M*A*S*H, Season 3 (1974)

Active hostilities in the Korean War lasted three years, and M*A*S*H catches up with that duration in this, the third season.  The show is far from over, though - two advantages that fictionalised wars have over real ones are:

1. not ending until it is narratively convenient to do so; and
2. they kill much fewer people

I'm not going to use this review to re-hash the basic premise of M*A*S*H.  You can check out either of the previous seasons for that.  Instead let's talk a little about how the show is evolving.

Some of those evolutions are more obvious than others: it's hard to ignore that this is the last season for core characters Henry Blake and 'Trapper' John McIntyre, even though the impacts of that won't really be felt until season four.  But it's probably the less blatant changes that are more profound and telling.  Season three sees the beginning of more dramatic finesse in the scripts, to my mind.  Early seasons would occasionally add dramatic elements to the largely comedic antics of the cast, but they often felt a bit separated and distinct; not well integrated to the core of the show.  I'd say season three has more maturity and sophistication in that regard.

Not that it's stopped being a comedy, mind you.  Laughs are still the primary goal.  It's just that the non-jokey bits are better melded into the whole, now.

Recommended episodes for this season: "Officer of the Day", "Adam's Ribs", "Private Charles Lamb" and "Abyssinia, Henry".

Asterix the Gaul (1967)

Around 50 BCE, Julius Caesar completed his conquest of Gaul when he finally forced the surrender of Gaulish commander Vercingetorix.

Or at least, that's what the history books tell us.  In reality, Caesar's conquest was not 100% complete.  One small village of Gauls (none of whom are women, if this film is to be believed, as we see literally no female characters, even in the background) still holds out, despite being hemmed in by multiple legions.

How?  Well you see this village has a druid - named Panoramix here, though in the comics he's got the much more apropos moniker 'Getafix' - who can brew a potion that gives anyone who drinks it the strength of a hundred warriors.  With that kind of weapon in their hands, it's a wonder this village hasn't conquered the Romans.  Apparently they just lack much ambition.

Now as you might imagine the Romans are keen to know how it is that a single one of these Gauls can handily defeat dozens of their legionnaires.  So they send in a spy, and well ... supposedly funny shenanigans ensue.

As you might have gleaned from my use of the word 'supposedly', I wasn't all that impressed by this.  The Gauls are rather too smug in their overwhelming strength, making them quite unlikable, and for me that rather undercuts the humour.  The Gauls' situation is supposed to that of plucky underdogs, but they feel more like bullies.

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

Anna Shepherd is eager for school to finish so she can finally get out of her small town home in Scotland and travel the world: a plan she hasn't shared with her widowed father and of which he will most definitely not approve.  She's also dealing with the fallout of a failed relationship with the local bad boy, the unrequited pining of her (male) best friend, the tedium of her part time job, and all the usual stuff that accompanies the Xmas season.

(Come to think of it, the Xmas setting - which is why I am reviewing it today - is a bit odd in the context of "what I will do when I finish school", given that UK school years end in June or July.)

Ahem.  Anyway, all of this is to say that Anna has a lot on her mind, which is why (a) she has a tendency to break into song from time to time and (b) she is a trifle slow to notice the Zombie Apocalypse when it happens.  Because yep, what we have here is a musical zombie comedy, though one where the humour is generally rather lower key than in say Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland.

I had a good time watching Anna and the Apocalypse.  It could have done with a couple more songs, perhaps, but I enjoyed the ones it did have (especially "No Such Thing As a Hollywood Ending"), its wry tone and the well-judged balance it strikes between the horror and threat of the situation (and the necessary "bad things happening to decent people" that this means) and the fact that it is still a comedy.  To my mind, this was something that Shaun of the Dead failed to execute well, leading to me finding that movie to be half a funny film and half a decent zombie movie, but somehow less than the sum of its part.

If you're at all a zombie fan, check this one out.

Doom: Annihilation (2019)

In a secret base on Mars's larger moon, Phobos, scientists are conducting investigations into teleportation technology.  Technology with a decidedly unsettling "glowing red runes on black stone" kind of aesthetic to it.  But looks aren't everything, right, so I am sure it will all be fine!

... or not, as the lights go out and the screaming starts.

Walking into whatever just happened (spoiler: bad things) is a small group of marines, who at least initially are rather more concerned with their own interpersonal issues than any thought of battling for their lives against a demonic alien enemy.

