So there I was, on Saturday afternoon, chatting with Dave Fanning about Hergé, his (great) works, and the (not-so-great) Spielberg/Jackson adaptation of said works, when we got to the sticky issue of "faithfulness". I may have (accidentally) ended up sounding like the kind of saddo nerd to whom slavish faithfulness is intoxicating fan-boy catnip. But, like, y'know, I didn't mean to…

Take Zak Snyder's (snore) Watchmen, or Robert Rodriguez' (zzzz) Sin City. Both cravenly respectful adaptations of the source materials. Both technical experiments in trans-medium faithfulness that treat comics as mere storyboards. With intensely dull and unimaginative results.

The problem here is a formal one. Comics are (of course) not storyboards. Comic book panels are not the direct equivalent of cinematic "shots". They have their own visual language. Their own narrative logic and flow. And few people have ever spoken this language more eloquently and gracefully than Hergé. Sure, the Tintin stories are fun-filled and stuffed with the thrilling-est of derring-do. Sure, the characters (Tintin aside) are outrageous, lovable and hilarious. But it's not those elements that raise Tintin from pleasantly good to unforgettably great.

The things that make Tintin arguably¹ the greatest creation in the history of comics are all specific to the medium. Hergé's visual genius (disciplined, obsessive and hard-won) didn't lead to the creation of some sort of proto-cinema in book form. It wasn't a stiff skeleton waiting for animation to make it dance.

It celebrated the thing just about to happen. The pause between the stumble and the head-long plunge into a ravine. The thrill of the frozen moment just before a wielded cosh connects with an unsuspecting head. You could stare (breathlessly) at those moments for minutes at a time, terrified to turn the page.² Afraid to see the results of this thrillingly tense pause being released.

There are so many other examples. The long vertical thrust of panels where Tintin stands perilously on the edge of a cliff/building (as he does in The Black Island). The long horizontal thrust of panels where the long road stretches ever on (as it does in Tintin in Tibet). The sumptuous detail of the backgrounds (inviting the reader to pause and linger and return). The way every single extra, every single backgrounded or foregrounded unspeaking figure is invested with character. Each face telling their own untold stories.

These things (and many more) mark Tintin as, ultimately, a glorious celebration of the possibilities and pleasures of the comic book form. Specifically. You can faithfully reproduce narrative elements, dialogue, character, in live action or animation, but this X-factor,³ this thing that makes Tintin – Tintin, is, quite possibly, impossible to translate to another medium (particularly a comfortably mainstream piece of cinema).

And so, whatever about the cold/dead failings of motion-capture, whatever about the allegedly formulaic Hollywood-isation of this most European of icons, the most glaring flaw of all is that the soul of Tintin (our Tintin) just isn't there. And this absence really has nothing much to do with faithfulness (or otherwise). It's simply this.

Tintin = comics.

Producing a film/TV version is like dancing a poem. Or singing a painting. It may be a pleasurable thing, in and of itself, but it's not the thing (and, perhaps, it can never be). Particularly in this case. We're left with Tintin minus Tintin. Which is what, exactly? An above average action/adventure flick? A poor-man's Indiana Jones?

1. I emphasise arguably. [back]
2. Many of Tintin's most deliciously tense moments occupied a page's final panel. A classic example being those panels where a loud BANG! causes our hero to leap into the air and glance anxiously over his left shoulder (in the direction, of course, of the next page) toward the sound's source. Source not revealed till the page was excitedly turned. [back]
3. A compromised term these days, I know. [back]

Had a blast and a half, with the Outbreak Festival crew, in the old Daghda space (St. John's Sq, Limerick) last night. A healthy (or suitably unhealthy) crowd shuffled horrifically down to enjoy local film-maker Dermott Petty's Gothic Country 'n' Irish short Zombie Waltzing, and the "splatstick" classic I'd chosen as our main attraction, Return of the Living Dead.

On the off chance any gorehound wishes to check out the folk and films mentioned in my introduction to the screening, here it be.

The film you're about to see, Dan O'Bannon's 1985 Return of the Living Dead, was released almost simultaneously with Day of the Dead, the third film in George Romero's seminal zombie series. Though the two films share a common birthday, tonally they could hardly be more different. While Day was bleak and grim, Return was (and is) in the words of zombie-scholar Jamie Russell “a breathless horror cartoon that aspires to make jaws drop to the floor through its sheer exuberant excess”.

It had originally been conceived by John Russo – Romero's co-screenwriter on 1968′s Night of the Living Dead – as a straightforward horror film in the Romero mould, with Tobe Hooper (of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame) directing. When Hooper departed to direct the schlocky alien vampire-fest Lifeforce, Dan O'Bannon (who had written the screenplay for the original Alien and worked with John Carpenter on Dark Star) was brought on board.

In O'Bannon's hands the tone quickly shifted from earnest to overtly and outrageously comedic. Though horror and comedy might, on a superficial level, seem odd bedfellows, they've been combining happily and hilariously on-screen for many decades, dating back at least as far as James Whale's Old Dark House in 1932. In terms of breaking taboos, saying the unsayable, graphically depicting things that society normally hides away, the comedic and the horrific are, in reality, close cousins. Allowing audiences to laugh and scream in the face of their fears.

What films like Return of the Living Dead specifically helped popularise was the horror sub-genre/form generally referred to as “splatstick”. A key influence on O'Bannon's film – and other “splatstick” classics like Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, Peter Jackson's Braindead and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2 – were the outrageous horror comics of the 1950s, particularly those produced by the legendary EC. In those publications – which were victims of a sustained campaign of moral outrage – death, dismemberment and evisceration became gleefully delivered punchlines. The tension-releasing laughter they inevitably invited being one of the things that infuriated the guardians of public morality the most.

