There is an enormous amount of challenging information in this book. Please do not continue if you are dependent on your present belief system, or if you feel you cannot cope emotionally with what is really happening in this world.” – David Icke, The Biggest Secret
Okay. Hold onto your hats: you are now leaving reality and entering – literally – a parallel world of shape-shifting reptiles from the Nth dimension. This all started when a pile of photocopied material on mind control technology which I’d sent, went AWOL in the post – it did eventually turn up (five days for first-class post?), but while waiting, I was listening to Duran Duran and my paranoia latched on to the line: “Voices in your body coming through on the radio”. Here are the full lyrics:
Telegram force and ready I knew this was a big mistake There’s a fine line drawing my senses together And I think it’s about to break
If I listen close, I can hear them singers Voices in your body coming through on the radio The Union of the Snake is on the climb Moving up, it’s gonna race, It’s gonna break through the borderline
Night shades on a warning Give me strength, at least give me a light Give me anything, even sympathy There’s a chance you could be right The Union of the Snake is on the climb It’s gonna race, it’s gonna break Gonna move up to the borderline
I sat up, since one of the things discussed in the mind control material was implants, and the use of radio by the CIA and others to make targets hear internal voices. That this reference came in a song called Union of the Snake was even more interesting: I had long been aware of underground reports in mysterious and anonymous documents, which posit that a reptilian alien race were controlling things from bases below the surface of the Earth.
Looking at the lyrics (right), it’s certainly possible to read them in a conspiratorial light. “I knew this was a big mistake” is an odd line, and “Give me anything, even sympathy, there’s a chance you could be right” is too – if even 5% of the reptoid theories are anywhere near true, we are fucked. But perhaps most interestingly, the chorus goes “The Union of the Snake is on the climb/Moving up, it’s gonna race, it’s gonna break through the borderline.” William Bramley, in his book Gods of Eden, describes a secret organisation called the Brotherhood of the Snake, which is just too close for comfort. Does talk of “moving up” and “on the climb” refer to its increasing influence, until it crashes “through the borderline” to trans-national government? New World Order, here we come.
The video, directed by Simon Milne, shows the hero descending into an underground city, a relic of an advanced civilization – one reviewer described it as “reminiscent of H.P.Lovecraft’s classic SF tale, The Nameless City.” This ties in with “night shades on a warning”, since one meaning of “shades” is the underground realm of the dead, as in Hades. With all this, I think it’s fair to say that Duran Duran – a name taken from a humanoid alien in Barbarella – have moved on from mud-wrestling totty.
To see the reptoid stuff in full effect, get hold of a copy of David Icke’s book, The Biggest Secret. The former TV commentator turned New Age guru has turned in one of the most fabulously loony works I’ve ever read. It starts with him churning out rehashed Velikovsky, where the planet Venus careers around the solar system like a pinball, triggering floods, etc. on Earth. From here it moves into vanilla-flavour conspiracy, in which all history from the birth of civilization is controlled by a secret group, the Babylonian Brotherhood. Almost all Earth’s leaders – Nelson Mandela gets a grudging exemption – are part of this. “So what?”, you yawn. Ah, Icke’s angle is different: this lot aren’t actually human…
Yes, our controllers are reptiles from the lower reaches of the fourth dimension, who are merely occupying human vessels, though they occasionally “glitch” and reveal their true forms. For example, here’s an eye-witness description of one such transformation. Which world leader do you reckon:
“…began to transform into a reptile. He eventually became a full-bodied Reptiloid, growing in size by some two feet. He was ‘slightly scaly’ and ‘spoke fairly naturally’“.
That was Edward Heath, our former Prime Minister, taking part in a Satanic ritual near Chequers.
Overseeing this vast conspiracy is our Royal Family, who are near the top of the cold-blooded heap, being pure-blood snakes involved in human sacrifice and black magic, as well as the drug-running beloved of Lyndon La Rouche. Phil, Liz, Charlie-boy: they’re all at it. Here’s one of Icke’s sources, talking about the Queen:
“I have seen her sacrifice people and eat their flesh and drink their blood. One time she got so excited with blood lust that she…just went crazy, stabbing and ripping at the flesh after she’d shape-shifted into a reptilian…She has a long reptile face, almost like a beak, and she’s an off-white colour. The Queen Mother looks basically the same”
Reading this, I had a sudden image of the Queen Mum, forked tongue flicking in & out of a large gin…
The further one gets in, the more berserk Icke’s theories get, and they start spinning off all over the place. “I have no doubt from the evidence I have seen that the Earth is hollow”, he says. Princess Diana wasn’t just murdered, she was ritually sacrificed, the time and place of her death planned years in advance. And so on. But Icke seems to suffer from a disbelief bypass: he accepts the much-discredited Protocols of Zion, and takes the wild Trance Formation of America at face value. The latter – conveniently available from the same publisher – is written by Cathy O’Brien, who claims to have been sexually assaulted over a 25-year period by more or less everyone who is anyone in American politics, business or entertainment, including the evil paedophile, Boxcar Willie. While Trance is certainly worthy of a salacious read (I assume libel laws are less strict in America), as a credible source, it leaves a great deal to be desired.
Never mind 5%, if any of Icke’s theories are true, we are completely up the proverbial creek. Fortunately, I have my doubts – even if it all does add an entirely new meaning to another Duran Duran lyric, “Please, please tell me now, is there something I should know…”
David Icke, The Biggest Secret, Bridge of Love, £15
Cathy O’Brien & Mark Phillips, The Trance Formation of America, Bridge of Love, £12.95
Duran Duran, Seven and the Ragged Tiger, Parlophone, £7.99
(or, “Where is Francis Ford Coppola, and what have you done to him?”)
As Hollywood budgets escalate, the lure of the sequel grows: why risk good money on a risky, new idea, when you can invest in one with a proven track record? The generally held critical opinion is that this is bad, because it’s a short-sighted view which promotes the ploughing of unwarranted and bloated budgets into derivative and hackneyed movies, at the expense of original cinema. Or, put another way, “They’re over-priced, and they’re crap”. While there are plenty of counter-examples available (Terminator 2, Gremlins 2, Drunken Master II and Species 2 were all at least as good as the originals), when you progress further down the line, to a third film, the odds of coming up with quality appear to lengthen dramatically.
There are some cases where the cause is obvious: a new director is quite sufficient to send the most cast-iron franchise down in flames. Exhibit A in this category must be Batman, which Joel Schumacher appears to have made his life’s work to destroy. Say what you like about the first two, they were at least memorable: I can’t recall one single scene from Batman Forever. I admit that Batman & Robin is worse still, being many people’s choice for worst film of the 1990’s, but there’s no doubt when the rot set in.
