Threads

Hello everyone! I recently re-watched a show that I saw a couple of years back called "Threads". After seeing it again I've felt compelled to write about it and highlight it to people who haven't seen it.

"Threads" was a one off show commissioned for the BBC. It was first shown in late 1984, on BBC 2, then later on BBC 1 in mid 1985 to mark the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The shows plot depicts the long term effects of a nuclear war in Britain, focusing on what would happen on a smaller scale to places outside London. When Britain becomes involved in nuclear war, the government would go underground. When all communication is lost, smaller authorities outside London would have full control of the towns or cities in which they reside until communication is re-established with the main government. The show focuses on what would happen in the city of Sheffield.

"Threads" is a filmed in a documentary style, with brief narration at the beginning, and facts about the effects on Britain. The main plot at the beginning is about two lovers, Jimmy and Ruth, and their families. They go on about their lives, ignorant to the fact that an international crisis is occurring overseas in the Middle East, involving the Soviet Union, America, and Great Britain. The show focuses more on the families in the beginning, and the global conflict plays out in the background. People seem too wrapped up in their own lives to see the bigger picture and the threat that is literally on their doorstep. That is, until shit gets real and war is imminent.

The second plot is about key members of the Sheffield City Council making preparations in a bomb shelter underneath the Town Hall for emergency operations.

A good 40 minutes is used to establish these people in each storyline. You become involved in the lives of these families which makes it that bit more powerful when the bombs hit. Some of the members of each family survive the initial blast, but over time due to radiation or injuries these numbers fall. In the bomb shelter, the makeshift local government are trying, and failing desperately, to direct services above ground. The Town Hall has collapsed above them, making it difficult to get them out. Meanwhile, toxic fumes are seeping into their air conditioning.

The show doesn't just show you what happens in the coming weeks, but what happens over the course of 13 years! Those who don't die from the initial blasts have radiation sickness and very likely a slow death to look forward to. If you're lucky enough to survive that, you have long term exposure to radiation and the harsh weather conditions to survive. You have little to no chance to grow crops due to irradiated soil, and the prospects of having a child that isn't stillborn or deformed is slim. After 13 years, the population is back to mediaeval levels. Money means nothing any more, food is the only thing worth trading. The only way to get food is to help the new government rebuild the country. Looters are pretty much shot on sight.

Out of all the films I've written about on the blog, this is by far the most bleak, pessimistic, and cold thing I've seen. It's totally unflinching in it's portrayal of suffering in the face of nuclear war. What's most jarring is that it spends the first 40 minutes almost intimately portraying the two families and making you identify with them. Also the amateurishness of the acting amplifies how harsh the second half of the film is. There is literally no respite from all the horrors it shows you.

The shows facts are mostly taken from a home defence exercise to evaluate the effects of an attack from Soviet Russia. This exercise was called "Operation Square Leg". Scientific advisors also helped overlook the production of the show.

I'm not sure how much of the show is sensationalised or exaggerated for shock value, and I'm sure the tactics used for nuclear war are a lot different now due to advances in technology, but I feel some of the themes are still quite relevant today. This show has not lost it's power to shock and I'm also quite frankly amazed that the BBC had the balls to show this. I do highly recommend it, though be warned, it's not something to watch if you're feeling depressed!

Thank you for taking the time to read. Please feel free to post your good and bad comments below, and if you have seen this, let me know your thoughts. To those that haven't seen it, I've posted the entire show below!

Michael.

Over 10,000 Views!!!!

Thanks to everyone who has ever read or commented on the blog! I just noticed today I have over 10,000 views on the blog. Maybe they're mostly from me, or people coming on to take the pictures (I'm guilty of that too haha!), but I do know at least some people are reading and helping by sharing the blog!

10,000 views may not seem a lot, fuck some people get that in a day, but I don't really expect anybody to read the shit I have to say. I just do the blog for myself and to connect to people with the same interests in film. I don't have many followers or whatever and I don't really care to be honest, but I am glad to have formed some friendships with people who have similar tastes as mine.

Once again thanks to whoever has taken 5 minutes out of their schedules to read this crap!

Michael.

Bad Boy Bubby

Hi there! This is the first blog post of 2013, I hope you all had a great New Year with plenty of food and booze!

"Bad Boy Bubby" is an experimental film made in 1993, and was written and directed by Rolf de Heer (who made the equally experimental "Alexandra's Project" in 2003).