So what exactly makes Return of the Living Dead one of the finest examples of “splatstick”? Well first (and possibly foremost) are the three pitch perfect performances from the senior male leads: the wonderful James Karen (as the folksy and avuncular 'Frank'), Clu Gulager (as his put-upon, pragmatic boss 'Burt'), and Don Calfa (as the Nazi-loving embalmer 'Ernie Kaltenbrunner' – named, incidentally , after a real-life Nazi war-criminal). The gusto and glee with they embrace their roles, not only offered a refreshing counterpoint to the often irritating woodenness of the film's teen stars, but showed how instinctively they understood the kind of acting “splatstick” demands: full-on, no-holds-barred commitment, no matter how ludicrous the situations might be. [Bruce Campbell, of the Evil Dead fame, is probably one of the finest practitioners of this kind of OTT style]

Then, of course, there are the zombies themselves. In keeping with a film that cracks along at a frenetic pace, and bounces along to an ass-kicking punk soundtrack (featuring the likes of The Cramps, 45 Grave and The Damned) – the film's zombies don't shuffle and stagger about a la Romero. They sprint full tilt toward their prey – anticipating the hyperactive undead of 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake.

Most memorable of all was the film's so-called “Tarman” zombie – a dripping oozing mass of putrid flesh whose obsession with devouring big juicy “braaaainnns!” almost single-handedly popularised the notion that the undead are fixated with the contents of our skulls.

Oh…and then there's Linnea Quigley's…em….naked gyrations on a crypt. Which proved catnip to teen fanboys, and helped turn her, overnight, into a successful and prolific “scream queen”.

As gloriously goofy as the film undoubtedly is, there are moments where unsettling horror, unexpectedly and delightfully, creeps to the surface. While previous zombie movies had portrayed the undead as abjectly wretched – denied the dignity of eternal rest – Return of the Dead was one of the first films to suggest that being dead was actually painful. They're not just eating our brains because they're hungry, they're eating them because doing so offers temporary respite from the agony of being dead! Death, then, is not a release from bodily pain, but a descent into even more terrible suffering!

Another of the film's innovations was to actually show you the process of someone slowly turning into a fully-fledged zombie. As they lose control of their will, develop rigor mortis, and feel the urge to eat brains grow, Frank and Freddy describe what all this feels like. And force us to imagine and feel it too.

But, enough of all that. It's the laughs that brings people to the film, and it's the laughs we remember. There may be one or two more important zombie films, and certainly one or two more sophisticated zombie films, but none are anything like this much fun. Enjoy.

But, wait. All is not lost. We have in our possessions a technological miracle. A camcorder. You press a button and it imprints moving images on tape. Crazy! And check out the settings. Pixellate! Solarise! Sepia! The future was here (or there, and then). What a world.

And so, we grabbed the camera, and pointed it at things (mainly ourselves). Two hours later and the greatest fucking zombie film ever made by anyone anywhere was in the can (if, y'now, "the can" had been an 8mm TDK tape). My friends, behold BRAINSTORM (or Dawn of the Damp). The newly-digitised "Director's Cut", with delicious layers of funky muzak lashed on.

Forget wordy old Ulysses. This is the the most important cultural artefact ever hewn by Irish hands. Even if you ignore its aesthetic wonders (not that you should), it functions as a poignant and moving document of the world that was. A few short months later Y2K rode in on a pale horse. And the computers, as predicted, went nuts. And the robots rose from the wreckage of global apocalypse to force us all into sex slavery. The bastards.¹

1. I think I'm accurately representing Adam Curtis' thesis here. [back]

Back in the fun-stuffed, joy-filled, gloriously utopian days of the early 1980s, three things seemed sure and certain.

1) Nuclear Armageddon was imminent and inevitable. It was 2 minutes to midnight and jttery fingers hovered over red buttons. We were all fucked.

2) We'd soon be abandoning a borked earth and heading out into the cosmos on giant space arks. Possibly as a result of 1.

3) I'd wake, most days, to find myself caked and coated in drying urine.

All three were, I'm sure, related. Cold war politics, space opera, and my stinky wee. Key ingredients of a frazzled Zeitgeist.

It's my daughter's ongoing love affair with Bosco that has such thoughts fizzing about my brain-box. This afternoon we watched the episode where Frank Twomey returned from "the pictures" having viewed a Star Wars knock-off. He was jazzed. He was jizzed. He was excited. He wanted, he said, to build a spaceship and to head off, he said, into the depths of outer space. He, Marian and Bosco decided to sing a song that spoke of the thrills, spills and adventures that awaited them there. This is the result.

Bosco – Outer Space, Is the Place

Melancholia and poignancy absolutely drip from every flat, warbled note. Outer space suddenly doesn't sound anything like a jolly old…er…space where you'd whizz about in an X-Wing, chortling delightedly. It sounds deeply sad. And empty. A place of forced exile. A quality Marian captures upsettingly with the words…

"Past the moon,
And then soon,
We will wave the sun goodbye".

Yes, we will wave the sun goodbye as we squat in our tin-can ships gazing longingly back toward a long-disappeared earth. Tears streaming down faces half-lit by said sun's weakening rays. We're suddenly out here like Major Tom, spinning and floating and slowly asphyxiating. Mummy! I want to go home!

To make matters worse, Frank all but admits that space travel is, really, when you think about it, a metaphor for death.

"Outer Space,
Is the place,
Where we all intend to…fly".

There's a millisecond's pause between "to" and "fly" that inevitably invites the listener to jauntily sing "Where we all intend to…die!". You think subtleties like these were lost on young Bosco enthusiasts? Not a bit of it. There may have been a time, back in the giddy days of the 50s and 60s, when space seemed seductive. A place of boundless possibilities and off-world technological utopias. But by the time I was old enough to really consider such things, and worry about such things, and piss in the bed as an indirect result of such things, space just seemed horribly cold, weird and indifferent. A vast place where'd you'd lose your mind. Where you'd slowly suffocate or burn up on re-entry. Where you'd watch the tiny blue bauble of mother Earth vanish (forever) into the endlessly black distance. The place where we all intend to die.

Nobody (not even Kubrick, or Bowie, or Tarkovsky) articulated this space/death analogy as succinctly and movingly as Europe's beautiful Joey Tempest of course.

The mushroom clouds are rising. We're headed for Venus.¹ The undiscovered planet, from whose bourn no traveller returns. It's game over, man. I'm off for a little cry. *Sob*²

1. Snigger! [back]
2. Actually, I'm off to the Irish Blog Awards in Belfast. I may see some of you there. [back]

About 6 months ago, on a night (dear readers) very much like this,¹ I found myself sitting, sweatily, at a giant mahogany table in my parents' "Good Room".² Phone in hand. Preparing to talk to an 85-year-old Richard Matheson.