Even if you keep the same director and star, you can still run into difficulties by fixing what isn’t necessarily broke. For examples, see The Evil Dead and Mad Max trilogies, which show some interesting similarities. Both start off with cheap, hugely profitable openers, followed by sequels which actually come closer to big-budget remakes. Then, realising they couldn’t get away with doing that again, both George Miller and Sam Raimi head for the cinematic hills, opting for other than the simple “…3” title to boot. Although I actually quite like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Army of Darkness, the former replaces hardcore action with a lot of mythic mumbo-jumbo (not to mention Tina Turner!), while Army is a Ray Harryhausen film filtered through the Three Stooges.
Alien 3 – sorry, that’s the almost apologetic 3 – was another destined to be a disaster from the moment David Fincher stepped on board. Previous instalments had been directed by people with experience in the genres: the nearest Fincher had come to horror was working with Madonna. As a learning experience, it’s marginal: compared to the classic horror movie and all-time greatest action pic which came before, it blows chunks and, measured against its predecessors, may be the worst third entry ever. The curse is of particular note here, since Fincher has since proven his talents with Se7en, The Game and Fight Club. In that kind of company, Alien3 seems an out-and-out aberration.
Strike threes…
Three’s that triumph
Alien 3 Robocop III Lethal Weapon 3 Star Trek 3 Hellraiser III Return of the Jedi (nominally Part VI, but one word: Ewoks) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade A Better Tomorrow 3 Drunken Master III Scream 3
In the Line of Duty 3 Goldfinger Poison Ivy 3 Er, that’s it…
Speaking of aliens brings me to The Godfather III, since the only explanation for it I can imagine, is that at some point shortly before filming began, Francis Ford Coppola was abducted by ET’s and had his entire talent sucked out through an anal probe. Since his return, the empty husk has been shambling around Hollywood, directing things like Jack. Never work with animals or children, Francis – especially not your own. And, as an aside, I’m sure that Daddy had nothing to do with Sofia subsequently getting to direct The Virgin Suicides. However, going by that, it looks like the bug-eyed monsters got to her early.
Return of the Living Dead 3 seems to buck the trend, being Brian Yuzna’s fabulously kinky eulogy to body-piercing, and a vast improvement on part two. However, don’t forget that Return of the Living Dead was itself a sequel, to Night of the Living Dead. This means Return of the Living Dead 2 was thus the true third part, and it duly blew chunks, allowing Yuzna to escape the curse. The moral of this story is that sometimes you have to look especially carefully in order to see the evidence.
There’s another factor which might play a part, to do with a letter producers feel a particular urge to tack onto “3” titles: “D”. Jaws 3-D, House 3-D, Nightmare on Elm Street 3-D, Amityville 3-D. Now, even at the best of times, it’s a very tricky task to combine the usual requirements, like plot development, with the necessity to have sharp, pointy things coming out of the screen at regular intervals. Indeed, I’ve only seen one which works as a regular i.e. flat movie – Flesh for Frankenstein. For a double-sequel, already likely to be struggling, it’s yet another cross to bear.
The strange thing is, this is all despite the fact that there are logical reasons why they should be better, not worse. By this stage, you should be looking at fully-developed characters, to whom audiences have already been successfully drawn twice. In addition, if a concept is good enough to sustain a solid sequel, then it should be able to squeeze out at least one more before collapsing. Let’s face it, by the time you reach a third installment, the studio is thinking “franchise”. Which may be the problem: after two hits, lazy executives will green-light a third almost as a reflex action, without bothering to concern themselves over trivia like scripts. I suspect you could hand over a hundred pages of the LA telephone directory and get it made, if you scrawled Terminator 3 on the front sheet.
T3 will be an interesting test: looking likely to be Cameron-less, yet with Arnie on board, the odds are not in its favour, if our theory holds true. The Matrix 2 + 3 will also act as a litmus paper: I predict the first sequel will be competent enough, and the second will blow chunks, despite being shot back-to-back in Australia, with the same cast and crew. I believe the third part will focus almost entirely on Carrie Moss’s character, allowing them to call it The Matrix 3: Wholly Trinity. [Sorry…]
In conclusion then: “Sequels suck!”, says a character in Scream 2. This is what passes in the series for wit – but perhaps the most ironic thing is that the lame, tame Scream 3 provides damning evidence for the hypothesis that second sequels suck even more.
No, I’m not wearing a silver suit, I’m not wearing a metallic string vest and I’m most certainly not launching myself into space to fight spinny flying saucers. The year 2000? What a letdown. The nearest thing we’ve had to an apocalypse so far is the petrol “crisis” and people slagging the Millennium Dome off (no, I’m joining in on that one, I really couldn’t care one way or the other at this stage of the game). Strangely enough (and yes, my first bizarre tangent of the whole article), Jim has actually been chasing me for the reviews, I’ve had the things for ages, and now, here we are, Tuesday 3rd October 2000, with Jim descending on my house this coming Saturday to pick the finished reviews up, and I’ve not even started. How terribly Julie Burchill of me – minus the face like a spastic bulldog chewing a wasp.
So, what’s been happening with me? Hmm, well, quite frankly, it’s really none of your business. I could ramble on about various job offers that had been made to me involving £3000 cash bonuses for moving (that I turned down – email me for the full story), or the fact that little Nick, who is basically my bitch at work (I promised I’d give him as many name checks as I could), has been offered a contract to play “soccer” for 2nd division Reading football club which means I’m going to lose him at the end of November, which really is a shame because, and this is being polite to the point of making even myself ill, Nick is one of the nicest people I’ve had a chance to work with. Ok, so when he started as a temp 2 years ago, at the age of 17, he was a freakishly tall, mute, scary-looking fella, but since we took him on full time, and he started talking, and more importantly, since my bleak, “cup is half empty” view of life has rubbed off on him, he’s turned into quite a normal human being, and it really will be a shame to say goodbye. Well, unless I can bribe someone to run him over with a forklift.
What else, what else, oh, yes: my new game. Shopkeepers across the country (I’m assuming it actually is across the country, and not just in London) have started installing cashpoint machines inside their shops. A genius idea. Ok, so it costs £1.25 to get money out of the thing, but as I’m with the Abbey National and the only other cashpoint machine between my house and work is a Nationwide one that charges me £1.50 to get money out I’m not complaining (bear with me, this does get interesting and is in no way an attempt to put off reading fanzines, no, sir). Anyyyyyway, my new game involves said cashpoint machine in shop, me and an unsuspecting minicab driver. You ask the cab driver to stop at the shop: “Keep the engine running, I’ll only be two minutes”, then you go to the shop, take, ohhh I don’t know, lets say £50 out (it always seems to pay out in £10 notes) then, clutching the money in one hand, come running out of the shop (or the closest approximation of running I can manage), jump into the car and yell “Drive! Drive! Drive!”. Fine, so it doesn’t actually freak the cab driver out, but it keeps me entertained. Try it, it’s… Ok, don’t try it. Ok, damn you, I’ll start reading, you stay there and wait: believe me, it won’t take very long at all…
Arteries – Issue one (£2.50). Oh, this really is priceless… I picked this up and was instantly transported back in time. I have tears of joy in my eyes. Anything with a picture of Bad Taste on the cover automatically gets my thumbs up, and the reviews, oh please, how totally wonderful. Here are some sample quotes; these alone will have you searching out a copy, believe me:
Mothers Day: “an effective little shocker which will offend some and delight others, personally I liked it!”
