Microreview [film] : PostWar SciFi Curios : X - The Unknown (1956)

Delving into post-war cautionary sci-fi films is like sorting pebbles on a beach. There are too many, and many are too similar. And there is seaweed everywhere. Well, not the last bit. So instead of picking a particular method of analysis, I hereby begin, in no particular order of importance or date - or sanity - an occasional series on some of the more unusual, less-celebrated movies of that time. And so we start with the wonderfully-monikered 'X - The Unknown' (1956, Hammer Studios), which was a forgotten childhood favourite I had the pleasure of seeing again recently. 

I saw it on TV. I'm not that old...

The Meat Pie :

No, this is not some obscure prequel to X:Men. Or Vin Diesel's XXX. As much as we all wish. This is in fact a delightful sci-fi horror from the revered Hammer Films company, made at the now-closed Bray Studios, west of London. It actually mainly looks like it was made in a muddy field at night, and this is one of many things I love about it.

Another thing is the superb lead actor, Dean Jagger, an American known best to me as the inept sheriff in Bad Day at Black Rock, but he also won an Oscar for 12 O'Clock High and played Elvis's dad in King Creole, apparently. Now, I use 'superb' in a rather loose sense. Jagger is here one of those actors who seem like they are in a slightly different film to everyone else, and seem also to be slightly annoyed to be there. I found out after watching it that he allegedly demanded the original director, Joseph Losey, be fired as he was on the blacklist in the US, but Jagger also hated the replacement, Leslie Norman (a bully by all accounts), and ignored most direction from him. This is detectable in his eagerness to walk out of shot a lot and to stroke his bald patch irritably. A lot.

He also seems almost suicidally unconcerned by smoking in his nuclear lab -

This lady, however, is clearly very concerned by something.

Just to be clear, that is screaming, not yawning. She has just seen the doctor she was about to snog (in a closed-mouth '50s style) melt after encountering an off-camera monster, which remains off-camera for most of the film as it creeps really, really slowly up on people, who scream then die. The reason it is off-camera so long is of course to increase tension and wonder in the viewer, and nothing at all to do with budget constraints on making a mound of molten mud move menacingly...

There it is, finally visible. The radioactive mud. That kills. Slowly. Beautiful, isn't it...

Don't laugh. It's deadly. Look - 

Anyway, pictures are a thousand words and all that but if I showed much more you wouldn't have to watch the damn thing. Which you will of course do immediately... Anyway, here more words...

The film begins with soldiers on a training exercise (in the aforementioned muddy field in 'Scotland') coming into contact with some strange force from the depths. Soon enough military scientist Jagger is on the case and, in between letting us go off to see other extras getting blasted and melted in amusing ways, he slowly figures out an ancient creature of pure energy is running amok in search of radiation, tempted out of subterranean hiding by the nascent nuclear age.

And there is the 'cautionary' part of the sci-fi. Jagger's character, Dr Adam Royston, is a maverick, straying from the lab to work in his shed on a device to deactivate radioactive devices. The police chief who quickly appears up from London, played by a young Leo McKern (later to be in The Prisoner and other gems of British telly), is impressed and excited by the implications if such a device. It's not said whether that's because it could stop the nuclear threat to all, or because it could help them beat the 'Ruskies'. I like to think it's the former reason. Of course, this device comes to play an important role in more immediate proceedings, but I don't want to spoil the ending...

Shot lovingly in black and white (or black and silver, more accurately), and with editing and a score that keep the pace and tension, the film evokes a small Scottish community with a few nicely-accented supporting players and the odd foggy wood. As much as I joked about the mud monster effects, in many ways X is a smartly made and seriously-minded film. It takes a small budget and works that weakness into a strength, keeping things on a small scale, staying in rooms and the same few exterior locations, and uses decent actors to bring home the drama rather than helicopter shots and pricey effects work. It is clear it is as concerned by the inaction of bureaucracy and the violence of the military as it is by the threat from below, and the lasting impression is of intelligence and compassion winning the day. Even if lots of stuff blows up too.

