Keep Calm And Carrie On

She just wanted a friend. They gave her a fight. All episodes of Carrie, a new series from Mike Flanagan, premiere on October 7 on Prime Video.

ONE PRIME TO RULE THEM ALL

Knowing full-well that it's my 60th birthday in November, Prime Video has just released trailers for two franchise shows dropping that month that are right in my wheelhouse: one a returning fantasy series, the other a new sci-fi spin-off from a great couple of movies.

BLADE RUNNER 2099

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER, SEASON THREE

Rings of Power continues to chart the rise of Sauron in Middle-Earth, starting November 11, while all eight episodes of Blade Runner 2099 will drop on November 25.

Coincidentally, both shows have popular roleplaying games based on them, published by Free League.

PRIME HAS THE POWER!!!

The excellent Masters of The Universe movie drops on Prime Video tomorrow.

You can read my review here.

The Caped Crusader Returns To The Streets of Gotham

One of my favourite new superhero cartoons of recent years, resplendent with its vintage, noir-meets-pulp vibes, Batman: Caped Crusader returns next month for a second season with a host of new villains for our hero to bring to justice.

CONAN GETS ANIMATED!

The legendary Genndy Tartakovsky is animating the Robert E Howard classic Conan the Barbarian: Queen of the Black Coast for Prime Video.

After much recent teasing, this exciting announcement was made on the official Conan The Barbarian YouTube channel (see below), run by Heroic Signatures, custodians of the Howardverse, earlier today.

After finding love in the pirate queen, Bêlit, a battle-hardened Conan defies gods, fate, and even death to save her from a dark sorcery that threatens to destroy everything.

The show is being made by Cartoon Network Studios with Tartakovsky as executive producer and showrunner for the Conan the Barbarian: Queen of the Black Coast series, while the executive producers are Darrick Bachman, Fred Malmberg, and Mark Wheeler.

I'm so here for this, although honestly I was hoping the announcement was going to be for a live-action serial with HBOMax, Netflix or some organisation like that.

But I'll gladly take a bloody, visceral, and violent cartoon from one of the masters of the artform while I await my live-action dream project.

MUSICAL MONDAY: Dream A Little Dream Of Me (Li Jun Li)

Li Jun Li's cover version of Dream A Little Dream Of Me, from Spider-Noir, currently streaming on Prime Video.

Spider-Noir Swings Into Action This (Aunt) May

THROWBACK THURSDAY: At The Cinema With...

Pre-demolition: The derelict site of the former ABC Cinema in central Tunbridge Wells

These days I rarely see any movies at the cinema. I count myself 'lucky' if I manage the trip once in a 12-month period.

However there was a time - when I had a job - that I'd pop in to the cinema almost every week.

While the Tunbridge Wells town centre cinema (pictured above, years ago and well past its prime, and now - after a lot of faffing about - demolished) was still open, and I was friends with the manager, I saw pretty much everything that came out.

Of course, at the time, I was entertainments' editor for the local paper and self-appointed cinema critic.

I even had my own regular - and well-read (if not well-written) - column: At The Cinema With...

But when Odeon bought out the site then closed it so it didn't draw audiences away from their new, dismal, overpriced grottiplex on the out-of-town industrial estate, the rot started to set in.

I still went reasonably regularly, even though I had to pay(!), and got to see pretty much everything that interested me.

These days, now that I can't drive, it's just too much hassle. It's expensive, as well as inconvenient... and there are "other people" there when I'm trying to watch films.

To mangle Jean-Paul Sartre: "Hell is other people."

Despite what you might see elsewhere (in some movies, actually) watching a film is NOT a social experience, especially when you're paying the sort of money now being asked just to get through the doors.

If I've made the effort to go and see a film, I don't want to hear other people chattering, whooping, parroting dialogue, munching popcorn etc

I want to be in my own little bubble where I can sink into the story unfolding before my eyes.

And remember, more often that not, the people telling you that you HAVE to see a film on the big screen are those who will benefit financially from your inconvenience.

Truth be told - and it's probably a product of my age as much as anything - I find that far easier to do at home these days.

With the advances in home entertainment - the quality of TV screens and Blu-Rays, for instance - there is no longer the need to go to the cinema and pay a fortune to get annoyed with the unappreciative crowds of oiks who treat it as a social club.

