It’s time once more to trawl through the nineteen (count ’em!) months worth of letters, and find out whether anyone has said anything a) interesting and b) still relevant as we scream towards the end of . My, some of these letters are so old, they appear to have been written on papyrus… But, wait! Next to a scroll from William the Conqueror asking why I haven’t returned my Domesday form, we find that golden treasure chest which can only be a letter from Andy Collins. In fact, here’s two of them! Sorted — and this way, I don’t have to give him a contributor’s copy…

Andy Collins, October 29th, 1995 — Firstly, I must comment on this. Roswell. Bollocks… now into my third week of the Canterbury College Radio, Film and TV course. A major shock to the system. As suspected, the usual clutch of Eisenstein questions, the pricks in the lecture hall – “Ur, yar, ur, that particular piece of footage had amazing mise en scene, and extrapolated the characters from the objective to the immensely subjective.” Fuck off! Guy in question has been dubbed Schumacher (both of equal popularity)… Apparently, he entered the quiz, and took being a wanker from a mere personality trait to a full-time professional vocation. He is littering the campus with enemies. A Christmas lynching might be in the offing. “Analyse that, you bastard!”

On the whole it has been a very positive move… Impossible to get lost, obviously, as there is a huge, great Landmark, which seems to be giving itself standing ovations every time I look at it, gazing down awesomely at everything beneath it… With a nod to the Vatican, Canterbury Cathedral seems to have amassed quite a coinage (perhaps the law of Tithes is still in effect round these parts!). The clergy all drive top range motors, slowly, through the tourists into the Cathedral grounds. Now, if that is not indicative of what it’s all about…

Autumn…winter…spring…summer. Cue pictures of pages being torn off calendars, clouds across the moon in time-lapse, buds bursting into bloom. And then:

Andy Collins, July 2nd, 1996 — Canterbury has gone all wrong. I feel like I am undergoing Caesarean Section, and am being organically removed from this highly precocious, somnambulistic place. I started here with good intentions – as we do with every endeavour – but mentally and spiritually, this self-delusionary bourgeois pretty-city has suffered crucial disfigurement. And I don’t much like looking at it anymore…

Disappearing for a month to Mexico gave me a beautiful taste of the other-world, the special life that there is out of Britain, away from Trainspotting tide and perverse materialism. Mexico was a magic place — certainly not the garden of Eden or a third world spiritual Mecca, but a total shock to the system. They are a bunch of macho bastards and have enough American products to make them even more corrupted. But the society has a proud stance, and a weird innocence, a great sense of community. Mexico is what you make it…you can mould your experiences accordingly – it’s not set – a country still changing.

Memorable moments, apart from actually being there. A bar manager forgetting himself for a moment, and running after us down the street as we had left due to closing time, apologising for not offering us any drugs… Another bar, in Palenque, near the famous ruins. Apart from trying to get antiseptic cream in a vet’s (I somehow missed the huge picture of a dog), this bar was one of the few places worth visiting. Sleaze has never been so cultivated. There were huge iron grilles over the windows. The drinks were housed in cheap shelving, a little compartment for each bottle. Unbelievably tacky decor assailed my eyes — yeah, the mirrors, small coloured bulbs as the sole illumination (the 10W candle bulbs, that is). Somewhere over towards Hades was the deep blue-lit ‘dance floor’. Empty, of course.

Including the Australian guy my brother and I had hooked up with, there were about seven of us at the bar. The bartender, a cross between the underground club manager in ‘Vamp’ and your worst disco bouncer nightmare, was not so much imposing as infuriating. One would expect such a lack of passion for your work from egg-sorters, or Co-op cashiers. But this man put them to shame. I mean, you felt guilty asking him for a drink. And what drinks! I was surprised, somewhat, not to see an optic or measuring cup. Starting out with a tequila, of course, by pointing and merely saying uno, por favor (what else could I say to Marvin the Bartender) — he plonked a tumbler on the bar and freely poured the spirit in. Not gently, or carefully, but slugged in a hearty measure of brain-damage juice. The quarter of a pint stared at me, as did the large, suspicious Mexicans to my left. And the bartender who wanted paying. I was anticipating a phenomenal ticket, a bastard giant bill for this shot which would have knocked out the Jolly Green Giant.

Ten pesos, he said. Ten, I repeated. Si, ten. One pound for the lot.

