THROWBACK THURSDAY: To Bournemouth And Back

Paul and I outside our alma mater

For my 50th birthday, back in 2016, Paul arranged with Rachel for the three of us to make a flying visit back to Bournemouth, where Paul and I had gone to university, studying Scriptwriting for Film and TV.

Alice was dropped off with Rachel's parents, the neighbours agreed to look after Barney, and we were off.

We rendezvoused with Paul (who'd travelled down from London by train, while we drove from Tonbridge) at our wonderful seafront hotel, then went round the corner to an old Beatles-themed café where we had lunch.

After that we headed to Poole, so I could I could pick up my latest shipment of comics from Andy at Paradox Comics, before heading back towards Bournemouth.

We dropped in to the main university campus, to have a drink at the student union (Dylan's) and a wander round, to show Rachel where we'd been "educated".

Not only were we slightly baffled by the lack of the students (or the fact that nobody asked us who we were and why we were wandering round) but also by the ease with which we wandered in and out of several lecture theatres!

Paul had phoned ahead to clear our visit, but neither the security guards nor the bar staff at Dylan's batted an eyelid as we sauntered in, or asked to see any ID.

Our next stop was the town centre Wetherspoon's The Moon In The Square - for drinks and a meal - that we had frequented often as students, before ending the evening with a beverage at O'Neills (another favourite haunt from our days on the south coast).

In O'Neills there appeared to be a band setting up, so - although there was nowhere to sit - I said I was quite keen to stay and see a live show.

However, the band spent, what felt like, about an hour going through their sound check, played half a song and walked off. It was most peculiar. Whether they actually got round to ever playing a full song, or even a set, we'll never know as we'd finished our drinks and decided to head back to the hotel.

On Sunday, it was an all-you-eat fry-up at the hotel before we drove out to the "suburbs" to see where we'd lived all those years ago.

We then dropped Paul off at the railway station and headed home ourselves (stopping off to pick up Alice on the way).

Although there had been a lot of improvements made to Bournemouth in the 20 years since we lived there, what was really noticeable on the Saturday evening and night was the paucity of obvious students.

There were stag parties, locals and tourists, but we didn't see more than a handful of students (even at Dylan's) until we passed a mammoth queue on Sunday morning outside the town centre student union venue (The Old Fire Station) which was hosting a vintage clothes sale!

It was a great weekend, full of some incredible reminiscing and the usual mix of anecdotes and BS. Instead of making me feel like an old man (even though the phrase "well, that was 20 years ago" got a lot of airings), it actually, for a moment, made me feel young again.

I have great friends!

Childish conversations in The Moon In The Square

Rachel enjoying her wine in The Moon In The Square

Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021)

Chicago, 1999. Video archivist James (Glee's Harry Shum Jr), haunted by the disappearance of his wife Hanna, stumbles across a surreal, nightmarish, clip of a "broadcast signal intrusion" - a mysterious pirate hack of a televised signal.

Fascinated, he starts to dig deeper, learning that these signal hacks are extremely rare and the authorities have managed to track down those responsible for all except for the one that initially triggered James's interest. 

He discovers that not only was this one of a pair of known intrusions, but there was possibly a third as well.

Mixed up with all this is the fact that a woman supposedly disappeared, probably kidnapped and maybe murdered, the night before each intrusion - and the last one was the night after his wife disappeared.

Instead of reporting her to the police, James teams up with Alice (Kelley Mack), a strange woman who follows him one night, for nebulous reasons.

Together they disappear down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, crossing paths with a selection of enigmatic and oddball characters, as James becomes increasingly paranoid on his dual quest to find out who created the "broadcast signal intrusion" and what happened to his wife.

Starting from a similar space as the far-superior Archive 81, Broadcast Signal Intrusion instead apes True Detective (poorly) using this elaborate, potential Creepypasta urban legend to obfuscate a very linear murder mystery.

I'll confess I was hoping for another Archive 81, Deadwax, or Cigarette Burns.

Being inspired by true events (there were actual signal intrusions of a similar nature in the mid-to-late '80s), I had high hopes as to what fantastical journey the movie would take its conspiracy theory-driven protagonist on.

However, of all the potential stories that could have sprung from this set-up, a poor man's Batman adventure - where the villain leaves a trail of breadcrumbs that only the protagonist can follow (despite years of investigations by various branches of the government and law enforcement) - was a major let-down.
 
There are films where you can recognise their greatness early on, but there are others - usually mystery stories - where everything hangs on the final reveal, which can make or break the audience's investment in the piece.

