rave from the grave.

 Celebrating the birthday of the king of the undead - George A Romero with this creepy cacophony of corpse based floor fillers.... 

Stay scared!

 

more mooncup.

After rewatching the frankly fantastic The Man From Planet X recently I immediately (well almost immediately, I had a wee first) went online to see if there had ever been a sequel or the like and to find out who owns the rights because let's be honest it deserves a remake.

In a bizarre bit of (fearful) symmetry - seeing as it was rediscovering my Robot Monster strip that made me watch it - I discovered that Fawcett Publications actually produced a comic adaptation of the movie in 1952 (which actually ain't too shady).

Not only that tho' but after even more digging I found that way back in 1975 top scribe Hunter Adams (AKA Jack Lancer, AKA Jim Lawrence) penned a three book series chronicling the further adventures of The Man From Planet X.

Excitedly I scurried to Ebay to find the books and after a few weeks (and a large part of the kids college fund) they arrived at Unwell Towers.

So imagine my surprise upon reading them when I realised that they had absolutely fuck all to do with the film but were actually a series of sexy stories about some bloke named Peter Lance,  who although looking human was in fact an alien from the planet Tharb named Pritan Lansol, sent to Earth to study our customs and learn more about us before his race finally announce their presence.

Obviously being aliens they have absolutely no concept of sex so to discover more about it the alien leader, Dr. Kraag, sends Lansol to Earth to look into it.

Obviously this involves him bedding as many beautiful women as possible and all in the name of science.


Sounds legit.

Invariably he ends up involved in spy rings, human trafficking and the like  forcing him to  use his amazing physical prowess, telepathic abilities, and alien technology to defeat the bad guys and save the damsel.

Before having some more of 'the sex' with them obviously.

And whilst this may seem a tiring proposition to us mere mortals, it turns out that the planet Tharb is actually the size of  Jupiter (tho' not alas Uranus) with a similarly immense gravity meaning that the muscles of its people are tremendous compared to Earthlings.

Obviously this means that Lance is able to 'perform' for hours and hours.

If all this wasn't manly enough Lance also freelances for the CIA on a part-time basis, investigating such mysteries as:

The She-Beast.

An exciting sexcapade involving an old hag who needs an experimental drug called Novitol in order to continue to look young and beautiful, therefore being able to continue having sex.
 
Unfortunately the company that manufactured it has just been bought by a rich industrialist who wants to cease its production so the old hag attempts to kill him.

Luckily Lance is shagging the guys daughter so steps in to help.





Tiger By The Tail.

When Lance rescues a beautiful young (nude) woman from a tiger attack - as you do - he finds himself in the middle of an attempt by a cabal of bad men trying to acquire a secret weapon known as C.O.D. AKA Crack of Doom.

The Devil To Play.

A rash of muggings and rapes in Manhattan can be connected (as is usually the way) to a group of Satanic worshipers who intend on controlling the oil industry by kidnapping a woman who has created a synthetic oil formula.

Unfortunately, on account of them being utter shite, Lawrence (who for years scripted the James Bond newspaper strip, eventually creating more adventures than any other writer including Ian Fleming) called it a day after book 3 and returned to writing Tom Swift Jr. (as Victor Appleton II) and The Hardy Boys Adventures (as Franklin Dixon) before going on to co-create two highly complex adventure games for the Infocom series in the 80s.

Shit! That means this computer is made entirely out of your dad's arse!

 

As an aside, all this talk of the 80s got me thinking, does anyone else remember/care that the 1962 classic Creation of The Humanoids was bizarrely feature on the inside sleeve of the Bronski Beat album Age of Consent?

This was quite possibly due as much to it being Andy Warhol's favourite SciFi movie as well as it's plot regarding forbidden love and the like.

Caught up with it again recently and surprisingly it still stands up well.

Tho' that's probably because all the sets are really thick cardboard.

Creation of The Humanoids (1962)
Dir: Wesley Barry.
Cast: Don Megowan, Erica Elliot, Frances McCann, Don Doolittle, George Milan, Dudley Manlove and David Cross.

Was She One Of The Green-Blooded People?

The place: A future Earth.

The time: Just after lunch where a nasty (let's be honest,is there any other kind?) nuclear war has resulted in the total extermination of 92% of the human race and left the remaining survivors riddled with radiation poisoning, scabs and bad teeth meaning the prospect for humanity surviving via the medium of having 'the sex' looking very grim.

To keep civilization ticking over smoothly, the remaining humans go into overdrive building over a billion robots to handle all the everyday jobs (bin men, STV voiceover announcers, working in the off licences, saying "In a world...." at the start of trailers etc.) and over the years these automatons have been constructed to emulate humans more and more, eventually becoming sentient and possibly even more human than their human 'masters'.