Look, I don't usually conduct telephone interviews in my parents' "Good Room", OK? It was very late, and I think I was worried about shouting at an 85-year-old in California (who might, after all, have been a bit deaf) and the effect that might have had on my sleeping toddler daughter and…I'm sure there was probably some other stuff too, but, anyway, there I was. Phone. Mahogany table. Sweaty head.

The reason for the call was to (hopefully) hoover up a few choice quotes for an SFX piece I was writing on The (Incredible) Shrinking Man. The reason for the sweaty head was a combination of fan-boy jitters, and an unsureness as to how Matheson would react to questions about the (absolutely unavoidable) sexual/gender subtexts of the novel.

The phone rang. A frail and barely audible voice answered. I blurted out my spiel. Who I was, what I was doing, how it had all been arranged.

Silence.

The kind of silence that feels hideously like one of those "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about" silences. Then:

"Can you hold on for a few minutes?"

I held on. For several minutes. Richard Matheson was speaking to another (unknown) man. Speaking to this other (unknown) man about the security of his property. About how there were gaps in this security. Gaps that were allowing things in.

Unknown Man: "…this here is an open area. It used to…uh…have barbed wire but it broke on the other side. So…I was wondering if you wanted that filled in?"

Matheson: "Will coyotes still get in?"

Unknown Man: "Well…if coyotes want to get in, they'll get in."

And on and on it went. I was both thrown and thrilled. Matheson was sounding just like Robert Neville. Or Scott Carey. The doomed "heroes" of his deeply paranoid (and deeply wonderful) pair of genre classics – I Am Legend (1954) and The Shrinking Man (1956). Novels absolutely dripping in angst about invasion, loss of integrity, loss of self. "I bet he'll love my question about The Shrinking Man, male diminishment, nascent feminism and the undermining of patriarchal structures!", I all-but-chuckled to myself.

Several minutes later still, after much unsuccessful (and desperate) fishing for answers I knew must be there, Richard Matheson signed off with the following:

"Don't emphasise any kind of subconscious desire on my part to make social commentary."

I assured him I wouldn't. And I didn't – in the piece at least. But I may have now.

Will coyotes still get in?

1. Except significantly warmer, and brighter, and less March-like, and well, not very much like this at all. [back]
2. One of those "fancy" (useless) supplemental sitting rooms that nobody ever goes near and serve only to potentially impress the kind of guests who never visit anyway. [back]

I shall treasure it always.

A quick explanatory note on “slash fiction” (in case anyone’s rigid sense of moral propriety makes them unfamiliar with the term). “Slash fiction” – which first appeared in its contemporary form in the 1970s – was (and is) amateur, not for profit, fan-made-fiction (often written by women incidentally): focusing on romantic/erotic relationships between same-sex fictional characters. The original (and most important) of these pairings being Star Trek’s Jim Kirk & Mr. Spock.

And to set the mood I’ve got a tasteful fan-produced slide of them to show you…

There they are – relaxing and luxuriating in a nice bubble bath, in front of a gorgeous backdrop of airbrushed gas clouds, stars and swirling nebulae. By the way, if you’re thinking that this represents a twisted, perverted and wholly re-imagined version of the Kirk/Spock dynamic then you’ve obviously never seen the show or subsequent films. Slash fiction writers (and artists) weren’t inventing subtexts, they were accurately representing the text.

Here’s another…

…where they’re both manacled and topless in a prison cell – having just been brutally tortured and whipped. By Nazis. Amazingly enough, that one’s actually real.

Now, Trek creator Gene Rodenberry, may have intended the relationship to epitomise some kind of 23rd century Platonic ideal of male love (and it’s certainly moving on that level): but in giving Spock so much Vulcan restraint and stiff-upper-lippiness, he (perhaps accidentally) created a pulsating Costume Drama style vibe. As in most costume dramas, unarticulated passions heave and seethe just below the surface – held (just about) in check by Spock’s Vulcan cool and their mutual professional obligations (this is, after all, a workplace romance).

Unlike most costume dramas, one half of the couple (namely, Spock) suffers from the Vulcan affliction of Pon Farr, which means he has to mate once every seven years or else he’ll actually die. Talk about pressure. So even if they never actually shared a sensual cosmic bath together (onscreen at least): every loaded look, and potent touch, and awkward (pregnant with meaning) silence suggests that they definitely both considered it.

Anyway, where once such tales were distributed through hand-stapled and crudely photocopied fanzines – they’ve now, unsurprisingly, found a perfect and sympathetic home on the internet. Expanding and exploding online to include not just slash tales of same-sex encounters – but heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual and (somewhat alarmingly) interspecies ones as well.

Not all fictional universes, however, are evenly or equally represented. Over on the indispensable adultfanfiction.net, for example, the clear market leaders (with thousands of tales devoted to each of them) are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lord of the Rings, and (slightly upsettingly) Harry Potter.

The convention is for each story to synopsise itself through a use of codes indicating the relevant genders involved and themes explored. Here’s one perplexing – and mildly terrifying – example of said codes taken from a Buffy story called “My Own Demons”.

Obviously, there’ll be a few even the most chaste of you will recognise there: Anal, Oral, Trans, Bond and…um…Other¹ – but unless you’re a particularly open-minded crowd, I’d wager that the bulk are unknown, and possibly unknowable. I’m not sure man (or woman…or other) was ever meant to know the meaning of HJ. Or AU/AR. Or UST, WAFF, WIP and Yuri. It’s like trying to fathom a mind-bogglingly complex equation, cataloguing the inner workings of outré human passions and sexual depravities. Stare at it long enough and you might just go mad.

Go down through the code-heavy lists on adultfanfiction.net and you’ll soon find yourself venturing into fringe and niche waters. Who’d have thought, for example, that Black Books could produce 10 texts? Or that Greatest American Hero would warrant 7? Or that Jurassic Park might spawn 11? – one of which (by noted author “bighardwang”) tells the alarming tale of how the…

“Professor dude who gets eaten in a bathroom finds a really pretty dinosaur before he gets eaten”.