The flaws are many, but it is perhaps unfair to judge the past on today's standards. The dialogue is stagey at times, the acting often awkward, the gender politics appalling, the slow and naive decisions of the heroes frustrating and the attempts to scare us laughable. But I can imagine at the time it raised a few hairs on the back of the neck. It was originally a follow-up to Hammer's successful The Quartermass Xperiment (sic) but the writer of the Quartermass serial on which the film was based refused them the rights to his character, hence the Doctor Royston creation. The fact that its troubled gestation resulted in such a solid work is impressive, and, despite an odd false ending that isn't sure if it's a cliffhanger or not, worth searching out.

The Math :

Baseline Assessment : 7/10

Bonuses : +1 for no annoying romantic subplot with swelling strings; +1 for the weird and unlikeable lead; +1 for the effective use of a small budget

Penalties : -1 for the death scenes being funny rather than scary; -1 for the odd ending; -1 for the lack of Vin Diesel *

Nerd Coefficient : 7/10
A mostly enjoyable experience

 * I tried to find a photo of Vin Diesel crying, or even looking dejected. And there aren't any. Really. The man only scowls or grins. That is how he rolls. Seriously. Google Image search 'Vin Diesel crying' and he just laughs at you. Or flexes. There is one of Toby Maguire crying in there for some reason. Don't understand that. Although he cries in everything.

 

Plastic by Christopher Fowler

Fowler, Christopher. Plastic [Solaris, 2013]

The Meat

A strange one, this. A forward by Joanne Harris tells us the book was finished over 8 years ago but has remained unpublished til now, a favourite amongst publishing staff but being a woman's story written by a man, lacking the selling power of being by female author apparently. Hmm. That never stopped George Eliot, though... Wait...

Anyway, an odd way to preface the book (although there is also much expertly-summated dissection of the themes and details of the book... something I should learn something from...) given Fowler actually is already the successful author of dozens of books and short stories. The Bryant and May detective series has many fans, and he has written fun-sounding titles under the excellent Solaris imprint like Hell Train, which is on my list. He has even had one novel turned into a 1992 film starring MacGyver(or Stargate Jack, as readers here may know him better as..?) a as crazy builder for cripes' sake. I want to write a book that ends up as a film with MacGyver in it. That no one has heard of. 

So I wondered what had held Plasticback. And as I began reading the novel proper, my confusion continued, for each turned page brought enjoyably fresh and compelling descriptions of a life in stasis from our narrator June, who has trapped herself in a suburban prison largely of her own design, with only her shopping addiction to keep her company.

Now, before you all fall asleep, this IS a violent, twisted thriller. It all starts with June telling us she is as good as dead, covered in blood and the captive of a menacing thug. There is also a scalpel on the cover. Clear signs. But Fowler then has June guide us, involvingly, through her life choices, her mental state and her marriage collapse, and for quite a while, before the plot that takes her to the bloody doom she greets us with begins to kick in.

And it's these early moments I enjoyed the most. There is a knowing humour yet also a keen eye for emotional realities inPlastic's descriptions of June and her world. It's also a landscape I'm more than familiar with, having grown up largely in the same bland and soulless London suburbs that Bowie and no doubt Fowler escaped but June slowly faded away in. Not exactly standard Feather reading material. But a nice bit of kitchen sink realism just makes those aliens and dragons all the more exciting, right..?

It's when the novel tries itself to be exciting and a little less downbeat, a little more fantastical (although no dragons, just to be clear), that its hold on my affections started to slip. Our narrator has the idiosyncratic voice of the unusual, quirky character behind it.

Yet I just couldn't buy into her as a real breathing person who would act how she acts over the crazed weekend she finds herself in. Not quite 30, full of knowledge and intelligence but supposedly naive and downtrodden, she nevertheless makes random, dumb decisions and yet with a boldness that belies that innocence. That does, now I read it back, seem like a recipe for an interesting, complex and less-cliched character than most thrillers have. But somehow she annoyed me, like when a dull character in a bad film keeps making dumb choices - 

And she annoyed me in a place I know very well. Lambeth, in central London, right on the river. It's there that lies a friend-of-friend's plush flat (I'll be damned if I'll use the A word!) that June is handily asked to house-sit the very weekend she has to be out of the house that her now-ex is selling. And it's there that she stumbles across intrigue, weird neighbours, and murder. Murder most fouuuul.... So she responds to this by running aimlessly around the streets, which geographically barely clicked together for me as I place I lived in during the years the novel was written (not in a plush flat, I must add, for my street cred's sake). It's an area I like, despite its grim appearance and total lack of decent pubs. But it wasn't quite in these pages, it's fictional form didn't quite ring true.