Needless to say, two hours later (or around that), I had visited most of the compartments behind the bar, and was clinging on to the wooden structure for dear life. Now, I couldn’t even see the bar tender. Who cares if he’s a miserable fucker! I was trying to crack jokes with him in fractured Spanish and drunken English. The posse of dodgy Mexicans? Fuck ’em! I’ll take them all if it comes to it… Alfonso, the resident piss-head also befriended me. Though this geezer was a little worried. He wasn’t quite sure about my nationality. “American?”, he kept saying, and grinning madly through crooked teeth and deranged mental processes.
“No, no, Inglaterra. England!”
“Ahhhhhhhhh! England that in America?”

By this time, the bar entrance was shut. I could barely move or think. I decided to get some soft drink inside me, a bid for survival. “Coke, por favor”. Well, that was that. Julio practically lunged at me, offering a gram for £30, “good sheeeet!”. Alfonso was still trying to get my nationality out of my other arm, the bartender still doing his impression of an Easter island statue…

Well, if anyone wants to make a bid to knock Andy off his position as reigning TC Heavyweight Letter Champion, you know what to do. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll will enhance your chances of success. As will bribery. Go for it!

Click on the cover to begin browsing. then use the arrows (either on the gallery or your keyboard) to navigate through the issue.

‘Mr. Vampire’ is one of the most enduringly popular of Hong Kong films, still winning fans over more than a decade after its original release. This applies in Britain as well, thanks almost entirely to Channel 4’s screening as part of its ‘Chinese Ghost Stories’ season. Less well known are the myriad of sequels it inspired which have yet to appear on our shores; plus countless spin-offs on a similar theme.

There are two common elements in most of these films: Ricky Lau as the director, and Lam Ching-Ying as the star. The original movie made Lau’s name, and he has since wasted no opportunity to cash in, with three direct sequels as well as other films with titles like ‘Ultimate Vampire’ and (appalling pun alert!) ‘The Vampire Strikes Back’. He’s also directed more straightforward action pics, though the titles of even these seem to resound with supernatural overtones –  ‘Nocturnal Demon’ is actually a straightforward serial killer film. Lau plays to his strengths admirably in the ‘Mr. Vampire’ series, with a restrained use of special effects; the films are firmly rooted in a real world, even if not quite this one. Stunts and action, naturally, play a big part in the series, but they’re never allowed to overshadow the characters, who are far less two-dimensional than in most of their Western genre counterparts. Even in the sequels, while many would happily to ride the same tracks again, Lau pushes the envelope, twisting and modifying the genre further, changing locations and era at will.

Lam Ching-Ying has a long and honourable career, going right back to perhaps the original horror-comedy, ‘Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind’ – even before that, he was a noted stuntman, appearing in ‘Enter the Dragon’ as the main double for Han in the ‘hall of mirrors’ end fight. He’s especially noteworthy for an exceptional screen presence, in his perpetual role as “sifu”, or master. When things go wrong – as they inevitably do – it’s only his knowledge of folklore and legend that save the day, especially when the films are set in the modern day. When this is the case, his major problem is often not the vampires, it’s trying to convince other people to take them seriously. The audience doesn’t have this problem, since Lam Ching Ying projects such a resounding air of authority that whatever he says must be right. Unfortunately, this competence did not extend to his directorial debut, a remake of “The Green Hornet”, which set new record lows at the Hong Kong box-office.

Apart from these two, many other performers who appeared in the first movie returned later in the series: Wu Ma (part 4), Pauline Wong (part 2), Billy Lau (part 3), and even Moon Lee, who appears in both of the first two entries. Though you’d be hard pushed to recognise her, especially in the original film, since it was before the “eye-widening” cosmetic surgery which left her with that trademark and highly distinctive wide-eyed look, like something out of ‘Project A-ko’! You can also spot Sibelle Hu, Yuen Biao and Samo Hung, making the series something of a Golden Harvest All-Stars production.

It’s important to be relaxed about the rules of engagement depicted in these movies, because we’re dealing with something totally unfamiliar. Everyone knows to use garlic & crucifix if dealing with Western vampires, but for their Oriental “blood brothers”, a new set of rules are in play. Some examples:

• a) Vampires can’t see you if you hold your breath…
• b) …or are covered in tar.
• c) If “infected” by a vampire you need blood from it to cure you…
• d) …or maybe sticky rice.
• e) You know someone is possesed if their heels don’t touch the ground.

Ok, fine. Of course, there are some similarities. Vampire corpses don’t decay, their bite will turn you into one, and if anything is attached to them — such as stakes or magic spells –removing them generally rates low on the IQ scale. Not that this stops most of the characters in the Mr. Vampire series, which shows another point of similarity between East and West – regardless of location, participants in all horror movies are inevitably cerebrally challenged!