As is usual in situations like this, a nasty group of bad men (somewhat kinkily) named the “Order of Flesh and Blood” push for a ban on these human looking machines (know bizarrely as 'clickers') insisting that any new robots must be bald, blue and dressed in boiler suits left over from Brian Tilsley's garage.

Which is fair enough I guess.

The situation goes from bad to worse tho' when one such clicker goes a wee bit mental, killing his creator Dr. Mike Raven (Doolittle, best know for his sterling performance as a DA in a 1971 episode of Hawaii Five -O) to death.

Robot hater, founder member of the Order and all round rugged tough guy Kenneth Cragis (Blazing Saddles gum chewer himself, Megowan) suggests a solution to the problem.

Kill all the clickers.

Kill them a lot.

Which is nice.

"I love you....could it be magic?"

The rest of the group think this may be a wee bit extreme and start to distance themselves from 'crazy' Cragis, who decides to go visit his sister Esme (McCann from fuck all else) for a few days of bitching and badness.


Unfortunately upon arriving at her house our racist rebel-rouser is surprised - and oh-so slightly annoyed - to find that Esme has become 'involved' in the state of 'rapport' with a robot named Pax (The Magic Swords Sir Pedro of Spain himself, Cross).

And what, you may ask, is 'Rapport'?

Well 'Rapport' occurs when a robot and a human begin to share the same mindset and the humans every desire is instantly understood by the robot partner and immediately fulfilled.

Which if I'm honest isn't as rude as it sounds really.

Sorry.

Shocked and upset Cragis storms off to his fantastic plastic bachelor pad for a tearful wank and a pot noodle.

Probably.

Hanson have let themselves go.

Even this small solace is interrupted tho' when the beautiful (and very 60s breasted) Maxine Megan (Elliott from, um, Peter Gunn) appears out of the blue and falls into his arms.

Hmmmm.

After a whirlwind romance - plus shedloads of cheesy B-grade SciFi dialogue - Cragis and Maxine stumble across a secret that will shake their beliefs to the very core and may explain the terrifying secret of the Creation of The Humanoids...

Looked at from a purely production point of view Creation of The Humanoids is a cheaply made, warehouse bound 'B' flick populated by bald-pated, blue toned men with acting as stilted as the wooden slats pretending to be a futuristic laboratory and talky to a point where you can imagine that writer Jay Simms originally envisaged this as a stage production, the whole threadbare endeavor is topped off by a particularly lurid poster design and not much else.

But look passed all this and you'll find a quirky and intelligent lo-fi movie that's ideas pre-date many of the themes and concepts that would go on to dominate books and movies under the 'cyberpunk' banner more than two decades later.

Yup, it's basically Blade Runner 2049 but with sturdier underwear.

I'd better stop now before someone mistakes this for a real film blog.

mooncup.

About 10 years ago I was commissioned to draw a comic sequel to the fantastic Robot Monster for a now defunct space-based magazine and recently came across the first draft of the art for it (you can see it in all it's glory here).

It was this find that made me realise that I'd not actually sat and watched any  50s sci-fi for what seemed like forever so with that in mind I dived into the DVD slushpile and pulled out the first thing that came to hand....


The Man From Planet X (1951).
Dir: Edgar G. Ulmer
Robert Clarke, Margaret Field, Raymond Bond, William Schallert as Dr. Mears
Roy Engel, Charles Davis, Gilbert Fallman, David Ormont, June Jeffery and Franklyn Farnum.

To think - a fantastic gnome like you had to hurdle out of space to put this power in my hands. Well, now that we've made contact, I'm gonna tear out every secret you've got!

Famed astronomer Professor Billy Elliot (Bond who bizarrely also played an astronomer in Flight to Mars - did he own his own telescope?) is excited to discover a new planet that just happens to be hurtling thru space toward the Earth.

Exactly as planets don't.

Although there's no evidence that the two planets will actually collide (that'll be a totally different movie) “Planet X,” as Elliot has so originally named it, will come close enough to cause a wee bit of bad weather and maybe a few tremors and the like.

Probably.

Using 'the science' Elliot works out that the closest the mysterious planet will come to Earth is the small island of Bury just off the coast of Scotland - which is in England near Paris, Europe for all our American readers.

"What did you do with the trumpet you found buried in your garden?" "I root it oot.”"

And with that the professor alongside his foxy - in a kinda part-time librarian way - daughter, Enid (Sally Field's mum Margaret - no really) heads off to the island to await its arrival.