Then there’s Dawn of the Dead’s six pieces (with one featuring the immortal line: “The zombie squeezed his balls between its gripping fingers”), Captain Scarlet’s one (wherein Captain Scarlet touchingly admits to his beloved Captain Blue: “I may be indestructible…but my heart isn't”), a lone Goonies story (I didn’t dare look) and two on…um…Schindler’s List.

Keep probing and exploring, and still weirder treats make themselves known.

Serving the deranged Mechanophile, or obsessive Top Gear follower (who foams at the mouth at the thought of polished chrome and thrusting pistons) is the surprisingly popular Transformers category. Which contains, to my human eyes at least, some of the least erotically-charged prose ever dreamt up by the human imagination. A few choice examples:

“The port was still dry, indicating that he wasn’t aroused. This made it a difficult situation since inserting his transfer into an unaroused mech would not be pleasurable for either one of them.”

“Slowly, Prime began to move his hip servos. Arching up against Soundwave…His aft port became slicker…”

Further down the rabbit hole of bonkers-ness are two understandably neglected categories – serving and servicing the proclivities of, I’m not sure who or what exactly. Exploring, in unflinching furry detail, the “erotic” adventures of Care Bears and My Little Ponies.

First up is the delightful “Belle of the Ball Until Dawn Comes…” the lone tale in the My Little Pony archives. Although…one My Little Pony story is still one more My Little Pony story than one might expect to find.

Here we’re invited to experience, with slack-jawed and agog faces, an account of a night of passion between Star Catcher and Twinkle Twirl.

That’s Twinkle Twirl there on the left, and the rearing and magnificent Star Catcher on the right. After an enchanting ball in magical Ponyland they tenderly get down to business.

"Star Catcher?" Twinkle Twirl whispered, shaking a little from the newness of things. She was aware that he had taken off her skirt and she was a little shy.

Now, I freely admit, I’m no My Little Pony expert, but I wasn’t aware they wore skirts. I guess without something to remove there’s less of an erotic frisson. As my father always says: If you want to eroticise animals, put clothes on them. Naked animals are, simply, animals. You wouldn’t want to bang a duck unless it had a pair of pants you could whip off.

Back to the story…

"Close your eyes… It'll be more pleasant that way. Relax and breath deeply of the cool night air", Star Cathcher instructed Twinkle Twirl as she complied. He began to massage her neck muscles softly… allowing her to loosen up as he went along. "How does it feel?" he queried.

"Heavenly…" Twinkle almost purred, except that ponies don't purr.

You have to give the author props for self-correction there. Instead of anticipating objections about the outrageousness of the material, he/she imagines incredulous readers saying: “Look, we can suspend our disbelief and buy all that stuff about magical equine fucking in a colourful fairyland, but purring ponies! Come on! That’s ludicrous!”.

Moving to the climax…

"Star Catcher!" She breathed. "HARDER!" She panted in a breathy equine sort of way, shivering.

He thrust into her harder still, gasping as he did.. IN and OUT…. in and out… back and forth… faster and faster… "Oh! TWINKLE!" He called out heavily. "Twinkle Twirl… you're wonderful…!!!!!"

I should point out that “you’re wonderful” is followed by no fewer than five exclamation marks² – so I fear my drab delivery isn’t really doing justice to Star Catcher’s punctuated enthusiasm.

We'll finish with “Morning Reflections” – a surprisingly affecting and sensitive Care Bear tale from the sex-mind of “Mana Angel”. Here are the relevant couple…

Proud Heart Cat there on the left, and the angst-ridden/sexually-repressed Brave Heart Lion on the right.

Brave Heart Lion knew about sex, of course…but he hadn't heard about it from his cubhood guardians, True Heart and Noble Heart. He supposed they figured it was a non-issue with them being what they were. But when he was younger, he had discovered by accident that when he touched a certain part of his body a certain way, good feelings resulted from it. Because of the private nature of that body part and those feelings, he had kept it to himself, but he had always wondered why. Then, one day, he had caught himself staring at Proud Heart Cat, and he’d almost had a serious social disaster when his penis began to swell. He had excused himself from tummy symbol practice,³ saying he didn't feel well, and walked towards his home with his hands folded in front of him to hide his condition. How embarrassing!

We meet him again, a little later, after a moment of painful intimacy…

Proud Heart had touched his most secret place, where her paw encountered nothing but silky fur. Their genitals were always masked by their fur, and for the males, their penises were hidden in a sheath; you'd never know they were anatomically correct…but they were.

Audience members of a certain vintage will undoubtedly remember the scandal and outrage caused by Kenner Toy’s 1982 range of anatomically correct Care Bears. If you cuddled them but a little they’d chuckle and lecture you on the merits of sharing. If you cuddled them a lot a fur-lined phallus would unsheathe itself, creep out, and poke you in the belly.

Moving on and wrapping up…it’s later still and Brave Heart Lion is shampooing his mane in the shower.

His balls drew up close to his body, and he emitted a roar as he ejaculated. He had the sense to aim for the drain as his penis spasmed and his testicles emptied themselves of his seed…

He felt awful. It was a dull, hollow pain in his chest, as if he had committed some grievous sin. His member had shrunken and retreated to the safety and obscurity of its sheath. He sighed, shut off the water, and dried himself off. It was late enough as it is, and he still had to eat before he left the house. He pushed his guilt away, and went down to raid his fridge. It was his secret. No one would ever know.

Now, Brave Heart may only be a Care Bear, or a Care Lion (or whatever), with a jolly red heart adorning his chest – but that’s one of the most eloquent and heart-rending articulations of pubescent masturbatory guilt I’ve ever read.

Though I can’t quite relate to the mane, and the silky fur, and the sheathed cock – I can readily identity with the shame and the emptiness of covert, feverish wanking in the shower. Not only that, but when I was 13 I regularly brought myself to orgasm by humping a Masters of the Universe bean-bag (while dreaming of the Cadbury’s Caramel Bunny), so I retain a certain warm and fuzzy nostalgia for eroticised cartoon universes.