Mr. Vampire – Lam Ching-Ying, Ricky Hui, Moon Lee, Chin Siu Ho, 1985. This first entry remains a landmark in the genre, and introduces many of the ingredients that recur repeatedly in the series: well-intentioned but bungling assistants, femme fatale spirits, lots of fun poked at authority figures (though I’m not claiming any subtle political subtexts!), and the inevitable “Lock the door and don’t open it whatever happens” gag. Lam is a ‘spiritual advisor’, whose attempts to rebury a corpse go horribly wrong when it turns out to be a vampire. His knowledge lands him in hot water with the constabulary, who suspect him of the murders it commits, and he has to handle both them, and his two assistants, one of whom has been bitten, and the other of whom is trysting with a beautiful lady ghost. The amount of invention on view is impressive, with subplots spiralling away in all directions, though the whole fits together beautifully. Major silliness: lady ghost, with head which can detach itself, grow hedgehog-like hair, and attack independently of her body. B+

Mr. Vampire 2 – Lam Ching-Ying, Yuen Biao, Pauline Wong, Wu Ma, Sibelle Hu, 1985. After the historical stance of the first film, it’s something of a shock to discover the sequel is firmly rooted in the present day. It starts with grave-robbers stealing a “family” of corpses, but before long, the vampire kid has escaped, taking up with a local family. This subplot is strangely reminiscent of ‘ET’, a similarity which is invoked during the inevitable song while the vampire and human kids play together: “You’re ugly but your heart is not. They take you for an E.T.”; fortunately, the child actors are not too unbearable, making it sweet rather than sickly. Meanwhile, mummy and daddy blood-sucker are looking for their son, and Lam Ching Ying turns up as a pharmacist, called in to treat a vampire bite, who realises something is going on. In what has to be an all-time classic euphemism, he isn’t going to kill the vampires, but “help them to an early and successful reincarnation”. Bet they’ll be chuffed. At time of writing rumours suggest this may be shown as part of an imminent second C4 season, so keep an eye out for it (knowing TC schedules, it’s probably already been on by now…). Major silliness: slow-motion fight sequence after vampires and grave-robbers are accidentally dosed with sedative. B

Mr. Vampire 3 – Lam Ching-Ying, Billy Lau, Richard Ng, Lui Fong, 1987. Back in time again, though it’s not immediately obvious for the first 15 minutes. Here, the central character is a Taoist priest who’s got a nice exorcism extortion scam going, thanks to a pair of accomplice spirits who haunt places at his behest, until he exorcises them. Life is fine until he meets honest Taoist Lam Ching Ying who captures the spirits in jars; and adds them to a mega-collection. Their human friend releases them, but also accidentally frees a  less amenable female ghost. In fact, the words “seriously” and “pissed-off” come to mind. This is my least favourite of the films; it fails to provide any new angles or approach; there’s not much here that wasn’t seen in part one. While Lam Ching Ying is his usual forceful self, the other “hero” just can’t quite cut the mustard, being neither interesting nor amusing. It all gets terribly manic, needless to say, but it’s just smoke and no fire, which not even a cameo by producer Samo Hung can save. Major silliness: possession by invisible spirit leads to bout of self-wrestling. D-

Mr. Vampire 4 – Wu Ma, Anthony Chan, Yuen Wah, Chin Kar Lok, Loretta Lee, 1987. Shock! Horror! Probe! No Lam Ching Ying! He was presumably too busy working on one or other of the many Mr Vampire clones in which he appeared, so we get another actor with enormous eyebrows, Wu Ma (anyone know if they’re real, or stunt doubles?). The set-up continues to vary; from the previous entries’ urban setting, we’re now out in the country, with two neighbouring priests, one Buddhist, one Taoist, and their acolytes. The first half of the movie is devoted to their bickering and perpetual attempts to make the other look foolish, which is amusing, although scarcely anything to do with vampires. Things perk up notably in this department later on, when a passing funeral procession spills an especially unpleasant example of the genre. We’re then treated to a spectacular display of physical comedy which, for me at least, makes this the most purely enjoyable of the series. While the ending is a slight cop-out, as far as methods of killing the unkillable goes, this doesn’t detract much from a thoroughly entertaining ninety minutes. Major silliness: a conga-chain of limbo-dancing hopping vampires. A-

