped a massive bollock.
The mid 70s saw the beginnings of a few changes in British society. First and foremost, trade unions began to become an increasingly powerful force amongst the working classes, so, when "At your Convenience" decided to portray trade union members as lazy and dimwitted, the films core audience was none too impressed, leading to calls to boycott the film.
The producers quickly churned out "Matron" as a way of trying to gloss over the hideous insult they had just laid at the doorstep of their core viewership, returning to poking fun at the middle classes and the NHS, "Carry On Abroad" saw them poking fun at silly foreign people and ex-pats, who by the 70s had begin to flock to live overseas to escape the rapidly declining social conditions in the UK.
Another bollock was dropped when the film "Carry on Girls" mocked the concept of beauty pageants, but instead ended up insulting feminists and equal rights campaigners by basically being an excuse to have a film which spends most of its time having old and ugly men ogling scantily clad young women.

In 1972, it was decided to see if the concept of the films could be transferred to television, mainly as a way of breathing life back into the franchise but also as a way of getting some viewers back who had deserted the cinema. The series, entitled "Carry On Laughing" ran for 12 half hour episodes and starred many of the Carry On.. regulars in some form or another. Each episode would be in a different setting and would attempt to make fun of whatever time period or setting it was in, however due to the strict censorship requirements of TV, the crude gags were scaled back in favour of slapstick and carefully crafted double entendres...it wasn't a success, especially when held up against other sitcoms of the time, all of which had been specially crafted for TV by experienced writers used to working in the genre.

1974 saw the departure of many of the gag writers who had been with the series since the beginning, one of whom, Talbot Rothwell, actually suffered a nervous breakdown as the pressure to write more and more gags got too much for him.
1975s entry in the series "Behind" attempted to recapture some of the popularity of "Camping" by having the film based around a holiday camp type theme, again, it ended up being a dismal failure.


"Carry on England" followed in 1976, and pretty much abandoned the concept of "comedy" in favour of being little more than a soft core porn film, with numerous scenes of gratuitous female nudity throughout and with a young Patrick Mower playing a role intended for the recently deceased Sid James. The film was based on an unfilmed script left over from "Carry on Laughing" and featured hardly any of the usual Carry On regulars.

"That's Carry On!.." came along in 1977 and ended up being the final nail in the coffin for the Carry On.. series, as it was little more than a feature length clip show, with links done by Babs and Kenneth Williams, with all the jokes in those bits revolving around Kenneths urgent need to urinate, which he finally manages at the end of the film by pissing up a door.
Peter Rogers finally called it a day and decided that was enough and it was time to put the series to rest...but then one year later, a private investment company offered him £349,000 to make a film capitalising on the success of soft core comedy porn films such as the "Confessions of..." series, the end product of this venture being the truly awful "Carry on Emmanuelle", which manages to fail spectacularly as a comedy film by not being in any way funny, and fails as a soft core porn film as, oddly, there is no nudity on screen whatsoever, instead, the film rehashes numerous old double entendres and crude puns and reduces all of the Carry On regulars to being B characters, although it could be argued that this was a good thing being as that by now, most of those still featuring in the Carry On.. films were all somewhat old.

"Emmanuelle" was the last film in the series, although "Carry on Columbus" came along in 1992 and featured many alternative comedians as well as some who had appeared in the original films. The film wasn't terribly well received and since then numerous attempts to reboot the Carry On.. series have all ended in failure.

The Carry On.. series as a whole offers a window into the changes that occurred in British society over the course of nearly 30 years, but whereas they started off as being quite well written genuinely funny comedies, they soon devolved into little more than offensive smut.

Dystopiarama! - Weekend triple feature!1!!!!!

Ah well, now that the £5 cheapo video games have all been completed (deffo £5 worth..nothing more), its time to get back to watching fillums of varying qualities.....

This time round I dredged up an old, but favourite, film topic..Dystopian futures!.