So, in conclusion, while there’s not much in the way of sexy pleasure to be had from the boggle-eyed reading of these tales – they do serve a purpose: namely, to remind us (in brain-scalding terms) of the rich, mad, endlessly perplexing tapestry of human sexualities. On adultfanfiction.net and its sister sites, nobody’s really a weirdo…because (of course) everybody is.

1. Catch all term there [back]
2. Bit of a redundant point in print, but there you go. [back]
3. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds hilarious. [back]

1) It conflates big heads (i.e. big brains) with cruelty and mercilessness.

2) It conflates big heads with violent interspecial sexual predatoriness.

3) It implies that shrivelled and withered bodies are the inevitable result of unchecked intellectualism.

4) My 20-month-old daughter looked at it, pointed to the bug-eyed (damsel-carrying) fella in the foreground and said "Daddy!".

Yes, I've got a big head. I can't deny it. It bulges out freakishly at the back. Like Jeeves (after a feed of fish). Or (less flatteringly) John Merrick. And I am scrawny. But I've never invaded another world, obliterated its cities, and sex-kidnapped its females. Not once. Honest. It's just a crude and hurtful stereotype.

The big-headed get a constant kicking in Sci-Fi. Their relentless pursuit of knowledge leads inexorably (and inevitably) to an incongruous pursuit of galaxy-wide communistic/totalitarian empires of brutality. That's what you get for reading books, kids. Go out and get some fresh air before it's too late.

Of course, Mekon-like super evil might, instead, stem from childhood trauma. I can sympathise. Back in 1982 I (like most children of my generation) fell through rotting floorboards into an ancient sheep dip. On Achill Island. Result? I lay (miserable) in a hospital bed for some time, growing thinner and yellower till I was finally discharged into what should have been the loving embrace of my family. In the door I shuffled, body wasted, head ebulgent, to be greeted by two sisters who instantly pointed and shrieked – "E.T.!!!".¹

Human scum (with their regular heads). They will pay.

1. That looks wrong. [back]

I refer, instead, to good "bad" films. Half-baked, perverse, unloved, no-budget, confused, and (unintentionally?) subversive. Films born of singular passions, strange obsessions and charming incompetence. Human films. I know how to consume these. Late at night (essential), alone (so you don't have to constantly defend their "merits"), and with a gargantuan bottle of fine wine (to lend the experience a soft & dreamy edge).

"Bad" books, however, are a different matter. 20 pages in and I start to feel the nagging and oppressive awareness of 200 plus pages to go. Thoughts then turn to life, and it being too short, and the percentage of its brief span this bad book might take up, and I stop. Also, I don't want to risk being found dead on the jacks with a dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged clasped in my rigor-mortised hand. It'd be the only detail of my life anyone would remember.

Bad books are best consumed in random chunks. Dipping in and dipping out. Marvelling at paragraphs stuffed with rank prose before moving on. One of the "finest" writers of quotable (dip in & out) genre dross is "Pel Torro" – a.k.a. The Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe. During one particularly feverish period of "creativity", Fanthorpe/Torro (best known, perhaps, as Fortean TV's Harley-Davidson riding clergyman) was churning out pulp volumes for Badger Books at a rate of a "158 page book every 12 days". If you're now gasping with awed wonder and feeling like a wretchedly unproductive loser…you obviously haven't read any of the results.

Here follow a few randomly chosen extracts from two Fanthorpe/Torro classics: Galaxy 666 (1968?) and World of the Gods (1960?). There isn't a single page of either volume that doesn't heave with mad, adjective-stuffed prose whipping itself into a frenzied superabundance of descriptiveness.

You'll thrill to…

…Irish rascals!

"Riley O'Rourke was a blue-eyed dare-devil. His eyes were blue-grey and little devils danced in them. He was as Irish as the Blarney Stone and the shamrock. As harum-scarum and devil-may-care as Errol Flynn, and yet at the same time, his erratic genius had very often arrived at solutions when problems had been beyond his more staid and sober colleagues." (World of the Gods, p.8)

…Re-evaluation of scientific worth!

"The robots were obeying the order of that voice, the voice that could only belong to Aznar – Aznar the Crazy Scientist! More thoughts darted in his brain. Maybe Aznar wasn't crazy! Maybe Aznar was the outstanding scientific genius of the 22nd Century!" (World of the Gods, p.136)

…Outrageous & colourful characters!

"Old Tom Farrow was a gardener. He had been a professional gardener and now he was retired…", and, "Jeff Grayson was a road engineer. He had been a road engineer for a long time…". (WotG, pgs. 34 & 37)

…Obsessive colour-of-rock fetishism!

"There were a number of white veins in the rock, which bore some kind of resemblance to marble, but the majority of it was grey. It gave an over-all impression of greynesss streaked with pink and white, rather than an over-all impression of whiteness tinged with grey and pink, or an over-all impression of pink streaked with grey and white. Greyness was the dominant background shade; neither black nor white, but something midway between the two. It was a light rather than a dark grey, yet it could never had been so light that it might have been mistaken for an off white." (Galaxy 666, p.56)

…Inconsistent and temperamental galaxies!

"Our universe is straight-forward; this one is whimsical, fanciful and fantastic. This is a temperamental galaxy, an hysterical galaxy, a mad galaxy. This is an insane, freakish, wanton, erratic, inconsistent galaxy; it's a completely unreasonable galaxy. It's undisciplined, refractory, uncertain and unpredictable. It's a volatile galaxy, a mercurial galaxy." (Galaxy 666, p. 136)

…More inconsistent and temperamental galaxies (and shouting up air vents)!

"He turned around and shouted up the air vent: 'It's a frivolous galaxy; it's inconsistent and inconstant; it's variable; it's unstable; it's irresponsible and unreliable.'" (ibid.)

…Creatures of endlessly-repeated oddness who're indescribable in concrete terms!

"The things were odd, weird, grotesque. There was something horribly uncustomary and unwonted about them. They were completely unfamiliar. Their appearance was outlandish and extraordinary. There was something quite phenomenal about them. They were supernormal; they were unparalleled; they were unexampled. The shape of the aliens was singular in every sense. They were curious, odd, queer, peculiar and fantastic, and yet when every adjective had been used on them, when every preternatural epithet had been applied to their aberrant and freakish appearance, when everything that could be said about such eccentric, exceptional, anomalous creatures had been said, they still remained indescribable in any concrete terms." (Galaxy 666, p. 75).

