Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974)

How have I gone this long without seeing this wonderful little film? Especially as Rachel bought me the Blu-Ray for Christmas several years ago and it's just sat on my shelf waiting for the right moment.

Clearly an influence on a variety of other monster-hunting shows from Buffy The Vampire Slayer to The Witcher, and the Ravenloft setting in Dungeons & Dragons, the mythology presented in Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter suggests a wider world and the adventure we witness in this film is obviously just a single episode in his storied life.

Liberating stunning gypsy girl Carla (Caroline Munro) on the way - locked in the stocks for "dancing on a Sunday" - former Imperial Guard captain-turned-professional vampire hunter Kronos (Horst Janson) and his hunchbacked companion, Professor Hieronymous Grost (John Cater), respond to a summons to investigate a suspected vampire attack.

We learn that there are many varieties of vampire, beyond the accepted stereotype, and the one operating here appears to drain life rather than blood.

However, Kronos and Grost need to investigate further, to uncover its weaknesses.

At a later point this involves a darkly humorous sequence when one of their allies falls foul of the vampire and they struggle to find the right method of execution.

The film doesn't really make too much of an effort to conceal the mystery of who the vampire is, but still manages to slip in a few surprises in the wake of the "big reveal" in the final act.

Wearing its '70s pedigree on its sleeve, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter takes place in one of those peculiarly Hammer, vaguely Central European, pseudo-nineteenth century settings where 90 per cent of the women look like glamour models.

The dashing swordsman and his posse

And Munro's Carla is there mainly to take the role of dogsbody, vampire bait, and the Captain's booty call.

But casual sexism aside, this is a well-paced, swashbuckling-horror from writer-director Brian Clemens (the main scriptwriter of hit '60s spy-fi show, The Avengers, and screenwriter of Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, amongst many other achievements on his CV), that really would have worked as a serial.

Janson plays the deadpan Kronos straight, showing that the war hero is clearly damaged, not just from losing his family to vampires, and that's what makes the katana-wielding, Chinese herb-smoking swordsman all the more intriguing.

Then on top of the layered central character (we learn very little about Grost except that he's an expert on vampire lore and he's insecure about his appearance) we are treated to a number of his peculiar, folktale-inspired, tricks to unearthing the undead.

I was particularly fond of the dead toad gimmick (this is something I need to work into an RPG).

"If a vampire should bestrode / Close to the grave of a dead toad / Then the vampire life shall give / And suddenly, the toad shall live."

There's a minimalist look about the movie as well (no doubt down, in part, to the budget), where scenes - regardless of the size of the set - feature very few characters, which reminded me of my beloved Hawk The Slayer.

Light-weight and well-lit, compared to many of the more Gothic Hammer vampire flicks (as these vampires don't sizzle in sunlight), Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter is a unique film in the Hammer vaults - which is a shame, because there's obviously many more adventures to be had with these characters.

Glorious Fantasy Films of the 1960s

Once again the excellent Luminism channel selects some of the finest fantasy films of the 1960s to shine the spotlight on.

Several of these feature the work of Ray Harryhausen, but the video is about more than just his masterworks.

Jack The Giant Killer (1962)

The Prince Of Witches, Pendragon (Torin Thatcher), and his minions have been expelled from the Duchy Of Cornwall, but he is still craving dominance over the land and so uses a giant to kidnap princess Elaine (Judi Meredith) on her birthday.

His plans are thwarted though by farmer Jack (Kerwin Mathews), who slays the giant and rescues the princess. He is promptly knighted by the king (Dayton Lummis) and charged with the task of ferrying Elaine to a Normandy nunnery where she can be hidden from Pendragon.

Unfortunately, Pendragon learns of this plan from a traitor at court and sends a cadre of witches to ambush Jack's ship in the English Channel. Elaine is spirited away to Pendragon's island fortress and Jack is thrown overboard by the ship's mutinous crew.

