Jurassic World (2015)

"Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond. After 10 years of operation and visitor rates declining, in order to fulfill a corporate mandate, a new attraction is created to re-spark visitor's interest, which backfires horribly."

I remember way back in the far distant past of 1993 that I was sixth in a queue of eager moviegoers over a mile long which ran all the way down the street from the cinema, past a park, and over a bridge. The original "Jurassic Park" was so hyped that the world went a little bit crazy that opening weekend for dinosaurs, and I'm proud to admit that I was part of the insanity. I may have been too old for it, but I still bought the action figures, books, and anything else labelled with the "Jurassic Park" brand.

Twenty-two years later, nothing seems to have changed apart from the age of the original audience. With box office takings of over $551 million so far, "Jurassic World" has become an unprecedented success for a third sequel, but it's not only due to my generation's nostalgia.

Dinosaurs have and always will be one of the biggest draws for audiences of all ages. Everyone loves dinosaurs! Stick a dinosaur in a movie and it's almost guaranteed money in the bank. A couple of dud sequels in the "Jurassic Park" series have done nothing to diminish the yearning to see more of the same.

Velociraptors and motorcycles are cool.

Since I'm trying to be not my seemingly negative and jaded self, let me just interject the obvious fact that "Jurassic World" is a PG-13 Summer movie meant for little kids and family audiences. As such, it's no better or worse than any other movie released to get asses on seats for money this year, and it's full of all the spectacle that you would imagine.

Unfortunately, "Jurassic World" is overlong at 124 minutes, and it often suffers both from lag and unsympathetic characters. In fact, the action doesn't even get going until around an hour in, so if you haven't seen it yet, you can arrive late and not miss anything very important. Apart from a load of exposition and crowd scenes of visitors to the new Jurassic theme park, the CGI dinosaurs mostly mill around aimlessly and aren't nearly as impressive or groundbreaking as in the original.

Chris Pratt plays an ex-marine who has semi-trained a bunch of velociraptors in one of many "Chekhov's Gun" tropes which predictably play out later on in the story. As the most charismatic actor in "Jurassic World", he tends to steal the show, especially from the younger actors who are more or less forgetten during the second-half.

Bryce Dallas Howard provides some corporate eye-candy with a heart, but minor characters and the other co-stars tend to remain minor and one-dimensional with no surprises or chemistry whatsoever. Having none of the original "Jurassic Park" cast members even in cameos, "Jurassic World" appears to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater for the sake of making everything "new".

And now for some SPOILERS. Stop reading here if you don't want to know!

Imodium Rex will scare the shit out of you.

SPOILERS

The best part of "Jurassic World" is undoubtedly a death scene at the 80 minute mark which almost rivals the opening sequence of "Jaws" (1975) in terms of excitement. Yes, it's the one with the aquatic Mosasaurus which is heavily featured in the marketing. Being CGI and rated PG-13, all the deaths are quite bloodless, but this one is rather good despite those limitations.

All the predictable fights ensue, and the Pterodactyls or Pteranodons which are a big part of Michael Crichton's novel are nicely used. Fans of flying reptiles will be pleased.

Obviously, the biggest thing in "Jurassic World" is the much touted super-dinosaur which is called Imodium Rex or something similar made-up for the sake of it. There's no great educational exploration of dinosaurs or any apparent scientific accuracy here, but the story works as a fantasy-adventure for the intended audience.

END OF SPOILERS

Overall, there's nothing really to hate in "Jurassic World", but there's not a lot that most people haven't already seen before, either in the previous "Jurassic Park" movies or clones. A few "in-jokes" and homages don't detract from the considerable retreading of the same ground as "Jurassic Park", but they don't add anything new or memorable either.

If you just want to relax, switch off most of your analytical brain functions, and enjoy a kids' movie (or have a family to take with you), you won't go wrong by choosing "Jurassic World" over the other theatrical offerings this month.

Including nods to similar scenes at the end of "Jurassic Park", this love letter to the fans (both young and old) is a worthy finale, but it will cause déjà vu.

Rewind This! (2013)

"Home video changed the world. The cultural and historical impact of the VHS tape was enormous. This film traces the ripples of that impact by examining the myriad aspects of society that were altered by the creation of videotape."