Bubby (Nicholas Hope) is a man who has been kept inside the same room for 35 years, as long as he's been alive really. His mother, an overweight, quite repulsive woman, has brainwashed Bubby into believing that the outside world is horrible. To keep Bubby from being too adventurous, she tells him the air outside is poison, and has a gas mask hanging beside the door that she puts on when she wants to leave the house. Whenever she leaves, to keep Bubby still and well behaved, the quite literally put's the fear of God into him. There is a cross hanging from the wall that his mother says is always watching him, and if he misbehaves, God will beat him brainless. At nights, his mother sleeps with him and says he's a good boy.

Bubby's only way of learning is from mimicry. He has a pet cat in a cage that he abuses on a daily basis. Bubby pretends that he is his mother and pretends that the cat is him. One day he asks his mother what it's like when you can't breath, so she put's her hand's over his nose and mouth to show him. He becomes obsessed with this concept, using cling film to cover his face. Eventually he experiments by using the cling film on the cat and killing it, learning a valuable lesson about life and death in the process.

One day when he's alone, there is a knock on the door from a man who shouts a few things through the door and that he'll be back. Bubby gets quite excited! This is the first time he has had any interaction with a human apart from his mother. She comes back home from whatever she's been doing, and Bubby mimics what the man shouted through the door, making her slightly nervous. Eventually the man does come back, and the mother lets him in. He's a scruffy man dressed like a priest, and it ends up that he's Bubby's father.

Pretty soon, his dad has pretty much came to the conclusion that his son is some sort of wierdo (due in part to the fact Bubby always mimics him), and his mother starts to neglect him (more so than usual). One day his mum and dad leave the house, and he wears his dad's priest uniform and goes around pretending to be him (whenever he does this, he always seems to remind me of Nick Cave!).

Eventually his mum and dad come in drunk and kick him out the house, which doesn't go down well at all! His mother throws the gas mask out into the close so he can breathe. When he gets back into the flat, he destroys everything in a rage, and when his mum and dad come back in again from their drunken antics, he disposes of them with cling film while they are sleeping.

After a couple of days of not being fed, he starts to get hungry and decides to venture out into the great outdoors. He quickly finds out the world is nothing like his mother described, and that the air is not poisoned. Throughout the rest of the film, Bubby gets into all sorts of different situations. He joins a rock band (which ends up very popular), gets a girlfriend, has children, but also learns some harsh life lessons along the way. He starts off his journey into the unknown like a child, mimicking everything he sees, but matures as the film goes on. At the end of the film, things seem to be going all right for him.

The film has had it's fair share of controversy throughout the years, and upon release generated a lot of anger mostly from animal rights activists and the press, due to some very convincing scenes of animal cruelty towards cats (and quite deservedly so). It was only passed uncut in the UK in 2007, and the blu ray which I own has a booklet pretty much dedicated to detailing how the director dealt with the BBFC in respect to these scenes of alleged cruelty. This booklet has the letters which de Heer wrote to the BBFC and an Italian animal welfare group, which are convincing enough to me, and apparently to everyone else that read them, that the animals were well looked after and not put under too much stress.

I do have to admit, the films first act is pitch black in tone. These scenes are where most of the controversy lies. Violence, incest, animal cruelty, and a few other taboos are dealt with in these scenes. Once Bubby gets outside, the films tone lightens up quite a bit. In my screwed up mind, I see this film as an alternative feel good movie. Even someone as messed up as Bubby, can end up happy in the end.

As I said before, this is an experimental film. Director Rolf de Heer implemented some strange techniques while making the film. Microphones used to pick up dialogue were placed behind in main actor Nicholas Hope's wig behind his ears to give the impression that you're hearing things through Bubby's ears. The room that Bubby lives in for the first 35 years of his life starts off large, but ends up getting smaller by the end of the first act, to show Bubby's psychological state. There were 31 different directors of photography used in the film. When Bubby goes into the real world, a different director of photography is used to give each new thing that he sees a sense of individuality. In my eyes, de Heer is mostly successful in his techniques.

The film also won four awards in 1994 from the Australian Film Institute. Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing.

I hope you have enjoyed what you've read. Please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts on the film. If you haven't seen it before, I hope I've highlighted it as a film you should watch soon. It's worth a watch!

Thank you,

Michael.

Fuck You Social Networking!

Hello everyone! Well, I haven't updated this blog since the 19th September. Sorry about that! There have been several factors involved that have made my absence so long, but mostly I suppose it has been sheer laziness. I have recently moved properties, so I was offline for about a month when that happened, and combined with work and general real life I felt like I had no time. This and the fact my mind was occupied on another project I was doing writing film reviews for a site called Horror Fans Asylum Reviews, which I have subsequently stepped down from to concentrate on my own page which has been neglected.

