September 2006

Satan’s Slave

UK: Norman J. Warren, 1976

As you may remember, back in August I purchased a trio of British horror collections from Anchor Bay, among them The Norman Warren Collection. I put them to one side, because at the time I was knee-deep in the final draft of my dissertation, but now that that’s done and dusted, I decided to take a look, starting with the first film in the Warren box set, Satan’s Slave.

After a less than auspicious start, consisting of the generic murder of a generic victim, Satan’s Slave pleasantly surprised me. It’s not masterpiece, to be sure, but it’s a competently-made supernatural horror film with an impressively spooky atmosphere. The plot deals with a young woman, Catherine (Candace Glendenning), who, on the cusp of turning 20, witnesses the fiery death by exploding car (!) of her parents, on the very doorstep of the house of her uncle Alexander (Michael Gough). Kindly Uncle Al takes the bizarelly untraumatised Catherine into the fold, but it soon turns out that he, his wacky son Stephen (Martin Potter) and his secretary Frances (Barbara Kellerman) have a sinister ulterior motive in adopting her as their own.

It’s all a bit uneven: the script makes a major bungle by revealing the malicious nature of Alexander and Stephen within the opening ten minutes, and a lot of the dialogue is of a risible standard. The performances are also rather hit and miss, although Candace Glendenning, who seems to have all but disappeared after making this film, makes an appealing and at times resourceful heroine, with her wide eyes and raven hair, while the inimitable Michael Gough makes the most of his distinctive and powerful voice in the role of her malevolent uncle.

The film also benefits from some truly impressive cinematography (a grand total of five cameramen are credited, of whom Les Young seems to have been the chief), which makes the English countryside seem like a genuinely haunted place, while John Scott’s score is pleasantly ominous, if a tad hokey. Unfortunately, some of the gore effects are more than a little cringe-worthy: it’s clear that Warren doesn’t know when to hold back, leering over the effects in extreme close-up and revealing just how fake-looking they truly are. This is especially true of the rubbery-looking flesh used for brandings and slicings, while an otherwise well-directed suicide features a lumps of pink-looking putty, presumably signifying the victim’s innards, bulging out of various orifices.

Still, I enjoyed Satan’s Slave. I’ve always had a thing for supernatural horror, especially of the demonic possession variety, and this one is well-executed. It’s rather predictable, and the budgetary constraints are at times all too visible, but it’s a good, solid effort with a palpable sense of dread - which, in a horror film, is almost always the most important feature.

7/10

On a side note, the transfer for this film is pretty shockingly bad. I know it’s old, and low budget, and obscure, and all those things, but really, there’s no excuse for it looking the way it does. Half the time is resembles one of those dodgy camcorded movies.

Eugenie

Spain/West Germany: Jess Franco, 1970

Back in 2003, I happened to see a film by a Spanish director by the name of Jesus “Jess” Franco. The film in question was Justine, and I’m sorry to say I thought it was so bad that I didn’t make it beyond the opening half-hour. This was when my Euro-cult craze was still in its infancy (the only such films I’d seen were around a third of Dario Argento’s catalogue), and I realise that Franco has a rather formidable following among such circles. Therefore, recently, when I was doing a little borrowing and trading with other Euro-cult fanatics, I decided to give Franco another go, with his 1970 film Eugenie.

It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Eugenie and Justine are pretty similar films. In addition to sharing a director, a writer/producer (Harry Alan Towers) and a composer (Bruno Nicolai, he of so many gialli), they are both based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade and have a similar narrative theme of an innocent young woman embarking on a series of sexual adventures, many of them sadomasochistic. As such, Eugenie is somewhere between a character drama and an exploitation/porn hybrid, although the fact that it takes itself seriously and places no small amount of emphasis on the narrative means that, as one reviewer put it, it’s as far from a Skinemax flick as you can possibly get.