There are some absorbing descriptions of the Thames, and Fowler nails the lonely and surreal desolation of a main city road at night. I was hopeful. I was enjoying myself. I wanted to uncover the mystery of the murder and I wanted June to survive despite her being annoying and knowing she would end up as she first appears, covered in blood. I really wanted to like this story.

But it just falls short as a thriller. The encounters June has inside and outside the apartment block (damn! failed!) stretched credibility, and when a violent attack happens at the petrol station (I'll be damned if I'll use the G word) and it barely registers as an event, well, I started to frown at the book like a date that has farted whilst revealing they love Celine Dion. By the time (spoilers) our hero is being chased by adult gangsters on skateboards through city traffic as a helicopter chases them both, I realised what was bugging me about the tale.

It is precisely Fowler's ability to involve you in the inner life of an everyday person, in an everyday setting, that makes his steering of that person and that world into ridiculous moments of action, interspersed with ridiculous behaviour by the hero, so unwelcome. I've read countless dumb 'airport' thrillers with unbelievable plots and lazy writing, but expected nothing more of them. The way Fowler can write makes this book different. 

And so sadly I must report for the second time in a row that a book has disappointed me. But at least I finished this one. And I look forward to reading some of this writer's other works, for, despite the forward's protests, I sense the reason this one was unpublished for so long was because it simply isn't as good as his other stuff. Like Hell Train. That one sounds like a gas.

Damn.

The Math

Baseline assessment : 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for the idea; +1 for the narrative detail

Penalties: -1 for the execution; -1 for the action 

Nerd Coefficient : 6/10

Guest Microreview [book]: Hooded Man by Paul Kane

Kane, Paul. Hooded Man [Abbadon, 2013]

The Meat

So, one review on here recently touched on the positives of book reviewing and I agree with those. However, Hooded Manby Paul Kane raises in my mind most of the negatives. In reading in order to review, I dragged myself far further through this series of three novels than I ever would have as a casual reader, even one who had paid for the books. And I also kept my interest heightened by regularly looking for good aspects of the stories in fair rebellion against my gut feeling that I just didn't enjoy reading them.

The concept is pretty fun, and for a while Kane does a good job of balancing the serious and the jokey in his vision of a post-apocalyptic Robin Hood. Robert gradually becomes a leader and fighter that strongly resembles, through both coincidence and design, the medieval legend. He uses a bow and arrow. He has a girlfriend called Marian, I mean, Mary. He has a hood. He lives in Sherwood Forest. He fights an evil 'sheriff' (a Frenchman called De Falaise) based in Nottingham castle. Etc.

Some aspects are well rendered. The sorrow Robert feels over losing his family, and how grief even more than anarchy is the abiding result of the virus that killed most of humanity, are convincing and bring a depth to events. The inter-relationships between characters get space to breathe and most are given respect and emotional range. The action is often inventive and unpredictable.

The chief issue is not in the tale, which is largely entertaining - the kind of tale that people who take paintball a bit too seriously would love... 

...but in the telling. The books are just too long. Why would anyone want something giving pleasure to be shorter (Oscar Wilde never asked) ? Well, because it grates, and dilutes the power of the story. He can't avoid embellishing his meanings, adding to his details, rounding out moments, which, in my learned, never-actually-written-a-book-myself opinion, makes for a more labourious read than the kinetic, fast-flowing action deserves. He feels a constant need to reiterate points :

And a recurring dream sequence of Robert and De Falaise in a climatic confrontation, over and over, is like a bad trailer. "Who would win, who would lose? It was a question that soon would be answered..." Thanks for that. Nice way to build the tension.

