Scorpions, Ninjas, and Hulks... Oh My!

It's a Brand New Day for Peter Parker. Fighting crime full-time as Spider-Man in a world that doesn’t remember him — and the pressure of seeing his old friends move on without him — sparks a change in Peter he may not have the power to control.

But that transformation might also be the only thing that can stop a shocking new threat to the city and those he loves - a powerful villain no one can even see.

The world may have forgotten Peter Parker, but he hasn’t forgotten them.

Spider-Man versus The Hulk? Thank You Very Much!

Figuring Out My Mummy Issues

It's a definite truism - and a meme - that as you grow older people are less inclined to ask you your favourite dinosaur (it's a diplodocus, by the way) but I've realised the same is true for your favourite monster. Specifically the original Universal Monsters.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Not sure exactly why. 

I'm pretty certain my friend, the author Charles R Rutledge would say Dracula, but I really had to put my thinking head on before it struck me which monster I'm most fascinated by.

The Mummy.

Although my favourite old Universal monster movie is, of course, the marvellous Bride of Frankenstein, the actual Bride is only really on-screen for around five minutes.

However, The Mummy is ubiquitous in films, comics, games etc. 

I even did a whole series of Show Me The Mummy movie reviews... and am planning a second such collection of write-ups in due course.

The Mummy was also a key antagonist in both issues of my DIY comic, Monster Mag, that I created as a youngling. For instance, in the first issue it easily defeated the Hulk! You can find issue one here and issue two here. 

From the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Monster Manual, pg 72

And I've always been a fan of mummies as monsters in the old school Dungeons & Dragons games of my youth (really must bring them back at some point!).

There were some grand pyramid-themed dungeons in old issues of the Judges Guild magazines around at the time.

But all this has culminated in Rachel buying me a most incredible present the other day: the Ultimate Mummy action figure of Boris Karloff's portrayal in the the original 1932 film.

After thanking her profusely, I excitedly told her I now had an excuse to pick up the Ardath Bey figure and the sarcophagus accessory pack!

There is a rule (well, more of a guideline) in this house that my action figures are "tolerated" as long as they are not kept in their boxes, but put out on display.

However, at the moment, I'm so in awe of my Mummy figure that I can't bring myself to open it quite yet.

I also think I might have a new idea for a theme for my protracted castle tower project as well (inspired by the Egyptian Collection at Lord Carnarvon's Highclere Castle [aka Downtown Abbey])! 

SINBAD WEEK: Sinbad of The Seven Seas (1989)

As the original 1947 Sinbad The Sailor movie proved, you can make an excellent Sinbad film without Harryhausen effects as long as you have a great cast and script - Sinbad Of The Seven Seas has none of these.

I guess my spidey-sense should have been tingling by the mere sight of Lou 'Incredible Hulk' Ferrigno grinning on the cover of the DVD case.

And if not then, by the fact that the film opens with a contemporary framing device of an annoying  mother (Daria Nicolodi) reading her equally annoying daughter (Giada Cozzi), Edgar Allan Poe's The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (although Poe's story bears no similarity to this sorry affair).

So far, so Princess Bride. But the narration continues, even as the scene shifts to Sinbad and his multi-racial crew, and then it continues some more and it pretty much never stops throughout the whole movie!

And if that wasn't bad enough, all the dialogue by the main characters has been rerecorded and dubbed over - quite badly and quite obviously.

Not that the actors are that good anyway, nor do they have quality material to work with and little apparent direction from Enzo Castellari, master of the spaghetti western and director of the original Inglorious Bastards.

From start to finish, Sinbad Of The Seven Seas is a dreadful script performed by dreadful actors, with the only comparison I can make being the distinctly British tradition of pantomime. And like pantomime, unless you are under six, Sinbad The Sailor is - in equal parts - likely to bore you to distraction and have you laughing out loud at its awfulness.

The only performer to come out of this with any kudos is John Steiner as villainous vizier Jaffar, clearly the only one in on the joke, who is gloriously over-the-top and arch, switching between delightful smugness and being his own worse enemy. Not only does he tell Sinbad where he has hidden the magic crystals that Sinbad must track down but then, having summoned a magical storm to batter Sinbad's ship, he runs it ashore on one of the islands where some of the crystals are hidden!