Android of Notre Dame: “Definitely for people who like body dismemberment in movies, Disney this ain’t!” (my personal favourite!)
Sleazefiends (Muhahaha) will love the movie [Caligula: The Untold Story] but don’t expect a UK release any time in the near future”
The editor also appears to have an unhealthy fascination with turds, mentioning them in almost every other review. The video game reviews and insightful Internet overview are merely the icing on a very, very wonderful cake. Oh, my aching sides…
Cashiers Du Cinemart – Issue 10 ($3). From the ridiculous to the sublime… This is more like it, and hell, I don’t even mind all the advertisements scattered throughout the issue if they manage to keep the cover price down to $3; good luck to them. Issue 10 has enough material to keep you reading for well over 10 minutes (probably longer if your attention span is…er, what was I saying?). Bang! A six page look at the Babycart movies (including an exploded view of the baby cart itself – they never did that on Blue Peter). Bang! An interview with Keith Gordon, who you’ve probably never heard of (he was in Christine remember?): excellent stuff, and I still rate Static as one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Bang! Ok, that’ll do, otherwise I’ll just go through the entire thing saying you should read it, when in reality, all you want to do it go out, buy it and read it. Now, if it had a picture of Drew Barrymore wearing only little Victorian boots and a red ball gag it’d get my Magazine of the Millennium award, but well, you can’t have everything, can you?
Vex – Issue 4 ($3.95). Ok, now I swear, I’m just pulling these things out at random, it’s not some bizarre “Oh look, he’s just putting all the stuff he likes in the article first”, but I really do like Vex, this issue being no less funny that the preceding three. In-depth, stupid, sick and very, very, very entertaining. Disney this ain’t! (heh, see what I did there, that was quite funny). You! Buy! Now!
Roadworks – Issue 5 (£2.50). Ok, look, it’s Thursday, Mr Editor is coming around to my house on Saturday, I have no time to read all of this so, er, well, here we go…Wow, £2.50 for a magazine packed full of quirky short stories and poems, what a bargain. 64 pages long, that works out to around 4p a page. I can’t recommend this highly enough, and the cover is green, which, as you all know, is the Celts good luck colour. What more recommendation do you need?
Hey, you know I think I bluffed my way through that last review quite well, I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this ages ago, I would have saved myself so much time, and I don’t know about you, but I welcome a “Price per page” count. And now…it’s time for the “Annual Bumper-Mega-Huge-Combo-Multi-Issue Mansplat review 2000” Right, we can play this two ways, you can have all four issues reviewed in one huge blobby concoction or each of the issues reviewed, one after the other. Make you mind up and call now on 020 8900 %$(“. Oh, the phone’s ringing, how exciting, excuse me… “Hello?” “Get on with it! No-one has even bothered reading this far, so it doesn’t matter how you review them as long as you do review them!” “Ok, thanks, Jim – I’ll get straight on that, see you on Saturday.”
Mansplat – Issue 17 (No charge, which reminds me of a country song). Ok, so I actually looked at this after 18 & 19, but you’ll never know as I’m cunningly sliding it at the top of the Mansplat section. You fools! Muhahhahaa<cough>hahaha. Heh… The first thing that struck me about issue 17 was the “Movie villain guide”; my favourite villain from that article? “Fu Manchu – So solly – you must die”. Excellent! Elsewhere is the TV guide we really wish we had, a Spiderman vs. the Internet face-to-face showdown, pages of video reviews, a picture of a cute Asian girl in strappy boots holding a gun (no, the boots aren’t holding the gun. Look, I don’t get paid for this, so grammar is out the window. Hmm, actually, even if I were being paid for this, the grammar would still suck) – ok, so that picture is from an ad, but it caught my eye. Talking of ads, there’s also one for something called “Trash City”, apparently, according to the ad: “Trash City is a magazine published out of London, England by a dedicated group of insane writers…” Blimey, I wouldn’t want to meet any of those wacky sorts!
Issue 18 (Free!). Hmm, Julie Strain. We like Julie Strain, even though she is knocking on a bit, bless her, but she looks wonderful on the cover of issue 18, I think I’ll just retire to the toilet so I can examine this issue more closely… Ok, I’m back, and it’s quite easy typing with sticky fingers, don’t believe what they tell you.
The sky is bright blue Clouds are so fluffy, so soft I’ll kill everything
What’s that? Well it’s one of the Godzilla haikus that appear in issue 18: genius! Ok, what else is there? Lemme carry on reading…
Oh, look: “The 100 Women who Wrecked the World” article.. No. 43: Alanis Morrisette – “Geez, she gets dumped by one guy and 12 million have to hear about it.” Marvellous! Also contains the Top 12 greatest women of all time, Hmm, Drew Barrymore is no.6. I knew there was a reason I loved Mansplat. Moving on, elsewhere in issue 18…nestled softly next to the “Where have all the fat wrestlers gone?” article (shut up, Jim!) is the invaluable “Burpology: cool words to say while belching” article, and hell, for the sake of journalistic completeness (ok, so completeness is the wrong word), I have in the space of the last 40 minutes burped my way through three quarters of the words listed. The easiest? “Keno”. The hardest? “Duran Duran”. Go! Now! Write! Email! Get Mansplat! This phrase is guaranteed to be repeated at the end of the reviews for the next issues of Mansplat, or your money back.
Issue 19 (Yep, still free). More of the same (see those four words? I’ll be using those a lot), centre-page madness looks at American cereals. You know, I always maintain that American cereal is so much better than ours. Ok, we briefly had Lucky Charms, and there was the mad period where Ricicles had marshmallowy bits in, but look, you’ve not lived till you’ve started your morning with a bowl of Fruity Pebbles (what do you mean, you don’t like lemon flavoured pieces of cereal?). Terribly informative guide to road rage – I do hope you’re paying attention at the back, Mr. McLennan. And also in issue 19, Mansplat staff reveal the things in Batman’s utility belt; I knew that bulge was a butt-plug.
Issue 20 (Free, probably…see below). Er, I haven’t got a copy of issue 20; I do have two of issue 19 though. I’m sure that issue 20 is lovely. Next!