Saturn 3 (1980)

Eeh by gum!, this films as old as I am!.
So, plot wise this film is a sci-fi thriller, set in some unspecified future time when Earth has become ridiculously over populated and its inhabitants somewhat sociopathic, almost the entire film, save for the open sequence and a teeny bit at the end, takes place on an isolated botanical research station located on Saturns 3rd moon (which by astronomical standards would be Tethys, although which one it actually is is never stated, but this would make sense being as about 90% of Tethys' surface consists of ice, you know which is good for turning into water to grow plants with an shit, yo..anyway..).The moon is inhabited by Adam and Alex, a couple who are both there to research more efficient ways of growing plants to assist with Earths chronic food shortages. Adam and Alex (Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett respectively) live a very comfortable life free form interference by the domineering Earth authorities, however one day their bliss is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Captain Benson (Harvey Keitel, although his voice was over dubbed by Roy Dotrice) , who brings with him a robot (arguably a cyborg) called "Hector".
Problem is, Benson wasn't supposed to be the one to deliver, and more importantly, train, via the use of direct mind impulse transference, the robot being as his mind was too disordered and prone to outbursts of extreme emotion and violence.
In the end, these violent, jealous and lustful thoughts (once he has got an eyefull of Farrah that is) end up being transferred to the robot, who, without any kind of moral guidelines, goes on a murderous rampage etc etc etc.

The film itself isn't a bad one, its not a good one either. For a start, Kirk Douglas was 64 at the time of filming, and even though he was in fairly good physical shape, theres something decidedly creepy about seeing a man who could be your grandfather engaging in simulated sex, nude scenes and sexual dialogue with a woman who was 32 years his junior.
The story is a tad predictable from the word go, and the special effects look extremely bargain basement, because the filming was fraught with problems, mainly stemming from the fact that ITC films had pissed a shit load of money up the wall on the film "Raise the Titanic!" which ended up being a massive box office flop, therefore the budget for this film ended up being stripped to the bare minimum required in order to get it finished.
The screen play was written by the semi famous writer Martin Amis, who later went on to write a thinly disguised book about the production, chronicling his own observations. He makes mention of an aging film star who is obsessed with his sexual virility (*coughkirkdouglascough*) as well as the numerous cost cutting measures and script changes required on short notice in order to accommodate them.

Entertaining?, not really, more, interesting than anything else.
Overall - 4/10

Omega Doom (1996)

Director Albert Pyun carved himself a nice little niche in the mid ninties through to the mid noughties, a niche which earned him the moniker "the Ed Wood of modern films" for a while.

Omega Doom is similar to Pyuns 1989 film "Cyborg", insofar as it concerns robots/cyborgs getting up to shennanigans in a dystiopian and post apocalyptic future.

Omega Doom (Rutger Hauer) is an android soldier who fought in world war 3, however on the last day of the war, a gun shot wound to the head erased his programming, making him forget his primary directive to KILL ALL HUMANS!!1!11!11one!1!.
Some time later, OD wanders into an abandoned French town (the original script called for the film to be set entirely within the boundaries of a post apocalyptic EuroDisney) to find that two factions are battling for control over the ruined buildings. One one side are the "Droids", a motley group of old robots, some of them ex-military, some of them servitor robots, and on the other side are the "ROMs", a trio of identical female robots who are much more advanced than the others, but are too few in number to take over completely.
The two factions share an uneasy peace, however secretly both sides are eager to find a rumoured cache of firearms that they believe to be hidden somewhere in the area.

This film is unashamedly a pastiche of  "Wandering Samurai" type films mixed in with "Mysterious stranger western" type films, hell, theres even a "saloon" in the town where a timid governess robot serves water to both sides to use as fuel.
OD appoints himself to be the local "lawman" and put an end to the feud, mainly via killing the leaders of the opposing factions who are constantly stirring up trouble and picking on the drifters that occasionally ride through the town.

The action scenes are silly in the extreme, with "gunfights" being replaced by quickdraw type duels in which both participants are armed with some sort of laser edged throwing knives.

Even though the film is very slowly paced, and the story isn't terribly demanding, "Omega Doom" still makes for a good viewing.

Overall - 7/10

Battle Truck (1982)

(This film was also released under the title "Warlords of the 21st Century")

Mad Max and its sequel, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, set a standard in the film industry and created a new type of post apocalypse film which featured people using vehicles and scrapping it out over fuel reserves after some off screen war had pretty much fucked the world up.
"Battle Truck" came out 1 year after Mad Max 2, and features, you guessed it, a Truck that is used for battle, manly battle involving a gang of ruffians picking on people in order to steal their supplies of fuel, food and pretty much anything else that takes their fancy, and thus far they have done quite well out of this wrongdoing being as no one can stand up to their massive armoured behemoth.