Inexplicably Sinbad is joined on his adventures by a Viking (Ennio Girolami), a Chinese soldier of fortune called Samurai (!!!) (Hal Yamanouchi), effete prince Ali (Roland Wybenga) - who is to marry the caliph of Basra's cute daughter, Alina (Alessandra Martines) - as well as a bald chef and a cowardly dwarf called Poochie (Cork Hubbert).

While chasing after the magic jewels that Jaffar has scattered - like a pointless video game - they encounter a number of ludicrous obstacles, most of which are overcome by very bad fight sequences (Sinbad has an odd habit of throwing his sword away and simply wrestling whatever he is facing).

The only scenario that shows a bit of initiative is Sinbad's seduction by Amazon Queen Farida (Melonee Rodgers) and her ultimate comeuppance.

I can't even bring myself to discuss the surreal cameo by bodybuilder Teagan Clive as Jaffar's co-conspirator, Soukra, the S&M dominatrix witch, except to say, like the rest of the film, it will leave you perplexed, bemused and possibly in need of counselling.

Unless you are in a particularly masochistic mood, really love ultra-low budget bad movies or are aged under six, Sinbad Of The Seven Seas is best steered clear of.

It's A Brand New Day For Spider-Man

After the record-breaking global success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spider-Man: Brand New Day marks an entirely new chapter for Peter Parker and Spider-Man.

Four years have passed since the events of No Way Home, and Peter is now an adult living entirely alone, having voluntarily erased himself from the lives and memories of those he loves.

Crime-fighting in a New York that no longer knows his name, he's devoted himself entirely to protecting his city — a full-time Spider-Man — but as the demands on him intensify, the pressure sparks a surprising physical evolution that threatens his existence, even as a strange new pattern of crimes gives rise to one of the most powerful threats he has ever faced.

Confessions Of A Superhero (2007)

A fascinating 90-minute documentary looking at the lives of four acquaintances who make their living from dressing up as superheroes and posing for photographs with tourists outside the world-famous Mann's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

The primary focus of the feature is Christopher Dennis, the Superman of the group, who claims to be the son of actress Sandy Dennis, although her living relatives deny this.

A generally positive person, Dennis seeks to embody all that is good about Superman when he is wearing the costume, and is very protective of the character and all that he stands for.

Living in a hoarder-style apartment, surrounded by Superman memorabilia, there's an inspiring naivety about his personality that borders on autistic, and despite the knocks he suffers, and the darkness from which he has come, he soldiers on.

Maxwell 'Maximus' Allen is Batman, and it's hard to tell if he really has had the shady past he claims (and occasionally contradicts) or if he's a master fantasist. Even his wife is quoted as saying she only believes half of his stories.

What is undeniable, unfortunately, is his anger issues and Maxwell's arc unfortunately peaks with his arrest for threatening behaviour.

The giveaway that this was not going to end well really begins with Maxwell turning-up for his psychiatrist appointment in full Batman costume.

Of course, it's highly possible that that was staged for the film (how could a real psychiatrist allow his sessions to be filmed like that, anyway?), but it's still a jarring moment in the narrative that makes you realise something could be going wrong.

All the street performers are governed by strict laws - including only being able to work for tips, not being able to demand payment etc - and the documentary also talks to the patient police officer who patrols the area, and explains the problems he has with some of the "pan-handlers".

Jennifer Wenger (née Gehrt), as Wonder Woman, is probably the most recognisable of the featured performers, having gotten a variety of acting gigs off the back of this documentary and being a recognisable convention cosplayer.

Her storyline goes from her desire to get away from the stifling confines of her highly religious hometown, through a hurried romance and marriage, to a point in her life where she can see her dreams maybe coming true.

Joe McQueen, as The Hulk, is the final personality of the piece. Like the others, he is an aspiring actor, but living homeless on the streets of L.A. he really has to go the extra mile to prove himself and the film ends with getting a potential big break in a Justin Lin flick.