I am a huge fan of the 1993 video game Doom and its sequel, and an active part of the game's fan community (to the point where I have my very own entry on doomwiki.org).  I dutifully went along to see the 2005 Doom movie (it's not terribly good), and was quite pleased to hear that this low budget offering was in the works.

That was not at all the universal reaction.  Violent outrage seethed in many festering corners of the internet, mostly because the film had the audacity to cast a female lead.  Some people tried to claim they were upset because the story was rubbish, but I call foul on those claims given (a) the film wasn't actually out at that time and (b) the video's game plot is literally "kill the monsters with the guns" - not exactly nuanced.

Anyway, how is the movie?  Well, it's cheap and cheesy space zombie action basically.  Like a lower-budget Resident Evil.  I had a good time with it.  There's nothing ground-breaking here, and the momentum flags a bit in the second half, but I didn't sign up for Doom: Annihilation for avant garde film-making.  I signed up for a popcorn sci-fi action/horror film, and on that front, I thought it delivered.

Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season 2 (2009)

The war for the future continues, with ever-escalating intervention by the future, as Sarah Connor and her allies face off against the minions of Skynet and also begin to get inklings that there are factions within factions in the war against the machines.

"The best Terminator since T2" is perhaps faint praise, but The Sarah Connor Chronicles definitely gets the nod for it in my eyes.  I freely admit to having enjoyed the "kitchen sink" excess of Genisys, and Dark Fate was a solid "killer robot chase movie" (and might be some people's pick for that reason), but the former is very silly and the latter sticks a bit too close to the franchise's well-trodden formula.  The longer format of the TV show allows the writing staff to branch out a bit more and create more layers and complexities to the narrative.  Would the whole thing have ultimately collapsed under its own weight if the show had continued past this season season?  Possibly.  But we'll never know as this was the end of the road.  It seems likely the writing staff had some warning of this, as they deliver a fairly satisfying conclusion / revised status quo that also neatly echoes the 'stable time loop' of the original film.

If you've ever enjoyed a Terminator film, the TV series is worth a look.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

The end of Friday the 13th: Part III saw Jason Vorhees sprawled on a barn floor after being hung from the neck and then smacked in the head with an axe.  Paramedics arrive to pack him off to the morgue, but Jason's obviously a fan of The Princess Bride because he's apparently just mostly dead.  He hops out of his drawer at the morgue, murders the attendant and a nurse, and then heads back to Crystal Lake to find more teenagers to hack to bits.

He will be well-served on the teenagers front.  There are no less than ten of them on hand, and almost all of them are well and truly focused on getting laid, which in Friday the 13th-land is pretty much signing your own death warrant.  The next hour or so will be pretty much entirely occupied with (a) young ladies showing some skin and (b) people being murdered with various household items.

To the extent that the Friday franchise ever penetrated the public consciousness, the factors most commonly known were: Jason Vorhees.  Wears a Hockey Mask.  Carries a Machete.  Murders nubile teens.  And in this, the fourth chapter of the franchise, we have pretty much the exemplar of that popular perception.  The Final Chapter is replete with titillation of both the sexual and violent kind, and has approximately zero interest in anything but bosoms and murder.  It is unabashedly here to give its primary audience plenty of what they want and not to bother about any diversions or details that might distract from that (such as, for instance "how does a guy get whacked in the head with an axe, be pronounced dead and sent to the morgue, and then get up and go running all over the place murdering folks?").

Somehow, this cavalier disregard for anything but blood and nudity leads to arguably the most entertaining entry in the series (I personally favour Part VII, but that's not a common preference).  Certainly, if you're looking for the iconic Friday, I would say you should look no further.  This is the franchise distilled into a single ninety minute romp.  If you're a slasher movie fan, it is absolutely one you should check out.

Look, Season 1 (2010)

By 2010, there were 40 million security cameras, and hundreds of millions of camcorders and mobile phone cameras, across the US.  Even when people think they are alone, and free to act how they want, there could be someone watching.

That's Look's basic pitch, as all footage in the show is nominally shot from cameras that exist "in the fiction".  I say nominally because said cameras sometimes don't really act like I expect the in fiction cameras would, but instead act like ... well, regular movie cameras.