A small village called Clearwater becomes the next target for these ne'er do wells, who are pretty easy pickings being as they generally live a peaceful existence similar to the Quaker lifestyle, however this time round the bad guys get some trouble in the form of a mysterious motorcyclist named "Hunter" (Michael Beck - in one of his many B movie roles since his A list career ended when he decided to sign on to star in the awful "Xanadu" ).
As it turns out, a young woman who Hunter brought to live in Clearwater after he rescued her from being attacked by the baddies is the reason they have come, because she is the Big boss baddies daughter!.

Yeeaaaahhhhhhhh....This is a shite film, even the titular "Battle Truck" looks rubbish, and Michael Becks acting in the role of Hunter is really poor, you can tell hes only doing it for the pay day and not out of any particular interest in starring in this piece of dodgy sci-fi shit.

Overall - 3/10

The Champions (ITC 1968-1969)

One thing that 60s TV shows did fairly well was produce a number of series that centerd around Spies, Detectives and people with special powers, sometimes combining the three with varying degrees of success.
With the 60s being the height of the cold war and people wondering on an almost daily basis if they were going to finally hear those air raid sirens before having to scramble into bomb shelters when the DIRTY COMMUNISTS!1!1!1!! decided to start some aggro, it was understandable that the most popular programs would centre on people actively trying to prevent armageddon in some fashion.

"The Champions" is a sci-fi/spy/detective/action/mystery tv series consisting of a single series of 30 episodes.
Similar in format to the much more successful "Mission: Impossible" and to some extent "The Avengers", the series concentrates on the adventures of a team of three special agents, who work for the (fictional) U.N backed intelligence/police agency code named NEMESIS (it is never explained whether the name is a name or an acronym for something, probably chosen just cos it sounds cool)

Unlike other secret agents, "The Champions" (this title is never given to them officially, and is only spoken by the series narrator when referring to them) are not your run of the mill types, as in the very first episode of the series it is explained that while the team were on a mission to steal samples of an experimental biological weapon from the Red Chinese, their plane crashed in the Himalayas, where they were rescued and operated on by a group of reclusive, but advanced people who lived in the mountains of Tibet. This operation, as well as saving their lives, gave the three secret agents superhuman powers, including enhanced strength and stamina, perfect memory recall, enhanced cognitive abilities and enhanced senses, as well as the ability to perform a limited form of telepathy to communicate with each other over distance.
The three members of the team are:-

Richard Barrett (William Gaunt) - British code breaking and electronics expert.
Craig Stirling (Stuart Damon) - American pilot and all round action man.
Sharron MacReady (Alexandra Bastedo) - British Doctor and research scientist.

The three, who were based at the NEMESIS headquarters in Geneva, would receive their orders from "Tremayne" (the only other character to appear in every episode in some fashion), who was not aware of their super powers, but who would occasionally ask them to explain how they managed to escape from seemingly certain death type situations unharmed (sometimes it appeared that Tremayne was a bit thick not being able to figure out what was going on, although this added to the suspension of disbelief required to watch this type of show).
Each episode would typically begin with a short featurette with one of the team using (or abusing) their powers to somehow outsmart someone else, for example in one episode, Craig is shown watching a weightlifter showing off his strength by lifting a series of heavy barbells, before Craig then walks up and effortlessly picks up the same weights and throws them around like they weighed nothing at all.

Most of the stories from the series revolved around the team fighting communist plots, South American dictatorships, neo nazis, drug dealers and criminal gangs, but on the odd occasion an episode would throw in some deliberately comedic touches, although not to the level of "eccentricity" reached in "The Avengers".

The main characters were quite well rounded out and believable, given the subject matter, although the secondary characters (ie, the bad guys) tended to be over the top comic book villains, most of whom had dodgy east european or faux-latino accents, although to its credit, the series did actually use chinese actors for chinese parts (mainly in the form of Burt Kwouk  ) and didnt resort to having white actors don dodgy looking eye make up and start mispronouncing their Ls and Rs.