He's rescued from the sea by Viking fisherman Sigurd (Barry Kelley), along with the ship's cabin boy Peter (Roger Mobley), and so the three, aided by Sigurd's "imp in a bottle", the leprechaun Diaboltin (Don Beddoe), sail to Pendragon's mysterious island to rescue the princess... little realising that she has already been transformed into a witch by Pendragon's dark arts.

Jack The Giant Killer reunited stars Kerwin Mathew and Torin Thatcher from 1958's The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad with director Nathan H. Juran and producer Edward Small.

However, even though Jack The Giant Killer uses extensive stop-motion claymation for its special effects this is no Ray Harryhausen picture. The monsters, on the whole, are serviceable, but the clay sculpts lack the detail of Harryhausen's superior work.

The script, by Orville H. Hampton and Nathan H. Juran, based on the folk tale of Jack The Giant Killer, puts an interesting spin on witchcraft that I've never seen before: it is akin to a form of demonic possession that can be placed on a person, wiling or unwilling, turning them into a witch.

The film's witches come in two distinct flavours: those who resemble humans (but whose true form is revealed in mirrors) and those who resemble demons, with the latter having a broader range of magical powers.

As is often the case, it's the villains that steal the show and Torin Thatcher is brilliant as the scenery-chewing, pantomime villain Pendragon, who continually mocks the Cornish king as he schemes to usurp the rightful ruler.

Jack The Giant Killer is very much a fairy tale story from simpler times, but makes for excellent family-friendly fare full of magic, monsters and romance.

Little-Known Stop-Motion Monster Movies

Rare VHS oddities. Forgotten fantasy films. Handmade monsters hiding in places you’d never expect.

Today we’re digging into some obscure and little-seen movies that delivered surprisingly great stop-motion creatures, from demonic vultures and clay dinosaurs to cyberpunk war machines and prehistoric monsters.

Thanks to the excellent SirBootis Flicks channel for this selection.

"Second To The Right, And Straight On Till Morning"

I have long dreamed of a fantastical, island-hopping roleplaying game "project", akin to the beloved Ray Harryhausen sword-and-sorcery movies of my youth filtered through something akin to old school Dungeons & Dragons.

The exact flavour remains undecided, but I already have a campaign format in mind.

I want to emulate the very first campaign that Gublin and I played back in the late '70s: a picaresque nautical yarn in the style of Sinbad The Sailor, The Odyssey, Jason & The Argonauts or even Clark Ashton Smith's The Voyage of King Euvoran, with the player-characters as the crew of an exploratory ship sailing from mysterious island to mysterious island.

I've long said my campaigning Holy Grail is to run an open-ended 'forever campaign' that captures the spirit of the first generation of roleplaying campaigns (e.g. Gary Gygax's Greyhawk, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, and my personal favourite: Dave Hargrave's Arduin).

Maybe this is the adventure that will steer me in that direction.

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.

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).

SINBAD WEEK: The Lost World of Sinbad (1963)

Today's entry in this week of early Sinbad movies is a little known chanbara excursion  from that brief period in the Arabian sailor's storied career when he was, in fact, Japanese.

In this well-dubbed reworking of the Japanese movie, The Great Bandit, about the semi-mythical 16th Century Japanese merchant and pirate Sukezaemon Luzon. the legendary Toshirô Mifune (of Seven Samurai fame, as well as many other movies) takes the role of Sinbad.

The film begins with him inexplicably (in that it's never explained) escaping from being burned alive for the crime of piracy.

Back on his ship, however, in no time at all, Sinbad and his crew are caught in a massive storm and their vessel destroyed.

Sinbad and a couple of survivors are adrift, with a large chest of jewels, when they are set upon by the dread Black Pirate (Makoto Satô) who makes off with the treasure, leaving Sinbad for dead.

Our hero washes up on a beach, where he meets horny wizard Sennin (Ichirô Arishima) who carries his family curse of becoming paralysed whenever he sees the exposed flesh of a woman's cleavage!