I think I could overlook that minor flaw, though, if Look was using the concept to do something interesting, but it doesn't seem to have a lot of ideas beyond "when people think they are alone, they act like jerks" and "bosoms".  It's just kind of tawdry and tacky and filled with a cast of characters who become steadily more unpleasant the more you get to know them (and some of them start pretty unpleasant to begin with).  Only Claudia Christian seems able to lift her character's narcissism and nastiness to the point where it tips into 'entertaining', and even then it's mostly in a "waiting for her to get her comeuppance" kind of way.

I'll give it this: in the last couple of episodes the show does do a good job of finally weaving together its many seemingly unconnected storylines and setting up a whole bunch of cliffhangers about what happens next ... but it is very much a case of too little too late.

Free Fire (2016)

In an unspecified city in what is probably the 1970s, a South African gun-runner meets with two IRA operatives who want to buy weapons from him.  The meeting is facilitated by an intermediary named Justine, and both sides bring a couple of low level grunts with them to handle the tedious business of actual loading and unloading the weapons.  And for added security, because lets face it everyone here is a criminal and nobody trusts anyone else.

Unfortunately, the choice of those grunts is going to prove to be a lit match in the powder keg environment of a high stakes black market gun deal.  Conflicting agendas and plans - not all of them obvious from the outset - are about to collide in a brutal (and often brutally funny) showdown of shifting loyalties, priorities and purposes.

Free Fire has a stellar cast who deliver strong performances and a tight, packed to bursting script that feels longer than its 90 minute run time, but in a good way.  If you at all enjoyed Reservoir Dogs but think that Tarantino's a little bit too pompous in his film-making, you definitely need to check this one out.  Alternatively, if you are at all a fan of quirky black comedies, then it is most definitely worth a look.

The Shield, Season 4 (2005)

Captain Aceveda is finally leaving The Barn and Vic Mackey should over the moon, given the two men's acrimonious history, but Vic's a bit distracted with the collapse of his marriage and the self-destruction of his beloved Strike Team.  Honestly, given the scant respect he gave his marriage vows, it's likely the latter hurts him more than the former.

Without his team, Vic's unmotivated and unfocused, barely paying attention to the assignment he's been given.  But the arrival of a new Captain with an aggressive new approach to policing presents him with an opportunity to get out of this rut.  But only if he can prove himself to her, and do so while keeping his nose clean.  For a man whose approach to policing has always been shall, we say, very flexible, this is a challenging time.  And it's not made any easier by the rise of an ambitious new gang boss with big plans of his own ...

Season four of The Shield continues the good work of the three previous series.  The cast remains strong (and is certainly not hurt by the addition of Glenn Close as the new Captain) and the writing is solid.  The characters go through a lot of turmoil here as they try to carve out new roles and places for themselves, and on the whole the progression feels natural and reasonable in the circumstances.  It's not necessarily "realistic", but it does have a sense of internal consistency and verisimilitude.

Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974)

Someone - or something - is roaming the woods, ambushing young women and draining them of their youth.  The local surgeon calls in an old army friend, one Captain Kronos.  Kronos, who arrives with a hunchbacked professor (as well as some girl he randomly picked up in the woods) in tow, is now working as a vampire hunter, and quickly ascertains that such a creature is responsible here.

This isn't your normal blood-drinking, stake through the heart, can't eat Italian food vampire though.  As the professor helpfully explains, there are hundreds of different types of vampire, each with their own powers and weaknesses.  This one drains youth, rather than blood, and can be expected to be young and gorgeous itself.

The girl with Kronos is young and gorgeous, and in a smarter film perhaps she would have turned out to be the monster.  But no-one, including the script writer, ever seems to consider this possibility.  A shame.  Instead we get a villain so obvious that I was actively disappointed that they weren't a red herring.

"Actively disappointing" might be a good way to sum up this whole film, actually.  Leading man Horst Janson lacks the charisma to make the taciturn Kronos compelling, but I'm not sure many actors would have been up to that challenge.  The script certainly does him no favours in that regard, and it misfires in a number of other ways too, frequently squandering precious chunks of its slender 90 minute run-time on characters and scenes that add little to proceedings.

This was apparently planned to be the start of a new franchise for Hammer Films, but the studio's money troubles sunk that plan.  Based on the one effort they completed, I'm far from convinced we lost anything in not getting a Captain Kronos 2.

Arrow, Season 1 (2012)

Five years after his presumed death by drowning, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen is rescued from an isolated island off the coast of China.  The name of the island?  Lian Yu; which we are told is Mandarin for "purgatory".