And one more thing; Sherwood Forest is tiny these days. Tiny. In American terms, it's a small thicket. So why doesn't the bad guy just napalm it? When the good guys get hold of a helicopter and yet the huge evil army that has raided army bases has nothing, it just strains belief too far. It's like he thought as he wrote, 'Oh yeah they could use a helicopter, that'd be a twist', and thought nothing else. Although if he had he would have put in a paragraph slowly explaining it all.

Anyway, as you can tell, I wasn't really buying the first of the trilogy. But onwards I read, partially out of duty, partially because it was mindless easy reading to while away some long days on vacation when something more intense or complex felt like hard work. But also because I hoped the story would begin to expand and lose the trappings of the Hood legend and become its own beast.

Well, the next two tales do expand, in a way. The villains are from further afield and grander in their plans. More and more characters are added to the mix (which leaves Robert actually reduced to just another player, and I'd have preferred him to be the sole protagonist). The simple mix of post-outbreak sci-fi and myth homage is broadened to include mysticism and mild fantasy elements. There is even a American native indian bad guy who has visions. So an interesting enough world. But the writing just fails to inspire, to rise above the fan fiction way it sounds. And the violence becomes repetitive and gratuitous. When the bad guys do it, it serves to show how evil they are. When the good guys do it, it shows how brave and righteous they are. Boring and morally backward, like a Steven Seagal film.

In the end, I decided to stop reading a third of the way into the last book, as giving up on it is what I would have done if not reviewing and the best review you can have of Hooded Man is one that says don't bother. Like substandard candy, it is fun for a bit but after a while loses its flavour and just needs spitting out. Sorry.

The Math

Baseline Assessment : 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for a genuinely enjoyable idea, and a good beginning, which builds the idea up gradually.

Penalties: -1 for failing to capitalise on it, instead trotting out villain-of-the-week scenarios; -1 for annoying, frequent dream sequences; -1 for putting that Brian Adams song in my head

Nerd Coefficient: 4/10. "Problematic, but still has some redeeming qualities." 

Guest Microreview [book]: The Good, The Bad and the Infernal by Guy Adams

Adams, Guy. The Good, the Bad and the Internal [Solaris, 2013]

The Meat

The idea of mixing up the era of Billy the Kid with fantasy is as old as, well, the Wild Wild West. But this, the first part of a trilogy, takes a fresh spin on it, and is a great adventure tale that manages to hold its fantastical premise together with some deft mixing of the daft and the sublime.

It spends much of its time introducing all the various characters, in disconnected sections, as they travel across America, fighting evil forces and each other - rather like Lord of the Rings, only without the annoying pipe music. We meet a fake preacher, a Victorian inventor, a team of monks, a gang of freaks and a gunslinger as old as the desert, amongst many others.

They all are for various reasons heading for a mythical town called Wormwood, which is claimed to be a way to enter Heaven without dying. It shimmers into sight every few centuries somewhere in the world before vanishing and leaving legend and rumour in its wake. This time it is scheduled for the American Wild West, just after the Civil War.

And it's a era that Adams is clearly in love with (as he admits in his humourous biog). Through his passionate descriptive detail, you can almost feel the sun and dust, and smell the sweat and blood. It's tremendous fun for any Spaghetti Western fan.

As well as the main ingredient of this setting, he stirs in some steampunk seasoning courtesy of the inventor, and a whole ladle of religious fantasy. What you end up with is a gumbo of the hardboiled universe of a Sergio Leone with the far-fetched but enjoyable action and horror of, say, a quirky mongrel of Bram Stoker's Dracula andSolomon Kane.

For, as they near the town, nature turns against them. In fact, it unleashes hell on them, and the novel heads towards more magical realms. Imagine a souped-up locomotive being chased by cyborg Indian warriors and hordes of bats, and you'll get the jist. However, whilst the mutant creatures and high-concept fight scenes are entertaining enough, they don't entirely convince as spectacle. Compared to the Spaghetti Westerns he loves, a gunfight just can't come across on the page quite so well as on the screen, although he makes an impressive attempt. Also, while the grim-faced and stone-hearted Western elements were believable to me, the monsters made out of glass and wood, or the swarms of killer bugs at times felt, well, a bit daft to be honest. I found myself occasionally wanting to see a film adaption instead, where I could stare passively at CGI nonsense whilst scoffing popcorn. But maybe I'm unfairly more forgiving of movies than books.