Be of no doubt, though, that this is far from a classic. Not much of note really happens, and the whole thing seems to come to an abrupt end long before it should. Franco’s attempts to blend fantasy with reality are also not particularly successful, and, to be honest, there’s only so much canoodling and breast-fondling I can take before I start looking for something more substantial. And yet, Eugenie’s technical qualities set it apart from most films of this sort. Franco had a decent (at least by his standards) budget with this film, and you can tell that every penny ended up on the screen. Shot in anamorphic Technovision, it consistently looks sumptuous, making excellent use of the picturesque island location and, in the more hallucinatory sequences, various dye filters. And the final moments, which show the naked, degraded Eugenie stumbling through sand dunes and along deserted country roads, are haunting in their sheer beauty. Unfortunately, a number of scenes are sullied by being so out of focus that I’m amazed Franco never re-shot them.

The film also has an interesting cast, headed by Marie Liljedahl as the young Eugenie who, while not exactly a first-class thespian, is game for anything and handles the character’s innocence well. Her transition from innocent wallflower to sullied damsel never really convinced me, though, as she does little to show any sort of change in her character. The sultry Maria Rohm is also on fine form, and the sheer shock of seeing Christopher Lee in such a dirty picture is well worth the price of admission. (Apparently, he had no idea what sort of film he was appearing in until he saw the final cut, but, looking at the scenes in which he appears, I’m not entirely convinced by this claim.)

In the final analysis, therefore, Franco is a better filmmaker than I previously assumed him to be. The subject matter isn’t really to my liking, but here he clearly demonstrates a decent ability behind the camera if given an appropriate budget. For all its faults, I’m not sorry to have watched it, and I’ll be less hasty to avoid this director’s output in the future.

6/10

Movies section completed

Good news, people: a few hours of mundane formatting have paid off, and the Movies section of the site is now up to date. Since midday, I’ve gone through more than 400 entries and manually modified them to conform correctly to the format of the new site layout, which, while hardly the most fun way to spend an afternoon, at least means that it’s now done and dusted.

Major HD DVD announcements from Warner

Source: High-Def Digest

One of the biggest criticisms levelled against both high definition formats has been the relative lack of “triple-A” movies. This is not in itself particularly surprising, as the studios, always keen to make a buck, have initially been releasing less successful titles in the hope that, given the dearth of available films, AV junkies will buy titles they otherwise wouldn’t consider simply because there isn’t anything else on offer. The run-up to Christmas was always going to be the point at which the studios really kicked into gear, and it seems that Warner, who have been unusually sluggish when announcing new releases (often very close to the release date), have finally decided to kick things up a notch with the following releases on October 10th:

- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971 version)
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005 version)
- Corpse Bride
- Batman Begins
- The Polar Express

These titles will be encoded in VC1 at 1080p, with 640 Kbps Dolby Digital-Plus audio. The extras will be the same as those of the standard definition DVD releases, apart from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Batman Begins, which, in addition to the standard definition extras, will both gain an “In-Movie Experience” interactive feature.

Warner also announced two Blu-ray releases for the same date - Syriana and 16 Blocks, both of which are already available on HD DVD. They too will be using the VC1 format, unlike Sony, who continue to insist on using the outdated and bloated MPEG2. This should mean that image quality will be identical to the HD DVD versions (unless they need to be re-encoded in order to fit on the lower capacity Blu-ray discs), although the higher price tag of $34.99 (versus $28.99 for the HD DVD releases) means that, once again, there is nothing appealing about the Blu-ray versions.

PS3 games to come with free Blu-ray movies?

Source: High-Def Digest

Industry insiders are suggesting that Sony will be bundling free Blu-ray movies along with game releases. No, you didn’t read that wrong: they’re not bundling them with the console itself, but along with games. I’m starting to smell the strench of desperation. “Buy Sonic the Hedgehog and get a free copy of the classic Little Man!” as Lyris put it.