Through a series of misadventures in the nearby town, Sinbad eventually falls in with a bandit queen and would-be rebel leader, the rather lovely Miwa (Kumi Mizuno, who crops up in several well-known kaiju films of the 1960s), and learns that the local ruler is taking peasants' daughters, in lieu of taxes, to bolster his harem.

Meanwhile, there's shenanigans at the nearby palace, where the sickly king (Takashi Shimura) remains out of sight.

The king's conniving Chancellor (Tadao Nakamaru) is trying to engineer a coup by getting himself hitched to Princess Yaya (Mie Hama, who appeared alongside Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice), with the help of his cackling pantomime demon-witch ally Granny (Hideyo Amamoto), whose skills include brewing poisons and turning people to stone with her gaze.

The princess, however, is betrothed to the Prince of Thailand (Jun Funato), who is due to arrive any day now for their wedding, which would scupper the Chancellor's ambitions.

Sinbad begins to suspect what is going on when he realises the jewels the kindly princess is wearing come from his own treasure haul (their original provenance is never truly discussed, but I like to think it's booty from a previous adventure of the "I'm not really a pirate" Sinbad).

Unsurprisingly, the lurid claims made in the movie poster (above) are gross exaggerations (the 'giant', for instance, is just a tall bloke, like Bernard Bresslaw in Hawk The Slayer or Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson in Game of Thrones) and there is no "lost world".

Nevertheless, The Lost World of Sinbad is a damn fine romp.

There's even some nice misdirection through the Chancellor's double-dealings that adds a surprising degree of complexity to the central plot.

Mitsukô Kusabue turns in a particularly good performance as Sobei, the Chancellor's overlooked consort, who definitely delivers some of the best snark .. before running afoul of Granny.

While the film boasts no monsters, there's plenty of magic on display, even if Sennin and Granny only have a handful of spells each in their repertoire.

Sennin's main trick is transforming himself into a fly, primarily to get around (including landing on a dancer's breast at one point... because family curse!), while Granny leans heavily on her petrifying gaze.

Towards the climax of the movie, a peculiar sequence sees Sinbad strapped to a giant kite to evade the enemy guards, when he and the rebels are storming the castle,.

He's not riding the kite like a magic carpet, as shown in the (again misleading) poster, but for some reason strapped on its back - facing the sky - so I have no clue as to how he was supposed to guide it.

Sinbad eventually gets into the castle entirely by chance!

Otherwise, the plot - for a dubbed effort that changed so much from the original and unfolds in a setting you'd never associate with Sinbad - is solid, has some good politicking in the court scenes, a cast of interesting and memorable characters, and, as you might expect with Toshirô Mifune involved, pretty decent fight scenes.

SINBAD WEEK: Captain Sindbad (1963)

Today's Sinbad movie not only boasts a wonderful selection of low-budget magic but also an array of cheesy monsters, and a variant spelling of the protagonist's name.

Heading home to the city-state of Baristan after years of clearly successful "adventuring", the charismatic Captain Sindbad (Guy Williams, better known as Professor John Robinson from the original Lost in Spaces series) is looking forward to marrying the Princess Jana (Heidi Brühl).

However, he is unaware that, since he has been away, the wicked warlord El Kerim (Pedro Armendariz) has seized control and is holding the princess and the king, her father (Rolf Wanka) hostage, with the reluctant assistance of alcoholic court magician Galgo (Abraham Sofaer).

The change in Baristan's power dynamics is graphically demonstrated to Sindbad though when his ship is dive-bombed by a squadron of rock-bearing rocs.

He is rescued by passing fishermen, and eventually makes his way to the city where he reunites with his surviving crew members.

Gaining an "audience" with El Kerim, Sindbad runs the villain through with his sabre, only to discover that the usurper can't be killed!

Forced to fight an invisible beast in the city's arena (possibly the biggest anti-climax of the otherwise fun picture), Sindbad slips free and eventually learns that the secret to El Karim's invulnerability lies at the top of a tower on the far side of the desert.

He, and his men, must then race there to solve the mystery before El Karim executes the princess, who has chosen death over a forced marriage to the wicked barbarian.