Even though this documentary's director, Josh Johnson, has been gobbing-off and exaggerating about how I called him "creepy" for being yet another two-day follower on Twitter who appeared on my followers list, said nothing to me ever, and then unfollowed me just because I didn't follow him back simply for existing, I'm not Harry Knowles and will give "Rewind This!" a fair review. Yes, Josh, I know you'll read this and report back to your new clique of pretend friends, so enjoy your time here!

For what it is, "Rewind This!" is an informative yet somewhat repetitive history of VHS. Interviews with several celebrities in the horror movie industry including Charles Band, Lloyd Kaufman, Frank Henenlotter, and Cassandra Peterson are mixed with nutty independent filmmakers and VHS collectors to good effect, but there are too many big names missing for it to be the "definitive" documentary on the subject. That tagline in the trailer has a Hell of a lot wrong with it!

Where's Paul from VHScollector.com or any of the other YouTube collectors such as KandJhorrordotcom? They aren't in this anywhere, but one of the last "mom and pop" video stores and some amusing sadsack who gleefully films no-budget camcorder movies for his own amusement take up a good chunk of time which would have been better spent on interviewing more collectors. Why do that when what people really want to see is the tapes themselves, the novelty big boxes, and a more indepth look at how all the different distribution companies came and went? Where's the advice for new collectors from old collectors? And how can you let someone who stacks her tapes sideways by colour pass by without comment on her incorrect way of storing them? Arrrgh!

Unlike the maker of this documentary, I was alive before VHS tapes existed and can enthuse a lot more about how they revolutionised the way we all viewed movies. These "90s kid" filmmakers are so spoiled by modern technology that they don't even know they were born! Sadly, it shows in such superficial presentations because of the lack of real life experience and research. Information such as how the Betamax phase was over before it began in Britain, or that PAL VHS rental boxes (in two different sizes depending on whether they were ex-rentals or sell-through) were plastic rather than the cardboard crap which the American NTSC tapes came in isn't even mentioned! I know you can't include everything, but that's exceptionally lazy considering that I know Josh regularly talks to a certain English VHS blogger on Twitter!

Overall, I enjoyed the nostalgic interviews with the celebrities, but learnt precious little about the collectors or what they had in their collections. I got some entertainment but no joy out of "Rewind This!"; it gave me no incitement or renewed enthusiasm to start collecting again, and I actually felt quite alienated by its Americanness. There's also far too much emphasis on business in what appears to be an attempt to discredit the innovators for their opportunist capitalism, but maybe that's just how I naturally read things negatively. In fairness, I've also seen infinitely more famous people disgrace themselves on YouTube once the smoke and mirrors are gone.

Thus, I came away from "Rewind This!" feeling like there's a much bigger story to be told, and there is. Fortunately, another documentary called "Adjust Your Tracking" is coming soon which promises to be better. It's still too early to tell whether either will be the "definitive" documentary about VHS, but collectors will probably buy both anyway.

Worth a rental.

The Conjuring (2013)

"Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse. Forced to confront a powerful entity, the Warrens find themselves caught in the most terrifying case of their lives."

I've finally done it! I may be two weeks behind everyone else in the world, but I've now seen "The Conjuring"! I even managed to avoid all the spoilers on Twitter and Facebook beforehand, which wasn't easy considering how overhyped this movie has been.

Supposedly based on a previously unpublished case file from paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who I've never actually heard of before, "The Conjuring" starts off like an episode of "Friday the 13th: The Series", turns into a clone of "The Amityville Horror" for an hour, and ends up as a twenty minute version of "The Exorcist". As you can imagine, I was not impressed.

In fact, I was so disappointed with "The Conjuring" that I was tempted to only write the following for my review:

BORING CRAP!

If someone perusing the aisles next to me in a DVD store were to ask me what I thought of "The Conjuring", those two words would be the most honest initial reaction I could come up with other than adding whichever choice expletive I might deem appropriate to the situation. I'm not saying that this has happened, although it certainly has done with other James Wan movies in the past, and the response of the person asking has also been equally negative. I'm sure that similar conversations have transpired between other people in various locations.

Maybe I live in my own sheltered little bubble where everyone shares the same good taste, but I've never known of a director other than James Wan whose movies are so consistently underwhelming apart from Christopher Nolan. Even Zack Snyder has double the amount of good movies on his résumé. I'm not going to acknowledge Dario Argento, Uwe Boll, Lloyd Kaufman, or Ulli Lommel because, let's face it, all their movies are guaranteed to be crap from the get-go.

