EPis0dIC! - The Outer Limits - "Soldier" (S02E01 - 1964)

"Night comes too soon on the battlefield. For some men it comes permanently; their eyes never open to the light of day. But for this man, fighting this war, there is never total darkness. The spidery beams of light in the sky are the descendants of the modern laser beam — heat rays that sear through tungsten steel and flesh as though they were cheesecloth. And this soldier must go against those weapons. His name is Qarlo, and he is a foot soldier, the ultimate infantryman. Trained from birth by the State, he has never known love, or closeness, or warmth. He is geared for only one purpose: to kill the Enemy. And the Enemy waits for him…"

 1800 years in the future, Qarlo Clobregnny (Michael Ansara ) sits smoking a cigarette whilst hiding amongst some rocks. He suddenly stops when a voice issuing from his battle helmet instructs him to "Find the enemy...Attack!..Kill!". A short distance away, a soldier from another army sits quietly and has a drink from his flask, his battle helmet also instructs him to "Find the enemy...Attack!..Kill!", both men carefully move from their hiding places as energy beams lance overhead, they spot each other, but, as they charge to attack each other, they are both hit by energy beams...and vanish.

"Time is fluid. The waters of forever close — and passage may not be completed. The present and the future are for a moment united. And the Enemy, half-today, half-tomorrow, is locked between…"

 Qarlo materialises in an alleyway, still dressed in his body armour and carrying his energy weapon. At first he is bewildered, but he carefully removes his helmet, and is immediately deafened by the sounds of the city, which drives him mad with pain.
In his madness, he attacks several people and uses his energy weapon to destroy a police car, but he is stopped by several police officers and arrested.

Tom Kagan is a philologist, a specialist in languages, he is approached by the FBI and is asked to see if he can make sense of what the mysterious madman is saying, as ever since he was captured, he has repeated the same phrase over and over again...

"Nims qarlo clobregnny prite arem aean teaan deao"

...to which no one has thus yet been able to identify which, if any language he is speaking.


Kagen is escorted to meet with Qarlo, who is being kept in a padded cell, due to it "taking six marines to get him into the two strait jackets he is wearing". Kagen insists that they be left alone, and, within a minute of their first meeting manages to win a bit of his confidence by offering him a cigarette.

After a week of questioning, Kagen manages to deduce that Qarlo is a soldier and deciphers the language and meaning of Qarlos words. He is in fact speaking English, but the language is changed, mangled,  when he says "Nims qarlo clobregnny prite arem aean teaan deao" , translated he is saying "(my)name is Qarlo Clobregnny, Private, RM EN TN DO", in essence, doing the same as any soldier would by simply giving his name, rank and serial number when captured by the enemy.
Kagen also deduces that Qarlo is from the future, by having an astronomer plot the location of the stars from drawings made by Qarlo of the night sky where he is from.


In order to continue "taming" Qarlo, Kagen requests that he be allowed to have Qarlo live with him and his family for a time, as Qarlo seems to be completely emotionally and psychologically deadened, and Kagen feels that exposure to other humans in a normal family environment will help him to lose their air of aggression and distrust he has of other people.
Initially, Qarlo seems to make some progress, revealing that in his time, the world is divided into two superstates, who are in the middle of an endless war. Qarlo says he is the product of artificial birth, and was brought up in the Clobregnny nursery to be a soldier from being a child, but despite this, he has never seen any of the ruling class in the flesh, whom he refers to as "the purple". He also says that in his time, they use cats as scout beasts, and the commanders communicate orders to the soldiers via telepathy.

Meanwhile, Qarlos enemy from the future fully materialises in our time, and immediately begins hunting Qarlo.

Things go wrong for Kagen when Qarlo breaks into a gun shop and helps himself to a high powered hunting rifle, stating that "a soldier needs a gun, otherwise he isn't a soldier". Kagen manages to talk him down by letting Qarlo accompany him back home, and tells him that if he wants a gun that badly, he can have one but he doesnt need to keep it on him at all times. Just as Qarlo agrees to hand over the stolen weapon, the enemy breaks into the house by disintegrating a wall with a blast from his own energy weapon. Qarlo throws himself on the enemy and the two men fight hand to hand, but then the enemys weapon goes off, disintegrating them both.
Kagen and his family look sadly at the pile of charred ash on the carpet....

