Biblical Epics

Every now and again in my non-stop viewing calendar I like to take a moment to return to the big screen epics of my youth, the grandiose Bible stories that were a staple of vintage cinema.

In those benighted, pre-VHS days, when there were only three TV channels available in the UK, I would get my large-scale fantasy fix from 1950's movies like The Ten Commandments (which I'm watching at the moment), Ben-Hur, The Robe, Quo Vadis etc which were played, it seemed, pretty much on rotation at the weekends.

I have an embarrassing childhood memory of a very young me (possibly five or six) standing in the garden with a large stick - doubling as a staff - pretending to be Moses at the top of my lungs!

Never once did I think these were anything more than pseudohistorical, sword-and-sandal, fantasy stories but there was something there that piqued my young imagination.

In parallel with my unwavering love of Ray Harryhausen films and coupled with Kirk Douglas in The Vikings and, of course, Spartacus, these movies were already shaping my "swords-and-???" tastes even before I was introduced to the works of JRR Tolkien and then Dungeons & Dragons. 

Dungeons & Dragons provided me with a way to quantify ("stat up") the things I was seeing in these movies and hearing at school during our compulsory "religious education" (which meant trying to force Christianity onto us, rather than teaching us about all the religions of the world).

At prep school, I recall excitedly going through the hymn book we were given, hunting for potential magic items: "Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire!"

In recent times, harkening back to this mini-obsession of my tween and pre-tween years, I even sought out (I think from Noble Knight Games in the  States eventually, when it didn't cost an arm and a leg to ship something across The Atlantic), the Green Ronin d20 supplement Testament, for running games in the Old Testament era.

No, it doesn't have stats for God (unlike the Fantasy Wargaming book, by the late Bruce Galloway, published in the early 1980s, which has stats for both God and the Virgin Mary) but it does go into a lot of historical detail about life and beliefs in that ancient era.

The most recent "Biblical Epic" of the peplum variety that I've seen was 2018's Samson, a pretty decent retelling of one of the few Bible stories that ever held my interest.

Although they seem to be few and far between these days, I always keep half-an-eye out for any competent "Biblical Epics" that skirt the edges of my geeky radar.

It's Been Too Long, But Spartacus Is Back!

House of Ashur will be a history-bending, erotic, thrilling, roller-coaster experience that builds on everything that made the original series a colossal hit.

The series poses the question: what if Ashur (Nick Tarabay), hadn’t died on Mount Vesuvius at the end of Spartacus: Vengeance? And what if he had been gifted the gladiator school once owned by Batiatus in return for aiding the Romans in killing Spartacus and putting an end to the slave rebellion?

Jason X (2001)

And so we come to the end of the Friday the 13th canon with the chapter I have seen the most times, Jason X.

A savage slice of solid pulp sci-fi served with a soupçon of satire.

In the early 21st Century, Jason (Kane Hodder) has been captured (presumably some time after his return in Freddy vs Jason) and is being held at a specially constructed Crystal Lake research centre, where project leader Rowan (Andromeda's Lexa Doig) has been investigating ways to permanently execute the mass-murdering zombie.

Eventually, she realises the only course of action is to cryofreeze him, but then interdepartmental shenanigans - and a misguided desire to monetise Jason's supernatural regnenerative abilities - leads to the monster's escape.

This ends up with both Jason and Rowan being accidentally frozen... and then forgotten about.

Jump ahead to the year 2455, and a student field trip to the wastelands of the dead Earth comes across the two frozen bodies.

Bringing them back to their ship, The Grendel, for study, the researchers use nanotechnology to bring Rowan back... unfortunately, at the same time, they also accidentally reawaken Jason.

It maybe the future, but teens are still horny and that's motivation enough for Jason to start hacking away again.

You can guess what happens next.

Todd Farmer's script, directed by James Isaac, wears its Alien influences on its sleeve, with Jason substituting for that franchise's iconic xenomorphs.

The Grendel has its own cadre of marines, led by Spartacus's Peter Mensah, bargain basement clones of the beloved characters from Aliens, and their hunt for Jason through the bowels of the ship (while the civilians listen in, from relative safety) is an obvious homage (rip-off?) of the sequence in Aliens where the colonial marines first meet the xenomorphs in the tunnels under the colony on LV-426.

It's then left to the civilians - and their android (Andromeda's Lisa Ryder) to escape Jason's machete long enough for the ship to reach safety.

Unfortunately, just when they think they've got him beat, he gets a new lease of life - an upgrade - thanks to the same nanotechnology that brought Rowan back.

Also, the hull of the Grendel is deteriorating and is likely to collapse before the rescue ship Tiamat can reach them.

Silly, thrilling, and inventive, for me Jason X is a perfect example of how you keep a long-running franchise alive.

Through out-of-the-box thinking that takes the overarching narrative in a totally unexpected direction, yet remains true to its core principles, Farmer and Isaac have created a genuinely unique blend of old school slasher and pulp sci-fi.

Sure, it's obviously not the first blending of sci-fi and horror tropes, but as an extension of a franchise like Friday the 13th, it's inspired.

I would have loved to have seen a sequel to this where Jason vents his wrath on the horny teens of Earth Two, but sadly it was not to be.