Issue 21 (Free, to do what I like, any old tiiiiiiiime). Here we are then, the last issue of our marathon “Annual Bumper-Mega-Huge-Combo -Multi-Issue Mansplat Review 2000” 4 issue splurtathon. Wow, look, there’s an article on psycho lovers, I wonder who I know that could have done with reading it a couple of years back? A centre-page double-spread A-Z bra guide, bucketloads of video reviews, a loving look at greasy fast food (hmm, grease) and beer. Did you know that certain Americans think of Harp as the best beer in the world. Just sit back and digest that fact. Harp. The best beer in the world. How frightening is that? Last but not least, a classified section!! Oh, lets go read that now, shall we? Hmm, it was ok, but I was longing for the old Fangoria days (I’m assuming it is the old Fangoria days as I’ve not picked a copy of that particular rag up for years), where the classified section held lines and lines of “Jason Rools” and “Freddy Cuts Me Up” missives.
There you go: that’s the end of our Mansplat journey, and what have we learned? We’ve learned that even over the course of four issues (let’s forget the fact I didn’t have an issue 20), Mansplat is one of the most consistently entertaining fanzines to come out of the States. So there, and what’s more it’s free, they’ve got a website, and er, pictures of ladies’ soft pillows. How’s that for a recommendation?
Heh, Jim and Vanessa (top-class arty designy layout type person to the stars) popped around last Saturday to pick up the fanzines I’d already looked at, and in-between conversations about Jim attacking Vanessa’s nose with a Stanley knife in a fight over who got the last peanut (I think it was something like that), I stupidly mentioned that I only had four more fanzines to look at and was sure I’d written around 2,700 words. Well, that was wrong; bad and wrong. I just did a quick check and it turns out that I’ve actually written over 3,100. So, I guess I’d better not waste any more time and get straight on with the next review. Or should I? The more I think about it, the more the thought of Jim cutting swathes of rubbish out of this whole mess entertains me. No, no, ok, you’re right, I’m bad.
The ‘Mazing Adventures Of Captain Cadwallader (Issue one – Price erm, unknown) No, I’ve not lost the ability to spell even the simplest word, it’s actually “’Mazing”, and is according to the inside front cover (which, incidentally, has also got 22/100 written on it in silver pen – this makes me wonder if it’s actually worth carrying on with the review as all the copies have probably gone by now, but whatever), a melodrama in seven parts. Think of it as a kind of Around the World in 80 Days if Jules Verne had been sniffing Vim (or Drano if you’re reading this in a country that wouldn’t have the first idea what Vim was) It’s a lovely, small, A5 30-page piece of fiction (with some nice full-page illustrations). The ending is a bit of an eye-opener too: I say, that’s not cricket! Worth a read if you can still track a copy down (here’s a hint, Jim has got the copy I’ve just finished with, just think, issue one touched by Jim and myself!).
Arteries (Issue 2) He’s only gone and put another issue out hasn’t he? The conversation I had with Jim on Saturday night went something along the lines of this. “I see I’ve got another issue of Arteries to review, you know, I think I’m going to slag it off”, “Awww no, we like Arteries” replied Jim. Hmm, I’m in two minds now. On the one hand, I don’t think this is really doing anything that wasn’t done 5000 times over 10 years ago, on the other hand, you’ve got to admire the effort that “Lord Brendan MBE” has put into both this and issue one. Just the general slagging off of Jess Franco’s Faceless has me wanting to tear this issue into little pieces and throw it away (although knowing Jim’s hatred of Jess Franco it’s probably why he likes Arteries so much), and I have to wonder, if he hates the movie Forced Entry so much – “I don’t recommend it to anyone. Women will find it incredibly offensive and if any man enjoys this mean spirited, unsavory movie he needs to see a shrink and get his head examined!” – why he bothered reviewing it in the first place. Or more importantly, why he bothered buying a copy at whichever film fair it is he enjoys visiting. Ok, let’s be objective.
Not everyone here has been around that long, so final word. If you’re new, and want an easy way of knowing what’s what with “video nasties”, get yourself a copy of Arteries (although I would do something about the £2.50 cover price); on the other hand, if you’ve been around forever and a day, this really won’t tell you anything you don’t already know. How’s that for partisan? No, not the cheese, that’s Parmesan you maroon.
Little Shoppe Of Horrors – Issue 14 ($7.95). Fuck my old boots, he’s put another issue out! Huzzah, Tiny Tim will eat some turkey this fine Christmas morning. After the nasty hiccup a few issues back when it seemed like Richard Klemensen (who seems to have lived a far more entertaining life than I could ever wish for) was going to stop working on LSOH (don’t you just hate it when people put initials in instead of the full title, it’s so slack, and in this case, almost as if the author is typing really, really quickly to get everything done before the editor arrives to collect the finished article. Finished? Hah! Anyway…). Luckily for us, that hasn’t happened. Hell, I don’t really love Hammer films, apart from getting all nostalgic about getting off the train at Kenton station and walking to school on the morning after one of the Hammer films had been shown on the TV. It’d be easier for me to tell you what isn’t in issue 14, namely no pictures of Kelly Brook strapped to an X-frame with a bit gag. Hey, I’m nothing if not inconsistent.
Let me give you a quick rundown on what is in the issue so you can decide if it’s worth shelling out the eight dollars. [Three hours later] Oh God, no, there is too much in here, really, far too much for just $7.95, oh and it’s got nothing to do with the fact that the review of Trash City in there has choice quotes like “Probably the most fun reading fanzine coming out of the UK”. Hmm, he doesn’t mention me though, which is probably an oversight on his part! Go on, give Richard some of your money: well, give him some of your money if you like Hammer movies, don’t bother if you hate them. Hmm, if you’re rich and want to send him money anyway, you can do that. No, send it to me instead, I can always use extra money. Happy now?
Hog – Issue 4 (£2.50). This is more like it. Nick has just walked past my desk. He pointed at the cover and said “That is the best front cover I’ve ever seen”. How’s that for an unsolicited quote? Balls-out comic art from people I’ve never heard of, but want to hear a lot more from. Damn, this is all good, and hey look! Teresa Scott “comic strip” with a gag! Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Get this, get a copy of the first three, and a copy of anything they’ve done after issue 4; you won’t be disappointed! Without doubt my choice of comic fanzine of the month – or year, probably. No, it’s the best comic fanzine I’ve seen all Millennium. So there!
The Fugazi Virus (one-off). Judging by the “96/100” written on the inside front cover, I’d say that this was from the same publishers that brought you “The ‘Mazing Adventures Of Captain Cadwallader”. Once again taking the form of a complete short story (this time with half page illustrations), and according to the inside back cover it was produced for the Break 21 Festival in Slovenia, May 1999 (oh, how I wish I was there). Fairly bog standard science-fiction story, without anything to recommend it. Sorry, boys. Probably not a good thing that I’m looking at this the morning after I had the most disturbing dream concerning a nuclear war. Remind me to tell you about that sometime: it’s not often that I’m actually woken by a dream and have had to go and do something before I can get back to sleep.