A metaphor just waiting to happen.

The reasons why "The Conjuring" is such boring crap are very easy to list. For a start, the story is unoriginal and clichéd, and it's a messy fusion of far better films that came out over 30 to 40 years ago. We've seen it all before ad nauseum. "The Conjuring" brings nothing new to the table and doesn't even present what it has got in an entertaining manner for adults.

Thus, the second huge problem with "The Conjuring" is that it might as well be a PG-13. How and why it got an R-rating is beyond my comprehension. There's no nudity, no swearing, no sex scenes, no gore, and it's not scary in any way. So how the Hell did it get rated as an R? "R for Rubbish" is my assessment although I'm betting on failed bait and switch shenanigans behind the scenes with the MPAA just to get asses on seats in the movie theatres.

The big giveaway that the target audience was initially meant to be braindead teenagers is the amount of grammatical errors in the script. Both Lorraine and Ed get away with saying "hung" instead of "hanged" without anyone correcting them, and if that's not bad enough, there's Ed's immortal triple-negative, "We ain't never seen nothing like this!" which you can see in the trailer along with all the other "good bits". The terrible dialogue is almost as bad as the "I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do" line in the shitty "Evil Dead" remake. No wonder the mumble-mouthed younger generation are the way they are!

Thirdly, there's no characterisation whatsoever. I couldn't tell you the names of any of the characters even though they were given, what they might be interested in other than ghost hunting or being the victims of a demonic haunting, or any details that would make them more than two-dimensional. The best I can come up with is that "The Conjuring" stars Patrick Wilson with sideburns, Vera Farmiga looking far more beautiful than I've ever seen her look before, the Peter guy from "Office Space", the plain-looking girl who played Nell in "The Haunting" remake whose name I always forget, and a bunch of other people who I've never heard of poncing about in a badly maintained American house. If you think I'm joking, try telling me the names of the family members without looking them up on the IMDb. While you are at it, what are the names of the cop or the Warren's assistant? No idea? Case proven.

Without characterisation, what's the point of a horror movie? If you can't identify with the protagonists, empathising with their situation and feeling the catharsis when it's resolved is completely lost, isn't it? Or is this something that kids today just don't care about? As much as anyone born after 1989 is likely to be a complete moron in my estimation anyway, there are exceptions who must have left the cinema as disappointed as us older guys. Even the ones who only went to see some scary effects must have felt cheated of their $10.

Vera Farmiga is so hot in her granny clothes!

I wish I could find something good to say about "The Conjuring", but it's a typical James Wan movie. There are a couple of overloud jump scares which don't work, the usual creepy dolls which aren't creepy at all, some guy in a latex witch mask which is supposed to be scary, horrible shaky camerawork (but with lots of zooming this time just to be very '70s!), irritating child actors, poor CGI effects, plotholes everywhere, no atmosphere, no tension, total chaos at the end with a lame resolution, and nothing original whatsoever. The tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of Blumhouse Productions' formulaic style of composition when the family mentions birds hitting their house (as in "Dark Skies") is realised when the birds repeat their kamikaze attack near the end, but you can't make in-jokes like that when you do the same damned thing yourself!!!

I suppose the period setting in 1970s America is well done, but that's not exactly a difficult thing to achieve. Apart from the cars, America looks much the same as it has done since the 1920s when it comes to the crappy wooden sheds which people jokingly refer to as houses. Every house in my town looks like the one in "The Conjuring" only in an even worse state of disrepair! Forget nostalgia, these firetraps need to be knocked down and replaced with some proper bricks and mortar! I'm sure that I've mentioned that several time before on this blog though.

I'm not happy about James Wan using a cover version of "Sleepwalk" with lyrics either. The original Santo & Johnny instrumental from 1959 which is such a signature feature of Stephen King's "Sleepwalkers" (1992) just doesn't belong anywhere else! The guitars in "Sleepwalk" even sound like cats meowing for God's sake! But, in spite of having a witch in the story, there are no cats in "The Conjuring"! There's a collie dog called Sadie who meets her maker off camera, but no cats! Oh, that makes me so angry!

The word on the street is that James Wan is giving up horror movies now to make the next homoerotic installment in "The Fast and the Furious" franchise. I wish him the best of luck, but after "The Conjuring", I can't say that he will be missed.