Given the name of the place, it's perhaps no surprise that the man who returns from Lian Yu is not the careless, carefree and callow fellow who disappeared half a decade earlier ... though he does his level best to convince everyone that he is.

You see, the man who returns is an avenger (though not an Avenger; wrong comic book universe!) of the wrongs done to his home city.  He was set on this path by his father, who did perish in the disaster at sea, and forged for the purpose by the struggle to survive.

The new Oliver Queen is, overall, full of MANPAIN, even before we factor in the complicated mess that is his love life.

Arrow is a bombastic and really quite silly program that is lifted firstly by the fact that it plays its own bombast straight, and second by an excellent supporting cast of fun characters, who are well performed.  Which is not say that Stephen Amell is bad in the lead role of Oliver Queen - he is quite serviceable, and for those who like such things, he takes his shirt off a lot - but this first season's arc is very much about his character reclaiming from of the warmth and humanity that was knocked out of him by his time on the island.  So he's Broody McBroodsalot for most of the time.  I mean, just look at that mug on the DVD image above!

This is really solid "Batman with a bow" superhero action.  Recommended if you're at all willing to buy into the premise.

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

A mysterious beast terrorises provincial France.  The king sends Grégoire de Fronsac, a knight and the royal naturalist, to track and hopefully destroy the beast.  Fronsac is accompanied on his quest by his compatriot Mani, an Iroquois shaman who for reasons it will never explain is a kung fu and karate expert (Mani is played by Mark Dacascos, who of course has not one drop of Native American blood.  Sigh.).

Fronsac is knowledgeable enough to be sure he is not chasing an ordinary, but even he is not prepared for what he will actually find ...

Brotherhood of the Wolf is beautifully shot, and has a number of fine action set pieces, and for the first hour I was thoroughly enjoying it.  Alas, it turns out to be a horribly self indulgent movie that stretches to two and a half hours, which is (a) way too long, and (b) a symptom of it attempting to be about three different movies all at the same time, and doing none of them well.  I was actively angry with the film for much of the last half hour.

Also, it is encumbered by a painfully unconvincing romance sub-plot.  Please take note, movie makers: it is not enough for two people to be pretty and to occasionally share a screen to make me believe they are soulmates.  Show me a meaningful connection between them!  And no, having a third character tell the female half: "Sure, he has been sleeping with me, but he has been dreaming of you." doesn't cut it.

The Protectors, Season 1 (1972)

The Protectors are an elite international security agency, working with private persons and with friendly governments on all manner of sensitive cases, including providing bodyguards, searching for missing persons, and recovering stolen goods.  They're led by Harry Rule (played by a now slightly aging, slightly portly "Man from UNCLE" Robert Vaughn), whose principle cohort is the Contessa Caroline di Contini.  With occasional assistance from Paul Buchet (the other man pictured above), this duo tackles terrorists, kidnappers, drug smugglers and corrupt politicians.  They even find time to look for a starlet's missing puppy.

That "missing puppy" episode is a consciously farcical affair that apparently even fans of the show treat with derision, but it might actually be my favourite of the season.  Let's make no bones about it: this is a pretty light and silly show, with scripts that are much longer on action than they are on plot.  Tuning up that frothy nonsense to full-on slapstick as a one-off change of pace worked quite well, I thought, though I wouldn't want it every week.

Ultimately, The Protectors is a harmless but not terribly memorable TV spy show.  I'd rate it as better than supposedly more cerebral Department S from a few years earlier, mostly because it seems to take itself a bit less seriously and because the shorter episodes make for snappier viewing.

Not terrible, but not actively good enough for me to recommend it.

Super Inframan (1975)

Cataclysmic earthquakes devastate cities, while mountains crumble to reveal a giant, monstrous face.  Princess Dragon Mom has awoken from her ten million year hibernation, and intends to conquer the surface world with her army of mutants and skeleton men!

Here she is, addressing the troops

Fortunately for humanity, Science Headquarters - a gleaming facility that for some reasons has scores of martial arts-trained, pistol wielding, silver clad staff - exists, and its chief scientist has a plan to thwart this unforeseen enemy (about whom he seems to know an awful lot, given that whole unforeseen-ness of hers).  He will take one of his best agents and equip him with cybernetic enhancements, allowing him to transform into the deadly monster-fighting hero Super Inframan!