Another main reason I hadn't been updating the page was the fact I seemed to be having more interaction on social networking sites. With Facebook, I was posting a lot of upcoming film trailers and trailers for older, non-mainstream films (basically whatever caught my attention). In the past few days this has changed. It seems that Facebook has had some policy changes, one of which has impeded my ability to share with people movie trailers and clips from sites like YouTube. Pretty much killing off a considerable portion of what I liked doing on Facebook..... showing trailers and clips (old and new), and having some nice little discussions on them.

I can imagine that a lot of other fan pages are having similar problems. My page and other pages are seen as businesses on Facebook, who could possibly (who knows how?) be making money from sharing clips from YouTube and other sites of the same vein.

I never have, and never will, use this site or any social networking pages to make any monetary gain (as I can imagine is the same for a lot of bloggers). Fuck, not many people read the page anyway, there wouldn't be any chance in hell of making money off this blog! All the competitions I've had on here and my other pages all come from my own pocket!

So with New Year on it's way in a few hours, I thought I would take the opportunity to be as honest with people as possible, and make changes in how this blog will work. I'll mostly be using the blog for posting most of my random thoughts as well as the usual film posts (the way the blog should have been anyway), this will mean the blog will be my primary focus! And I'd like to still interact with all the great people I've met online on my Facebook and Twitter pages, so I please urge anyone who follows these pages to please take a few seconds to follow my blog on here or comment whenever possible! Though I'll still be on those pages, they aren't my primary focus at the moment.

While I'm being honest as well, I'm not here to write about all the news on what new films are coming out and all that crap, there are TONS of pages that deal with that! I'm just here to talk about the films I love or whatever curiosities I've seen recently. If it's a new film that's caught my eye, so be it. But I'm not really interested a lot in which new horror film or whatever is coming out soon, chances are it'll be a disappointment anyway. Most of the stuff on here will be from my own collection. Just thought I'd be clear on what my blog is all about!

That was quite a rant I had there haha! I'd like to thank Dr Blood for kind of being like a mentor to me for a while and convincing me to keep the blog going when I had pretty much given up. Thank you! Also to everyone else, I hope you have a fantastic New Year and I hope to see you soon. Below you'll find a full movie to see you through the bells!

Michael.

Guinea Pig 6: Devil Woman Doctor (Ginī Piggu 6: Pītā no Akuma no Joi-san)

Well, finally I have managed to make it to the 6th film in the controversial "Guinea Pig" series, "Devil Woman Doctor". So far in the series I've seen varying degrees of graphic violence, such as torture and graphic mutilation, and even more degrees of insanity. A man who can't die pulling his internal organs out, a mermaid coughing out pus and worms, midget scientists conducting human experiments, and many more bizarre incidents. But this film has to be the most bizarre film in the series!

"Devil Woman Doctor" was made in 1986 by Hajime Tabe. Strangely enough, this film was produced as the 4th film in the series, but ended up coming out  being the 6th to be released.

It stars a Japanese transvestite called Shinnosuke Ikehata (AKA Peter) in the lead role as the Devil Woman Doctor, an unlicensed doctor who's job is examining "heretical sicknesses where the common sense of medicine cannot be applied".

Basically the film is a series of silly sketches, where the Doctor introduces patients with very ridiculous ailments, and the outcomes of each sketch are usually just as ridiculous. For example, a man with a human face shaped malignant tumour which called a "human face whitlow" in medical terms (insane). The patient is a loud mouth yakuza gang member whereas the tumour (which can talk) is very polite and well spoken. The Doctor persuades the gang member to leave behind his life of crime and try to become a celebrity.

Another random sketch (which I thought was quite funny) is about a relationship between a woman and a walking corpse. He isn't exactly a zombie as he can still act like a normal person, he is just decomposing. They manage to pull a few gags with that sketch. A scene where they pinky promise to love each forever, only for the corpse's pinky to be pulled off. Also another scene where the corpse is given car air fresheners to keep him smelling nice! Very bizarre but I had to laugh.

Finally another sketch where the Doctor has to remove a tattoo using a Freddy Krueger type glove with scalpels on it. the only problem is, the tattoo can move around the body and change shape. We are shown a stop motion scene of a tattoo moving around a man's body changing shape and disappearing then reappearing out the guy's anus! The Doctor tries to cut the tattoo out, but it keeps getting away until the patient ends up running out of skin.