Sadly, as  became increasingly clear as the 104-minute movie dragged on, the climactic revelation of Broadcast Signal Intrusion, despite being dressed up in the trappings of James's dramatic dive into insanity, raised little more than a shrug and a underwhelmed "oh, was that it?" reaction.

For all the smoke-and-mirrors, James' unearthing of this great secret is mindbogglingly straight-forward, with the only real mysteries being the unexplained comings and goings of the small coterie of supporting characters.

Phil Drinkwater and Tim Woodall's script, directed by Jacob Gentry, was riddled with convenient coincidences,  inconstancies, and plot holes that you were probably expected to hand wave away with a "that's the nature of the beast" get-out-of-jail-free card.

But filmmakers have to earn that sort of trust from their audience and Broadcast Signal Intrusion falls well short.

Noah Hawley's Alien: Earth Looks Phenomenal

Zoltan, Hound of Dracula (1977)

Pretty certain Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula was the first vampire film I ever saw as a kid, as it was a running joke in our cat-centric house when I was growing up that all "vicious" dogs were called "Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula".

A cheesy B-movie, with a novel central concept, a modicum of gore, and almost zero scares, no one will ever mistake Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula (aka Dracula's Dog) for high art, as ultimately the "idea" is better than the execution.

A unit of Cold War era Soviet soldiers unearth a "Dracula tomb" in Romania, accidentally releasing Zoltan, The Hound Of Dracula, and his handler, Veidt Smit (Reggie Nalder).

Police inspector - and vampire expert - Inspector Branco (José Ferrer) correctly deduces that Smit is heading to America to pledge his allegiance to Dracula's last living relative, psychiatrist Michael Drake (Michael Pataki).

Smit (or 'Smith') and Zoltan arrive in California ahead of Branco, but Drake, his family, and their dogs (two full-grown German Shepherds and three puppies) have already left for a two-week camping vacation at Clear (not Crystal!) Lake.

To be honest, I was horrified that this family took their new-born puppies on a wilderness camping trip. Horror compounded by the fact that one gets lost almost immediately, and eventually falls prey to Zoltan's fangs.

The Hound Of Dracula, and his handler, have followed the Drake family to the wilderness, and begin a campaign of harassment, with the eventual idea (I think) of letting Zoltan bite Michael and turn him into a vampire.

It's all a bit vague really, and I don't truly understand why they don't just storm in there on the first night and turn Michael lickety-split.

By drawing things out, they only allow time for Branco to roll up, from "The Old Country", fill Michael in on what's going on and formulate a defence strategy.

Drake is clearly au fait with his historical heritage as he takes everything that Branco tells him at face value and has no problems accepting the existence of vampires.

Of course, if everyone had listened to Drake's young daughter, Linda (Libby Chase), earlier - after she bumped into Smit and his rather on-the-nose hearse - matters might have been resolved quicker and more easily.

I did like the fact that neither Michael nor Branco actually actually knew about Zoltan until the climax of the final act.

Conversely, I didn't quite grasp Smit's obsession with Michael as the last blood relative of Dracula, when Drake had two kids: Linda and Steve (John Levin). Surely, THEY were Dracula's last descendants? And probably better targets for vampiric transformation?

There's an exciting siege in a wooden hut, when Michael and Branco are attacked by Zoltan and a couple of dogs he's converted to his cause, but otherwise this movie pretty much fails to live up to its potential.

Although everyone gets bloodied and bruised in the final fight, ultimately the good guys win way too easily.

However, the denouement is worthy of a wry chuckle.

Inescapable comparisons with Cujo exist, as this is another "people attacked by blood-hungry canines" yarn, but Zoltan - unsurprisingly - pales in comparison.

An ill thought-out story, riddled with plot holes, pretty much sinks Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula, leaving us, simply, with the brilliant idea of the immortal count's pet having a cinematic un-life of its own.

Supernatural Rises From The Grave As A Dynamite Comic

Main cover art for issue one by Clayton Crain

Five years after the final episode of Supernatural's 15th season, the popular monster-hunting TV show returns in October... as a new comic book series from Dynamite.

With its initial storyline set between the events of seasons one and two, Supernatural will be written by Greg Pak, with Eder Messias on art detail.

From Dynamite's promotional blurb:

The brothers Winchester return! Get ready to hit the road again with Dean and Sam as they prowl the highways and byways of small-town America in search of demonic wrongdoing to put right!