All in all though "The Champions" is one of those oft forgotten gems from 1960s British TV which could make for a fairly entertaining remake/reboot now.

Transformers: Age of Extinction (Contains Spoilers)

So, Michael Bay said he wasn't going to do anymore Transformers related stuff after DOTM got fairly negative reviews...but the sweet, sweet money he was offered tempted him back....*face/palm*

"Transformers: Age of Extinction" (aka, Transformers: AoE, Transformers 4, Trans4mers etc) marks the fourth (duh!) outing for the "Bayformers" live action TF movies, which surprised many people as the ending of DOTM pretty much wrapped up the storyline for the Bayformers, you know, what with nearly everyone getting killed off and all that.

The Plot

Set 5 years after the climactic battle which saw Chicago levelled as the Decepticons tried to teleport Cybertron into Earths orbit and then enslave mankind and stuff, coupled with the sudden, but inevitable, betrayal by Sentinel Prime, it seems that humans and Transformers don't get along any more. Although the surviving Autobots are said to have been granted asylum on Earth, and approximately a dozen Decepticons are known to be at large, a secret-ish division of the CIA known as "Cemetery Wind" spends all its time  hunting down and capturing both Autobots and Decepticons (Ratchet and Leadfoot are shown to be both hunted down and killed).
As it turns out though, Cemetery Wind is pretty much just a front for making its commander, Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) a rich man, as he then passes the bodies of the "captured" Transformers on to a megacorporation known as KSI industries where its pompous CEO, Joshua Joyce (played by Stanley Tucci doing a really, really good impression of the late Steve Jobs) then experiments on them in order to develop and manufacture human built "Transforming robots" in order to sell them to the military etc.
HOWEVER!, things go a bit awry when as it turns out, Cemetery Wind and KSI are both in league with an unaligned Transformer named Lockdown, who is on Earth to collect a bounty placed on Optimus Primes head by his "creators" (who, in the opening scenes are shown to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs by cyberforming parts of Earth in order to mine "Transformium" to build more transformer robots for themselves).

So, Optimus Prime, along with Bumblebee and newcomers Hound, Drift and Crosshairs, as well as their new human chums Cade and Tessa Yeager and Shane (Tessas boyfriend) battle against both the cemetery wind, KSI and Lockdown in order to stop stuff from happening that will probably lead to the extinction of all life on earth and so on.
Oh yeah, KSI has unintentionally rebuilt Megatron (Now called Galvatron, but he isn't a purple repaint) as one of their robot drone weapons and he eventually frees himself from human influence and takes over the army of vehicon drones and causes some trouble.
Oh also, some Dinobots make an appearance towards the end of the film to boost the Autobots numbers.

Ooooooooooooh kaaayyyyyyyyyy.
Ah, yeah, erm........
At nearly 3 hours long AoE, when viewed as just another sci-fi action film isn't too bad, it fulfills all that is required of it in order to be considered a standard Hollywood Blockbuster, and uses the following cliches:-

• MOAR EXPLOSUNZ!!! - Standard trope from any Michael Bay movie, it would be pointless to comment any further on this.
• All Chinese people know kung fu! - yes, there is one "main" character who is Chinese, plus a couple of throwaway Chinese characters that feature during the bit set in Hong Kong, all of them somehow know kung fu...you know, because they're Chinese. Also included is a bit of casual racism as the character played by Li Bingbing is told by Stanley Tuccis character that he cannot understand what she is saying.
• "This is important!/No its not!/That is irrelevant!" - Some characters are introduced and seem to be on their way to being a big player in the storyline...then they either vanish for no reason or are killed. Additionally, some plot avenues open at the beginning, then get ignored/forgotten at the end.
• Carry on regardless! - The Witwickys, N.E.S.T and Agent Simmons, all big characters in the previous three films are gone, and not even mentioned...at all, as though they never existed.
• Maguffin-tastic - "Transformium"...dafuq?
• Object of attraction/Jailbait - Right from the very start, male audience members are directed to find Tessa Yeager attractive, being as she spends nearly the entire film wearing skimpy clothing items and being a damsel in distress. however, despite her make up being applied so that it draws attention to her dialated pupils, flushed skin and red lips (all visual cues for female sexual arousal) we are informed that she is only 17, and thus a minor (according to American standards) so therefore can be looked at but not touched, something which is played upon during the course of the film in an attempt at creating "humourous" dialogue. the other two female leads, played by Sophia Myles and Li Bingbing don't really receive enough screen time to be considered "main" cast members, instead mainly acting as "plot filler-inners".