I like this episode simply because Michael Ansaras performance of a man out of his own time is simply brilliant, he does a really good job of conveying the frustration that Qarlo must feel at having everything he has ever known taken away from him and replaced with what must seem to him to be a horrible parody of his own time.
This story was penned by Author and part time argument starter Harlan Ellison, who later went on to claim, and win, a lawsuit against James Cameron stating that the film "The Terminator" copied elements of both this story and another episode of the Outer Limits called "Demon with a glass hand"
The ending of the episode is rather sad, but also inevitable given the nature of Qarlos character, and Kagen efforts to make Qarlo more like a "modern" man as opposed to the near mindless sociopathic killing machine that he actually is are well portrayed by all concerned.

EPis0dIC! - UFO - "The Square Triangle" (S01E09 - 1970)

...SHADO mobilises its space interceptors after S.I.D detects an incoming UFO whose trajectory indicates it will land somewhere in southern England. Commander Straker hurredly calculates a rough landing point while Colonel Foster waits for the order to intercept, however at the last minute Straker orders that the UFO be allowed to pass through and land unmolested.

Meanwhile, as S.I.D reports that the UFO has passed through SHADOs outer defence cordons, a woman drives seemingly alone along a deserted road.

The UFO lands in the middle of an area of dense forest, so Straker orders Foster to lead a team of SHADO mobile units to track down the UFO and capture it intact.

The woman is not alone in her car, a young man is with her, she continues driving as he nonchalantly smokes a cigarette.

The SHADO mobiles are deployed into the search area, and begin looking for the alien craft, meanwhile, the woman and the young man reach an isolated cottage, which the man begins looking around suspiciously. The man, "Cass" (Played by a very young Patrick Mower ) tells the woman, "Liz", to "go and get it", she returns from the bedroom carrying a gun.

Straker monitors the mobiles progress, while Alec Freeman enquires why Straker hasn't simply "asked the aliens round for drinks". Straker, in private, explains that he has let the UFO through because as an organisation, SHADO knows very little about the aliens or their spacecraft, therefore, in this instance, he allowed the UFO through in order to capture it intact and learn its secrets.

Cass and Liz are lovers, and Cass has planned that Liz's husband is to die that very night, killed by his own wife in what will look like an accident as he comes in the front door. His planning is meticulous, every detail has been worked out, nothing can go wrong.

In the forest, a security guard and his dog stumble across an alien, the dog attacks the alien while the guard runs off, but is then later killed when another alien shoots him with its machine gun, before dragging his corpse away back to their ship.

The SHADO mobiles close in on the UFO, but, they are too late, the UFO has spent too long in Earths atmosphere, and it spectacularly explodes before they can capture it.

Liz and Cass lie in wait in the darkened house, the front door opens, and, after some cajoling, Liz empties the gun into the figure that enters the house, except, to their horror, the figure that came in the door was not her husband, but instead was the other alien, who had escaped the clutches of the guard dog, and had managed to find his way to the house after damaging his helmet.
Cass panics and tells Liz to go through with the plan as they worked it out, he then leaves in a hurry and tells her to contact him later.

SHADO searches the wreckage of the UFO and finds the security guards body, and then finds his dog, which follows the scent of the alien and leads them to the isolated cottage, where they find the dead alien and a terrified Liz, whom Colonel Foster arrests and has taken back to SHADO headquarters. The SHADO operatives also pick up Cass as he flees, and take him along too.

Later, Lizs husband arrives to find Foster still in his house, after a tense standoff between the two, Foster orders the husband away and says he will be contacted later once they have completed their investigation.

Cass and Liz are reunited and informed of what has happened by Straker himself, initially they don't believe him, but as he points out, whether they believe him or not is irrelevant, as they have been administered an amnesia drug, which will completely erase their memories of the past 12 hours.
Straker knows what they were up to, as do Alec and Foster, however as Foster ironically points out "unfortunately for them an alien walked through that door instead of her husband", Straker acknowledges that although they can erase their memories of the, albeit brief, encounter with an alien and SHADO, it will not erase their intent to commit murder, and also unfortunately, they cannot warn the husband about his possible impending death, nor can they tip off the local police without raising suspicion about themselves, Straker regrettably states that any future events will have to take their course, and Liz and Cass are to be released as soon as their memories are erased.