My Top Ten Most Traumatising Kids' TV Shows

I'm not sure if it's because of my recent scathing review of "Brazil", my "Ghost Stories for Christmas" series, or that I published a guest post, but I've lost three blog followers in the last week. I know that I'm not the greatest writer in the world, but give me a break here! At least I'm trying to come up with something in the midst of the horror famine.

As much as I loathe trips to nostalgia-land even during this traditional time for reflection, and I don't want to compete with Kindertrauma which does it so much better, I know how you all love top ten lists, so here's something I knocked up as a bit of fun. Christmas is for kids anyway, but traumatising them is something that can be done all year long.


1. Doctor Who (1963-present)

I'm too old now to be scared by any of the current "Doctor Who" monsters, but there are still several of them which I wouldn't want to meet down a dark alley. When I was a child, it was a different story. I was absolutely terrified of the Cybermen for some reason, I think it has more to do with what is involved in their creation than their really cool appearance, but I do remember an episode where Adric's gold star was crushed into the respirator of one of them which gave me the heebies all the way through. Sontarans, Davros, and even the Master (when he was all bubbly and rotting) also gave me enough reasons to soil myself. To this day, anyone unfortunate enough to look a bit squishy in real life just creeps me out.


2. Rupert the Bear (1969)

The whole thing was just weird, but the little birdy-creature called Raggety used to freak me right out especially when just its head appeared during the opening titles. This and the lenticular World Wildlife Fund card I had of an aye-aye made me wet the bed more than once.


3. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967)

Puppets are scary anyway, but don't go thinking that it was the "supermarionation" or even the zombified Captain Black who upset me. No, it was the voice of the Mysterons at the beginning which had me screaming like a 3 year old. It was probably a good job that I was a 3 year old at the time or I would have been really embarrassed. I wasn't even born when this was made, so damn you ITV for showing re-runs!


4. Chorlton and the Wheelies (1976)

Fenella the Welsh witch. 'Nuff said. Looking back on it, I think the whole thing was dodgy, and I still don't know what the Hell was going on in any of the episodes. Surrealism and talking dog-things bother me. I think Chorlton was supposed to be a dragon, but it's hard to tell when you are crying with fear.


5. The Feathered Serpent (1976)

I have no idea what this ITV drama was about other than Aztecs because I never made it through the opening sequence with all the screaming and skulls to be able to find out. I'll have to watch it eventually because now I know that Diane Keen was in it, and I had a huge crush on her.


6. Worzel Gummidge (1979)

Given his appearance, you would think that a living scarecrow was the most terrifying thing possible, but I liked Jon Pertwee and didn't find him scary at all. Much more sinister was The Crowman played by Geoffrey Bayldon who looked like a Victorian undertaker. I couldn't even bring myself to lust over Una Stubbs as Aunt Sally if The Crowman appeared in an episode.


7. Charley Says (1970)

As a Public Information Film, "Charley Says" was supposed to put the fear of God into kids anyway, but what really horrified me was the little boy, his scratchy voice, and... ugh... the terrible things which happened to Charley the cat.


8. Lonely Water (1973)

Another often repeated Public Information Film which you just have to watch on YouTube at some point to understand the trauma that it caused a whole generation. The combination of a menacing black-robed figure and the chilling voiceover from Donald Pleasence made sure that kids never went near water again. Yes, we all stunk!


9. The Ghosts of Motley Hall (1976)

I know it was meant to be a comedy, but the opening titles and music set the scene for something potentially a lot worse than Arthur English's jokes.


10. Kinder (1980)

Finally, not a TV show but a commercial that used to appear when people least expected it. Even though I was old enough to not be terrified, I'm sure the Humpty Dumpty from the Kinder Surprise adverts damaged some people. I used to do impersonations of "The Kinder Man" at school because I thought it was cool. Maybe it was my way of compensating since he was almost a Sontaran.


What did you see on TV that freaked you out when you were a kid?

King of the Castle (1977)

There are some TV programmes from my childhood which I thought I'd only imagined even though I fondly remembered important parts of them. On the other hand, there are quite a few which I wish really did only exist in my imagination because watching them as an adult makes me cringe. HTV's "King of the Castle" has a foot in both camps because, having spent a few hours today rewatching it, it's not something that I ever want to see again.