Sure, I'll have to wait two or three months (sometimes a bit longer) for the movies I want to see to come out on Blu-Ray, Netflix, Prime Video, Sky Cinema etc, but I've realised I don't mind waiting.

It's a small price to pay for being able to watch a film how I want to, in comfortable surroundings with minimum distractions.

SINBAD WEEK: Sinbad and The Caliph of Baghdad (1973)

Today's Sinbad movie is an obscure Italian peplum yarn, totally devoid of magic and monsters I'm sorry to say.

Tucked away in the recesses of Amazon's Prime Video vault, 1973's Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad has the titular sailor (Robert Malcolm) returning to Baghdad after years of exile, only to find his foster mother has died and all their family property seized by the state.

Falling in with two of the most annoying "comedy relief" characters in cinematic history - Firùz (Luigi Bonos) and Bamàn (Leo Valeriano) - all three are shanghaied to crew a ship that is supposed to deliver the gorgeous Princess Sherazade (Sonia Wilson) to Baghdad for an arranged marriage to the insane caliph (also Robert Malcolm, so you can see where this is going).

Sonia Wilson as Sherazade 

Sinbad, of course, falls madly in love with the princess, but she realises their romance is doomed and dobs him in.

Our hirsute hero and the two comedy stooges are cast adrift in a row boat and end up marooned on a lifeless island, populated only by other shipwrecks.

However, they manage to salvage a hot air balloon, and a cargo of explosives, and head back to the ship they were thrown off of.

By the time they arrive, and take it over with their cache of bombs, Sherazade has already left.

Sinbad and his "pals" head back to the city with the wealth they looted from the ship, and start living the high life, and it's at this point that a couple of muckity-mucks from the palace spot Sinbad and suddenly realise that, without his beard, he is the spitting image of the caliph that they have been thinking of overthrowing.

The mad caliph has been making sport of murdering dancers from his harem, is instigating plans to publicly impale criminals (à la Vlad The Impaler and Cannibal Holocaust), and is generally blowing the palace's budget as he goes full Caligula.

So naturally, factions in the court are seeking to depose him.

Besides being strangely obsessed with male grooming, Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad has a pretty mundane plot - bolstered only by the all-too infrequent appearances of the lovely Sherazade in a variety of skimpy outfits.

Matters aren't helped by the fact that the actors have been dubbed with voices that have near-impenetrably thick accents, making much of the dialogue incomprehensible.

That said, I don't think there are any deep sub-plots or complex, Machiavellian political machinations in play here.

Although there's a sort of mystery involving a torn scroll as well as a booby-trapped treasure chest (protected by a concealed watery pit trap), there's nothing really here that could inspire gamers looking to add some Arabian Nights magic to their campaigns.

The introduction of the hot air balloon is an interesting gimmick, I guess, so it's a bit unfortunate that on at least one occasion you can see clearly see the rope above the balloon holding it up (presumably from a giant crane).

The Green Knight (2021)

Although The Green Knight has been available to stream on Prime Video for ages now, it wasn't until I came across the Blu-Ray in an Amazon sale the other day that I finally decided it was time to clear 130 minutes in my schedule and sit down to watch this Arthurian epic.

It's Christmas in the court of King Arthur and aspiring knight Gawain (the perfectly cast Dev Patel) is seated beside the king, his uncle, when the mysterious emerald-skinned Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) rides in and issues an honour challenge.

He will allow someone to strike him, but then the following Christmas they must seek him out in The Green Chapel and he will repay the blow in the kind.

Gawain, with the loan of King Arthur's sword (is it Excalibur?), beheads the Green Knight, but then the supernatural entity picks up his head and rides off.

Eventually, time passes and the aged Arthur (a brilliant turn from Sean Harris) tells Gawain he really should go and find The Green Knight.

Thus begins Gawain's odyssey across the misty realm of Ancient Britain, searching for The Green Chapel where the unearthly knight will be found.

A hypnotic, often unsettling, blend of gritty Medieval verisimilitude and mythological magic realism, odd things happen throughout A24's The Green Knight and are just accepted as par for the course.