Captain Sindbad is a fantastical romp that never really lets its foot off the accelerator.

Considering the limitations of low budget special effects, the sorcerer Galgo utilises a wide variety of magic through the 85 minute movie, mainly leaning towards shape-changing spells, and the monsters - if you are willing to suspend your disbelief - are generally fun.

It has to be acknowledged that the invisible "thing" is a major disappointment though, not because director Byron Haskin doesn't try to demonstrate its presence with green-sparking footprints in the arena sand, but because Ian McLellan Hunter and Guy Endore's script brushes it aside so quickly that it's not really the threat to Sindbad it could have been.

Overall, the effects certainly aren't up to Ray Harryhausen standard (for instance, Galgo, at one point, extends his arm magically... and I was reminded of the Mr Fantastic effects in Roger Corman's Fantastic Four), but at least they tried.

However, what sealed the deal for me was the amazing (if effects- and budget-challenging) final act, which, essentially sees the good captain and his crew thrust into an old school "fun house dungeon", complete with strangling vines, whirlpool traps, alligator ambushes, a 12-headed hydra, a massive tower to climb, and an enormous animated fist for Sindbad to fight as the "boss monster" of the dungeon.

Princess Jana, despite the spunk she shows in the face of El Karim's threats, is rather lacklustre.

The princess aside though, this film is filled with interesting supporting characters, from the assortment of rogues in Sindbad's crew, to El Kerim's number two (Henry Brandon), who tries to act as the voice of reason, curbing his commander's more brutal excesses when he can.

But the breathless pacing from War of the Worlds' director Haskin means that while this isn't exactly high-brow fare, it's certainly colourful and surprisingly good family entertainment.

SINBAD WEEK: Sinbad The Sailor (1947)

As well as being the first, live-action cinematic outing for Sinbad (after a couple of animations), Sinbad The Sailor is particularly notable as one of the rare stories in the "franchise" that doesn't actually feature monsters or magic.

Sinbad, as portrayed by the dashing Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, has never swashed as many buckles or been more charming and romantic. He is a master raconteur, thief, philosopher and trickster; his enemies call him a "magician" because of the tricks he uses to escape their grasp.

He is also the narrator of this tale, in the sense that the main story is bookended with scenes of Sinbad regaling a gathering of jaded sea-dogs with the tale of his "eighth voyage" - they are all bored of hearing, repeatedly, about his first seven.

While there is talk of djinn, rocs and cyclops, this is the story of Sinbad's discovery that he is actually - maybe - the long-lost son of the ruler of a lost treasure island, Deryabar, where Alexandar The Great is thought to have hidden  all his gold and jewels.

However, his plan to return there is thwarted constantly by the Emir of Daibul (Anthony Quinn), who enlists flame-haired beauty Shireen (Maureen O'Hara) to seduce Sinbad into revealing the location of this fabled isle. Sinbad, of course, doesn't know where it is and, in turn, hopes that the Emir knows!

There's also a third party after the treasure, a mysterious and elusive assassin called Jamel (who has his name engraved on all his swords - and presumably written inside his underpants as well!).

Aiding Sinbad is his trusty, comedy sidekick Abbu (George Tobias) - who doesn't turn out to be anywhere near as irritating as the phrase "comedy sidekick" suggests - and the ship's barber and resident sage Milek (Walter Slezak).

To a cynic such as I, watching this through modern eyes, the secret identity of Jamel isn't particularly hard to guess, and there's a bizarre moment when he (or she) reveals himself (or herself) to Sinbad and the Emir and his (or her) face is suddenly lit from below with a green light - for no other reason than to really hammer home the point that Jamel is not a nice person.

John Twist's screenplay is wordy but as smooth as silk, the Technicolour is glorious and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr makes Sinbad a very physical character, constantly gesturing with his arms, moving his body and throwing himself around acrobatically and with the grace of a trained dancer.