And on and on and on it goes. Endless; illimitable; ceaseless; amaranthine; perpetual; Lovecraftian; unbounded…

Addendum: It has been pointed out to me, by the lovely Niall (a.k.a. @churlishbeardo), that I completely forgot to give him a much-deserved shout-out in the above. It was he who gifted me a copy of Galaxy 666, thus turning me on to a whole giddy world of weirdness and repetition. So thanks, Niall, my friend. Someday, somehow, you'll forgive me…

Countless bits of pop-apocrypha cling (like wailing, frost-bitten, doomed wretches) to the myth and meaning of the RMS Titanic. Vengeful Egyptian mummies in the cargo hold. Captain Smith saving a baby before floating off into the night. Stiff-upper-lippy musicians stoically playing Nearer my God to Thee as the ship went down. Most potent and enduring of all, however, is that whole "God himself could not sink her!" business (which has been attributed to everyone from a disastrously cocky deckhand, to bullish tabloids, to Billy Zane).

It's all about human hubris, you see. With the Titanic basically being a giant floating sign that read (in 882-foot-long letters) "God is shit! And humans are totes brilliant! Yah! Boo!". Cue an ominous rumbling sound in the heavens as a gargantuan can of whupass is opened.

So if Titanic is all about cocksure, preening arrogance (or *barf* the eternal persistence of love), then Shane Van Dyke's shit-tastic Titanic II¹ must (surely) be about mega-uber-hubris. Hubris Ultra Plus.

Well, yes. And, no. And, I wasn't really paying that much attention as it was poo. But I do recall Shane (a smug playboy shipping magnate who gets his comeuppance big time) making a speech to commemorate the maiden voyage of the rebuilt (what were they thinking?!) Titanic II, in which he says something like this:

"This ship will help us triumph over the mistakes of the past".

Take that history. Of course, what Shane had forgotten (the grinning tosser) was….global warming. A sort of unnamed (alluded to) terror that starts collapsing massive ice-sheets in Greenland (or somewhere), thus causing mega-giganto-super-tsunamis. Mega-giganto-super-tsunamis that are (*gasp*) heading straight for the Titanic II!² The tsunamis are also set to annihilate the entire Atlantic seaboards of various nations but nobody seems to give a toss about that because the grizzled ol' veteran chief-coastguard's daughter is (*gasp* *gasp*) serving as a medic on Titanic II.³

To add spice to proceedings (if mega-giganto-super-tsunamis aren't enough for you) she and Shane used to be an item. Before he became all super-rich and narcissistic and horrible and stuff. Forcing us to endure a penniless-man's bootleg version of the DiCaprio/Winslet lurve-fest from Titanic (or, Titanic I, as James Cameron is now hilariously forced to call it).

In a bootleg reprisal of the "King of the World" thingy, Shane and pound-shop-Kate stand at the peak of the ship (its nose, or stern, or pointy bit or whatever you call it) and exchange dialogue so banal it almost becomes transcendent.

Shane: You still have those earrings I gave you.
Pound-shop-Kate: Yeah. Well, I have a lot of earrings.

Huh? Wha?

The punch the air moment comes when the engines give out, and the ship is fucked (thanks to Shane's "Make it go 50 knots!" hubris), and a second (even bigger) mega-giganto-super-tsunami is on the way and the Captain turns to a chastened Van Dyke and says:

"Looks Like history's repeating itself"

Yeah! God wins again. Or something.

1. The "premiere" of which we've just endured on the SyFy channel (or whatever it's calling itself these days). [back]
2. The ship really is called the Titanic II. I couldn't stop laughing at this. [back]
3. I like saying "Titanic II". A lot. [back]

1) You're an intoxicating potpourri of muscle fetishism, bloody violence, revenge and cloying sentimentality that is so 1985 it actually hurts (see Commando for even more of same).

2) We open with giant US & Soviet boxing-gloved fists coming together and blowing each other to mutually-assured-destructive bits (mushroom cloud absent but implied).

3) Five minutes in and a robot is presenting Rocky's brother-in-law with a cake. A friendly and coquettish robot. Remember this for later. It's important.

4) Ivan Drago's training camp: where white-coated scienticians clutch clipboards, stare impassively, and collect data. Drago himself (or itself) is a cyborg/Frankenstein's monster in all but name. They've made him. Out of steroids and socialism and microprocessors.

5) Ludmilla Drago (Brigitte Nielsen): Darting eyes, pouting lips and flaring nostrils respond to every mighty uber-punch her husband throws. Raw power = Giant orgasm. Missiles. Phalluses. All that jazz. Hey, it was 1985!

6) Drago beats Apollo Creed to death – the result of Rocky's tragic hesitancy in throwing in the towel. As Creed lies dying in Rocky's arms, Drago endears himself further to the American public by icily telling the press "If he dies, he dies". He's a monster! Rocky gazes up (with punch-drunk, puppy-dog eyes) and the camera moves in for an extreme close-up.

Just before the scene fades (and with Drago's inhuman face filling the screen) we (just about) hear distant bleeps and whurrs. Delicious auditory clues to a subtext. Conclusion? Technology used wisely produces she-machines that bring you cake and act like they want to have sex with you (see No. 3). Technology used evilly leads to crew-cutted "Aryan" behemoths who punch you in the head until you die.

7) The best (and longest?) montage in film history. While Rocky chops logs, and saws logs, and carries logs across the Russian steppes…

…Drago is measured and tested and prodded and probed in a lab straight out of the most dystopian and fevered "science run amok" fantasies.

It's Grizzly Adams versus The Terminator. Robust organic individualism versus soul-crushing machine collectivism.

8 – Survivor's Burning Heart:

Sophisticated socio-political analysis…

Two worlds collide
Rival nations
It's a primitive clash
Venting years of frustrations
Bravely we hope
Against all hope
There is so much at stake
Seems our freedom's up
Against the ropes
Does the crowd understand?
Is it East versus West
Or man against man
Can any nation stand alone?