Despite the set-backs they all suffer, overall the majority of the stories told in Confessions of A Superhero are positive, offering an intriguing glimpse behind-the-curtain at the lives of people you might possibly cross the road to avoid - for fear of being hit up for change.

From Hulk To Hermit

In his first creature role since CBS’s The Incredible Hulk, global icon Lou Ferrigno returns to the screen, and steps into the horror genre for the first time, in the cannibal horror/thriller The Hermit.

Uncork’d Entertainment will release the film on Digital and On Demand platforms March 3.

In this dark horror tale with a quirky edge, Ferrigno plays a cannibalistic pig farmer who makes and sells jerky made from human flesh.

The film is also led by Malina Weissman (Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) and Anthony Turpel (Hulu’s Love, Victor), two familiar faces for younger genre fans.

This is destined to become a cult classic - either for the right reasons or the wrong ones.

I'm loving the Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Halloween vibe of the set-up, but the trailer doesn't wholly convince me that they stick the landing.

But it's Lou Ferrigno...

The Adventures Of Hercules II (1985)

Lou Ferrigno (aka The Incredible Hulk) returns as Hercules in this kinda-sequel to 1983's Hercules.

In this rather Xena: Warrior Princess-meets-2001: A Space Odyssey rambling affair, the Earth and Universe is given a fresh origin story for no readily apparent reason, then we learn that a quartet of rebellious gods have stolen the Seven Thunderbolts of Zeus, which give the top god dominion over all.

This disruption in the eternal balance causes the Moon to - very slowly - fall out of its orbit and threaten the existence of Earth.

Sonia Viviani

To recover his thunderbolts, Zeus calls Hercules back from the stars, however, to thwart this plan, the rebel gods resurrect mad scientist King Minos (William Berger)... who promptly rushes off to do his own thing.

The thunderbolts, it turns out, have been hidden inside monsters, which Hercules must track down and defeat (or simply bump into as random encounters).

It just so happens that he is also drawn into a side-adventure by the lovely Gabrielle-like Urania (Milly Carlucci) to save her sister, Glaucia (Sonia Viviani), and village from the fire demon Antaeus (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Id monster from Forbidden Planet).

This entails finding a balm that will protect Hercules from "the fire monster's radiant heat", that's another side-quest, but all, eventually, somehow, ties back into the main plot.

Urania has some kind of prophetic ability, which involves communing "with the Little People" (a pair of identical spirits) at random shrines around the country, who put her in touch with the gods and warn of her fate.

Meanwhile, Minos teams up with his old pal, Dedalos (Eva Robin), who gives him a very unscientific magic sword of ice, with the power to slay gods, before granting him superpowers.

Milly Carlucci

After a series of monster battles, bizarre set-pieces full of psychedelic light shows, gorgeous stage sets and cheesy costumes, events culminate in an astral battle between Hercules and Minos (that doesn't actually feature the actors... but does feature an appearance by Space Kong and Space T Rex!), before moving on to Hercules' mythological method of preventing the Moon destroying the Earth.

On a positive note, at least the rubbish bargain-basement robot monsters from the first film have been replaced by "men in rubber suits" and slightly more mythologically accurate models (although neither are exactly top quality).

The story rambles all over the place, managing to add an intriguing level of surreality and deviousness to events that this low-budget swords-and-sandals fantasy/sci-fi mash-up probably doesn't truly deserve.

Ferrigno is great as Hercules (when he's actually onscreen), but I've read that he didn't even know he was filming this sequel.

Writer/director Luigi Cozzi had actually been tasked by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to film extra scenes for Ferrigno's The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, but then they decided to use this material as the basis of a new film (Hercules II) instead... without telling their lead actor!

Which would explain his physical absence from so much of the movie.

And the patchy nature of the bonkers plot.

Darkman (1990)

Gruff action star and hardman Liam Neeson stars in Sam Raimi's Darkman as Peyton Westlake, an up-and-coming scientist on the verge of creating 3D printable replacement skin.

Unfortunately, Peyton's lab - with him in it - gets trashed and torched by a gang of mobsters looking for an incriminating memorandum that his attorney girlfriend, Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand), has acquired.