The episode ends with Liz standing over her husbands grave, before then walking away hand in hand with Cass....


Of all the episodes of UFO, this one is probably my second favourite, (My overall favourite being "A Question of Priorities") simply because in this storyline, SHADO and its ongoing battle against the alien threat is secondary to the story of a murderous love triangle, but then both storylines crash together when a one in a million chance event occurs. I also like how Straker finds himself in a moral dilemma over whether to compromise the worlds safety simply to prevent the murder of one man, but finds himself having to make the difficult decision to allow the man to die so that SHADO can continue operating in secret, even though his two closest friends disagree with him.

Film Review:- "Riddick" (2013)

Hmm, so, after seeing the somewhat lackluster "The chronicles of Riddick" many years ago (which at one point went on to become a staple filler of ITV2s late night film slots) I didn't hold out much hope of there ever being another film about the seemingly invincible ninja assassin type, save for video game entries, (none of which I have ever gotten round to playing) so, it came as something of a surprise when during a visit to my local ASDA I saw "Riddick" on sale in the DVD section.
Showing how much attention I pay to modern cinema, I wasn't even aware that this film had been made, let alone had been out long enough to be published on DVD/Blu-Ray (I don't get this newfangled Blu-ray stuff).

Now, being as I somewhat enjoyed the original "Pitch Black", and found "Chronicles" to be mildly interesting, I thought I might as well give this one a shot....

                                                                      ....Oh dear....

So, at the end of "Chronicles", Riddick seemingly got the answers to all the questions he had about his life, and became literally a king by his own hand by slaying the enemy who had put his own people to death (erm...isn't that the plot to Conan??) , so, realistically there wasn't anywhere more for the plot line to explore, however, Vin Diesel himself wasn't happy to see the character he had made his own (even more so than Dominic Toretto, who wasn't as much of a breakout character as Riddick ended up being ) get some sort of closure, so instead, old Vinny-boy decided he wanted to finance a third entry in the series, even appearing in a cameo role in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" in order to secure the rights to the Riddick franchise for himself, then employing the services of David Twohy as chief writer to bring his ideas for the further adventures of the ninja-assassin to the screen once again.

The film starts with Riddick, still dressed in his Grand Marshall armour, being attacked by a carrion eater as he lies buried under rocks and dirt on an un named planet.
A flashback sequence tells the tale that after Riddick became Grand Marshall of the Necromonger fleet, he rapidly began to lose his power base after his refusal to convert to the necromonger religion, and thus a campaign of intrigue sees him being left stranded on the planet he is now on.
after picking himself up and dusting himself off etc etc, he finds himself being hunted by two teams of mercenaries, before he escapes the planet and heads off for further adventures.

Yeah, thats it, the films plot in a nutshell, and trust me, theres not much more to it than that.
Riddick spends about half of the film playing a "Robinson Crusoe" type role and acting as his own biographer in a series of laconic voiceovers, then after the merc guys turn up, its a predictable sequence of events as he picks them off one by one by being cleverer than them.

I'll say it, this film is boring as fuck, even the action bits are yawnsome, the "character development" as it is is bland and completely uninteresting, and while watching the film I kept thinking "something awesome is gonna happen soon..." but alas, it was not to be.

Riddick, the project financed and produced by Vin Diesel himself, is nothing but a self indulgent vanity project which falls flat on its arse, promising so much and absolutely failing to deliver, apart from you get to see Katee Sackhoffs tits...thats probably the only bit of the film I liked.

I give it 3 pairs of goggles out of 10, and thats only for the special effects and Katee Sackhoffs "celestial orbs".

Anime Review:- Yu Gi Oh! Arc-V

Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V (Pronounced "Arc-Five", the V is intended to be the roman numeral) is the fifth series and fourth spin off of the ongoing Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise.
At the time of writing (July 2014), there have only been 13 episodes aired in Japan and it has yet to be dubbed into English.
Debuting on the Japanese TV Tokyo network on April 6th 2014, the series follows the adventures of Yuya Sakaki.
Yuya is a second year student at the "You Show" Duel school, who wants to follow in his fathers footsteps by becoming an "Entertainment Duellist", a form of professional duelling in which thanks to the invention of the "Solid mass" holographic system (basically a machine which creates solid light holograms), allows duellists to put on a show for spectators by physically interacting with the creatures they summon in a realistic 3D environment.
Yuya is a fairly optimistic lad, a lesson imparted on him by his father, however he is also sad as his father vanished for no apparent reason on the eve of one of his most important duels 3 years before the start of the series, so all Yuya has left to remember him by are his memories of spending time with him, and a mystical pendant, and the pendant is where Yuya derives his special powers.