After this, the series went into something of a decline, and neither ‘Mr Vampire 1992’, nor ‘New Mr Vampire’, did anything new or remotely interesting. There is, however, one further entry in the genre worthy of comment. While not an official part of the canon, it has been listed on occasion as ‘Mr Vampire 5’ (though some claim ‘Mr Vampire 1992’ is a more likely contender for the title). Its release here, and overall high quality, mean it deserves some consideration:

Magic Cop (dir. Stephen Tung Wai) – Lam Ching-Ying, Wilson Lam, Miu Kiu-Wai, Michiko Nishiwaki, 1989. The film starts with a puzzling case where an arrested criminal is found to have died some time before being arrested. With Mulder and Scully presumably unavailable, Lam Ching Ying, a cop and part-time exorcist from the provinces, is brought to the big city to investigate. After initial disbelief from his partners – rapidly changed after an encounter in a mortuary – he discovers that corpses are being re-animated by sorceress Nishiwaki to act as minions in her crime empire. Viewers may be reminded of ‘Dead Heat’, which took a similar line – though Western policemen had much more trouble coming to terms with the concepts! Nishiwaki delivers another excellent supporting performance (as ‘God of Gamblers’ and ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars’ showed, she can steal a movie with one scene, and she gets a little more here) and provides a fine foil for Lam, who also helped out as action director. Director Tung Wai had himself graduated from that role on ‘A Better Tomorrow’, so it’s no surprise this is perhaps the most effects-laden entry, especially in a spectacular final battle.  Sadly, the version released in this country features some of the most illegible subtitles ever seen, destroying the atmosphere somewhat. Major silliness: magical battle between hero and villainess, using a rather confused cop as an intermediary. B

Lam Ching-Ying Selected Filmography

The following is a list of some of the most important or entertaining entries in Lam Ching-Ying’s long career (a full filmography would be at least twice as long!). Titles in bold are believed to be currently available in this country…somewhere.

• 1980   – Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind
• 1982   – The Dead and the Deadly
                First Mission (cameo)
                Prodigal Son
                Winners and Sinners
• 1985   – Heroes Shed No Tears
                Mr. Vampire
                Mr. Vampire 2
                My Lucky Stars
                Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars
• 1986   – Eastern Condors
                Shanghai Express
• 1987   – Mr. Vampire 3
  |              Ultimate Vampire
• 1988   – I Love Maria  (aka Roboforce)
               Last Eunuch in China
                Painted Faces
                School on Fire
• 1989   – Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2
                Magic Cop (+ action dir.)
                Pedicab Driver
• 1990   – Swordsman
• 1991   – Crazy Safari
                Lover’s Tear (+action dir.)
                Red and Black
                Slickers vs. Killers
• 1992   – Forced Nightmare
                Martial Arts Master Wong Fei Hung
                Mr. Vampire 1992
                Pom Pom + Hot Hot (UK title: Curry & Pepper)
• 1994   – The Chinese Ghostbuster
                The Green Hornet (+dir/prod)

It seems there are times when stupidity is a revered trait rather than a handicap. Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with stupid people. Who else could do the tedious tasks which would send intelligent folks round the twist in an hour? We need people to work in McDonald’s. We need checkout assistants. We need night-club bouncers (ok, strike that last example). If nothing else, they provide amusing clippings for TC… In modem life, idiocy often goes unpunished, people aren’t responsible for the consequences of their actions, and intelligence is no longer cherished, rewarded, or necessary. Back in primitive days, if you were dumb, you died. The stupid didn’t live to pass on their genes to any offspring. Thus, the gradual improvement in humankind, through the slow but steady process of evolution.

Certain individuals still bravely sacrifice themselves for the gene pool. The “Darwin Awards” honour those who do away with themselves in spectacularly stupid ways. This year’s winner came after the Arizona Highway Patrol found a pile of smouldering metal embedded in a cliff above a curve on the road. It looked like a plane crash, but turned out to be a car, though it was impossible to tell what sort until the forensics had been over it. It appears the driver had stuck a Jet Assisted Take Off unit — used by heavy army transport planes taking off from short runways — onto his Chevy Impala, found a stretch of desert road, and put his foot down…

The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 4 miles from the crash site” said the report. If the JATO worked properly, it would have reached maximum thrust in five seconds, causing the Chevy to hit well over 350 mph. The driver, “soon to be a pilot” as the report puts it, would have felt G-forces of the type experienced by dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, “basically causing him to become insignificant for the remainder of the event.” The car remained on the tarmac for 2.5 miles before the driver tried — and completely melted — the brakes, blowing the tyres and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface. It then became airborne for an additional 1.4 miles, hitting the cliff face 125 ft up and leaving a blackened crater 3 ft deep in the rock. Most of the driver’s remains were not recoverable; however small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel…