On a related note, Engadget is reporting that Warner Home Video have apparently come up with a means of creating a triple format HD DVD/Blu-ray/DVD disc. This doesn’t mean that the same data can be read by both players, but rather, much like the HD DVD/DVD combo discs being offered by Warner and Universal for some titles, that multiple differently formatted layers are included. This is certainly an extremely interesting development, but I have to wonder how many studios are likely to pay the licensing costs for three formats, as well as the unavoidable increase in manufacturing costs.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 10: Wrecked

Written by Marti Noxon; Directed by David Solomon

There’s nothing I can say about Wrecked that hasn’t already been said in Boils and Blinding Torment’s review, so I highly recommend you give it a look. I’ll be making a lot of the same points, but with a lot less class.

If last week was Sabrina Week, this week is After-School Special Week, with the pompous moralising and condescension that go with such matters. This is the episode that really sets the show off on its downward spiral, pushing the characters into the darkest, most depressing places possible.

A lot of Season 6’s defenders claim that those who dislike it simply can’t handle the darkness and seriousness, but to that I say “bollocks”. Nothing in Season 6 is profound, or mature, or anything like that: it’s just angsty for the sake of being angsty, depressing for the sake of being depressing, and filled with as much sex and near-nudity as possible simply because UPN were less strict about that sort of thing than the WB.

It’s also the episode in which magic for some reason becomes equated with drug addiction. The problem with this is that there is no precedent for it. We’ve seen that the power that magic endows in a user can be addictive, which is fine - but, to quote one fan at the BuffyGuide forums, here there isn’t even a metaphor, just a poor analogy. Magic isn’t a metaphor for drug addiction: it is drug addiction, complete with magic dealers, magic houses, and Willow shivering on her bed as she goes through withdrawal symptoms.

I wouldn’t mind the complete bastardisation of the series’ internal consistency if it had actually been enjoyable to watch. But, no, instead it’s as boring as hell and infuriatingly condescending (did I mention that already?). We’re treated to lots of oh-so-serious talk about how Willow’s acting different and going through all sorts of stuff, Willow endangering Dawn in her careless drug-induced frenzy, Willow sobbing “I need heeeeelp!”, and me banging my head on the desk. To tell the truth, I’m reminded of the Drugs episode of Brass Eye and its portrayal of the effects of Cake. This is getting points only for Alyson Hannigan’s performance, which somehow manages to rise above the material in the final scenes. By the end of the season, when she, like Sarah Michelle Gellar, seemed to get completely fed up, even that would fade away.

If you want to know what so many viewers’ beef with Marti Noxon is, just watch this episode. This is not entertainment, and I’m getting absolutely no pleasure out of watching it. It’s like a kick in the face to everyone who stuck with this show for five and a half long years.

Overall rating: 2/10.

Next time: Gone.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 9: Smashed

Written by Drew Z. Greenberg; Directed by Turi Meyer

In this episode, Buffy turns into Sabrina the Teenage Witch. The sight of Willow snapping her fingers and turning men into giant dancing strawberries has got to rank as one of the most risible moments in the series’ entire seven-year run. Still, Sabrina Willow is better than crack whore Willow, who emerges in the next episode.

The Trio appear again, pulling off some sort of tedious jewel heist with the aid of a freeze ray. I’ve never been a fan of Buffy’s appropriation of comic book “technology” - magic and vampires I have no problem with, but for some reason things like freeze rays just don’t work for me. And don’t even get me started on the scene where they fawn over their Boba Fett figurine. This is the sort of writing I’d expect from a third-rate sitcom.

Spike also discovers that the chip in his brain no longer kicks in when he hits Buffy: a byproduct, it would seem, of her having been brought back to life via unnatural means. Unfortunately, the episode ends with the pair of them having sex in a house, whose very foundations collapse as a metaphor for the destructive nature of their relationship. The scene in question, as it happens, was investigated for “indecency” by the FCC, the watchdog body in charge of regulating American television. If you ask me, the only indecent thing about it is the complete lack of subtlety in the metaphor.