The dialogue and narration are superb. I love a good dark-hearted metaphor, and he these delivers in spades -

"It was the sort of smile an alligator wore when convinced its meat was just about rotten enough to chew". -

This and some intriguing conflicts between the key players kept me hooked through all the switches between stories and characters, and occasional slips in reality, grounding my mind in the hot plains and faded saloons.

Slight spoiler: this is only part one of three and is all about the journey to Wormwood. Part two is not out for a year so don't expect to be reading about the town just yet. The book ends on a fun climax, telling us the adventure has only just begun. Bring on part two next year, as this is darn good, rootin'-tootin', gun-slinging fun.

The Math

Baseline assessment : 7/10

Bonuses : +1 for reminding me how much I loved Clint Eastwood before he turned into a Romney-loving fool; +1 for juggling multiple storylines with aplomb; +1 for the phrase "He scratched at his face with a sound as rough as a gang of armadillos fucking".

Penalties: -1 for not quite handling the sudden lurches into fantasy convincingly; -1 for one of the character's names changing temporarily by mistake

Nerd Coefficient : 8/10. "Well worth your time and attention."

Al Ewing, The Fictional Man

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Guest Microreview [book]: The Fictional Man by Al Ewing

Al Ewing, The Fictional Man [Solaris, 2013]

Al Ewing is real, despite the Dallas-sounding name, and he has written a fantastic novel about fiction vs. reality. It's an easy book to read, but that's not to suggest it is only fun pulp. At times it confuses you as to where it is heading, and often brings up troubling and complex emotional scenarios. This is a book that can combine serious relationship issues, personality crisis, fan parody, spoof humour, gratuitous sex and violence and social comment all in a couple of paragraphs.

Ewing presents us with an alternate present, one where human cloning exists. Hollywood is full of 'Fictionals' - clones developed as fully-fledged fictional characters by writers and brought to life in labs, made to act in films and shows alongside real stars. Niles Goran, a 'real' person, is a hack author of Jack Reacher-esque thrillers whose personal life is a shambles. His only confidants aren't even 'real' - his counsellor, a Fictional who played a TV shrink, and his best and only friend, a Fictional created for a superhero series. He is asked to write a remake of a Flint-style 60's spy spoof which for the proud yet floundering novelist would mean one of his characters would be made into living, breathing Fictional. However, as complications ensue, Niles begins to question his own reality and what he really feels about these clones.

As we explore this world through Niles's story, the fun of the scenario becomes clear - much enjoyment seems to be had by Ewing in rewriting cultural history, and references to everything from Jaws to Weekend At Bernies, Batman to Bond abound. As the Fictionals are designed to BE the character they play- a true 'meat puppet'- jokes such as an old-school Sherlock helping the police, dumbly assisted by an 'Action Holmes', or how Dexter as played by a clone got a little too carried away, fly off the pages.

However, despite Ewing's clear talent shining through as with his work for 2000AD and his earlier novels, with interesting shifts in style and format, I found myself struggling to enjoy this story at the half-way mark. The British author writing about a depressed, arrogant British author struggling with his writing felt self-absorbed at times. It stank of a Mary Sue situation, a writer using his surrogate to bitch about critics and the world in general. The regular giggly 'you know what I'm referring to here, right?' nature of the pop references also began to grate, making me think of the South Park spoof of Family Guy's reference generator machin... oh shit now I'm doing it...

And, worst of all, the device of Niles narrating an alternative reality to each scene in italics began to annoy me; used, it seemed, far too frequently, and too like the tired filmic trick of seeing something happen that turns out to be all in the character's head - which, after making me laugh as a kid at Dream On, now it poisons my blood....(Actually I mainly watched Dream On for the nudity, so maybe it was never funny...).