During a duel in the first episode of the series, Yuya discovers that his pendant can unlock a hitherto unknown game mechanic for Duel monsters, namely, the pendulum summon. During the duel with the man whom his father was supposed to duel 3 years previously, Yuya is being beaten quite badly, however he takes solace from his fathers advice to "smile through adversity", and the pendants power transforms the effect monster cards in his hand into a new type of card, the Pendulum monster, which allows him to rapidly summon several powerful creatures in a single turn, winning him the duel. At first he is accused of cheating, however the Duel management system which is running the duel recognises the new game mechanic as legitimate, and pretty soon Yuya becomes something of a celebrity, however, even though he enjoys his new found fame somewhat, it also draws the attention of the "Leo Duel School", a rival duelling academy that is owned and run by the insidious Akaba family.

Although only 13 episodes have aired thus far, I've quite enjoyed the series, as it manages to blend the action of the original series with the fun factor of GX, and unlike 5Ds it doesn't take itself too seriously. Im looking forward to watching the remainder of the series as there have been the starts of what could be some interesting storylines.

Anime Review:- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (meaning, "Generation neXt" or "Generation X") was a 2004-2008 Anime TV series adaptation of the original 2005 manga (which ended publication in 2011), and formed the first spin off from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga/anime.

Set 10 years after the conclusion of the original series (hence "Generation X", meaning "Generation 10") , the series has many similarities with the "Harry Potter" series of books, insofar as most of the action centres around the goings off at "Duel Academy", the most prestigious school for aspiring professional duellists in the Yu-Gi-Oh world.

The series consisted of four complete seasons, although only three have been dubbed into English by 4Kids entertainment, who have stated that there are no plans to dub the final series, which caused some controversy amongst fans due to series 3 ending on an as yet unresolved cliffhanger, which, even though there are numerous fansubbed copies of the 4th series floating about, isn't properly resolved by watching it in the original Japanese, as the westernisation of the series basically made the two versions a little incompatible with each other.

A GX movie was planned, but was ultimately shelved in 2005, with the plot for the movie being developed further and used as the overall plot arc for series 2.

The main character is Jaden Yuki, a 13 year old boy who enrols in duel academy, and who over the course of the series shows that he is at least as talented at Duel Monsters as Yugi Moto and Seto Kaiba. Jaden (as well as most of the main characters as it turns out over the course of the series) has the ability to see "Duel Spirits", a concept introduced in the original series and built upon in this series, becoming a very important plot point from about half way through series 2 onwards.

Secondary characters include:-
Chazz, Jadens main rival and secondary protagonist throughout most of the series, who later comes to be a friend of Jaden (in a similar way to how Yugi and Kaiba held a grudging respect for each other throughout the original series).
Cyrus, Jadens best friend, whose dueling skills are overshadowed by his older brother, but who manages to prove himself time and again (similar in some respects to Joey from the original series).
Dr. Crowler, the head of the "Obelisk Blue" dormitory who takes an instant dislike to Jaden, but whom later is forced to admit he holds a begrudging respect for Jaden and his skills (Dr. Crowler is roughly analogous to "Professor Snape" from Harry Potter, insofar as he is initially an elitist antagonist, but later becomes something of an ally to the protagonists)
Alexis, A female duelist and member of Obelisk Blue, although unlike most members of that Dorm, she is not elitist. She spends most of series 1 searching for her lost bother Atticus, but thereafter is relegated to being a "bit part" tertiary character.
Hassleberry, Introduced at the beginning of series 2, and initially being somewhat of an enemy to Jaden, Hassleberry is an aspiring soldier with an interest in dinosaurs, who ends up being won over by Jadens fun loving attitude.
Aster, Introduced along with Hassleberry in series 2, Aster is a professional duelist who arrives at Duel Academy on a secret mission to take down Jaden (which forms an important part of series 2s story arc), however he discovers that he has been manipulated the two become firm friends and team up to fight that series' bad guy.