I found a copy of something else hiding at the bottom of my drawer, so this is officially the final review (perhaps ever <sniff>).
Bomba Movies – Issue 7 (£3.00). Hey, look, the Bomba Movies boys are back, going all A4 sized and everything! <Sniff> It’s like my little boys have grown up. I actually read this one through cover to cover (yes, yes, I read allof the fanzines through cover to cover, honestly). Pages of reviews for some obscure stuff that even I haven’t heard of! They win extra points for a look at some of Jess Franco’s women in prison movies, but lose points for slagging Tintorera off (I love all killer shark movies). Perhaps the Bomba Movies people could send a copy of this off to the people behind Arteries, just to show them how it could be done! My last review, and it’s something I enjoyed. Isn’t that sweet?
There we go then. That’s it. It’s all over. The end. With Jim disappearing to Cuba to start his own jazz band. will this be the end of Trash City and more importantly the end of my cutting edge fanzine reviews? Who knows, but I think, if we’ve learned one thing in the time we’ve spent together, it’s that I generally don’t like much, but I’ve got to the stage where I’m too old to really hate anything. Well, apart from those miniscooters, and commercial breaks, oh, and plastic wrapping that needs scissors to get into, and work. Yes, that’s about it. No, I also don’t have much time for old people whining that they don’t have any money. Balderdash! (Christ, do you remember that game Boulderdash? I loved that). Everytime I see old people they are either driving around in brand new cars or lugging around shopping trollies full of groceries, piss-smelling old liars. Not to mention the fact they are vicious at bus stops: don’t be messing with an old lady when the 18 bus arrives, let me tell you!
So, just before I go, some thank yous. Thanks to Nick for putting up with my constant mood swings over the past three years and good luck at Reading football club (someone tell him that they really do eat oranges at half time, he doesn’t believe me). Thanks to everyone else at work (you know who you are), another thank you to Toby Russell for keeping me supplied with chocolate from Marks and Spencer (and for still being the most insane person I know: “Go out, spend money, stupid”). Thanks also to Jaime who, despite everything, is still lovely (things have a habit of working themselves out, no matter how long it takes). Thanks also go to the people who actually read this column – both of you – and to the one person who mailed me after the last issue wanting me to send them the Xena story (which of course, I did). Final thanks go to Jim, who has the patience of a saint going through the rubbish I spew, and working it into something vaguely legible; good luck in Cuba and don’t forget to send me some cigars occasionally!
If you have any comments (or pictures of Drew Barrymore), just send them along to: lino@lino.demon.co.uk and I’ll be sure to send them straight to the trashbin. Oh, and Jimmy S is not a dirty old pedophile, no sir, no way, no how. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have 26 episodes of Sooty Heights to watch – now with added Scampi, who actually makes Scrappy Doo look entertaining. I’m looking forward to the Brian Blessed episode. And people say I have a boring job!
Following up on last year’s ultra-successful Prague spring, the 2000 TC Eurojaunt was given to Budapest. It was picked from a shortlist of possibles including Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna, largely because it was deemed to be the most “Prague-like” of the options, though its reputation as the European capital of pornography did no harm either. Having gone for the city largely because we wanted Prague II, what we really got was something significantly different, but no less appealing. While the Czech capital was love at first sight, Budapest is like a mildly pretty girl with a great personality, whom you gradually come to like more and more.
The town is split in two by the Danube, into Buda and Pest (by this method, I would commute into Lon from my home in Don), with the former the older, hillier part, while the latter has all the bars and nightlife. [Guess which we saw more of?] It’s bigger, more sprawling and less pedestrian-friendly than Prague, but the public transport puts London to shame: buses, trams, Metro, and trolleybus all fit together to make no journey a chore. This is a good thing, given the local taxi drivers’ international reputation for chicanery, up to and including the extraction of “fares” at gunpoint. Strange, therefore, that the city centre was so utterly quiet, even on Friday + Saturday nights. Perhaps the concept of “going uptown” doesn’t apply: the main street, Váci utca, was spookily quiet almost every time we went there. On Sunday night, we were the only people on the central square of Vörösmarty Ter, which was as unexpected as finding oneself the sole inhabitant of Piccadilly Circus.
Or maybe all the locals were all in restaurants, for this was one way in which Budapest surpassed even Prague: the food was astonishing. We tried everything we knew – starter, main course, beers, dessert, liqueur, coffee – and were still clinically unable to get the bill up above nine quid a head. Though I’d be hard pushed to name any recognisable national cuisine beyond goulash, the Hungarians had enthusiastically adopted other nations’ ways of cooking dead animal, including bits even I wasn’t prepared to tackle: “lung in sour sauce”, anyone? Thought not. But even discarding such questionable entrees, the appropriately named Fatal restaurant (at Váci utca 67 – and it’s actually Hungarian for “wooden platter”) was sheer carnal delight. Better yet was the Haxen Király Sörhaz (Király utca 100), a Germanic-themed establishment that delivered a feast ranking among the best meals I’ve ever had. The waiters cheerfully reject your choice of side dishes if he reckons it won’t work: take the advice, they know their stuff.
Oratorio, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Hungary is a country fully at peace with its past: there are bars with Communist themes, and even the icons of the era have been “retired”, and put to grass out in the Statue Park on the Budapest’s outskirts. There, you can see tributes to Lenin and other revolutionary ex-heroes, and confirm what you always knew: dictatorships may be morally dubious, but they do seem to have an excellent eye for monumental design. The temptation to stand before them and pose in imitation was irresistible. So we didn’t…
As is now tradition, had a local kebab as well: pretty good (B-), if a little on the small side, with chilli sauce and yoghurt, it came in a pitta and tin foil, almost like one of those trendy wraps. And while Austria and Hungary have had their differences, national rivalries are overcome by a mutual appreciation of cakes and pastries: “world unity through gateaux”. Hungary is better known for its wine, such as Bulls’ Blood and Tokai, than the beer, yet there are competent local brews like Dreher, and a wide variety of places in which to consume them, often alongside the aforementioned slabs of dead animal. While a little short of Prague on the brewing front, it was still far more chilled-out than London. You could always get a seat, waitress service meant you never needed to go to the bar, and “closing time” was an unknown concept, with some places simply rolling their stuff around the clock. This means that things tend to kick off later than in Britain, with places tending to be eerily empty before 10pm.