Enter - roughly and from behind -  an old friend of the professors, the American journalist and general stud-muffin John Lawrence (Clarke from The Hideous Sun Demon),who's been invited along to cover the story.

But what he's going to cover it in we're never told.

Anyway it seems that the pair met during 'the war' when Elliot was working as a meteorologist, supplying Lawrence's 8th Air Force squad with information regarding the weather conditions they could expect during their bombing missions, which is way more back story than either of them deserve.

Arriving at/on the island John is met by Enid, giving us plenty of time for that old "Oh you were just a child last time I saw you but I'd shag you now!" type chat you used to get in movies before the pair drive up to the old keep the professor has taken over in order to start this alien visitor plot good and proper.

When they - finally - get there (after a wee bit more of what passed for flirty bantz in the 50s) Lawrence is surprised to find another scientist, the creepy Dr. Ray Mears (Tobor The Great and Trouble With Tribbles star Schallert) ingratiating himself with the professor, no-one actually admits why he's such a bad man or what he's done but the lank hair, sinister beard and ill-fitting suit mark him out as a bad yin and the character most likely to abuse an alien during the course of the story.

Ah things were so much simpler back then.

"Please don't jump we've just let all the water out"

With John visibly seething at Mears very presence Enid decides to take him up the moors to calm him down so away they trot.

Yup, the films pace could be generously described as leisurely.

And it's while out on the moors that the pair come across a strange metallic object that looks suspiciously like a toilet roll rocket painted silver embedded in the side of a nearby paper-mache rock.

With it only being about 30 inches long and weighing just a few pounds (you can see Enid is impressed by the way she's licking her lips)  John gingerly pockets it and the pair hurry back to the keep where an obviously excited Dr. Mears’s sweats in anticipation of the profits he'll make as soon as he:

A. Figures out what the fuck it's made of.

and

B. How to make it himself.

As Mears gently strokes the cylinder as he coos away to himself, Elliot sits stroking his chin and surmises that the object must be of extraterrestrial origin and has arrived on Earth from the rapidly approaching Planet X. 

Enid on the other hand just stares at it whilst crossing and uncrossing her legs, the heavy woolen skirt she's wearing gently brushing against her milky smooth calves.

"Look at the dog!"

 

 

John, realising that he's left his re-usable sheath back at the hotel makes his excuses and gets ready to leave hoping that the cool night air may calm his amour but Enid has other ideas and offers him a lift in her car, accidentally brushing his leg with her Lilly white fingers every time she grabs for the gear stick.

Probably.

Stiffly - in more ways than one, phnarr - saying their goodnights Enid begins the lonely drive back to the keep but on the way she gets a burst tire, well her car does, I mean she doesn't have any wheels for one thing so has to walk the rest of the way.

It's not too far tho' seeing as the whole thing is totally studio bound.

Well I say studio bound but I'm pretty sure it was shot in someone's shed.

 

 

"Get in the back of my car and let me bite you!"

On the way, she sees a strange glow out on the moors, which on closer inspection appears to be emanating from what looks like a giant menstrual cup (painted silver obviously) with cardboard fins attached.

Stealthily sneaking toward it (well as stealthily as you can be when you try to walk across polystyrene in heels), Enid moves ever closer before peering into the window coming face to face with a midget in an old lady mask wearing a fishbowl on its head.

Or it might actually be a very tiny old lady.

Wearing a fishbowl on her head obviously.

 Who can truly say?*

Scared shitless Enid hurries back to her father (and Dr. Mears) to tell them all about it and her father excitedly grabs his jacket to go look for himself.

Unfortunately as he's peering at it from behind a rock the alien turns on his secret weapon (cunningly disguise as a high wattage porch light) - a mysterious  ray that hypnotizes people into obeying his every will.

The fact that he chose to shine it on an old, balding man rather than the narrow-hipped vixen that is Enid says more about the alien creature than I ever can.

Luckily for the professor - and humanity - spaceman X totally fails to give him any orders so the pair just shrug and head home leaving a very sweaty Mears hiding in a bush rubbing his hands together.

The next morn, John arrives to find the professor chomping at the bit to get back to the alien ship to try and find the pilot and to this end the pair hurry off across the moors.

Again.

Luckily for them - and us - the pilot (whom we shall refer to as Mr X from now on) is actually present this time, cutting a dashing figure as he flails around outside his spaceship gingerly pointing at a bathtap attached to his suit before falling over.

Which is a kinda unique way of revealing yourself it must be said.

Mooooooooooooooooooonhead.

 John, being a strong man, easily helps the little invader turn the tap on his breathing equipment and a grateful Mr X gives them a wacky thumbs up before following them home for tea and biscuits.