Presumed dead, Peyton's body is fished out the river and given an experimental treatment, administered by - of all people - a surprise, and uncredited, cameo appearance by the lovely Jenny Agutter.

This grants the disfigured scientist increased strength and makes him immune to pain, but also means he's prone to fits of berserk anger.

Waking up, Peyton breaks free and returns to the ruins of his lab, where he somehow salvages enough equipment to resume his experiments in replacement skin growth.

With his new abilities, he begins to exact his revenge on the mobsters, who are led by the iconic figure of the late Larry Drake as Robert G Durant.

Durant happens to work for Julie's boss, Louis Strack Jr. (Colin Friels), a corrupt property developer looking to transform the city into his own vision of the 'city of tomorrow'.

Peyton's lab-made skin can only last 99 minutes in sunlight, but he realises that as well as helping to rebuild his own face, he can now impersonate anyone he chooses... as long as he has enough photographs of them to build up a 3D image in his computer.

Before he plunged headfirst into the world of superhero movies with his classic Spider-Man trilogy in the early 2000s, Sam Raimi tested the waters in 1990 with Darkman, his inspired horror spin on the pulp antihero, The Shadow.

However, Darkman also blends in elements of classic, tragic creations from the black-and-white era of creature features, such as The Invisible Man, The Phantom of The Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Frankenstein's monster.

There's even sprinklings of The Incredible Hulk in the mix, with the stylised sequences of the scientist's raging anger and then his sad farewell to Julie at the end when he finally adopts the moniker of Darkman, merging into the crowd wearing the face of Bruce Campbell (another great cameo in a film loaded with them).

Based on Raimi's own story, with a script he helped co-write with Chuck Pfarrer, Ivan Raimi (Sam's brother), Daniel Goldin, and Joshua Goldin, director Sam Raimi created a visually-striking 'superhero' in Darkman, who operates intelligently from the shadows, resorting only to violence in the action-packed grand finale of the 96-minute movie.

While not quite as inventive - or gonzo - as his game-changing Evil Dead movies, Darkman still manages to capture Raimi's delightfully twisted sense of humour.

The "experimental treatment" Peyton receives as a near-dead John Doe is a bit random and never really explained (or revisited), but then again once you accept the weird science of Peyton's DIY replacement skin you know you're in for a wild, pulpy ride where things don't have to make 100 per cent sense to be fun and entertaining.

Two direct-to-video sequels came out in the mid-90s - Darkman II: The Return of Durant and Darkman III: Die Darkman Die - although it will surprise no one that Neeson didn't return as the titular hero, being replaced by The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo, and Sam Raimi took a producing role, leaving the directing to TV director Bradford May.

I will, of course, now be tracking them down (there's a Blu-Ray box set on Amazon with the full trilogy).

Dr. Strange (1978)

With the official Marvel Cinematic Universe iteration of Doctor Strange now well established and part of the general public's consciousness (thanks, in large part, to casting Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Sorcerer Supreme),  I thought it was time to set the Wayback Machine to the 1970s and fall under the spell of the original Dr. Strange movie.

As ever, this 1978 TV movie needs to be considered on its own merits, taking into account the budgetary and technological restrictions of its time.

The Ditko-verse

Five hundred-year-old sorceress Morgan LeFey (Jessica Walter) is tasked by her nameless, demonic master (a giant, mist-enshrouded puppet, voiced by David Hooks) to slay Earth's current sorcerer supreme, Thomas Lindmer (John Mills... yes, THE John Mills) within an arbitrary timeframe of three days. I suspect he's supposed to be Dormammu.

The legendary Arthurian villianness has been hanging around the "higher levels of the Astral plane", a set clearly influenced by the iconic artwork of Dr. Strange comic book artist Steve Ditko. This opening sequence gave me hope that the film would be treating its source material with some respect.

Morgan's scheme involves mind-controlling beautiful student Clea Lake (Eddie Benton aka Anne-Marie Martin) to push Lindmer off a bridge.