Yet then something wonderful happens with this book. I realised all these apparent flaws were intentional and designed to highlight Niles's neurosis. Niles's existential dilemma and attempts to finish his movie pitch begin to shift things in an intriguing way. His friendship with the Fictional and his dealing with his ego become far more central than the Hollywood biz story. His narration of his own life is shown to be a major personality flaw, one he tries to overcome, and the constant refs are revealed to highlight the smudged reality Niles has to navigate. Ewing started to really play with my brain in the second half of the story. What is real, other than what we each believe, or tell ourselves to believe? Is a clone any less human than a 'womb-born'? How much do we surround ourselves with lies to make ourselves feel better, and can one person ever really know another? Are love and friendship just fictions with a finite life?

This book became far more than theFuturama-meets-Blade Runner stunt it appeared at first, and although the humour continued, by the perfect and almost gentle ending I was very impressed. Managing to combine explorations on writing, author ownership, identity, sexual disfunction and Hollywood business, whilst never losing its playfulness, and including some wild tangents, this is a superior read and I can't wait for Ewing's next.

The Math

Baseline Assessment : 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for the dark and serious ideas behind the spoofs and winks; +1 for the sly digs at media coverage and bad movie-making; +1 for the ending; +0.5 for the use of the phrase 'Action Holmes'.

Penalties: -1 for indulging too much in the self-narration; -1 for underwritten support characters, particularly women; -0.5 for reminding me Scrubs exists.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10. "A mostly enjoyable experience."

Read about our scoring system, in which a sufficiently random sample of books would normally distribute around 5, here.

Microreview [book] I, Crimsonstreak and II Crimsonstreak by Matt Adams

Adams, Matt. I, Crimsonstreak / II Crimsonstreak [Candlemark & Gleam, 2012 and 2013]

The Meat

Two book reviews for the price of one! Written seemingly back-to-back, 'I, Crimsonstreak' and the wittily-titled 'II Crimsonstreak are a light-hearted duo of novels, that can be read at a pace and with a lack of gravitas that both matches the eponymous hero. A young son of superheroes, Crimsonstreak has the power to run. Very, very fast. And to quip. And banter. And mock. And generally Josh Abrams all over the shop. As our narrator, we whizz through events with a largely-jovial perspective, things treated with references (Star Wars, Batman, Tom Clancy(rip), etc) rather than reference. This is superhero fiction more in the vein of The Incredibles than The Dark Knight.

For a while, though, the wonderful Brad Bird film cast a shadow over proceedings for me. This is a world familiar from so many other works; not to cast aspersions on Adams but he is walking over many old footsteps of those who have affectionately lampooned the comic book universe of capes and muscles already. Therefore once a reference or memory popped into my head, it hung around, watching and judging. And Mr Incredible and co stood in the wings the longest, with me wishing some more of that film's humour and excitement came into play.

We begin with Crimsonstreak breaking out of jail after being framed, and finding that whilst he's been behing bars the world has changed dramatically. His father, Colonel Chaos, has apparently gone insane after the death of Miss Lightspeed, his mother, and taken over the world in a sort of camp facist Big Brother way. Teaming up with Crusading Comet (loving these names) and others, Crimsonstreak battles to bring order to the world and closure to his family problems. All whilst quipping and running. And telling us what has just happened. And what things in popular culture that events remind him of. And lots of references to American sports that left me more cold and confused than a penguin with amnesia.

Yet I slowly began losing my grey(not gray)-souled cynicism and just decided to relax and enjoy myself. With the end of the first novel and the start of the second (which follows neatly on from the plot of the first), I was becoming a fan of Adams and a fan of Crimonstreak. The second book nicely ups the ante while retaining the tone of the first. The aliens who invaded prior to the start of book one (don't ask; I'm British but I'm not Basil Exposition) return and take control of Earth in a fresh and imaginative way, and the roster of heroes and villains is expanded whilst retaining the affection of the core 'cast'. My favourite has to be Falcon Gray (not Grey), an alien birdman that brought fond memories of the ridiculous but proud Hawkman from Buck Rogers.

So if you want a fast and fun couple of reads between more deep and dark novels, I recommend this duo. 

The Math 

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for managing, after an awkward start, to breathe new life into a tired genre

Negatives: -1 for too much referencing; -1 for going over the plot again like a bad reality tv show

Nerd Coefficient : 7/10 A mostly enjoyable experience