The second area in which Budapest beat Prague – and this was agreed upon by everyone in our party, from newly-single to happily-married – is babes. With hair that went beyond black, to a bluish tinge capable of sucking light in from the surrounding area, we were often reduced to awed gawping. At times it seemed like Hungarian women needed to have competed in a major beauty pageant, simply to be let out on the streets, with winning one a prerequisite for a job as a waitress. The Miro café (Úri utca 30) almost saw fights breaking out over one such beauty – “No, it was me she smiled at!” It’s easy to see why the place has become a mecca for artistic film-makers, and unlike this country, where “looking” now appears to be a form of sexual harassment, in Budapest they meet your gaze unflinchingly. Although this was at first un-nerving (in London, it’ll soon be possible to have an entire relationship without eye-contact), eventually you get used to it. Though it does make the tube journey back from Heathrow a bit tricky.
Walking down Váci utca, you will (at least, if “you” are male) be accosted by smartly-dressed thugs offering “drink-bar-striptease”, in a variety of different languages. In one of the tourist brochure’s elegantly flowery discouragements, “we cannot say not to go, but close friends might want to dissuade you”, for these venues are adept at distracting you with stunning female company and selling you very expensive cocktails. However, unlike Soho clip-joints, you can actually buy sex as well, since a lot of them are just as much brothel as strip-club. Either way, best not argue over the bill, since the various East European mafiosi have a hand therein, and no aversion to violence – in 1998, four bystanders were killed by a car-bomb. So, despite Budapest’s reputation, Prague is generally a more relaxed and laid-back place in which to appreciate the unclad female form.
Not that we spent all our time there indulging in pleasures of the flesh (eating or watching it). Buda offers a lot of old buildings to explore, along Várhegy, though not that old, since the site has been ravaged and rebuilt 86 times over the past seven centuries, a total surpassed only by Cher’s face. The main attraction is Mátyás Church (below), which is largely a 19th-century remake, yet has a breath-taking interior, and is still in use, as we found out when the rear doors swung open unexpectedly and a bride and groom swept in for their wedding. The Japanese coach party went “Waaaaahh!”, in a reverent tone previously only heard during barbed-wire death-matches, and an explosion of flash bulbs gave the bride the show-business wedding she’d always craved. But no-one could deny the impact of a genuinely overwhelming moment, one of those experiences that make travel rewarding.
The Hungarian language is a law unto itself. To quote one melancholy guidebook, “The Hungarian language belongs to the Finno-Ugric family. We do not understand our European relatives the Finns and Estonians either.” Interesting to note that those countries are the only ones in Europe whose suicide rate surpasses Hungary’s. Mere coincidence, or the natural result of having to cope with sentences like Camilla egyszerü, hétköznapi lány, egyedülálló nö, aki ellen összeesküdött a világ? It sounds like it reads – on the flight out, when we first heard it spoken over the intercom, we thought there was a fault with the PA.
All we managed to learn, between the five of us, was “Thank you”. The Hungarians seemed impressed we even bothered with that, perhaps because, by the end of the holiday, we had perfected saying it in a shy, not-sure-if-we-are-right kind of way. English and pointing are enough to get by in Budapest itself, though I wouldn’t fancy your chances in more rural areas. It definitely helped that menus were bilingual, even if when shopping, we were lucky not to end up with cartons of lard instead of milk, since we largely had to trust in the picture of a cow on the packaging.
The apartment we stayed in was cheap (£10/night each), overlooking a central courtyard that was a feature of many city blocks. You could spend hours exploring all the little side alleys that open up off the main street, if you could avoid being mown down by the cars which had a propensity to whizz out from them at high speed. Well, highish speed, anyway – given the number of Trabants on the road, you had a fighting chance of walking away from a collision with less damage than the offending vehicle. Didn’t spend much time in the flat, since the only leisure pursuit there was a black-and-white television, and our tolerance for MTV in monochrome was heavily limited by the discovery it was Backstreet Boys weekend.
We opted for the delightfully bad (unless you’re a big water-polo fan) Hungarian channel, with its stupendously poor, extremely cheap variety programmes. Improbable highlights were someone who looked like Michael Berryman doing modern dance while a blind pianist – shades of Suspiria – played Mussorgsky, and a children’s choir, whose nervous glances off-camera suggested they’d been abducted and were being forced to perform at gunpoint. Far better to stroll the streets and contemplate bringing home souvenirs, such as the wild boar skin complete with hooves, seen hanging on a market stall by its nostrils, from a meat-hook. Ft 16,000, forty-five quid – meat-hook not included.
In tourist terms, Hungary has reached the gawky teenage years – not innocent enough to be unspoilt, yet not quite aware enough of its responsibilities. A recent story illustrates this: a party of four Danes wandered into the Halászcsárda restaurant on Ferenciek tere, ate a modest meal, and wound up with a bill of around £4,300. To quote the owner, “As far as I’m concerned, we can charge tourists anything we like.” This attitude is unfortunately all too prevalent, and while it continues, Budapest is a city of great potential, which requires more than average care on the part of the visitor to prevent unpleasant experiences. But as a destination, it’s certainly worth that additional effort.
Handy Hungo-Holiday Hints
Don’t clink your glass when toasting. Back in history, Austrians did that after executing some Hungarians, and since then, it’s been a no-no.
Change money out there. The rate is much better for Forints, which look like Monopoly money, but are slightly less valuable. Ideal for a game of Who Wants to Be a Hungarian Millionaire though.
On the Metro, the clocks show the time, not until the next train arrives, but how long it has been since the last one. Unlike London, these “tube minutes” do not last three times as long as real ones.
The local liqueur called Unicum is made from herbs, and the bottle has a cross on the side for good reason: it smells like medicine and tastes ten times worse. Avoid.
Arriving tourists beware: Hungarian customs’ list of acceptable personal property includes “1 kayak or canoe…1 hot-air balloon, 1 parachute”. So avoid importing those multiple dirigibles.
Don’t bother shopping round the Váci utca street traders for the best deal on souvenirs. There’s a cartel redolent of past Socialist glories, and they all charge exactly the same.
Each Budapest district has one day in which everyone chucks out large junk for free browsing and selection by passers-by, like a Communist garage sale. Tourists can join in by barking their shins on the many pieces of broken furniture, which litter the streets.
Bring your own carrier to Hungarian supermarkets. Re-use of them is not just encouraged; it’s compulsory, unless you fancy the charade version of “May I purchase a plastic bag please?”
Memorable Budapest attractions include the Hungarian Museum of Electrotechnics, with its famous collection of electricity meters, and the Capital Sewerage Works Museum.
Ten famous natural-born Hungarians: Bela Bartok, Cicciolina, Joe Eszterhas, Harry Houdini, Alexander Korda, Franz Liszt, Bela Lugosi, Emeric Pressburger, Joseph Pulitzer, Ferenc Puskas.
The title Frequently, this has two parts, reflecting the genre: one to do with prison, the other to do with women. Particularly traditional are C-words: Chained, Caged, Captive, Confined, anything to do with sex or violence, such as Heat, Fury, Inferno, Fear, Passion, and plurals of the female sex i.e. Women, Babes, Bimbos, Totty or Stewardesses. In the box to the right are some classics.