Tho' seeing as it's Scotland it's more likely to be a deep fried pizza, some Irn Bru and a yeast infection.

Attempting, rather unsuccessfully, to communicate with him thru' the medium of interpretive dance Mears hits upon the idea (as opposed to hitting on wee boys) of using geometry and maths to communicate with him and lo the rest of the gang trundle off for more biscuits and leave him to it.

Unfortunately for everyone involved Mears is a bit of a mentalist and no sooner have they left than he's making Mr X hit himself in the face and drawing pictures of cocks on his nice shiny space helmet in order to learn his 'secrets' and become rich.

Because that's how it works.

Obviously Mr X is a wee bit upset by this so decides to feign sleepiness, wait till Edin turns up to check on him then kidnap her.

No doubt in order to use his hypno-ray to make her dance wearing only a teatowel.

Just me then?

With Mears admitting to being a bit bad and in light of Enid's disappearance John gets set to head into town to inform the local police but as he goes to leave the town constable, the potato-like Tommy McSporran (Zombies of the Stratosphere star Engel) drunkenly bursts in demanding to see the professor.

And some crumpets.

It seems that over the last few nights that a couple of the local farmers have gone missing too so it must all be the fault of the foreigners that have recently arrived.

Luckily John manages to convince him that it is in fact a totally different type of alien by taking him across the moors and showing him the spaceship, thereby totally ending what ever drama this scene may have been building to almost immediately.

Meanwhile Mr X has been busy, firstly re-hypnotizing the professor before doing the same to Mears and a dozen or so townsfolk in order to have them build a wall around his spaceship to protect it from attack.

Sounds legit.

With the clock counting down to Planet X's arrival (and to rationing ending too possibly) John and Tommy must race against time to stop Mr X from doing whatever it is he has planned (because it's obviously bad) and rescue the townsfolk.

From the golden age of sci-fi and Edgar G Ulmer - the director of such classics as the Lugosi/Karloff caper The Black Cat and the little seen The Amazing Transparent Man (I thank you) - comes a threadbare tale of extra-terrestrial terror that's actually quite high on concept if not on budget, winning it's place in cinematic history not for being a good film but for being in all probability the first alien invasion film ever released.

And because of that we should be a wee bit kinder.

So let's not mention how none of it makes any sense storywise, I mean early on Mr X asks our heroes for help and only turns mental when Mears attacks him (which is fair enough) tho' as the film heads toward its climax everyone decides out of the blue that the wee fella is the scout for an invasion force and should be wiped out.

And no, having your female lead looking wistfully into the middle asserting her belief that Mr X was just misunderstood doesn't make this any better.

Even tho' she's wearing a kilt.

"Hello Dave?"

Talking of kilts I'd love to know what American audiences made of its 'exotic' locations, tho' thinking about it  they probably all came away with the idea that 'The Scotchland' is a place completely made up of painted scenery where everyone speaks in a mix of farcical French accents and Unwinese.

But most likely they'd be under the impression that it only exists in someones shed.

Which if I'm honest is scarily close to the truth.

"Are you the farmer?"

Whilst never as arse-numbingly boring as that other genre first, the terrifyingly tedious Dr. Blood's Coffin (it's considerably shorter for one thing) The Man From Planet X actually has a fair bit about it to enjoy, especially if like me you decide to view it when drunk.

And if that's not a recommendation I don't know what is.








































* Rumour has it that the alien was (terrifyingly) portrayed by either Pat Goldin,  an actor best known for Jiggs and Maggie in Court (1948), Jiggs and Maggie in Society (1947) and Bringing Up Father (1946) or the ex-vaudeville performer Billy Curtis.

"Can you get me a Drifter?"

Popular opinion it must be said goes with Goldin as it turns out that Curtis was about 6' 4" or something.

Bizarrely tho' when interviewed (by my Nan) about the film in the early 80s star Robert Clarke could only recall that the actor was 'Jewish'.

lynched.

David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025)

 

Pour yourself a coffee, cut a slice of cherry pie and celebrate the genius that was David Lynch with 90 minutes of Badalamenti beats, sinister soundbites and toe tapping tunes....

 

 

carpenter cuts.

 

 

Celebrate John Carpenter's birthday with 3 volumes of classic Carpenter inspired cuts, Jack Burton beats and taxicab tunes available to download here.

 

"It's all in the reflexes..."

 

 

people you fancy but shouldn't (part 112).

 In celebration of the 42nd anniversary of Fraggle Rock's first broadcast here's the utterly adorable (and mysteriously captivating Red Fraggle.

Admit it, you do too.

the ghost man always rings twice.