So, did I like it?

Er, ooh, Id say "like" is far too strong a word. On the whole, the film is yet another example of a throwaway sci-fi action flick that includes characters of which I am familiar with, which was designed and intended to shift merchandise in the form of childrens toys.
The plot is ridiculously weak, and the film watches like a series of action and car chase scenes edited together with some "talky bits" that shovel fairly basic character development at you in big, difficult to digest chunks.
As a lifelong fan of Transformers, it is quite uncomfortable to sit and watch in places, namely the bits where the "new" Transformers are shown transforming simply be disintegrating themselves and then reforming into robot/vehicle mode, and also bits where the Autobots openly discuss killing people because they are a bit pissed off with how they have been treated (although given the storyline, they do have a right to be pissed off).
The ending of the film is as formulaic as they come, with a big battle happening, lots of explosions and death followed by a "happy" although ambiguous ending, thus setting up the plot for "Transformers 5 - We aren't Quintessons, Honest!"

Final score - 5/10 - Impressive SFX but ruined by a crap storyline and the desire to shift merch.

War Of The Worlds - The series (1988-1990)

The War Of The Worlds TV series was first envisaged as a concept in the 1970s by Director George Pal and was intended to be a direct follow on the the 1953 movie, however the series did not make it to screens due to no interest in it.
In 1988 however writer/director Greg Strangis managed to pitch a similar concept which found favour amongst US TV executives who were, at the time, quite keen on making TV series based on successful films, as the same year saw a "Friday the XIII" TV series and a "Nightmare on Elm Street" TV series.

Two full series were made, however there are massive differences in the settings and tone of the second series compared to the first, so much so that barring a couple of shared characters, the second series could be considered to be something entirely different based on a similar premise.

Series 1 (1988-1989)

The back story goes that both the events of the 1953 Film and the 1938 Radio Broadcast were actually real attempted alien invasions, however following the end of the 1953 invasion, the aliens (note - the aliens are not referred to as "martians", as a rule in all episodes, as the concept of life on Mars had long since been disproved and thus useless as a believable plot point) did not die when exposed to Earths bacteria, instead, the aliens entered a state of torpor, and thus, after the 1953 war ended, thousands of "dead" alien bodies were sealed into oil drums and sent to storage areas all over the world, supposedly for scientific research purposes, but in reality they were quickly hidden away along with any spacecraft and artifacts so that the worlds governments could quickly and quietly rebuild and forget about the horrifying events of the invasion.
35 years pass and in present day (1988) a group of environmental terrorists attack and take over a military storage compound, which they intend to hold for ransom due to it being used to store nuclear waste. Unfortunately for them the facility is also one of the places that sleeping aliens are stored, and, in the process of their assault on the facility, the terrorists cause the aliens to become exposed to radioactive waste, which reanimates them. The aliens quickly counter attack, and demonstrate that they have the ability to merge their bodies with a human body, thus allowing them to appear as human (This was actually a cost saving measure so that numerous difficult to produce alien costumes didn't have to be made and maintained, plus it also allowed the aliens to directly influence the plot. It should also be noted that throughout the entire series, the aliens are never seen clearly).

The aliens are discovered when they make a transmission requesting orders from their superiors, and this leads to the introduction of the series' main characters:-

Dr. Harrison Blackwood  (Jared Martin) - The adopted son of Dr. Clayton Forrester and Sylvia van Buren. Harrison is an eccentric scientist who carried on Dr. Forresters work on the aliens, even though after the great cover up no one believed in aliens any more. He becomes head of "The Blackwood Project" a secret group dedicated to finding and stopping the aliens before they take over the world. Blackwoods curiosity quite often gets the team into trouble.