Even for a series as crazy as "Guinea Pig", this is very out of character. It takes a very light hearted approach to things and is very slapstick in nature (the credits come up to a montage of the cast hitting each other, custard pie style in the face with what looks like a board with spikes on it, with blood splatting out of it!). It is quite an oddity even for Japanese cinema. It surely is the worst film in the series, but I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

There's not much else I can say about this film. It's bad but you'll find a couple of stupid laughs in it. I've had a good time revisiting the "Guinea Pig" series, from it's dark pseudo snuff beginnings, to it's high concept storyline's and then it's fall from grace with a slapstick comedy ending.

I hope you all enjoyed my post's on the "Guinea Pig" films, even if you hadn't heard of them before. Please leave a comment below and get a conversation going. If you want to hear any more of my ramblings, there are links to my Twitter and Facebook pages to the right. I have also just been given the position of film reviewer at Horror Film Asylum Reviews, a brand new site where I'll be reviewing more mainstream horror films every Wednesday. Check it out!

Thanks for reading,

Michael.

Dredd 3D

Hey everyone. Taking a brief break from doing the "Guinea Pig" series to talk about "Dredd 3D". I usually avoid recent movies of this nature because you generally find that most other sites have already talked about them, I like to keep it a bit more obscure! But Judge Dredd has always been one of my favourite comic characters and I felt compelled to do a post on the film.

"Dredd 3D" (2012) was directed by Pete Travis (Vantage Point), and has a script written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine). Judge Dredd creator John Wagner also had a close collaboration with the film.

In the future, America has become a radioactive wasteland. Throughout the wasteland there are Mega Cities surrounded by a vast desert called the Cursed Earth. Mega City One runs from Boston to Washington DC and the city is enforced by Judges from the Hall Of Justice. The Judges are judge, jury and execution who dish out instant sentences on the cities undesirables.

Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is one of the most famous and feared Judges in the city. During a routine day on the job, Dredd is asked to evaluate a rookie called Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), who failed the tests to become a Judge but has a talent which is very special. She happens to be one of the best psychics the Hall Of Justice has ever seen.

At the beginning of the evaluation, Dredd asks Anderson to choose an incident to investigate. Anderson chooses to investigate a triple homicide at a 200 storey tower block slum called Peach Trees, where they find out the murders were probably related to a drug called SLO-MO: a highly addictive drug which slows time down to 1% normal speed for the user. Peach Trees is controlled by a ruthless drug lord called Ma-Ma, who manufactures and supplies all the SLO-MO in Mega City One. Dredd and Anderson locate an apartment in the complex which is alleged to distribute the drug, and after a shootout, apprehend a drug dealer whom Anderson has sensed was involved in the murder.

Ma-Ma is worried the drug dealer is going to tell the Judges everything about the drug operation going on in Peach Trees, so puts the entire tower block into lock down and orders the Judges to be killed. Dredd and Anderson are forced to fight their way up 200 storeys in order to survive. I wont spoil any more of the film for you than I already have!

People have commented on the film's story, which is very nearly identical to Gareth Evans "The Raid: Redemption". I agree that it is very similar, but I think it has all been an unfortunate coincidence. "Dredd 3D" is an independent film made with a 45 million budget, meaning that the film had to avoid a lot of expensive exterior shots of a futuristic town with flying cars and robots and all that other expensive stuff. This is one of the reasons the film had to be mostly filmed indoors.

The uniform that the Judges wear has changed a bit from the comics. Alex Garland thought that since Dredd was out on the frontline fighting a war on criminals, it makes sense to be wearing a suit of body armour to withstand any knocks he might take. I don't think the uniform looks that radically different that it makes the character look bad, it makes a bit more sense on realistic terms for me.

The city also looks quite different. The comic book version of Mega City One is quite dense with a lot of buildings of all different shapes and sizes packed in close to each other. In the film the city is still bustling, but it seems more barren. Alex Garland also says that when all the tall buildings were all close together, you lose the sense of scale of how tall the buildings really are. So spacing out the high buildings were people live, shows you how massive the buildings are in comparison to the rest of the city.

Judge Dredd isn't the most talkative or emotional of characters, so the film is shown more from Anderson's point of view. For Dredd, everything is quite black and white and he is very fast at delivering judgement on people. Anderson is more emotional, and has more of a moral compass. She was raised in a slum like Peach Trees and understands the plight and desperation that most of the people in that environment have. Throughout the film, she even manages to make Dredd change slightly.