Lindmer survives, but Clea is traumatised by the event and ends up in hospital under the care of psychiatrist Doctor Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten), who wears his father's ring that bears the same symbol as seen on Lindmer's window and on a painting in his Sanctum Sanctorum.

Strange finds himself drawn to Clea and Lindmer offers to help out in her treatment, convincing Strange to come to his home where he sends the doctor off on an astral voyage to save Clea's soul.

Astral Tripping

This 2001-style, kaleidoscopic light-show - complete with a phantom horseman in the form of the demon Balzaroth (voiced by The Addams Family's Ted Cassidy) - is the visual highlight of the film, being surprisingly imaginative and trippy despite the limitations of '70s TV special effects.

After this, Strange declares he doesn't want anything more to do with Lindmer's magic, but Morgan isn't listening and after bitch-slapping Lindmer's chum Wong (Clyde Kusatsu) and then seemingly doing the same to the old man, she turns her attention to Stephen Strange.

It turns out that Morgan has a bit of a cougar-thing going and wants to use her womanly wiles (which apparently haven't seen much action during her centuries in The Dark Dimension) to seduce the good doctor. He, of course, is having none of this - as his eyes are focussed on Clea.

Dr. Strange is quite a dialogue-heavy piece, but still manages to break this up with some flashy light shows and demonic summonings, so that even in the many hospital scenes the pace never sags too badly.

However, things go bizarrely off the rails in the film's denouement - presumably these were meant as plot hooks if this pilot spawned a TV show - when Clea and Strange repeat (almost verbatim) a conversation they had earlier in the film, but neither notice, and then neither seem that perturbed by Morgan popping up on TV as a self-help guru!

There are a lot of changes from the source material in Dr. Strange, most of which I can understand for the sake of brevity, such as stripping out Strange's adventures in Tibet and making him a psychiatrist rather than a surgeon to tie him in to Clea's sub-plot.

What were they thinking?

It's a bit of a shame that in removing the Eastern aspects of Strange's backstory (thus explaining why Lindmer becomes Strange's mentor, rather than The Ancient One - who, confusingly, makes a vocal appearance during Strange's transformation sequence) they also decided to Westernise Wong and change Clea to a normal human being.

But I guess they didn't want to overload a mainstream audience with too much extraneous weirdness in a 90-minute television show about dimension-hopping sorcerers battling demons for the fate of humanity.

The worst change though is the inexplicable reworking of the classic Dr Strange look into a kitsch superhero costume with a bizarre starburst on the front.

Thankfully this only appears briefly towards the end of the film, after Morgan has magically dressed him in robes that do a far better job of emulating his comic book look.

Overall, Dr. Strange - as you would expect - is a product of its time. A bit slow in parts and very cheesy, but with some great touches along the way that suggest the people behind it had ambitious plans should it have been picked up to run as a series.

It was clearly going to be a very different superhero show to The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and Captain America that were making similar, difficult, transitions from the comic book page to the television screen at that time.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell (1995)

Trapped inside a haunted house, a body builder must survive a blood soaked night of insanity to save himself and his friends from a demonic ghost that is hell-bent on revenge.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell aka The Japanese Evil Dead wears its love of Sam Raimi's original movies proudly on its sleeve and makes no bones about "homaging" styles, shots, and even classic lines from Evil Dead and Evil Dead II.

Writer/director/star Shinichi Fukazawa's 1995 subtitled horror barely lasts over an hour and while it starts slowly, the extended final act is simply a gonzo sequence of man-versus-indestructible demon that fans of Raimi's early work will really appreciate.

The basic plot wallows joyfully in its grainy, direct-to-video, amateur constraints following the titular bodybuilder opening up a creepy, rundown, old house in the city - which his father owned decades ago - to try and woo back his ex-girlfriend, a photojournalist looking for a "ghost story".

They've brought with them a psychic, who promptly gets possessed by the angry spirit of a murdered woman and can only be stopped by the complete dismemberment and destruction of their corpse.

The ghost uses the psychic's abilities to boost her own and trap the bodybuilder and journalist in the house, like a supernatural escape room where their only chance at freedom depends on the total eradication of the paranormal presence. 