Norton Drake  (Phillip Akin) - A paraplegic computer genius who intercepted the aliens first transmission. (In the pilot episode of the series, Norton sported a faux Caribbean accent, however this was dropped for the series proper, although in the first few episodes he still uses it, however the actor playing him re dubbed his lines in his own voice) Norton, as well as being a top notch research scientist is also an expert hacker, and helps the team get access to information by bypassing governmental "red tape" from time to time with his skills.

Lt.Col Paul Ironhorse  (Paul Chaves) - A US army special forces operative of native American ancestry who serves as the liaison between Dr. Blackwood and the military. Ironhorse is a staunch conservative and generally prefers military action over scientific investigation, putting him at odds with the pacifistic Dr. Blackwood, however over time the two grow to hold a respect for each other.

Suzanne McCullough (Lynda Mason Green) - A Microbiologist and single mother who comes to work for Dr. Blackwood prior to the arrival of the alien threat. Throughout the series Suzanne works on numerous biological methods of identifying or attacking the aliens, as well as finding out more about them. Suzanne is a very "by the numbers" scientist, which causes problems with Blackwoods eccentric approach to science.

The Blackwood team are tasked with researching and finding ways to combat the aliens, however the aliens themselves face numerous problems. Firstly, although they have been resurrected by the radiation, its effect of killing the germs that harm them also causes their bodies to break down from radiation sickness, meaning the aliens can only spend short periods inside a human body before they too begin to disintegrate. Secondly, the aliens do not have access to their advanced weapons or technology this time round, so therefore have to make do with crudely adapted human technology, or hopefully be able to scavenge some of their own equipment from secret storage facilities, or left over from previous visits to Earth.
Over the course of the series the aliens revive more of their own kind and try numerous strategies to subvert and kill mankind, some of which end up being horribly successful (yes that's right, the baddies win sometimes), but the series does end on a fairly high note, as it turns out that humans may have allies from space as well as enemies, although by the end of the series, it is established that an alien colonisation fleet will arrive within a few years.

Series 2 (1989-1990)

Series 2 saw some major changes to the shows format. Firstly, the setting was changed from "present day" to "almost tomorrow", this allowed for the timeline to be moved on to accommodate the arrival of the alien colonisation fleet.
Also, and more bizarrely, the aliens from the first series (the "Mor-Tax") were replaced with another set of completely different aliens, the "Mothren", with little to no explanation given as to why.
Also, Ironhorse and Norton are killed off in the first episode, and instead replaced by a mercenary called John Kincaid (played by a pre-Highlander: The Series Adrian Paul).


In this series, Earth has fallen into a period of chaos and great social upheaval, leading to an almost total breakdown of civilised society.
The Mothren arrive on Earth, and, unlike their predecessors the Mor-Tax, have no trouble whatsoever adapting to the environment, however they find it inconvenient that the humans haven't been massacred, allowing them to begin full colonisation procedures, however, over the course of the series they try to complete their mission of finding a new home world, despite their many internal conflicts.



Overall Thoughts



While the series' original concept, and thus the first series itself was quite good, it completely went to pot with the changes made for the second series.
The first series mixed sci-fi with elements of adventure and horror, and was genuinely scary to me when I first saw this series as an 11 year old, especially some of the gruesome ways that the aliens killed people.
A nice touch was that Jared Martin was instructed to copy actor Gene Barrys mannerisms in his portrayal of Harrison Blackwood, so as to make another link between the film and the series.
Another nice touch was the episode "An eye for an eye", which first aired on the 50th anniversary of Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast and pays tribute to it by having the Blackwood team visit the setting of the radio play and tangling with aliens with help from some of the town militia who fought them during the 1930s.
The series also had a lot of environmentalist themes, as well as some cleverly crafted bits of satire and black comedy, most notably that each episode of series 1 was titled after a biblical quote, which had an ironic connection to the plot for the episode.
Series 2 was just awful, with far too many plot and character changes to make the two series' related in any way, even the episodes of it themselves are boring, save for one episode which involves Blackwood travelling back in time to the 1950s.

This is a good series, so long as you only really watch series 1, well acted, and for the most part well scripted. Some of the special effects are a bit bargain basement, and any instance of alien war machines appearing in the series is simply repurposed footage from the 1953 film, but, even though the program is very 1980s in its stylings, and thus may be a little difficult for younger people to get their head round, it is still watchable and entertaining.