Overall rating: 5/10.

Next time: Wrecked.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 8: Tabula Rasa

Written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner; Directed by David Grossman

In a season of doom, gloom and sheer boredom, I’m amazed they managed to come up with something this fun. It’s one of those traditional “memory loss” episodes, but I always find these appealing, as they help break up the monotony and allow the characters to do and say things they normally wouldn’t. I especially enjoy Giles and Anya jumping to the conclusion that they’re a couple (because they own the Magic Box together), and Giles and Spike believing that they’re father and son. It’s also very nicely photographed, considering how flat and mundane most of the rest of the season looks. Marks off, though, for the incredibly hokey villain: a loan shark who… you guessed it, is a shark. Yeesh.

It must be said that, for all its strengths, this episode sets in motion some of the worst aspects of the season.

Number 1: it’s the episode in which Giles leaves, and it’s amazing how integral he was to the show’s success. Take him out, and it feels like there’s a huge gap. The writers, to their credit, admitted that they didn’t realise how much the show would suffer without him till it was too late, and as a result made the most of Anthony Head’s limited availability in Season 7 by spacing his appearances out better (not that it helped, though, because they utterly desecrated the character in that season). Another problem is the complete lack of logic in Giles’ decision to leave: he’s just learned that Buffy was pulled out of Heaven (rather than Hell) by her friends, and despite her needing him now more than ever, he simply walks out on her. I know Anthony Head was going to leave either way, but you’d think the writers could have come up with a better excuse.

Number 2: they split Willow and Tara up. I’m not one to proclaim my undying love for TV relationships (believe it or not, I think there’s more to a character than who they happen to be having sex with), but I like this one. It’s believable and realistic, and Alyson Hannigan and Amber Benson have considerable chemistry. Tara’s leaving deprives the show of a great character (although she does pop up here and there until her short-lived reunion with Willow later in the season), and turns Willow into a shell of her former self, to the point that she becomes a whiny, self-obsessed junkie (more on that in my review of the deplorable Wrecked).

Number 3: at the end of the episode, Buffy and Spike get together. The two shared a sweeping Hollywood smooch at the end of Once More, With Feeling, but this is the episode in which the relationship gets underway. I’ll explain in the reviews of subsequent episodes precisely why I dislike it so much.

Given all these negatives, I’m slightly surprised to be rating the episode so highly. When all said and done, though, while this episode sets up many of the season’s biggest problems, they don’t really begin “for real” until the next episode. This is really the last time we see the whole gang together, so it’s a moment to savour.

Overall rating: 8/10.

Next time: Smashed.

Movies pages underway

The Movies page is now in progress. Because I have almost two years’ worth of viewings archived, I decided to import the data directly from my Blogger account into Movable Type. Of course, like all things weblog-related, none of this is straightforward, and I am extremely grateful to Mark Paschal for his Importing your Blogger weblog to Movable Type step-by-step illustrated tutorial.

Unfortunately, due to some differences in the way the data is handled, it arrived in a bit of a mess at this end. As a result, in order to make the content fit completely with the new template, and to ensure that it is 100% HTML 4.01 Transitional compliant, I’m going to have to go through each post and manually alter the tags. (Too bad there’s no automated means of doing this.) I’ve corrected the posts for the month of September 2006, but everything else is going to need some work. I can’t promise any sort of ETA on this: basically, I’ll do a little bit here and there as time and interest allow.

Update, December 19, 2006 06:39 PM: Fixed dead link.

Guild Wars: Nightfall

I decided to pre-order the Collector’s Edition of the upcoming Guild Wars: Nightfall for PC from Amazon.co.uk.