Spent the majority of the holidays mixing visuals and making animations for the annual David Bowie night we have up here (see? It's not all blood and boobs) so thought I'd celebrate their completion with a good movie

Unfortunately this was the first thing that came to hand.

Until Death (AKA The Changeling 2, Brivido Giallo: Per Sempre. 1987).

Dir: Lamberto Bava.
 

Cast: Gioia Scola, David Brandon, Giuseppe Stefano De Sando, Roberto Pedicini, Marco Vivio and Urbano Barberini.

Professional brunette bad-lady Linda (Scola from the fantastic Raiders of Atlantis) has decided, along with her horse-cocked (yet scarily rodent faced) lover Carlo (Stagefright's Mr. Serious Brandon) to off her baw headed boring hubbie Luca (Pedicini best known for his voice work in Dellamorte Dellamore, looking like a human/frog hybrid and emptying our bins) and set up house together whilst running their homely seaside bed and breakfast cum restaurant cum boat business like some murderous hybrid of Basil and Sybil Fawlty and Tom Howard from Howard's Way.

Tho' not alas Howard's End.

"I can see your house from here Peter!"

 

Anyway, enough character background - and looking back at that paragraph butchery of the English language - let's get back to the story which begins good and proper with the aftermath of Luca's murder and the deadly duo about to dispose of his still fresh corpse in a nearby swamp.

But he's not properly dead and with his last vestige on strength tears one of Linda's huge market stall hoop earring out.

Of her ear not his own obviously.

Hitting the poor sod on the head with a large pizza tray to finish him off our loving couple head home to settle into their new (if rather fraught) lives; baking, shaking and raising Linda's muppet like poppet Alex (AS Roma fan Vivio, who seems to have had the biggest career out of anyone else on screen seeing as he appeared in Avengers: Endgame).


Eight years down the line the couples idyllic - yet it has to be said, fairly paranoid - existence is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of ruggedly raffish traveler (OK, hobo), the hunk-tastic Marco (Sam J Jones alike Barberini from Opera, Demons, Casino Royale and your Aunties bed).

I'd get that seen to son.

After checking out his cooking skills - and it has to be said frankly magnificent arse - Linda and Carlo hire him on the spot to help out in the restaurant.

But it's not long before the pair begin to notice Marco’s frightening familiarity with their home-life, business affairs and even where Linda keeps her clean undies.

He also has an almost unhealthy fondness for lil' Alex but most disturbingly for Linda, he knows all of her secret family recipes.

Nice to see she's got her priorities right, no doubt she'll leave him babysitting next time her and Carlo pop out for tapas.

"Hey senorita! You fancy a little mooth shite-in?"

All this insider knowledge begins to play on Carlo's barely hidden paranoia, leading him to surmise that Marco is working with the police to trap the couple for murdering Luca.

Obviously Italy have a special 'head-fuck' department specially recruited to play with criminals minds.

Or something.

Linda however is way too busy fiddling with herself whilst lusting over Marco to  jump to such bizarre conclusions and poor Alex is too shot to fuck by his recurring dreams about arms bursting thru' his bedroom walls and trying to goose him whilst soggy tramps attempt to crawl out of swamps to care one way or t'other.

"Laugh now!"

Is Carlo reading too much into the situation?

Will Linda get her end away with the hunky bum?

Will Alex get touched up by the nightmarish ghouls?

Will the movie end with a blazing inferno?

But most importantly will Marco steal all of Linda's recipes and pass them off as his own, getting his own teevee show in the process?

If you really are what you eat then he must have eaten a warty testicle.

Only a director of Lamberto Bava's (albeit slightly tarnished) reputation could take the plot of The Postman Always Rings Twice and re-imagine it as a psychological horror tale before turning it into a cheaply made teevee movie and still make it moderately successful.

Under no circumstances to be confused with the 2007 Jean-Claude Van Damme cop caper of the same name (tho' if you did I reckon you deserve all you get), Until Death is, bizarrely enough one of Bava's most subtle and successful movies, returning to the promise he showed with his first feature Macabre then subsequently pissed up the wall with every movie since (Demons being the obvious exception).

"Ooh Alex come and have a wee nibble of your mums nice hot pie!"

It's nicely acted, stylishly shot and features the best line in denim fashion wear this side of Brokeback Mountain.

Or your dad going to one of his classic car weekends.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your alcohol levels) it has one of the most idiotic and shlocky twists ever committed to celluloid.

More fun than Graveyard Disturbance but nowhere near as sexy as Blade in The Dark (or your sister), Until Death is still worth owning.

Especially if you have a wobbly table that needs straightening.

happy hogmanay!

 Here's wishing all (3) readers a fantastic 2025.