On his journey Gawain helps a ghost, meets a talking fox, mystical tokens are lost and found, and our hero is nearly flattened by hauntingly ethereal giants (who look like they've stepped out of the classic 1973 French animated movie Fantastic Planet).

As far as I can figure - and it feels as though you are diving into a dense text as you try to follow along on a first viewing - the story is primarily concerned about upholding a chivalric code of honour, a parable about being true to your word.

For some bizarre reason, although I've heard the tale of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight several times, I can never remember how it pans out, but the dialogue-free extended epilogue of writer/director David Lowery's adaptation of the original 14th Century text is sublime.

Although prone to occasional atmospheric mumbled dialogue and minimalistic, naturalistic, lighting that makes some scenes as dark as The Long Night, there's a lyrical quality to the narrative of Lowery's The Green Knight that buoys you along. 

While not the traditional swords-and-sorcery, knights-and-armour type of film that I enjoy, it certainly doesn't feel like an arduous two hours if you allow yourself to sink into the world David Lowery has conjured up for us.

It's not necessary to know the names of all the characters and their backstories (in fact, if you check IMDB very few of the characters even have names), because The Green Knight isn't that sort of story, rather it's a period piece told using modern technology but as it would have been recounted "back in the day".

We also don't need to know where the giants came from or how the fox spoke, because these were aspects of Medieval storytelling that were just accepted in stories told around the campfire.

That said, on a more academic scale, I strongly suspect that with a bit more reading about - and research into - the subject matter of The Green Knight, more will be gleaned from this great movie upon subsequent viewings.

IT'S THE FINAL SHOWDOWN FOR THE BOYS

In the fifth and final season, it’s Homelander’s world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims.

Hughie, Mother’s Milk, and Frenchie are imprisoned in a 'Freedom Camp'. Annie struggles to mount a resistance against the overwhelming Supe force. Kimiko is nowhere to be found.

But when Butcher reappears, ready and willing to use a virus that will wipe all Supes off the map, he sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change the world and everyone in it. It’s the climax, people. Big stuff’s gonna happen.

New and Upcoming Western Movies and TV Shows

There's a lot of optimism (wishful thinking?) in Just Westerns':

"...preview of 40 new upcoming Western films and TV shows heading are way in 2026 and beyond, including Young Guns 3, Lonesome Dove remake, Blood Meridian, A Fistful Of Dollars remake, Horizon: Chapter 2, The Dark Tower TV Show, Butch & Sundance, Flint, The Magnificent Seven TV Show, Wind River 2 and many more, as well as new Westerns starring Tim Blake Nelson, Kevin Costner, Scott Eastwood, Kiefer Sutherland, Wes Studi, Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Pine."

For my personal tastes there are a few too many "neo-Westerns" here (although I love Yellowstone... and there's an abundance of Yellowstone-adjacent projects on this list) and, maybe, not enough classic, period Westerns.

Two Flavours of Spider-Noir For The Price of One

An aging and down on his luck private investigator in 1930s New York is forced to grapple with his past life as the city's one and only superhero.

With no power comes no responsibility. Spider-Noir - a live-action series starring Nicolas Cage - arrives in True-Hue Full Colour and Authentic Black & White May 27 on Prime.

War's Coming To The World of Invincible

Shiver Me Timbers! The Bluff Looks Brutal and Bloody!

In the late 19th Century Caribbean, a former female pirate must protect her family when her past catches up to her.

Best Westerns of This Decade (So Far)

The Just Westerns YouTube channel shares a breakdown of its top Western films and TV shows released between 2020 and 2025.

There's plenty of great material here to add to your "must watch" list.

The Boys Goes Apocalyptic in April

This is the teaser trailer for The Boys Season 5.

It’s Homelander’s world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims.

Hughie, Mother’s Milk, and Frenchie are imprisoned in a “Freedom Camp.” Annie struggles to mount a resistance against the overwhelming Supe force. Kimiko is nowhere to be found. But when Butcher reappears, ready and willing to use a virus that will wipe all Supes off the map, he sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change the world and everyone in it.

It’s the climax, people. Big stuff’s gonna happen on the 8th of April on Prime.

I'm On A Crunchyroll

As well as helping me get my Christmas shopping finished nice and early, this year's Black Friday also saw Amazon  offering some cut-price Prime Video subscription deals for the many, many channels available through its central hub.