The sleeve. Lure the customer in with lurid artwork – if they stop to actually read the text, you’ve lost the battle. Include as much flesh as you can, even if you have to fake it in some way. Juicy blood-red is a nice colour, and it goes without saying that an 18 certificate is a must.
The tag-line. Often follows a set formula: Terrified. Tortured. Humiliated. Imprisoned. Abused. Afraid. Innocent. Incarcerated. Insatiable. Get. The. Picture? Read down, diagonally or across: it’s the basic concept which is important, rather than any actual meaning.
The heroine is innocent: framed, or taking the rap for her man maybe, but you rarely hear, “It’s a fair cop, guv”. And no matter the crime, there is absolutely no chance of a fine, probation, or a suspended sentence.
The soap. Jail is unpleasant: there’s no such thing as an open prison, they’re all hell-holes. But, no matter the conditions, hygiene is paramount, and rigorously enforced. Inmates shower frequently, paying special attention to soaping their breasts.
The location. The above two components are why so many movies are set abroad, where miscarriages of justice occur all the time; it could never happen here, of course. However, note that “here” is relative, naturally depending on where you are: American WiPs favour the Far East, Europeans like South America, and a recent entry in the Japanese Female Scorpion series was set in California.
The prisoners. As well as the heroine, the following may be included:
The Innocent. Our heroine may be not guilty, but that’s different from the naïve young thing whom the heroine befriends, and has to rescue from…
The Queen Bitch. Usually with ties to the warden; expect a cat-fight with the heroine. Will either then bond, or become a deadly enemy who is brutally killed in the last reel.
The guards. On the other side of the bars, you often find these characters:
The Warden. Sadistic if male, dyke if female. May quote biblical scripture.
The Nice Authority Figure. Token effort to avoid a wholly negative portrayal of the rehabilitation profession. Can be a doctor or psychiatrist; usually entirely ineffective.
Guards. Shout things like “Move it, ladies, this ain’t the Holiday Inn.”
The plot. Not strictly obligatory. Should you feel the need, you can have something nefarious going on in the background; white-slavery is a favourite. When discovered by the heroine, she will either bring in the authorities (this usually takes a while), make an escape bid, or lead the inmates in an rebellion, which will inevitably be successful – Attica, this ain’t.
The ending. Often sees the heroine released, sadder but wiser, to begin a new life outside on the straight and narrow. At least, until the sequel… If you’re lucky enough to make one, expect to recast, since your leading lady will now consider herself a ‘serious actress’, above such things. Try waiting a few years – her career will probably plummet again, and she’ll be glad of the work.
To test these ground rules as a working hypothesis, scientific practice now says we should apply some data to it, and see how it fits. Fortunately, Chris had just bought me a whole load of, er, data, because she thought I was into “that sort of thing”. Who, me? With experimental subjects thus sorted, let’s get on to the analyses. The numbers after each category refer to the elements listed above. But first, this:
All-Time Great WiP Exploititles
Barbed Wire Dolls
Concentration Camp For Girls
Crucified Girls of San Remon
Delinquent School Girls
Emanuelle Escapes From Hell
Naked Superwitches Of The Rio Amour
Nurses For Sale
School for Unclaimed Girls
So Young, So Evil
Strike of the Tortured Angels
The Big Bust Out (Richard Jackson) 1/5/6/8/9 – Heh-heh-heh… He said, “Big bust”, thereby covering both women and prison themes nicely. Difficult to tell the precise location here, but given the multi-national nature of the heroines, probably safe to say it’s foreign for some of them. This one starts off with all seven already inside, neatly bypassing questions of guilt or innocence. However, it doesn’t take long before they escape, along with their ‘social worker’ nun, only to fall into the clutches of white-slavers, filthy Arabs, and so on. Aided by a super-funky 70’s soundtrack and some good use of locations, there is also a bizarre sequence in which the nun goes into town looking for food, and ends up smashing a dwarf over the head with a boulder. It’s good to see a film which doesn’t avoid asking difficult questions about the role of the church in modern society. By the end of the film, the ranks of the women have been sorely depleted, and you can’t help wondering if they might perhaps have been better off staying in jail. B
Caged Heat 3000 (Aaron Osborne) 1/2/4/6/7/8/9 – This may be the sleaziest entry in Jim Cameron’s filmography – albeit only through the spaceship of his, spliced-in from Battle Beyond the Stars. For it is a Roger Corman production, so anyone expecting other than exploitation par excellence is being startlingly naive. Lisa Boyle (under the nomme-de-jail of ‘Cassandra Leigh’) stars as a girl sent to a futuristic prison asteroid, where she rapidly peeves both authorities and fellow inmates, and shows a remarkable fondness for violence which suggests the verdict was perhaps right on the button. The cast seems to be a mix of strippers and porn stars (even Ron Jeremy has a cameo), though the sets are surprisingly good and it looks better than its probably minute budget. After a bright start, balancing delicately on the tightrope of self-awareness, it seems to forget about the SF angle and descends into a standard “prison revolt” scenario, albeit with rather more fist fights than normal. Leigh certainly has the hard attitude – and breasts – for the film, and there’s enough of both to retain interest. C+
Caged Women (Luchetti Leandro) 1/2/3/4/6/8/9 – This is something of a rare item, in that the video was initially refused certification by the BBFC altogether. 25 minutes later (or rather, fewer…), it seeps out, shorn of all potential offence, mostly by the distributors. Is there any point watching a film missing over a quarter of its length? Perversely, yes: if five minutes had been cut, this would have been tedious garbage, but beyond a certain point, coherence is replaced by a fugue-like state of random scenes, connected only loosely. One second, our two heroines are the titular caged women, surviving by licking sweat off each other(!); the next, they’re in the jungle. Is this reality or delusion? Uncut, it made sense – perhaps – now, you’ve got to work hard at filling in the gaps, and whatever you come up with is likely more interesting than the atrocities removed for your protection. Admittedly, perhaps neither version ever did explain what an “American tourist” was doing in the middle of an Amazonian jungle. But it now gets the benefit of the doubt which, from an aesthetic, if not exploitative, point of view is a significant help. D+
Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (Shunya Ito) 2/7/8/9/10 – This is the second entry in perhaps the longest running WiP series, beginning in 1972, and still going strong today. The first four all star Meiko Kaji as Matsu, a prisoner of very few words – in this film, precisely two. At the outset, she’s under lockdown conditions about half a notch better than Hannibal Lecter, and we soon discover this is for good reason. Warden Goda, who has crossed her path before and come off worse, tries to break her spirit, but this merely leads to her escape, along with a dirty half-dozen of other murderous and malcontented maidens. They struggle through a surreal landscape, pursued by the warden and his men, leaving a trail of cadavers in their wake. It’s definitely a classic: in some ways, the movie comes across almost like a Leone western, while in others it’s more like Kwaidan, and it also possesses the hyper-red gore beloved by Japanese film-makers. Kaji does fantastically well given the limitations of her dialogue, and even the complete lack of background – it assumes you’ve seen the first part, so gives no hint why she’s in jail – works in her favour. B+