…meets a classically 80s conflation of sweaty sex and…er…"Let's Get Physical" exercising.

In the burning Heart
Just about to burst
There's a quest for answers
An unquenchable thirst
In the darkest night
Rising like a spire
In the burning heart
The unmistakable fire

9) Drago self-actualises and becomes a real boy:

As the fight reaches boiling point Rocky's corner shrieks…

"You cut him! You see! You see! He's not a machine! He's a man!

Drago's heartless politburo bastard trainer dashes down to ringside and bops him upside the head.

"Our people cheer for him! Idiot! Win!"

Drago's tiny and flickering human spark snaps and ignites. Heartless politburo bastard trainer guy is picked up (with one mighty hand) and fecked into the crowd. Drago's oppressed and beaten down spirit roars…

"I fight to wiiiiinnn! For me! For meeeeeee!"

And that, children, is how communism got punched unconscious.

The End.

Zealous and pedantic fans of Joan Collins and David Hasselhoff will have to forgive me. Their 1984 made-for-tv, wannabe-screwball crapfest The Cartier Affair (in which they come together like a kitsch immovable object meeting a camp unstoppable force) caused me to fall asleep. Twice. Plus I missed the end.

It is, therefore, difficult to seperate the facts (the mental, mental facts) from the fictions of my fevered dreams. I may have filled in gaps, or tidied up loose narrative threads. Doing more asleep than the screenwriters did when fully conscious.

To summarise: The Cartier Affair sees bumbling ex-con David Hasselhoff pretend to be a gay secretary so he can steal Joan Collins' jewels and repay his debts to gangster Telly Savalas. Astonishingly, none of that is dream-stuff.

Joan, as she has done for practically her whole career, plays herself (or at least the "herself" she has spent her professional life creating). Her improbable name (mixing hints of jewels with bigger hints of sexual predatoriness) is Cartier Rand: disenchanted glamour-puss star of a shit daytime soap. She wants out. She wants to do stage work, to push herself as an actress. To escape the icon of seduction and excess she has become.

"I am Cartier Rand!", she bawls at one stage, "Whoever that is. That's not even my real name!". Yes, very non-good as The Cartier Affair undoubtedly is, it dares to, well, go a bit Meta. With Joan playing herself, playing Alexis Carrington, who in turn (of course) is a version of the "herself" Joan created to replace and eclipse the real herself (whoever that is). It's like Being John Malkovich meets Last Action Hero, penned by Murder She Wrote hacks.

In what may well be the campest scene in film/tv history, Joan and Der Hoff (her "gay" secretary remember) go jogging. Bedecked in sweatbands, leg-warmers and other "Let's Get Physical" accoutrements. Set your brains to "Jesus!".

In their defenses (and to be scrupulously fair) they actually carry off their poor-man/woman's Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant double act with a reasonably deft comic touch. She (of course) cutting and uber-bitchy. He wide-eyed and naïf. But, sexual chemistry? There is zero. Less than zero. A big, black, anti-sex hole of zero. Doesn't stop them getting it on and humping each other though. In a fist-chewingly upsetting sequence with all the erotic charge of damp cling-film.

Bleeeurrrghhh!

So listen, you wretched bunch of phoneys, I know you pretend to like prestige transcendo-flicks like The Hours, or triumph-of-the-yadda-cocksplat rubbish like A Beautiful Mind – but I also know what you'd rather be doing. Sprawled out on the couch in your PJs scarfing fistfuls of Chipsticks as a deliciously demented Z-Grade crapfest makes you laugh yourselves sick. You know of what I speak.

The 9th Circle Film Club will (heroically) try to sate these secret and shameful desires. Down into the festering DVD sewers I shall go, and back (shit-stained and exhausted) I shall come, ready to report on the terrible beauties I have seen. Chuck us over that length of rope and helmet. Deep breath. Down we go…

Worm's-eye view shots of gleaming corporate skyscrapers? Talk of "the burning of The White House" and "the massacre of Greenwich Village"? Industries with names like "CyberCore"? Clear indicators of my most favouritest of all time periods – the "Not-Too-Distant-Future". As is routinely the case in the NTDF (let's acronymise it, Bertie Wooster style) things are pretty dystopian. Crime levels are (apparently) spiralling. Corrupt senators and police chiefs are in the pocket of billionaire CyberCore autocrat J. Craig Rounds. And law enforcement has (wholly unsurprisingly) been handed over to the "Core Trackers" – unstoppable and implacable android ass-whuppers who function as judge, jury and executioner.

None of this sounds remotely familiar of course. And Jim Maniaci's "Tracker" in no way, shape or form resembles a bargain-basement Arnie. Chortle!

Yes, like many a low-budget, exploitation quickie, CyberTracker (1994) is a giddy mélange of popular genre elements. A dash of martial artistry (thanks to kick-boxing legend Don "The Dragon" Wilson), a pinch of Westworld, a hefty dollop of Robocop/Judge Dredd, and (of course) several hundred fistfuls of Terminator.

The results are, actually, not entirely displeasing. It tries its unpretentious best (God help it) to be a tight and taut SF/action thrill-fest. Blowing its modest budget on blowing up its main Robo-baddie…on three separate occasions.

Between the bits where people get kicked in the face, and shot in the face, and blowed to bits, it kind of just dawdles and bumbles along – a bit unsure of what's going on or where it's going or who's supposed to be doing what to whom. But the mix of tedium and explosive violence is a major part of the charm. Like watching an episode of Countdown where the winning contestant solves the conundrum before revealing him/herself to be a merciless killing machine from the future.

Plus, Jim Maniaci (the knock-off Terminator) is the spitting image of Mr. Proper.

The only way he could be less intimidating would be if, after every execution, he were to pop on the Marigolds and mop up the blood. Whistling cheerily and sucking a Werther's Original as he went about his work.

Oh, and then there are the excellent (anti-CyberCore) protesters.

Someone dash out and get me a "Computers Don't Have Hearts" T-shirt. Right now. The scene also features the best shouted-out line ever heard at a protest (fictional or otherwise). As evil Senator Robert Dilly (who, it bafflingly turns out, is a cyborg himself) takes the podium, a tear-stained woman shrieks (in a thin and broken voice):

"Computers killed my brother!"