As I previously mentioned, this new campaign in the Guild Wars franchise is being released on October 27th, and comes in “normal” and Collector’s Edition variants. The latter, in addition to the game itself, includes:

• Making of Guild Wars: Nightfall behind-the-scenes DVD
• Collector’s art book
• Collectible skills pins
• A character mini-standee
• A poster-sized map of Elona
• Guild Wars: Nightfall soundtrack CD
• And more!

Who knows what “and more” signifies. If experience is anything to go by, it probably refers to the box, or the shrink-wrap, or something like that, but regardless, that’s an impressive array of features.

Universal boss takes swipe at Blu-ray

Source: AV Science Forum

Recently there has been some speculation from the Blu-ray camp that Universal, currently the only one of the big-name studios exclusively committed to HD DVD (as opposed to Paramount and Warner, who release for both formats, and Sony, Disney and Fox, who are currently Blu-ray exclusives), would begin releasing Blu-ray material as well. A comment from Universal Home Entertainment president Craig Kornblau, however, has pretty much put the final nail in that coffin:

“The reviews are in and HD DVD is hands down the leader in picture quality, audio experiences and interactive capabilities that have never been seen before,” said Kornblau.

“Look at the blogs, look at the reviews by the early adopters and even look at the mainstream media - HD DVD has maintained its first-to-market advantage and delivered on the promises of providing the best high definition image and sound quality at the best value for consumers today. Take today’s announcement of new players from Toshiba, new PC hardware from Niveus and new titles like ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,’ and add the hardware and movies that are coming this Fall and you can see why HD DVD is poised for a strong holiday.”

Given that, in order to succeed, HD DVD is going to need all the support it can get, this should certainly be welcome news for backers of the format.

Categories, wonderful categories!

It took me the better part of three hours to work out, thanks to Movable Type failing to include category display tags in its default skin, and the existing documentation being vague at best, but categories are now finally functioning at Whiggles.com!

This, as it happens, was one of my reasons for ditching Blogger. The current version of that platform, Blogger 2.0, includes no official support for categories, tags or whatever you want to call them, meaning that the only way to get them is through a variety of not particularly satisfying hacks. Blogger 3.0, currently in beta, adds categories (known on that platform as labels), but due to their use of Blogger’s dynamic server capabilities, they are unlikely to be available to users such as myself, who prefer to host our blogs on our own web space rather than using a username.blogspot.com account.

Anyway, as is usually the case with these things, perseverance eventually paid off, and as a result I can now safely say that the news pages of this site are working exactly the way I want them to. I even managed to get multiple categories working (initially I thought I was going to be restricted to assigning one category per post). Since there are only a few posts at the moment, only a handful of categories are visible, but more will no doubt start to crop up later as and when I find a need for them.

News sections a-go-go

The various news pages should now be properly formatted to fit with the skin designed for the rest of the site (goodbye boring white forms). Why don’t you try out the Comments function?

By the way, it’s come to my attention that these pages aren’t appearing 100% properly in Internet Explorer (now there’s a surprise): namely, for some reason it’s taken it into its mind to ignore the padding around images. In Firefox, Opera and any other proper web browser, most of the images I post have a rather fetching white “pad” between the image itself and the black outer border (and if the image is a clickable link, the pad turns grey when you roll over it). In IE… well, you get the idea. And it even does it in the release candidate of Internet Explorer 7, so it’s pretty clear that Microsoft aren’t planning on fixing it any time soon.

Update, 08:29 AM: I’ve made a couple of minor changes to the stylesheet, which changes the way images with attached URLs behave when you roll over them. Still haven’t managed to fix the IE bug, though.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 7: Once More, With Feeling

Written and Directed by Joss Whedon

This is the last great hoorah of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it’s strong and unique enough to give me reason to reconsider my desire to consign the final two seasons to the scrap heap. In this very special episode, a spell is cast that causes the inhabitants of Sunnydale to pour out their hearts in song, saying everything that they otherwise wouldn’t dare to say. As such, with its literalism and pushing of the subtext out into the open, it’s very much a Season 6 episode, but it’s handled with enough skill here for me to wonder if the season would have worked after all has Joss Whedon been in charge of it. (This was the only episode he wrote and/or directed during this season, with Marti Noxon handling day-to-day showrunning responsibilities, although Whedon undoubtedly signed off on everything that made it to the screen.)