Purgatory (Ami Artzi) 2/3/4/5/6/7/9 – Ah, how the mighty are fallen…and Tanya Roberts too, now reduced to coy exploitation films like this one. She gets sent to eleven years in an African jail, where the governor, a graduate of the “Harvard School of Business”, farms the best girls out as hookers in a reprise of much the same plot as Chained Heat. Meanwhile, her mother battles corruption and embassy apathy to try and free her. A lot of the exploitation here happens off-screen: you’ll see rubber gloves being snapped on, and that’s it. Another particular highlight is one client of hers, who has the least convincing Scots accent in cinema history, and sings Take the High Road to make up for it. It’s pretty depressing to watch lengthy scenes of Tanya Roberts sobbing, as she loses her sanity but, inevitably, retains her immaculately coiffeured big hair. Though the political intrigue and conspiracy angles are well-covered, the lengthy final escape sequence can’t shake off the torpor of the first hour, and there are not even any moral lessons to be learned here. D+
Slammer Girls (Chuck Vincent) 1/2/5/7/8/10 – At least Vincent has the exploitation credits for this women-in-prison parody, and his porno background also means he’s not short of actresses (there’s no shortage of adult movie starlets to be found here – as well as Beth Broderick, who’d go on to be one of Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s aunts). This clearly wants to be Airplane! with breasts, and on odd occasions succeeds, partly through dumb gags, partly through a faithful recreation of every WiP cliché imaginable. Thus you get an innocent sent down, an undercover (very male!) journalist, secret medical experiments, etc. However, there are long spells when you could be watching a “serious” entry in the genre, and the acting rarely reaches a sufficiently giddy height to cover the gaps: only matron Veronica Hart pushes the pedal to the max, spitting out her lines with fine venom. It’s just about amusing enough to fend off sleep, but in no way replaces Reform School Girls as the best example of jailhouse jollity. C
Star Slammer: The Escape (Fred Olen Ray) 2/3/4/6/7/8/9/10 – Blimey, another SF/WiP crossover: stars ‘n’ bars, perhaps? Anyway, our heroine is framed for the murder of cult icon Johnny Legend, actually committed by Ross Hagen, and gets sent to the prison ship Vengeance, where all the usual stuff takes place. This being Fred Olen Ray, it’s cheerfully trashy, with its tongue largely in cheek: Hagen and Ray regular Dawn Wildsmith sneer magnificently, and a very ill-looking John Carradine turns up for about ten seconds. It’s daft, and knows it, remaining good-natured and surprisingly unsleazy (only one completely gratuitous topless flash). There is some stuff which could even be claimed as social satire except that, at the risk of repeating myself, this is a F.O.R. movie, so clearly can’t be. While gleefully nicking stuff from other movies, such as the monster from Deadly Spawn, towards the end, Ray chucks in effect shot after effects shot, and the cast are left to stand around looking bored. They weren’t the only ones, and it gelled badly with the cheery kitsch of the previous 75 enjoyable minutes. B-
10 Violent Women (Ted V.Mikels) 2/5/8/9 – You have to admire any director who proudly proclaims “Ted V.Mikels Classic Gems” on the video box. Ten hot-pants clad (this was made in 1979, after all) gold miners opt for the easy option of a heist instead, but the sheikh to whom their loot belongs hunts them down. Ted himself turns up as a jewel fence, and performs creditably enough there: he just needs lessons in lighting, as much of the film appears to take place in a coal cellar. We’re almost in the third quarter before they get put into prison, but Mikels makes up for lost time, cramming brawls, a lesbian cell-block head, a scripture-quoting loony, and a lot of beatings into a relatively short section which is the best part of the film. Sadly for the viewer, they escape, and things sink back into the abyss; it runs 20 minutes longer than the box claims, but that is probably more of a curse than a blessing. Certainly, it’s neither a classic nor a gem. D
Women Prison (David Lam) 1/5/7/8/9/10 – Hong Kong has produced some classic male prison films, such as Prison on Fire and The Story of Ricky, and this deserves to be up there with them, albeit closer to the former then the latter – scriptwriter Nam Yin also did Prison on Fire II. An excellent ensemble cast (Carol Cheng, Fung Bo Bo, Pat Ha, Charine Chan and Elsie Chan) tell the tale of Kelly (Ha), and the film wastes no time, turning her from bride to jail-bird inside four minutes. She then gets involved in a struggle for jail supremacy, and embarks on a downward spiral which pushes her to the edge of insanity. Oddly, a stretch in isolation proves to be a turning point (as well as providing a great version of House of the Rising Sun – “My power is always there/It will never die/Never complain or regret/To hold my fist of freedom”) and things build to a rousing climax. While sex is barely mentioned and the ending seems unsatisfactorily rushed, the characters are wonderful, taking the usual clichés and adding depth (Pat Ha in particular does a fine job). You actually care – a pleasant surprise for the genre. B
Women’s Penitentiary
Readers wanting a crash course in the women-in-prison film need go no further than the Women’s Penitentiary series, released by video label MCM, no doubt to follow up on the cult status of blaxploitation flick, Penitentiary. While the Captive Women line may have reached eight, they still lag behind W.P. and its thirteen entries to date. Why not collect the set?
Covering a broad range of style, content and era, they are all cynical retitlings of other movies (albeit ones which only extend to the box, leaving the credits untouched). However, their trashiest and most appealing factor are probably the delightfully sleazy sleeves, on which models pose in costumes and positions that capture the whole WiP ethos admirably, yet have absolutely no connection to the film,
The same can often be said for the text on there too: if early entries did at least make the odd nod to truth in advertising, later ones appear to have largely made-up names which cannot be found anywhere else. Thus WP 11 borrows a couple of names from Caged Heat, yet isn’t, and the cast of WP 13 appear to be complete unknowns. The series falls apart in other ways too: note the poor punctuation and spelling on the WP 13 sleeve below…
Just to add to the general confusion, the first entry in the series, was Ted V. Mikels’ 10 Violent Women (see above), but Women’s Penitentiary is also an alternate title for The Big Doll House, Jack Hill’s hugely influential Pam Grier movie. Hey, who said being a Women-in-Prison fan was easy…
10 Violent Women
The Big Bird Cage
Women in Cages
Violenza in un carcere femminile, starring Laura Gemser
Femmine in Fuga
Women Unchained
Island Women
Five Loose Women, a.k.a. Fugitive Girls (with an Ed Wood script + cameo).