Hard to top, but the music comes close. I've a major soft spot for the synth-heavy (poor-man's John Carpenter) soundtracks used in practically all such cheapo genre efforts. Who needs the London Philharmonic when you can get a Yamaha YPT-200 to do the work of every instrument for you? Dig the choral drama of this though. A step above the norm and far too good for the film attached to it.

CyberTracker.mp3

Last but (certainly) not least, it should most definitely be noted that the rousing closing speech, about the sacredness of the individual and the value of the human soul, quotes Ayn Rand. Fantabulous. And all for 2 Euros.

Question: What the fuck had we just experienced?

Answer: A freakish hell-ride through the deranged mind of a psychotic fantasist named Eric Carmen.

Just watch. Just watch.

As he sits in his grimly stylish industrial apartment, watching snuff-core porn flicks like a lunatic 80s yuppie version of Mark Lewis (from Peeping Tom), Eric dreams of a lovely lady who he'll stare (madly) at with his "hungry eyes". Did I say hungry eyes? I clearly meant rapey eyes. He's got rapey eyes. Just look at him. And listen to him.

I've been meaning to tell you,
I've got this feelin' that won't subside.

Yes, Eric. This feeling is called "murderous blood lust". I wouldn't tell anyone. I'd keep it to yourself.

Now I've got you in my sights.

Note – "sights". As in "the sights of my Mauser 86 SR sniper rifle".

It gets worse…

With these – hungry eyes,
now I can take you by surprise.

I mean, come on! Take? By surprise (in a darkened alley)? Brett Easton Fecking Eliis would struggle to come up with a sustained rape fantasy this grotesque.

1:44 on is my "favourite" bit. Eric louchely leans against a nightclub (or whatever) door as fantasy lady outrageously whips her come-hither (and rape me) hair about in the sexy rain. In reality, she was probably just waiting for a bus, dressed normally. On her way home from work. Eric's bulging and "hungry" eyes see what they want to see…and force us to see it too. It's fucking terrifying.

Oh and then there's the bit where she becomes 100 feet tall and wails out a sax solo. And the bit where she makes out with Stan Lee before becoming Asian.

I need to lie down…

Formative experience recollection time.

It's a summer evening in, oh, 1979 (or thenabouts), and I'm standing – gob-smacked and wonder-filled – in the lobby of the (no-longer-existent) prom-side cinema in Lahinch, Co. Clare. I've just seen Disney's Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs for the first time, and its 83 minutes of Technicolor gorgeousness have rocked my little world.

I'm not the only one thus affected. A (presumably awed & dazed) teenage boy emerges from the theatre, ambles across the lobby, and walks up to, into, and straight through the cinema's floor-to-ceiling glass window/door. Miraculously he is (in my memory at least) unhurt. Such is the power of animation. It not only fires and fuels your imagination – it throws a protective aura of invincibility around you as well.

For the majority of the rest of my childhood all I wanted to be was a "cartoonist" (the proper term, I assumed, for someone who produces animated cartoons). I sketched. I doodled (a lot). I drew cariacatures of teachers on classmates' copy-books. I was utterly dedicated to my craft.

Then – as happens with about 99.99999% of humankind – I hit my teens, thought "Ah, fuck it", and went off drinking cider and listening to The Doors. Such (as the platitudinous fella no doubt says) is life.

Skip forward 30 years and I'm buying a Nintendo DSi for my birthday. Skip forward another day or two and I'm downloading Flipnote Studio. Skip forward ten minutes more and I'm giving life to crude stick figures. Here's an early effort – combining the simple joys of (falling flat on one's arse) slapstick with the grim tragedy of (Sisyphean) eternal recurrence.

Bwaa ha ha! Look at him fall! Right in the hole. Over and Over! There he goes again. And again! Ah ha ha ha! The poor doomed bastard…*sniff*

More tomorrow.

First impressions suggest a zero-tolerance approach to nonsense. A plain white background free of fireworks, fluffy clouds, chortling babies, or massed ranks of smug "Pope's Children". "Take me for what I am", Cllr. Cronin seems to be saying, "and let's all get on with the work of rebuilding this ravaged land – through gumption, rolled-up sleeves, and plain white background-y common sense". Frivolity and manipulative eye-catching design have no place on Cllr. Cronin's posters.

Neither, apparently, does a party name or slogan. From a modest distance (or even up close) it's by no means an easy task to work out who Cllr. Cronin is representing. A fair amount of persistent squinting and staring is required to find the relevant info – buried away in the bottom right corner, in tiny (almost apologetic) letters.¹

If you ever needed evidence of a party battered, humbled and self-conscious then here it assuredly is. Writ small. Very small. Ridiculously small – like print at the end of a contract. A contract you sign without realising the terrible implications your agreement and endorsement implies.

Debaffling this one looks pretty straightforward. Our omnipresent overlords, Fianna Fáil – spat on, shat on & abused – are now so concerned about their brand's lack of potency & appeal that they've all but excised the brand name from their "product". The only tactic left them, it would seem, is to hope that myopic passers-by don't study the details of their promotional material too closely. Let them note the reassuring smiles and the subtle patriotic sweep of tricolour and let them move on – with favourable impressions of FF (sssh!) candidates impressed subliminally in their minds.

As a strategy it's either a stroke of diabolic genius or a tacit admission of inevitable defeat. New party slogan?

Fianna Fáil – Ye'll go mental when ye realise ye've accidentally voted for us!

In closing, I'm reluctant to hop on board the celebratory band-wagon that anticipates a long overdue slaughter (and cough-softening) of our eternal rulers. Great evil has a way of enduring. I mean, look at Sauron. The boys were all high-fiving each other on the plain of Dagorlad after Isildur lopped off his fingers. They thought him vanquished, but back he bounced. Or remember the smug and self-congratulatory handing out of medals at the end of Star Wars. Before they'd time to pat themselves on the backs Luke had lost a hand, Han had been encased in carbonite, and a new (bigger 'n' better) Death Star was under construction.

The Empire strikes back. Evil will out. Don't get your hopes up.

1. Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party. [back]