Set between the foundational first and second seasons of the landmark television series, this brand-new title from acclaimed author Greg Pak (Darth Vader) and preternaturally gifted artist Eder Messias (Sam Wilson: Captain America) brings readers back to where the dark magic first began - and reveals a disturbing new threat that the bickering brothers will have to face before they can return to hunting down the demon who killed their mother.

In this first issue, the monster hunters must uncover the entity responsible for a series of mysterious fires in a decaying rust belt town - attacks that begin with a Windler Industries factory burning down, and then escalate to several Windler employees themselves going up in flames.

But finding the malevolent force behind the otherworldly arsons may not be as straightforward as it might seem - especially once the suspiciously well-prepared CEO Steff Windler gets personally involved! 

Variant cover art for issue one by David Cousins

Variant cover art for issue one by Eder Messias

Cast photo variant cover for issue one

As well as a number of licensed spin-off novels and an excellent selection of "in-universe" guides to the show's world, long-running horror show Supernatural (2005-2020) earned itself a handful of comic book miniseries over the years and a wonderful RPG that, sadly, didn't gain the traction it deserved.

However, when the 13-episode Winchesters prequel series also failed to set the world alight (in 2022) in quite the same way as the original show had done I thought that was the last gasp for this franchise.

Let's hope there are enough die hard - or potentially returning - Supernatural fans to breathe life into this new comic book series and reignite the thrill of those early years of the show.

This Week Is Going To Be Fantastic

More traditional character posters for the stars of Fantastic Four: First Steps

The Uninvited (1944)

Ghosts! Murder! Cats and dogs living together! A charismatic lead who doesn't take life too seriously!

The Uninvited was the Ghostbusters of its age, a film that - on paper - could have been quite scary, but is delivered with a lightness of touch and naturalistic humour that makes it more palatable to a wider audience.

I suspect when it was released, in the mid 1940s (at the height of the Second World War) it might have been seen as quite the chiller, but to modern sensibilities it's more a supernatural mystery, tame even by the standards of the Ghost Whisperer and the original Charmed.

Both Martin Scorsese and Guillermo Del Toro have described The Uninvited as one of the most affecting horror films they have ever seen, although I suspect nostalgia plays a role in those proclamations.

Carefree composer-turned-music-critic Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) and his sister, Pamela (Ruth Hussey), fall in love with an unoccupied house they come across on the Devonshire coastline while on holiday in 1937.

Finding it belongs to Commander Beech (Donald Crisp) they agree to purchase it for the princely sum of £1,200, much to the chagrin of Beech's pretty, 20-year-old granddaughter, Stella Meredith (Gail Russell).

Although her grandfather hasn't let her back in the house since her mother died when she was only three, Stella feels an attachment to the house, Windward, and wants to keep it in the family.

However, she soon finds herself attracted to the charming Roderick, and he invites her into the house.

And that's when things start to get a bit weird for everyone.

Based on Dorothy Macardle's 1941 novel, Uneasy Freehold, The Uninvited is steadily paced, with a great balance between humour (mostly from Roderick's flippant attitude) and mystery.

By today's standards the special effects for the ghost are quite primitive, but they're still effective, and the paranormal manifestations run the gamut from scared animals and howling cries, through messages from beyond and channelling, to cold spots and strange smells, before serving up actual sightings of an apparition.

In just an hour-and-a-half, the film does a good job of covering all the bases of paranormal investigations.

Roderick, as the audience's POV character for the most part, begins with the plucky, aspirational, grin-and-bear it attitude of the wartime (even though the film is set pre-war) but through his experiences his cynicism is worn away so that he starts to take the matter of ghosts and hauntings seriously.

Amid the emotional turmoil that forms the motivational core of The Uninvited, there's even a very overt suggestion of a lesbian relationship (or at least attraction) between two of the key players in the narrative, which was surprising discovery in a 1940's movie.

A delightful period piece, The Uninvited is a product of its time, but a very imaginative and creative one nonetheless.

Legless Elle Fanning Helps Young Predator Seek Ultimate Prey

First hunt. Last chance.

From the director of Prey, watch the brand-new trailer for Predator: Badlands, in theaters November 7.

Predator: Badlands, which stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, is set in the future on a remote planet, where a young Predator, outcast from his clan, finds an unlikely ally in Thia (Fanning) and embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.

The film is directed by Dan Trachtenberg and produced by John Davis, Dan Trachtenberg, Marc Toberoff, Ben Rosenblatt, Brent O’Connor.

The Xenomorphs Are Coming To Earth!