So, I got myself a sub to Crunchyroll, which I'd been circling for months.

But what is Crunchyroll, you may ask?

Google summarises it as follows:

Crunchyroll is a streaming service for anime and other Japanese entertainment, owned by Sony Group Corporation. It offers a vast library of anime series, films, and manga, with content available to stream both with original Japanese audio and subtitles or with English dubs.

I had two main reasons for this subscription: (a) I was fed up waiting for more episodes of My Hero Academia to be released on blu-ray and wanted to see the final season and the spin-off series, Vigilantes; and (b) I wanted to see what other fantasy anime were available that gave off similar vibes to my new favourite shows: Delicious in Dungeon and Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.

Now, I knew there were a LOT of animes out there, but I don't think I was fully ready for the full Crunchyroll library (and this is nowhere close to all the animes, as there are several other streamers offering similar content, such as Prime Video itself and Netflix, the home of the Studio Ghibli movies).

The first thing I did was finish season seven of MHA, but then I wanted to save the show's final season and spin-off, allowing myself time to explore what else there was in Crunchyroll's portfolio.

I make no bones about the fact that I suffer decision paralysis when being faced by too many options, but endlessly scrolling through the shows and movies I now had access to nearly melted my little brain.

I watched the first episodes (or two) of several almost random choices that looked like what I was looking for - which is really easy when episodes are a little over 20 minutes long - but found myself being extremely persnickety. They were good, but not EXACTLY what I was hunting for.

One thing I did quickly learn though is that I much prefer anime that's dubbed into English. When I was watching Japanese language shows I found the subtitles were changing much too fast and I couldn't keep-up and was also missing the visuals while trying to read.

This is odd because I watch subtitled movies and a lot of Japanese documentaries on NHK World-Japan and have no issue with their subtitles.

I've currently settled on The Water Magician, which is - so far - an easy-going isekai serial with 12 episodes in its first season.

Being a lifelong fan of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, I'm interested in the the isekai genre as it's something I've often thought about introducing - somehow - into a roleplaying game set-up. A number of recent Japanese-inspired systems I've been looking at fully embrace the idea of "people from our world finding themselves in a fantasy world".

Of course, I've now found my own fantasy world - Crunchyroll - and may be lost for some time as I ferret around to find the magical MacGuffin that will solve all my problems... or give me the inspiration I need for my next roleplaying campaign.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Amazonia - The Catherine Miles Story (1985)

Let's get one thing cleared up straight away, Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story (aka White Slave aka Schiave bianche - Violenza in Amazzonia aka Cannibal Holocaust II) is not a well-made or well-acted film.

As an homage to the work of his fellow Italian filmmakers Rugero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi - genre movie makers of the '70s and '80s - Mario Gariazzo (as Roy Garrett) concocted the faux "true story" of an 18-year-old Westerner taken prisoner by an an indigenous tribe of headhunters when her parents are butchered on a family boat trip in the Amazon.

Delivered through the framing device of Catherine's trial for murder - once she's back in 'civilization' - the story is narrated by the titular Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray) in flashback.

In a classic example of Stockholm Syndrome, during her lengthy imprisonment in the jungle, Catherine finds herself falling for the headhunter, Umukai (Will Gonzales), that she blames for her parents' death, but then uses that to ultimately exact revenge on those responsible.

Although 'inspired' by cannibal exploitation movies, there's a disappointing lack of actual cinematic cannibalism in Amazonia; the only mention of it comes from a brief interaction with a neighbouring tribe that we are told practices the eating of human flesh.

Instead, while playing up the 'romance' angle (dig the funky music), the film tries hard to be almost educational, with Catherine often 'educating' the court proceedings with National Geographic-style nuggets of information about the lifestyle of the indigenous population.

There are a handful of moments of cheesy violence, splattered with unconvincing bright red blood and cheap practical effects, and while thankfully devoid of the grim real life slaughter of animals by humans (as happened in the original sickening Cannibal Holocaust) there are a couple of gratuitously random 'nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw' shots of a leopard attacking its prey.

There are also a couple of uncomfortable scenes of threatened sexual violence.