There are moments - particularly when animated body parts combine - that reminded me of that other old school, darkly funny, Grand Guignol splatter classic, Re-Animator.

Stop-motion special effects bring a touch of Jan Švankmajer to the proceedings, while also feeling very Japanese, and the body builder's climactic discovery of his 'inner power' was reminiscent of both the TV iteration of The Incredible Hulk and Grant Morrison and Richard Case's Flex Mentallo in Morrison's seminal run on the Doom Patrol comics.

A shockingly fun, cheap and cheerful, short film, what Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell lacks in originality it makes up for in its passion for the material, accepting its budgetary and technical limitations and embracing them with great aplomb.

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (2023)

I hope Helen Mirren got paid a lot of money for this because Shazam! Fury of The Gods is a right mess.

There are bits that are great, but also a lot where director David F. Sandberg's inconsistent tone doesn't seem to know if this is a "DC dark" film or a slapstick comedy.

For instance reasonably early on a seemingly decent person is brutally murdered in front of one of the heroes (who, admittedly, is horrified), but this is never mentioned again, even though this was clearly someone that Billy Batson (Asher Angel) would have known.

It turns out that when Captain Marvel (yes, I'm calling him that because that's his name; why would a superhero have a name that he can't say without transforming back into a kid?) broke the staff at the end of the last movie he also rent the barrier between worlds (or something).

This allowed the Daughters of Atlas - Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu), and Anthea (Rachel Zegler) - through to retrieve the two halves of the staff, and stick it back together.

Their plan is then to retrieve a seed from the Tree of Life and restore their godly realm to its former glory. 

However, human-hating Kalypso goes full Khaleesi, riding a massive CGI dragon, and plants the seed in the middle of Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia (home of the Philadelphia Phillies).

Because it's not in divine soil, the tree becomes corrupted and starts sprouting monsters from Greek mythology (manticore, cyclops, harpies etc).

Meanwhile, Captain Marvel's extended family of fellow superheroes keep getting stripped of their powers by Kalypso and the magic staff, and it's left to our main man (Zachary Levi) to face the Big Bad.

After the conflict is set-up in the first act the bulk of this overly long 130-minute movie is a massive superhero slugfest, which only comes into its own sporadically.

While Mary Marvel (Grace Caroline Currey) and Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) have a fair share of the plot and the action, the other member's of Billy's family are largely reduced to space-filling background characters, although young Darla Dudley (Faithe Herman) does step up at one point.

This sequence - which elicited the biggest laugh from me - must have been paid for by the Wrigley Company because the Skittles product placement was off the chart!

I'm not a fan of superheroes having their powers removed or nerfed, even if the reasoning here made more sense than the treatment the Hulk got in the later Avengers movies.

It just feels like a cop-out by the writers, having been given a scenario where there's a team of heroes, why not find a clever way to use them?

For me, one of the unique aspects of the Captain Marvel comics of my childhood was the fact that he had a family of similarly powered heroes, a ready-built team, to call upon.

If you introduce that then take it away, that's an unnecessarily cruel bait-and-switch in my book.

And I realise that Dame Helen Mirren has done big budget action movies before, but I can't help feeling that she turned up, delivered her lines impeccably, took the cheque and flew off of to wherever she likes to hang out and chill.

As awesome as she is in this role, there was no need for a global icon of her stature to play the part of Hespera. 

That said there are standout moments of wit and humour in Shazam! Fury of The Gods, from the youngsters having turned the Rock of Eternity into a proper kids' hangout to the genuinely surprising cameo (see, it pays to avoid spoilers, even this long after a film has hit cinemas) during the film's denouement, and a couple of solid "mid/post-credits" scenes (any appearance by Mr Mind is worth the price of admission... and this was especially amusing).

And matters certainly improve in the protracted beat-'em-up once the Daughters of Atlas start feuding among themselves, and the climactic punch-up between Captain Marvel and the dragon is visually impressive.

Ultimately quite mediocre and not up the potential suggested by the original movie, Shazam! Fury of The Gods suffers from a paucity of story and surfeit of characters, meaning many of the protagonists don't really contribute that much.