Initially, the series is played more for laughs than anything else, and includes numerous instances of characters "breaking the fourth wall" and making various pop culture references (films referenced include "Ferris Beullers Day Off", "Return of The Living Dead", "Hellraiser", "Beverley Hills Cop" and many more) , however as the series goes on, the laughs become fewer as the main storylines become much darker and more "anime" in tone, but the series still retains much of its humourous content. 
In addition to this, the series generally features one main story arc, divided into two chapters per season, with the first chapter acting as a "set up" for the finale.

Series 1 - Jaden at Duel Academy/The Sacred Beasts.
Jaden settles in at Duel Academy, making friends and enemies along the way. Then a mysterious group of duelists known as "The Shadow Riders" arrive and Jadens group of friends are called upon to stop them from aquiring the three "Sacred Beast"cards, which are basically evil versions of the "Egyptian God" cards used in the first series.

Series 2 - The GX Tournament/The Society of Light
Duel Academy is chosen to be the site of the GX tournament, a tournament created to celebrate the tenth aniversary of the infamous "Battle City" tournament hosted by the Kaiba corporation. During the course of the tournament, a clairvoyant duelist known as "Sartorius" begins converting people to his pseudo religion, "The Society of Light", and Jaden, along with his friends and former enemy Aster Phoenix, must stop him from taking over the world.

Series 3 - Hunt for the Rainbow Dragon/The Supreme King
Duel academy finds itself being hurled into one of the alternate dimensions where Duel Spirits are real creatures, and only the power of the mythical Rainbow Dragon card can get them back. Later, Jaden and his friends return to this dimension in search of their missing friend Jesse, and find themselves having to tangle with the forces of the supreme king, as well as the ambitions of Adrian Gecko, a power hungry duelist who wants to be king of his own world. Jaden also finds himself up against an old foe from his childhood who he thought had gone forever.

Series 4 - Old enemies/Graduation (This series has never been dubbed into English)
Jaden returns from the alternate dimension victorious, but as a changed man. Over the course of the series he meets and defeats many of his old enemies and finally graduates from Duel Academy, but not before he faces a duel with destiny...against Yugi himself!. 



I personally enjoyed Yu-Gi-Oh GX, initially I thought I wouldn't like it due to hearing bad things on the grape vine, but, the humourous content, combined with the fast paced and more coherent storylines (compared with the original series' first season) and interesting characters won me over in the end.

Batman: Arkham Origins (2013)

Ahh, theres always something nice about popping a copy of the latest "Arkham" game into the old XboX and then spending hideous amounts of time beating random people up, just so I have an excuse to say "I'm Batmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan" after they've all been beaten to a pulp.

So having immensely enjoyed "Arkham Asylum" and "Arkham City", it was a no brainer when "Arkham Origins" came out. Now, I may not have gotten it on release day like I had planned to, due to the job I had at the time thinking it was ok to employ people to work a 60 hour week for subsistence wages, with no breaks, meal time, holiday time etc etc, so the Bat didn't a come calling to my Xbox until my birthday in December, but, was it worth the wait?...well, yes and no.

First impressions upon starting the game were generally favourable, the control system was pretty much the same as the previous two entries, the game mechanics and sandbox environment made for good non linear playability, with no nasty "forced" action turning up when you're not ready for it, and the storyline was interesting enough to make it worth not skipping cut scenes. In addition, the side missions added the extra level of play time that I had gotten used to from the previous entries.
There were however some problems, but I will address those later..

The plot itself isn't too bad, albeit not as immersive as the previous games, in a nutshell, five years before the events of "Arkham asylum", on Christmas eve, the villain Black Mask places a bounty of $50 million on Batmans head. Batman, who at this point in time is still fairly new to the superhero game, finds himself being assailed by numerous deadly assassins in the form of Deathstroke, Deadshot, Copperhead, Electrocutioner, Shiva and Bane, as well as having to deal with the up and coming crime boss Oswald Cobblepot (who has taken to giving away free automatic weapons to Gothams street punks), and a mass breakout of prisoners form the nearby Blackgate prison, then to add final insult to injury, Batman finds himself having to deal with the shadowy high tech blackmailer known as "Enigma", the rebellious terrorist "Anarky", and a new villain who goes by the name "Joker".
Aided in his very busy night by Alfred and Barbara Gordon, Batman has to put a stop to all the criminal shenannigans and convince the mostly corrupt Gotham City Police that hes only trying to help.