At almost two-hours duration, Sinbad The Sailor could seem a bit slow to some contemporary tastes, but the poetic script and outstanding performances - along with the requisite amount of stunt-filled fight scenes, chases, sea battles and even some mushy romance for the ladies - makes this such an engrossing adventure movie that you quickly forget that you're more used to seeing Sinbad fighting off Dynamation monsters!

The film's final act is a great meditation on the nature of real treasure, and although Sinbad does eventually claim his birth right he uses it to drive home the message of the story he has been telling his rapt audience... and obviously the post-war audiences in America and Europe.

Although the trope of the unreliable narrator isn't really played on, the movie does open with text posing the question of who made Sinbad the legend he was, how did he gain this level of immortality?

And the answer is very quickly given: "Who else, O Brother, but - Sinbad the Sailor!"

Thus leaving the audience also with the question that, given he is his own greatest publicist and how fanciful his previous adventures were, how much of what he said this time round was actually true?

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader (2010)

When Prince Caspian breathed new life into The Chronicles Of Narnia franchise (after the pretty bland Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe), I had high expectations for the next adaptation from the cycle: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.

And I wasn't disappointed.

Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund Pevensie (Skandar Keynes) find themselves transported once again from war-torn England to the fantastical land of Narnia.

This time the method of transport is a magical painting and they are joined by their obnoxious and cowardly cousin Eustice (the great Will Poulter in an early role).

Plucked from the sea by King (formerly Prince) Caspian (Ben Barnes) on board the sailing ship Dawn Treader, the children soon find themselves swept up in an epic voyage to track the location of seven lost friends of Caspian's father who held seven magic swords that are required to defeat a growing evil in the East.

The evil manifests itself as a green mist that has the ability to project itself as one's fears and doubts.

There is a moment, towards the end, when Edmund realises that the green mist has latched onto his own fears and with the look he gives, and the way he says "oh no", you just know 90 per cent of the adults watching are thinking: "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man".

Voyage Of The Dawn Treader is a classic sea-borne, island-hopping tale, in the style of The Odyssey and Sinbad stories, with every island being a different - increasingly dark - encounter for our party of adventurers as they make their way towards their final destination.

A true family action adventure film, this expands the fantasy world of Narnia beautifully, with some truly amazing visuals - to rival those of Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings movies - and high quality special effects that are so slick they never threaten to shatter your suspension of disbelief.

Director Michael Apted ensures there's never a dull moment here and, even though our heroes never actually set foot on the final island, the story wraps up in a suitably magical and convincing fashion that shouldn't leave anyone dissatisfied.

Although there is physical conflict in Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, most of the story revolves around dealing with intellectual and emotional problems - but in ways far more exciting than I've just made it sound!

A clever story, unsurprisingly there are "messages" in the text, but they are reasonably subtle and good natured, working on a fairy tale moral level rather than a sledgehammer approach.

The returning young performers, Henley and Keynes, have grown into their roles.

For completists there are some nice cameos by Tilda Swinton as The White Witch, Anna Popplewell as Susan Pevensie and William Moseley as Peter Pevensie.

Liam Neeson once more lends his vocal skills to Aslan and geek-favourite Simon Pegg replaces Eddie Izzard as the voice of warrior mouse Reepicheep.

The source material's Christian allegory gets a bit heavy-handed at the end when Aslan is talking to Lucy about "being known by another name" in our world (I'm presuming it's not Leo), but given then one of the characters willingly volunteers to travel on to "Aslan's country" (Heaven?) is this also advocating suicide as the character wasn't dead, just satisfied that he had had enough adventures in Narnia?

And, of course, the big difference between believing in Aslan, in Narnia, and believing in God, in the real world, is that Aslan is a walking, talking, breathing lion - not so much a test of faith as a test of eyesight.

Sometimes, I guess, it doesn't pay to think too much about these things!

Eclectic and Beautiful Fantasy Movies From The 1970s

"The Golden Age of Sci-Fi/Fantasy is 14"

In an old article on his blog about a youthful passion for the Dragonlance novels, Timothy S Brannan shared the wise saying: "The Golden Age of Sci-Fi/Fantasy is 14."