Scream VI (2023)

It's a year after the last Ghostface rampage in Woodsboro and the "Core Four" - Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) and the twins, Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding) - now find themselves in New York.

While the latter three are in college, at Blackmore University, Sam is doing menial jobs to cover the rent while she keeps an eye on her sister.

The film kicks off with an extended cold open, featuring cameos from Ready or Not's Samara Weaving and Tony Revolori, from the recent Spider-Man movies, again subverting the classic Scream opening with what is just the beginning of a trail of obfuscation and misdirection.

Ghostface has come to New York and states - on the phone - upfront that he's targeting Sam "for what she did" and anyone, such as her sister and friends, who gets in the way.

Sam is already persona non grata because of internet conspiracy theories that she in fact orchestrated the attacks in Woodsboro - because of her heritage - and then framed the actual killers.

This is all part of Scream VI's evolution of the central theme that it's now no longer 'enough' to 'simply' kill a person, you also have to kill their reputation as well.

As bodies start to inevitably mount up, Mindy declares to the group that they are not in a sequel, they're now part of a franchise and thus the rules have changed again, meaning everyone is fair game. 

As with the previous film, Scream VI presents us with a broad collection of potential murderers and victims, including legacy characters such as Hayden Panettiere's Kirby Reed, from Scream 4 (now an FBI agent) and fresh meat, including Sam's "secret" boyfriend, Danny Brackett (Josh Segarra, who you might recognise from playing the excellent Pug in She-Hulk, Attorney at Law, or Adrian Chase in Arrow).

Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) returns, of course, and even the ghost of Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) pops up a couple of times.

Thankfully, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are back as directors, working with a script, again, by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, which really helps ensure that Scream VI feels like an organic continuation of the previous instalment in the horrific murder-mystery franchise.

Whereas I posited the idea that 2022's Scream would have provided a satisfying conclusion to the overarching story, Scream VI now leaves the door well and truly open for a continuation of the saga of the Ghostface killings.

I would hope though that should another entry be made it would be under the auspices of the same team responsible for these last two Scream movies.

But now it's officially a franchise, who knows what direction the story will go in? 

And I must add the point that Marvel movies have broken me: I now scroll through the credits of every film I watch to see if there's a post-credit scene, and I have to say the one snuck on the end of Scream VI is perfect.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Mighty World of Marvel - This Is Where It All Began!

Despite my stroke-addled brain I've always retained a vivid picture of the comic book image (and its subsequent story) that hooked me on superheroes - and particularly the Fantastic Four - as a youngster.

It was the cover of Fantastic Four #17, which I managed to acquire back in 2016 and that now sits proudly framed in our lounge gallery of key (to me) comic book covers.

But, of course, it wasn't actually that comic I read all those decades ago, but a British reprint of the 1963 tale.

Me with my "holy grail", back in 2016

For the longest time, though, I was convinced that the reprinted version of the story had been printed with green ink.

But I was totally unable to prove it, and I'd begun to doubt my memories... until I spied a random post on Threads the other day, by a gentleman called geekyolhog, talking the British '70s reprint title called The Mighty World of Marvel and its use of green spot colour!

The green was primarily for the benefit of the main Hulk stories that ran in the weekly title, but was applied to other contents as well, such as the Fantastic Four backup strip, the letters' page, pin-ups etc

This was the breakthrough I'd needed (having completely forgotten about The Mighty World of Marvel as a title).

From there, it only took a bit of investigation to track down the issue that reprinted Fantastic Four #17: The Mighty World of Marvel issue 35.

A search on eBay, a modest investment (£8 for two issues), and it was in my hands.

Here's the crucial page (scanned from my copy) that proves I was "right" all along:

I can't say for certain that this was the very first American superhero comic book adventure I read, but it's definitely the earliest that stuck in my mind (and spawned my undying love for the Fantastic Four).

With a cover date of June 2, 1973, I would have been six at the time my parents bought me this magazine.

That tallies perfectly with my few remaining memories from that time, paving the way for my hand-drawn Monster Mag comic (issue one and issue two) three years later and my unwavering passion for the superhero genre and comic book medium since then.