So: this movie.  This movie.  It's kind of like someone in 1970s Hong Kong saw one of the cheesier Godzilla films, and H R Pufnstuf and thought "Two great tastes that go great together!".  And I wholeheartedly agree.  There really are few things in life finer than watching some guy in a spider-themed fat suit trying to do kung fu.

Awesomely terribad.

Robin of Sherwood, Season 2 (1985)

Accompanied once more by the lilting strains of Clannad, Robin of Loxley continues his struggle against the tyranny of Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham.  Also against Satanic Cultists, because this is MYTHIC Robin Hood.  That last element got the show in hot water with Professional Hater of Fun Things, Mary Whitehouse, because apparently you shouldn't show satanists as having actual magical powers, or at all.

As a kid, I loved the supernatural elements of Robin of Sherwood.  The mysterious figure of Herne the Hunter in his cool stag's head outfit, the sorcerous shenanigans of Robin's adversaries, and so forth.  As an adult I am more ambivalent about them, though definitely not for the same reasons as Ms Whitehouse.  For me, the issue is that when you have verifiable magic and supernatural forces actively at work in your setting, it stretches credulity and my sense of verisimilitude if no-one outside the core cast ever seems to acknowledge it.  "Magic is real" is great, but given that, surely the wicked Prince John should have a pet alchemist brewing potions for him, and so forth.

That quibble aside, I generally enjoyed this jaunt back to the days of my youth.  The production values are pretty good for UK show of the era (even if it's sometimes pretty obvious that the castles they're supposed to be living in are not exactly in prime condition), and the cast is solid.  I wish a little more was done with Robin's cohorts, though.  They are sometimes left a bit short of things to do.

If moody medieval adventures sounds like your kind of thing, check it out.

Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws (2015)

As Auckland prepares to host the 83rd International Water Convention, it finds itself haunted by the menace of the Ghost Shark: a supernatural predator capable of swimming through (and controlling) any form of water, whether it in be liquid, solid (ice) or gaseous (steam) form.  Fortunately, the city mayor is familiar with the danger this creature presents, and he instantly recognises the signs that one is on the loose, and brings in an expert Ghost Shark Hunter to try and stop it.

Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws began life as a fake trailer (obligatory warning: TV Tropes link).  After being posted to YouTube it was re-shared by several prominent websites, eventually generating enough interest that they decided to make an actual film.

This was probably a mistake.

Don't get me wrong, there are some laughs to be had here, in the po-faced, super-serious way that the characters treat farcical events like a man being murdered by his own pot of spaghetti sauce.  There's lots of jaw-clenching and thousand yard stares into the distance and earnest declarations of how terribly grim the situation is, while people are being killed by their kettles and toilets.

Trouble is, this one basic joke is basically all the movie has, and even with a scant 75 minute running time, it wears very thin well before the film is over.

My recommendation?  Just watch the faux trailer that started it all.

The Twilight Zone, Season 1 (1959)

I'm not sure The Twilight Zone really needs introduction, given that it has spawned three TV shows (with a fourth on the way), a film, novels, comics and even a theme park ride, but just in case: this is an anthology series in which each episode presents a stand-alone story.  Generally, the leading characters of each entry find themselves dealing with strange or unusual events, and many episodes end with a twist (M Night Shyamalan was probably a fan) or moral.

In terms of genre, The Twilight Zone covers a fair bit of ground: more I think than is commonly supposed.  The supernatural or fantastic elements of many plots might on the face of it mark an individual episode as 'fantasy' or 'science fiction', but I think that's probably letting the set dressing have too much say in the classification.  Would Romeo & Juliet cease to be a romantic tragedy if it was set in space?  I don't believe so, and I think a similar rule applies here.  Just because an episode like "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" has a final denouement where a character literally wills herself into a movie does not obviate the fact that it's at heart a study of one woman's emotional turmoil and dissatisfaction.

So is it good?  Yes, it is.  Not every episode is a home run, of course (and the episode with a baseball setting definitely isn't); that's the nature of anthology shows.  And naturally some of the stories aren't as fresh or innovative today as they were sixty years ago when they first hit TV screens: but that's at least in part because so many other media works have riffed on them.  I don't necessarily love all the reputed "classics" of this season ("The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street", I am looking at you), but I'd be surprised if you didn't find something to like in offerings like "What You Need" or "The Hitch-hiker".  At the very least, I'd recommend tracking down an online list of the best regarded episodes (many of which are from this first season) to selectively sample the show's wares.