And this is so true.

The things we discover at that age stay with us.

For me, this would be around 1980... the year Hawk The Slayer came out.

I've written often of my love for this most Dungeons & Dragons of all fantasy movies (and probably will continue to do so).

At the dawn of the '80s, I was already engrossed in the stop-motion worlds of Ray Harryhausen fantasy movies (his last, Clash of The Titans, would come out in 1981), and this was also the era of the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (which came out in 1980).

I was reading mainly sci-fi (Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, Stainless Steel Rat etc), if I recall correctly (inspired by the galaxy far, far away), but my young gaming hobby had propelled me to the works of Fritz Leiber.

His Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser stories would come to influence my Dungeons & Dragons adventures as much as Harryhausen's Sinbad at that time.

I was always a player - rather than a Dungeon Master - in my early years, so was interested in character ideas, rather than grander plots and world-building (not that I didn't appreciate them at that time, but they just weren't as useful from a gaming perspective).

I had yet to stumble upon the stack of New Teen Titans in a second-hand book store in Tunbridge Wells and become a fully-fledged comic book collector, but I still dabbled in that medium.

2000AD was my publication of choice at that age.

And, of course, all these things still hold sway over me and continue to influence my gaming and broader hobby interests.

I don't think I realised, until just now, quite how important the art we discover at that particular age is in shaping the sort of person we grow into in our adult life and our hobbies, passions, and interests.

The Last Voyage of The Demeter (2023)

If you know Bram Stoker's Dracula, then you know The Last Voyage of The Demeter.

Inspired by the book's single chapter that details the captain's log of the doomed voyage from Bulgaria to England, Bragi Schut Jr. and Zak Olkewicz's script, directed by Trollhunter's André Øvredal, extrapolates those few pages into a near-perfect 119-minute 'spam in a cabin' horror flick.

It's July 1897 and the merchant ship Demeter is carrying cargo bound for London, including - unknowingly - a number of boxes of Transylvanian soil and one holding the sleeping body of the vampire lord, Count Dracula (Javier Botet).

Once the ship is at sea, with the crew eager to get to England quickly to earn some bonus pay, the deaths begin.

First the livestock, which was to be the crew's food for their journey, is mysteriously butchered.

Then the crew start being killed off.

The Last Voyage of The Demeter is Alien on a nautical vessel rather than a space vessel, the ship's small crew trapped at sea, being hunted by a supernatural killing machine that dines on them as they bring him closer to his desired destination: the fresh feeding grounds of Victorian England.

Kong: Skull Island's Corey Hawkins is the new ships doctor, Clemens, a man of science to counter the superstitious crew, headed by the ever-excellent Liam Cunningham (aka Game of Thrones' Davos Seaworth, another sailor of note) as Captain Eliot: an almost unrecognisable David Dastmalchian as Wojchek, the quartermaster; and Jon Jon Briones (the genie from Sinbad; The Fifth Voyage) as Joseph, the highly religious ship's cook.

A young Romani stowaway, Anna (Aisling Franciosi) is found when one of the boxes of soil is accidentally opened by rough seas, and we later realise that she was Dracula's packed lunch for the voyage.

Captain "this is my last voyage, I'm going to retire" Eliot even has his eight-year-old grandson, Toby (Woody Norman), along with him and if you think "oh, they wouldn't hurt a child" you clearly haven't been paying attention.

The fate of the Demeter and its crew is inevitable, a foregone conclusion set down in the text of Stoker's game-changing vampire opus.

But that doesn't stop The Last Voyage of The Demeter being nail-bitingly tense and claustrophobic, with several good jump scares, oozing atmosphere from every frame, and featuring a genuinely monstrous depiction of Dracula.

The vampire is no suave British character actor, instead starting a gaunt, grey ghoul and evolving through the film into a giant, Nosferatuesque bat-creature, unsentimental in its brutal slayings.