Tacky as it sounds, it’s an undeniable hoot to see the cast members stretching their vocal muscles. Everyone provides their own voice for the musical numbers (Sarah Michelle Gellar was originally going to be dubbed, but she changed her mind when she read the lyrics and saw how integral they were to the characters), and some sing more than others depending on their relative talent. Gellar has the hardest time, since, as the lead, she obviously has to do a fair amount of singing. She’s not great, but she’s considerably better than I expected. In comparison, Alyson Hannigan and Michelle Trachtenberg are pretty bad, but thankfully only get a couple of lines here and there, while Nicholas Brendon and Emma Caulfield sing like troopers and generally do far better than one would expect. Unsurprisingly, it is the three cast members who have sung in a professional capacity - Anthony Head, Amber Benson and James Marsters - who impress most.

Bad points? Well, as unique as it is, it’s not a bona fide classic like Hush or Restless, and that’s because, despite how high it aims, it doesn’t always succeed. Giles’ sudden decision not to help Buffy, after Dawn has been kidnapped, lacks motivation (yes, we know he feels that, by always being there to prop her up, he’s “standing in the way”, but her sister has just been kidnapped by a demon from the depths of Hell, for god’s sake). Likewise, the revelation that Xander summoned the music demon (Xander casting a spell - pull the other one) and then didn’t say anything, despite it resulting in fatalities, is so out of character it’s laughable. Additionally, the inconsistent quality of the vocal performances does jar at times, while a sequence in which Marti Noxon actually appears on screen to sing about getting a parking ticket is the kind of self-indulgent crap that I highly doubt she would have submitted to had she known that, a few episodes down the line, jaded viewers would be baying for her blood. It’s ultimately the best episode of the final two seasons, though, and, although I said I never wanted to see these last two years of Buffy ever again, I would be willing to make an exception for this episode.

Overall rating: 9/10.

Next time: Tabula Rasa.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 6: All the Way

Written by Steven S. DeKnight; Directed by David Solomon

In this episode, Dawn goes out on a date with a boy… who turns out to be a vampire! No, not the most stunningly original premise ever, but at least this episode has a decent enough sense of humour, something that will disappear all too soon. It also has a nicely choreographed fight scene, in which even Giles gets to practice some slick moves. When did he become so adept at staking?

Besides that, Dawn turns into a shoplifter in this episode, presumably because in this, the season in which everyone gets so monumentally screwed up, something has to go wrong with her life (apart from losing her mother, then her sister, then getting her sister back and discovering that she’d rather be dead, that is).

Overall rating: 6/10.

Next time: Once More, With Feeling.

We are live - high five!

Well, that was a lot sooner than I expected, but that’s always the way with these things. With much assistance from Lyris, I did a considerable amount of wrangling with the equally idiotic structures of Movable Type and Fuitadnet (my web host), and finally got the damn thing functioning a couple of hours ago. Since then, I’ve been formatting the news page to fit my new layout, which took less time than I was expecting once I started to remember how Movable Type works. Obviously, there are a few kinks still to sort out, and the archive pages are currently barren in the extreme, but everything should be reasonably functional already. If anything’s broken, let me know.

If you want to see the Blogger-powered news posts of the last 15 months or so, please see the Blogger (2005-2006) Archive. Everything’s still there, although comment posting has been disabled.

Hope you enjoy Whiggles.com version 9! It’s been too long in coming.

PS. Categories/tags are coming, just as soon as I can figure out how to get them to work. It may surprise you to learn that Movable Type’s documentation on the matter is somewhat less than user-friendly.