If you've never heard of "King of the Castle", here's the blurb from Amazon:

Macabre, fantastical and a benchmark production for children's television in the 1970s, King of the Castle was created by Doctor Who stalwarts Bob Baker and Dave Martin as one of the run of outstanding children's dramas HTV produced in that decade. Featuring strong direction and a script which expertly melds fantasy and reality, the series boasts solid performances from genre stalwarts Fulton Mackay, Milton Johns and Talfryn Thomas as well as Philip Da Costa as the series' hero, Roland. One of the most memorable television series of the '70s is available here, for the very first time in any video format. Episode three no longer exists in the archive in any format and the version included on this set is taken from an off-air VHS.

I'm not sure what I was looking for on YouTube when I discovered that the whole "King of the Castle' series had been uploaded by several people, but I was in one of those moods where I randomly click on the recommended videos until I end up watching some very strange channels indeed. Before I found "King of the Castle", I'd been watching highly embarrassing episodes of "Grange Hill", "Chocky" and "The Tomorrow People" and feeling dirty about doing so. If there's anyone of a similar age to me who didn't see at least one of those when they were originally shown then they probably didn't have a television.

Since I didn't recognise the title of "King of the Castle", all I remembered from the series to identify it was that the kid who got beaten up by bullies had a model kit of Frankenstein's monster, and somehow he ended up in a dungeon ruled by some ratty-looking guy who told him to always go up if he wanted to escape. What I'd forgotten was how the story was filled with clever socio-political subtext and commentary which I'm ashamed to say that I still don't quite understand even as an adult.

The big messages of the fantasy part of "King of the Castle" are apparently that work is pointless, comfort and ignorance is bliss, and there's too much bureaucracy in the world. There's a lot of Oedipal stuff going on too whereby the hero, Roland, has to take his father's role by force and has a crush of some kind on his stepmother. The latter doesn't surprise me in the slightest since Angela Richards, who plays the dual role of June and the Lady, is absolutely gorgeous.

Very recognisable faces include Fulton Mackay (the prison officer from "Porridge") as a Frankenstein-style scientist, Milton Johns as his monster, creepy Talfryn Thomas as the ratty-looking caretaker, and Jamie Foreman (who now plays Derek Branning in "Eastenders") as Ripper the bully. Bizarrely, I didn't recognise the lead, Philip Da Costa, as being the same guy who went on to play Jackson in "Scum" (1979).

In spite of the badly-timed, obviously stagey acting, and cheap sets which look better than the cardboard and curtains that they are really made of, "King of the Castle" isn't a bad piece of kids' entertainment for the time. Unfortunately, as a grown-up, I can see that it's really just a slightly darker, and very British, rip-off of "The Wizard of Oz" with the genders of the protagonists changed. Both nostos stories go back to Homer's "The Odyssey" anyway, but let's not get too highbrow about them.

One thing which really irritated me, perhaps because I've been away from Britain for so long, was the choirboy singing the "I'm the king of the castle, and you're a dirty rascal" theme tune which is full of the mispronounced "Estuary English" which I despise. It sounds like "I'm the king of the CARsul, and you're a dirty RARscul". Ugh. I hate that and "BARth" instead of "bath", "GLARss" instead of "glass", and the "someFINK" instead of "something" which even Gordon Ramsay has fallen prey too. I've always noticed it, but maybe it doesn't show up so much when you are constantly surrounded by it or you're a bit thick.

I don't recommend "King of the Castle" although I've embedded it as a playlist at the top of this post. It's not an accurate reflection of life in Britain in the late 1970s or anything, and it's certainly not scary for anyone over 7 years old. If you are into nostalgia, it's interesting to see a "Hammer Horror" magazine and a "Howard the Duck" comic at one point, but that's about it really.

Isn't it funny what you can find on YouTube when you are looking for something else? If only I could remember the name of that weird poltergeist story with a load of cushions flying around a room which I caught the last five minutes of. Whatever it was that left the image of someone tied to a chair with a washing line and a bottle of Sarson's malt vinegar stuck in their mouth is another matter.