What adds to the terror is the realisation - to a modern audience - that these people have no idea what a vampire is or how to kill it, they don't know its powers and weaknesses and there is no spoonfeeding of exposition to give them a clue.

All Clemens learns from Anna is that the beast is Dracula, it drinks blood and has kept her people in servitude through fear of its wrath.

Unfortunately, The Last Voyage of The Demeter falls down in its denouement, at the very last moments when it suddenly decides to try and give the tale a pointless "feel good/Hollywood" ending, when the source material's nihilistic resolution would have had a more lasting impact.

The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)

 

A spectral alien entity of pure intellect, the interplanetary supervillain Gor (voiced by Dale Tate) from the planet Arous, comes to Earth and possesses the body of pioneering nuclear research scientist Steve March (John Agar).

Steve and his buddy Dan Murphy (Robert Fuller) investigate anomalous radiation readings from the ominously named Mystery Mountain out in the heart of the New Mexico desert.

There they come across a recently-blasted new cave formation and inside they are attacked by the non-corporeal brain creature Gor, who fries Dan and takes control of Steve,

Steve returns home after a week's absence, but his fiancée Sally Fallon (Joyce Meadows) is immediately suspicious by his increased libido. And the disappearance of Dan, of course.

Steve's story that he has "gone to Las Vegas" seems flimsy at best. But I guess this was the 1950s!

The brilliant John Agar as Steve March

Eventually, the local sheriff, Wiley Pane (Tim Graham), challenges Steve about the whereabouts of Dan... and meets a similar fatal end.

Using a combination of his own nuclear-based superpowers and Steve's contacts at the highest echelons of America's military, Gor has hatched a plan that would not only give him control of planet Earth but allow him to strike back at his homeworld and then take over the universe! Bwahahaha!

Gor

However, hot on Gor's heels is a police officer/bounty hunter from Arous called Vol (also voiced by Dale Tate), who's possibly not the sharpest tool in the box: needing a body of his own to possess, he passes on Steve's hard-done-by, but loyal, fiancée Sally and her dad, John (Thomas Browne Henry), and instead chooses their family dog, George!

The clock is ticking, as Gor - through Steve - demonstrates his incredible powers to the American military at the White Sands Missile Range, before delivering an ultimatum to the major nations of the world.

Luckily, for Earth, Vol has revealed his species' Achilles Heel to Sally, but the window for delivering the death blow is very small, and Sally's plan to save the planet is rather reckless.

Vol

A breathtakingly bizarre piece of retro, Atomic Age sci-fi, 1957's The Brain from Planet Arous was previously available in 2022 as both a special edition Blu-ray and DVD, featuring a crisp 4K transfer, and has now been officially released online (see above) by Film Masters.

First off, major kudos to John Agar - former husband of Shirley Temple and later a stalwart of B-movies such as The Mole People, Revenge of The Creature, and this - for an impressive turn as Steve March, particularly when Gor is driving the meat-suit. 

A truly unnerving villain, Agar demonstrates a subtle mastery of the sly sneer and maniacal grin, and somehow manages to be both the bad guy and the good guy of this pulp adventure.

With a runtime of a mere 70 minutes, The Brain never risks outstaying its welcome, and perhaps deserves to be held up as exemplar of tight pacing in this age of overly-long and unnecessarily padded "epics".

The deft directorial touch of Nathan Juran becomes obvious when you realise he would go on to direct such classics as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad  and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman the following year.

Nevertheless, even with its brief duration, the protagonists of this delightful B-movie still manage to spend an inordinate amount of time eating and saying the name "Mystery Mountain" (seriously, it needs to be a drinking game).

Ray Buffum's script delivers a surprisingly coherent rationale behind Gor's plan, which makes a lot more sense than Vol eschewing a human body for a canine one. 

All I can imagine is that he'd seen how Gor's possession of Steve turned him rather horny (quite shocking, I thought, for a 1950's movie, but then you just have to consider the name of their homeworld to see where this came from) and Vol simply preferred the idea of getting belly-rubs while he was posing as Georgie the doggo.