Winners in the ‘team’ category were the six people, including four from the same family, who drowned when they jumped into a well to save a chicken in South Egypt. According to al-Ahram newspaper, the chicken had fallen into a farmer’s well in the village of Nazlet Emara in Sohag province. The farmer’s son (18) quickly dived in to try and save it, but slipped and drowned. His two brothers and sister, aged 20, 16 and 14 respectively, jumped in one after the other to save him, but all met the same fate. Two neighbours who came to the siblings’ rescue also drowned. A police team which removed the corpses from the well found the chicken alive and floating in the water. [Reuters, 1-8-95]

[continued elsewhere in TC…]

Steve Aylett – Bigot Hall, Serif, £8.99, pp153. Aylett’s first book, ‘The Crime Studio’ was reviewed last TC, and was a highly enjoyable selection of hyperviolent splinters in a fast, loose style. “Bigot Hall” replicates the short vignette approach, but is notably less successful. The hero remains nameless, a child advanced for his years, trapped in a family of misfits and weirdoes. That’s it, which is the main problem. While “The Crime Studio” had enough characters to mean the interplay between them offered sufficient variation for latitude, here the restrictions prove too much. There is no detectable character development; at the end, something happens; precisely what is impossible to say.

On the bright side, Aylett’s technique remains as sharply infectious as ever, his ear for the English language is great. Someone should hire the man to beef up movie scripts; if it’s sharp word-play that you want, he can out-Tarantino Quentin, with one frontal lobe tied behind his back. I mean, “the lake was infested with boss-eyed cartoon characters which ghosted up, stared like lost souls and dipped away again. Inbetween were swirling volume levels and swarms of seahorses with tiny training wheels“. So what you have here is a book where the sentences are pretty good, and anything beyond the paragraph is on shaky ground. More rigour needed, please.

John McCarty (ed) – The Sleaze Merchants, St.Martin’s Griffin, $16.95, pp211. It’s interesting to compare and contrast the style of this book with ‘Immoral Tales’, as both cover the world of exploitation film. ‘Immoral Tales’ deals with the European flavour, and this one mostly looking at its American brother — the only common name is Jess Franco. Apart from him, it’s a trawl from the early pioneers, David Friedman et al, through those McCarty describes as the “Honorable Practitioners” (Franco, John Waters, Al Adamson and Ted V.Mikels) up to those who’ve carried the torch for sleaze in the 1990’s.

Some of the choices seem slightly arguable, and appear to be a case of, “well, we can talk to them, let’s give them a chapter”. Why else does Bret McCormick (yeah, who?) get one of his own, but not Roger Corman? Generally, the best sections are those that divert from the standard interview technique — though Fred Olen Ray comes over as well as ever — and go into more analysis. Lots of illos, ad-mats and photos (David DeCoteau looks exactly like you’d expect) enhance the flavour, though it’s nowhere near as ground­breaking as McCarty’s earlier ‘Splatter Movies’ book. It’s a solidly researched and interesting book, which never attempts to attach artistic pretensions where none were intended. Given the near-death of the B-video here, this is sadly as close as most people will get to the recent works of Jim Wynorski!

Edward Margulies + Stephen Rebello – Bad Movies We Love, Plume, £8.79, pp330. There’s a great book waiting to be written, about the ethos of bad movies, their appeal, how and why they become that way, and so forth. It’s still waiting: this book proves even worse than the much-loathed Medved Brothers’ ‘Golden Turkey’ works. It shares a common meanness of spirit: the authors don’t appear to actually love bad movies, They love being snide about them, trying to prove a superior intellect through vapid insults, they love to poke ‘fun’ at them. Ho-ho-ho: it’s a good measure of how effective their criticism is, that they spent an entire chapter trashing Sharon Stone, and she still writes their foreward! She clearly  doesn’t give a damn what they think, and neither should anyone else.

Worse still, writing about bad movies should be fun, reflecting the enjoyment they offer. This book fails even on that score. What might have been entertaining as one-off articles — the book started off as a magazine column — rapidly becomes grindingly repetitive. With no variation in style, the authors have all the imagination of a literary pit-bull. There is not one single movie in the book where reading the review makes you want to see it.