Hearts and Armour (1983)

"Bradamante, a woman wearing an invincible suit of armour, is travelling the countryside at the time of the Crusades. After ending up in the middle of a web of romantic and cultural tangles, she finds herself in love with a Moor prince, while one of the Christian knights has fallen in love with a Moor princess. Others, however, are against the cross-cultural romance, and Bradamante's love is soon forced into a duel to the death. Will she ever be with her true love?"

Do you remember "Hearts and Armour" from the '80s? No? Nor do I much except that it was the second VHS tape that I ever bought after "Flesh + Blood" (1985). I'd never heard of it before, but the original VHS artwork looked similar so that was enough for me. I practically threw my pocket money at the guy in Blockbuster and ran home thinking that I'd found treasure.

Of course, once I put in in my VCR, I was very disappointed. Although "Hearts and Armour" promised lots of former "Charlie's Angels" star Tanya Roberts (who shows more than she ought to if you watch carefully), I wasn't so keen on Barbara De Rossi, the terrible dubbing, or the really jarring editing. Allegedly, "Hearts and Armour" was cut down from an Italian miniseries, but I've found no real evidence of that. Basically, it was a cheap piece of trash designed to cash in on "Excalibur" (1981).

Nearly thirty years on, I can't say that I've grown to love "Hearts and Armour". It's still horrible, Bradamante (Barbara De Rossi) looks very uncomfortable in her suit of armour, and the fight scenes are ridiculous. There are some nice gory bits with dismembered limbs flying about in the battles, but this isn't really my kind of thing at all. As much as I can appreciate the work that went into making the costumes as historically (in)accurate as possible, I couldn't care less about the Crusades.

Barbara De Rossi also played Helietta Canins in "Vampire in Venice" (1988) which is the sequel to the terrible remake of "Nosferatu" starring Klaus Kinski. That's much more my cup of tea although I can't honestly say that she's any better in it than in this. Let's face it, she was cast in these movies because of how she looks rather than for any other reason. Strangely, I don't have any problem with that at all. Barbara De Rossi was quite the hottie back in the day.

Because I don't pay attention to crap, I can't tell you who played any of the knights in "Hearts and Armour" except by grabbing their names from the IMDb. Ronn Moss plays Ruggero (the pony-tailed object of Bradamante's affections), Rick Edwards is Orlando, and Maurizio Nichetti is the scruffy, little magician called Atalante. As for the others, who cares? It's not like they've ever been in anything else anyway.

The cinematography isn't bad despite attempts to ruin it with the panned-and-scanned VHS transfer (as yet there is no DVD available), but the acting is so dreadful and the pacing so slow that the overall atmosphere is one of boredom rather than excitement. I nodded off several times during the epic ordeal of trying to rewatch "Hearts and Armour" and even had to have a proper sleep before my numbed brain would allow me to complete it.

Unintentional laughs are created by the pompousness of the dialogue and the inclusion of a Samurai warrior for no good reason at all other than he's another kind of sword-fighter. Some of the action scenes do indeed liven things up for a few seconds, but "Hearts and Armour" even makes the "Deathstalker" sequels look good in comparison.

If you've never seen "Hearts and Armour", I'm not going to recommend it to you. Just knowing that something this awful exists should be enough to satisfy your curiosity.

Deathstalker (1983)

"The warrior Deathstalker is tasked by an old witch lady to obtain and unite the three powers of creation - a chalice, an amulet, and a sword - lest the evil magician Munkar get them and use them for nefarious purposes."

Filled with a plethora of monsters, boobs, blood, decapitations, and no acting ability whatsoever, "Deathstalker" marks the beginning of my new "Fantasy Friday" series in a way that no other '80s sword and sorcery adventure ever could.

There's certainly no other which co-stars Richard Brooker, the third actor to play Jason Voorhees in the "Friday the 13th" series, and the first Jason actor to wear the hockey mask. Did you really think that I would choose a movie which had no association with horror on my blog? Shame on you. Richard Brooker is also very British so that's another good reason to mention him although it's Rick Hill who plays the lead role of Deathstalker.

I was never a huge fan of the "fantasy" genre, but there were some titles which had to be watched back in the day simply because they came from the same Roger Corman stable as a lot of horror flicks. The awesome "Deathstalker" poster was also so proudly displayed by my local video store that I just had to rent the VHS tape to see if anything on it remotely resembled what the artwork suggested. It didn't really, but I was too young to understand why. God help me, I even looked forward to the sequels as they came out over the years.