Even though there are some slight changes from the comic, this is a very faithful adaptation. The film is totally uncompromising when it comes to violence just like the comic is. There are some nice SLO-MO scenes where people are being shot in gruesome detail, and because it's so slow it seems very comic book like and even very beautiful. It's good to see a film these days that is so respectful to the source material, even in taking the risk of losing out on money by keeping the film an 18 rating. For a film like this that probably has a large audience that are under 18, it's good that the makers kept their integrity and I feel it really benefited the film.

If you haven't figured it out already, I really liked this film. Sure I may be biased since I'm such a fan boy, but I really did feel it was very close to the comic. I'll admit that the story isn't very original and is very similar to "The Raid", but if they decide to make a sequel it's a nice introduction to the characters and a good starting point to giving people an idea of the world that Dredd lives in.

Karl Urban a already a fan of Judge Dredd and had a lot of say in how the character is played, and I think he nailed it. Olivia Thirlby is great as Anderson and really does bear an uncanny resemblance to the comic version. She is as much a part of "Dredd 3D" as Urban is.

I love the dream like slow motion scenes when people are taking the drug SLO-MO. I like how the stylistic slow motion scenes are actually part of the storyline and not put in pointlessly like a Michael Bay film!

Also I like my film's violent, and on that note I'm glad they retained that tone and never pussied out.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your opinions on the film or even your opinions on the comic, so please leave a comment below! I also have Facebook and Twitter pages which you can follow. The links are on the right of the page.

My next post will be on the final "Guinea Pig" film "Devil Woman Doctor".

Michael.

Guinea Pig 5: Android Of Notre Dame (Ginī Piggu 5: Nōtorudamu no Andoroido)

Hi there! Sorry I've been away for about a month but now I'll get back on track. "Android Of Notre Dame" is the 5th film in the "Guinea Pig" series. It was made in 1989 and was directed by Kazuhito Kuramoto.

The series started out with no real purpose but to sicken with it's graphic violence and it was quite successful at doing so. Then the series went into gross out comedy territory and then fantastical fairy tale horror. This 5th installment goes into the realms of violent science fiction.

Like the last two films, this title also has a bizarre story. A midget scientist called Karazawa has a sister who is dying. He is experimenting on animals to see if it is possible to revive her when she inevitably dies The experimentation with animals is unsuccessful and he feels that to get the proper results, he must use a fresh cadaver.

Out of the blue, he receives a phone call from a man called Kato (Tomorowo Taguchi of "Tetsuo I & II" amongst other great films), who offers him the body of a 21 year old female for the bargain price of ten million yen.

Karazawa accepts the offer and before he knows it, he has the body in his laboratory. He is a bit unhappy at the freshness of the corpse (5 days old), but he proceeds with his experiments. They don't go to plan and he basically fries the cadaver with electricity! Frustrated he stabs away at the body. He comes to the conclusion that he needs something fresher.

Later on, Kato arrives unexpectedly at Karazawa's door. He says he has the final answer to successfully finish the experiments. Also he blackmails Karazawa by saying if he doesn't accept his offer, he will put a virus into his computer. Kato asks to see the secret laboratory, and when Karazawa leads him to it, he chops off Kato's legs with a random buzz saw blade he throws at him, then he kills him.

Kato is now the latest guinea pig for Karazawa's experiments, though he turns out looking like Pinhead's long lost cousin. He is basically a reanimated severed head with a robotic arm from this point on. Kato is then programmed to call his partner. She comes over to the laboratory and is then killed by Kato and his robot hand. Karazawa then takes the woman's heart and gives it to his dead sister, who then says, "Why did you bring me back to life? Finally I found peace." Then dies again. Bizarre.

As with the rest of the films in the series this film is quite short, running at just over 50mins. The film is played quite seriously, but the acting is terrible. The over the top violence which is the main trait of the series, is almost non existent in this film. Also whatever special effects are in the film are done quite badly compared to  the other films. This is definitely when the series went into decline (some would say the series was in decline from the beginning), and the wooden acting and sub par special effects ruin the film. Though the film has an interesting premise and some pretty cool imagery it is largely forgettable. The only reason it is probably remembered is because the "Guinea Pig" name has been tacked on. Definitely a curiosity though! I couldn't find the trailer, so I've posted the whole film below.

Also if you're wondering where Notre Dame comes into all of this, Karazawa mentions at some point in the film that Quasimodo was an android!?

Thanks for reading. The next post will be on the final film of the series, "Devil Woman Doctor".

Michael.