There’s little challenging about their targets: the movies in their “Hall of Shame” had an average age of over 30. Taking the piss out of old films is like stomping on puppies, no measure of skill is needed at all. And once you’ve read their opinion on ‘9 1/2 Weeks’, why bother with their views on ‘Zandalee’ (we get the point), ‘Two Moon Junction’ (We Get The Point), or even both ‘Wild Orchid’ and ‘Wild Orchid 2’ (WE GET THE POINT!). Dreadful, truly dreadful. About the only thing in its favour, is that it makes you want go and do better yourself. In which case, expect the ‘TC Book of Badfilm’ before this year is out.

Michael Sauter – The Worst Movies of All Time, Citadel Press, £11.99, pp342. After the above debacle, this book came as a breath of fresh air, mainly since it’s written in a far better spirit. The central thread is a look at fifty films, from 1932’s ‘Sign of the Cross’ to ‘Christopher Columbus: The Discovery’ from 1992; there’s also a random grab-bag of almost bad-enoughs, and a broad selection of B-movies, including the usual classics from Ed Wood and others of his ilk.

The book is not perfect. To start with, it’s far too American-oriented, with all 50 of the “worst” coming out of Hollywood. No book about bad film can be thought of as complete unless it includes something by Jess Franco. The author also has a tendency to twist facts to fit his views: misattributing dialogue from ‘Faster, Pussycat’, and claiming that the spoof ‘Casino Royale’ “was the Bond spoof to end all Bond spoofs”, forgetting perhaps the best of them all, ‘Top Secret’. However, it covers a broad spectrum of eras, without any obvious axe to grind against specific genres, and, most importantly of all, you come away from the reviews actually wanting to see a lot of the films (though there are exceptions to this, it would take a better writer even than myself to make anyone want to see ‘Howard the Duck’).

Most of the targets are obvious ones such as ‘Ishtar’ and ‘Heaven’s Gate’, though many of the older titles were new to me; I’ll be scanning the daytime TV schedules for ‘The Fountainhead’! But if you want coverage of turkeys from major Hollywood studios, this book is hard to beat.

David Kerekes and David Slater – Killing for Culture, Creation Books, £12.05, pp286. Now issued in a revised second edition, bringing it up to date with recent developments — though embarrassingly, since the first edition never made it off my “books I ought to buy” list, I can’t give any specifics about new material. What I can say is that it remains a comprehensive review of that mythical creature, the “snuff” movie, in all its forms from mondo to mainstream.

The book is at it’s best with a clinical deconstruction of all such alleged snuff films, calmly and logically pointing out the factors which prove they are faked or staged.  The authors do so with a clear critical eye, unhesitatingly scathing when they feel it’s deserved. Copious footnotes and references back it up and give some much-needed authority, in a field dominated by the hype and the gory. On the down side, the book sometimes slides into a catalogue of atrocities, listing the nastiness in films whil avoiding much comment on why these films are made, or remain so popular. This is especially true with some of the pictures: blurry, b/w screen shots of state treasured Bud Dwyer committing suicide are a pointless exercise in geek-show mentality, and almost turn the book into mondo of its own. Otherwise, it’s immeasurably useful, essential reading for anyone who wants an informed viewpoint on the topic. Sadly, those most in need of reading it — certain MP’s, media pundits, and indeed Hollywood stars like Charlie Sheen — are unlikely to do so.

Geoff Davis – Nnn goes mobile, Juma, £3.95, 114pp. Sent to me by TC’s ex-printers, with a “this seems like your sort of thing” message, Davis writes parodic cyberpunk characterised by a charming, deliberately incoherent depiction of what the world might become i.e. a total mess. The hero, Nnn, has risen from the gutter to become a technical innovator specialising in nanotechnology. He’s just invented a living zipper, but is then kidnapped by guerillas keen to use his talents. His employers send out two hitmen, Fluffy and Kitch, to get him back before he does something they might regret. In this future world, Prague has been successfully duplicated, and the Old Kent Road has relocated to cyberspace.

And it’s in there that Davis’s strength lies; none of Gibson’s sleek data blocks exist in Nnn’s world, VR looks more like a drug trip animated by crazed Nintendo employees and directed by Ed Wood, Jr in one of his more enthusiatically ambitious moments. There are a lot of madcap characters here, and warped imaginings of self-propelled computers with personality disorders, public domain cultural icons based on Mickey Mouse, and eyepopping virtual sex. This is hideously plausible, as futures go — can’t wait, personally. Flashy, fast and effective. [Juma, 44 Wellington Street, Sheffield, S1 4HD]