Make no mistake, this is grindhouse sleaze (although largely tame compared to cinema's modern excesses) of the lowest kind, peppering a forgettable script with fake blood and plenty of real nudity, selling itself as a 'cannibal horror film' yet devoid of cannibalism.

However, what almost redeems Amazonia is the plot twist that comes in about two-thirds of the way through the 90-minute movie and answers a major question observant audience members should have been asking.

In a better film, that could have done this revelation justice, the final act of Catherine's narrative would have had more impact.

It's almost as if there actually was a good idea in there, but it got buried under the limitations of 1980's Italian low-budget filmmaking and  Gariazzo's desire to make an exploitation flick in the style of his idols.

Camp Blood (2000)

In my long, and varied, history of movie-watching (for fun, professionally, or for university), I've sat through a lot of rough movies, but Camp Blood is possibly the worst film I have ever seen.

Made with a budget of about $1, the script is bad, the acting is bad, the camera work (and film stock) is bad.

The colour is washed out for most of the movie's duration so the characters have yellowy, Simpson-like skin and sound quality fades in and out (depending on how bored the boom mike operator was, I guess).

Camp Blood is a sad attempt at a low-budget slasher that, thankfully, sinks in to that precious reality of "so bad it's bad". This is a film that deserves a fan-commentary track, MT3K-style.

There's an attempt at a backstory - a man wearing a clown mask in the woods who likes to kill people - but it doesn't really make any difference to the plot.

From the gratuitous nudity in the first five minutes (tricking you into thinking the film will be full of T&A... it isn't), through several mind-blowing moments of what-the-frakkery to the supposedly clever "twist" ending which is just risible, Camp Blood can only be enjoyed by those who truly revel in crap cinema - or are totally wasted.

I cannot stress how bad this film is.

It's bad. Really. Bad.

Then, back in 2018, Paul (who had watched the first Camp Blood with me on one of our regular "film nights") stumbled upon a sequel to Camp Blood on Prime Video (Ghost Of Camp Blood), that was released that year, which led me to investigate further and discover that there are, in fact, numerous sequels to this steaming pile of poodoo.

Currently, IMDB lists 13 titles in the franchise that began in 1999 (including the 30-minute Camp Blood: The Musical, which I don't think has anything to do with the the other movies whatsoever):

• Camp Blood 2 (2000)
• Within The Woods (2005)
• [Camp Blood: The Musical (2006)]
• Camp Blood First Slaughter (2014)
• Camp Blood 4 (2016)
• Camp Blood 5 (2016)
• Camp Blood 666 (2016)
• It Kills aka Camp Blood 7 (2017)
• Ghost of Camp Blood (2018)
• Camp Blood 8: Revelations (2019)
• Camp Blood 666 Part 2: Exorcism of The Clown (2023) 
• Camp Blood X: Animated (2023)
• Camp Blood 9: Bride of Blood (2024)
  
  

At the time, Wikipedia went someway to explaining what is going on here:

[Writer/director Brad] Sykes quickly followed up his 1999 release of Camp Blood with a sequel, Camp Blood 2, in October 2000. A third unofficial film, Within the Woods, was released five years after that, in 2005. Sykes wrote and directed both sequels and actress Jennifer Ritchkoff reprised her role as Tricia Young for Camp Blood 2, but did not return for the third film.

Four sequels were released beginning 2014 with Camp Blood: First Slaughter, which was written and directed by Mark Polonia, and is sometimes referred to as Camp Blood 3. Three more instalments were released, Camp Blood 4, Camp Blood 5, and Camp Blood 666, all of which were released in 2016. Like First Slaughter, these films do not take into account the third movie created by Brad Sykes in the Camp Blood series, Within the Woods.

Check that out: THREE of the sequels came out in the same year. They must be sooooo good!

And yet, because all the 'official' sequels were available to stream 'for free' to Prime members of Amazon, Paul and I were perversely - masochistically - tempted to tip our toes in the murky waters of these other movies.

Just to say we've seen (a selection of) them and survived...

But then again, life is short, and these are hours of our precious time that we'll never get back.

I applaud the filmmakers' enthusiasm, and by all means make these movies for your friends (I know I used to), but for the sake of global sanity don't foist them on the rest of us who are scratching around for decent horror flicks.

Fool me once, shame on me, try and fool me a dozen times, shame on everyone!