Obviously, "Deathstalker" is an even lower-budget clone of "Conan the Barbarian" with lots of manly posturing, surprisingly well-choreographed swordplay, and hardly enough plot to keep it going for an hour and a quarter, but what more do you expect from any B-movie apart from cheap entertainment? If you want gratuitous nudity, hot chicks, or just some weirdly homoerotic costumes and a bizarre, magical sex-change, "Deathstalker" has it all. There are some nice gory bits dotted around too.

I'm not going to go into any great detail about the story because it won't stand up to any serious critique. Instead, I've embedded the full movie at the top of this post for you to enjoy.

Let me know what you think of "Deathstalker" in the comments section below.

The Ghosts of Motley Hall (1976-1978)

"The series relates the adventures of 5 ghosts who haunt Motley Hall. Each ghost is from a different era and all with the exception of Matt are unable to leave the confines of the building and Matt himself is unable to travel outside the grounds of the Hall."

I just thought I'd post this little piece of nostalgia from my childhood up as I'm sure that there are some people who have never even heard of "The Ghosts of Motley Hall".

It used to be on ITV on Sunday afternoons when I was far too young to really understand it but I watched it anyway. I think it must have helped to warp me into what I am today.

Some of you may recognise Arthur English as Bodkin since he was also in "Are You Being Served" which appears to have a huge American following for reasons which I can't quite fathom. Maybe it's all about Molly Sugden's use of the word "Pussy" and the hilarity which ensues.

Freddie Jones was another very recognisable face from films and TV, but the real big player was Sheila Steafel in the role of The White Lady. I honestly can't even tell today if she was actually pretty or just pretty scary but, either way, she was my favourite character in the series.

I didn't like any of the other actors particularly and absolutely hated the stableboy, Matt, for possibly no other reason than his Northern accent. Being a Southerner tended to create that prejudice in England and I've never really got over it.

Anyway, since some kind soul has uploaded all the episodes of "The Ghosts of Motley Hall" onto YouTube, there's quite a lot there to entertain you should you be in the mood for some rather juvenile British comedy.

The scenario is much like "Beetlejuice" (without the titular character) and even more like a comedic version of "American Horror Story" if you think about it. I wonder if either of those productions was inspired by this one?

Stuff I wish that I had owned at the time

Since I'm getting a little bit bored with posting nothing but badly written reviews of horror movies all day, here's something completely random which I'd rather talk about instead.

A while ago I started collecting old minidisc players even though I've already got several mp3 players which I hardly use. I even bought two of the same kind because I liked the design so much and they were cheap.

It's total madness and I blame reading the "Night Watch" books by Sergei Lukyanenko for all of it. I never actually owned a minidisc player when they were popular but the hero of the books and films, Anton Gorodetsky, is all about the minidiscs so I just had to find out what they were like for myself.

In fairness, they aren't bad at all. They sound really good and one AA battery lasts for about 50 hours of continuous play which makes my ipods look pretty crap in comparison.

I've only recorded about 40 minidiscs of my own as the software to do it was slow and annoying. In the end, I just got bored with doing it and with minidiscs in general. Dragging and dropping mp3s is so much more convenient.

Before that I went through a phase of buying ex-military issue Panasonic Toughbook laptops with half the parts missing and getting them to work again. Oh, the fun I had tracking down hard drive caddies, AC adapters and obsolete RAM. Why nobody on ebay could sell a complete one for the $20 that they are actually worth is a mystery to me.

Having to download obscure software to partition the hard drives just so that the stupid things could "hibernate" lead me to forums full of techy geeks doing the same thing. I almost got sucked into their obsession myself but, after a few posts of my own and far too many private messages from the board members trying to sell me their old broken crap, I soon got disillusioned with the whole thing.

The touchscreens on these ridiculously heavy beasts were a novelty but the mouse control was horrible. At least my older cat enjoys one now.

Don't even get me started on the time I was collecting all kinds of horror comics, some of which I've never even removed from their original bags. This was the closest I've ever been to making a complete nerd out of myself and I didn't even really want to read the childish crap in the first place.

The amount of money that I've wasted on things over the years to make myself more disappointed when I found out what they were actually like in the flesh makes me feel disgusted with myself.

Do you ever trawl ebay and fleamarkets looking for things which you wish that you had bought back in the day when they were good but now have absolutely no use for?