Right, so, as I have said,  the game plays pretty much identical to the previous games, and as such, the problems I had with them have been carried over to this game..

• Over/Under responsive and unforgiving controls - The combat system is fairly straight forward, hitting the X, Y and B buttons makes Batman launch a flurry of punches, kicks, throws and so on, then comboing them with the A, Lt and Rt buttons allows use of gadgets, combos, beatdown and takedown moves. This is all fine, however the games extensive "freeflow" combat system places a massive emphasis on keeping the flow of combat moving continuously in order to rack up the XP bonuses and to increase damage from attacks, which would be fine if it were not for the fact that it is ridiculously easy to lose control of the combat due to it being so quick and intensive, especially so when you have  a couple of shield or knife wielding thugs backed up by armoured brutes or Venom supercharged gorilla thugs thrown in there for good measure. Quite often I find ill be in the middle of a 50 odd hit combo, only to find that Batman will fail to jump in the direction I'm pointing him in to attack someone, and will instead just stand still and throw a punch at thin air, or, more worse, will fail to counter an attack aimed at him while I'm mashing the counter button in the correct direction at the right time. Missing the timing quite often leads to the Dark Night getting his head caved in.
• Playtime - From start to finish, the main storyline took me about 10-12 hours of play, and, at the time of writing, I'm about 90% of the way through picking up the side mission stuff and finishing all the "Dark Knight" side objectives. Thus far ive spent about 20 or so hours total on the game and have pretty much completed all the "standard" stuff, seems a bit short to me.
• Replay - Ok, so completing the story mode unlocks the "New Game Plus" mode, which is basically a second play through of the main story, just harder due to no on screen prompts and more bad guys. The side missions this time round though are pretty easy, the Enigma data gathering is MUCH easier than the Riddler challenges of the previous two games, and the other most wanted side missions generally consist of beating somebody or a group of somebodies up. That said though, the crime scene reconstruction missions are pretty interesting, although they too end in you having to find someone and beat them up.

I dunno, although I do like this game, it is the weakest of the trilogy, basically being little more than the "Arkham" series' answer to "Batman Begins". Its storyline, although good, is nothing compared to the others, insofar as it seems fairly bland by comparison.
Also, large sections of the game world are almost identical copies of locations found in "Arkham City", which ok, fair enough, it is supposed to be the same location, but to me this seems lazy, as literally some of the areas are carbon copies from the previous game.
Finally, a lot of the games achievments are gotten from online play, and a hell of a lot of time is spent on promoting DLC and multiplayer content *sigh*

So all in all, "Batman: Arkham Origins" isnt bad, its not great either, and could have been tons better.

7 out of 10 broken noses.
 

Film Review:- The Car (1977)

"The Car" is a 1977 horror/thriller film, playing on the myth of "the devils rider", which has popped up before in various forms of storytelling since the middle ages.

Set in a backwater town named "Santa Ynez" in Utah, the films plot revolves around the sudden appearance of a mysterious black car which kills several people by running them over.
Local policeman Captain Wade Parent ( James Brolin ) tries to solve the mystery, which at first the police put down to the work of a maniac, however as the film pans out, it turns out to be a much more sinister threat than a simple psycho murderer. The film also stars a very young looking Ronny Cox as a bible thumping deputy who struggles with alcoholism, as well as a whole host of other people who I've never heard of.


The film itself was poorly received by critics on first release, citing bad acting, poor scripting and dodgy effects (even though there arent many effects on show in this film, and even then the quality of them isnt bad compared to some films of the time with much larger budgets ).
Over time though, this film has gathered a bit of a cult following, and I have yet to see many examples of other films like it, save for the awful "Maximum Overdrive", which is a shame really because its a really good basic idea for a storyline.

On a side note, the Car featured in the film was a prop created especially for this film by famed Hollywood car mod guru George Barris, and when you first see it it really does look menacing, although the film uses the old 50's B movie cliche of keeping the audience from seeing the bad guy/monster in full until half way through the story.

Nonetheless, despite its original critics moaning about crap acting and campiness, "The Car" is a pretty good no brainer watch, although I'd hardly refer to it as a "horror" film now, but still its a good way of spending 90 minutes watching some good, old fashioned honest entertainment without any hidden subtexts  etc.

I give it 3 skid marks out of 5