Mulberry Street (2006)

There are a lot of rats in New York City (though not as many as commonly believed), so a spate of attacks on humans by aggressive rodents attracts some news coverage, but is not immediately seen as the start of a major disaster.

But this is an October review, so of course Bad Things are about to ensue.  The rats, it seems, carry a pathogen of some kind which infects anyone they bite, turning them (slowly or quickly, depending on partly on how badly they were bitten and partly on narrative needs) into ravening, mutated monsters that want nothing more than to attack and feed on any humans they see.  Soon the uninfected find themselves hunted in the streets or under siege in their own homes.

So what we have here is a zombie movie in all respects except the actual presence of zombies - which come to think of it was also basically the situation in writer Nick Damici's later film Stake Land, though the specifics of the two films are very different.

And a pretty good zombie movie it is, even without any undead monsters.  The cast aren't well known names or faces, but they do a solid job.  The movie's financial assets don't always stretch to the most convincing of special effects, but the film-makers are smart enough to minimise the impacts of that weakness.  And lastly there's a pretty solid script, creating a set of characters who are reasonably likeable and then putting them through hell.  Probably the only narrative misstep - at least for my tastes - came right at the end; which is an unfortunately impactful place to go wrong, of course.

I originally had another movie slated for review on Halloween but it was such a damp squib of a film that I decided to sneak in a watch Mulberry Street as well, and I am glad I did.  If you've enjoyed zombie fare in the past, then even though it's not technically got any zombies in it, you should find this an engaging watch.

Splinter (2008)

Polly and Seth had planned a nice anniversary camping trip.  So when they accidentally break their tent, and then get carjacked while searching for a motel, they probably think their day has hit rock bottom.

Unfortunately for them, they are in a horror movie, and things can still get considerably worse; as the attendant at the gas station they are about to pull into recently found out ...

Splinter is a low budget but by no means low effort monster movie.  It has a solid cast; decent, mostly practical, effects - which the director protects from too much exposure with some occasionally annoying rapidly shifting camera work; and at a lean 82 minutes it maintains momentum and engagement.

The movie I kept thinking of while watching Splinter is John Carpenter's The Thing.  The details are very different, mind you, and the tone is much less one of paranoia and much more about direct action.  But the basic situation - a small group who distrust each other in an isolated location, under threat from a creature that can warp human flesh - certainly contains a strong echo.

I'm pleased that this is not a slavish homage like say Harbinger Down was, though.  Splinter reminded me of The Thing without feeling like a lesser echo of it.  It's a film with its own sense of identity and a reasonably consistent and coherent narrative, provided one accepts the core conceit of the monster.

If you like monster movies, and particularly if you liked The Thing, this movie is worth your time.

Creepshow (1982)

An irate and aggressive father confiscates his son's "Creepshow" horror comic book, ranting as he does so about how it is puerile and stupid.  When his son protests, the older man strikes the boy, then carries the comic book out to the trash.

Not a very nice man.  But we're more interested than the book than we are in him, at least for now.  Creepshow, you see, is an anthology film of five (six, if you count this framing sequence) stories.  That lets the show pack in a bunch of different horror staples: murder, zombies, monsters, mutation, bugs, voodoo: we got it all!

None of this wealth of content matters if the movie's not good, of course.  Fortunately, Creepshow is a fun film.  Not in any way a scary one, I feel I must point out.  Like the 1950s comic books on which it is modelled, the aim here is gonzo, gleeful gross-out, with a side order of awful fates for its often equally awful characters.  This is not a subtle or nuanced film, is what I'm saying.  But it's not trying to be.

At 120 minutes, Creepshow does perhaps slightly outstay its welcome.  And it's tempting to wish that when George Romero and Stephen King decided to collaborate, they tried to stretch themselves more than this.  But at the end of the day, the movie they did decide to make is a solid example of its type.  So if it sounds like your thing, you should check it out.

The Crazies (1973)

A young girl getting a late night drink is teased by her brother.  Their incipient argument is short-circuited by their father going on a berserk rampage that sees their mother murdered and their home in flames.

Neighbours raise the alarm over the fire, and among the first people contacted are a young couple named Judy and David.  David's a volunteer firefighter called to help battle the blaze.  Judy is a nurse summoned to help look after the injured children.  By the time she gets to the clinic, however, she finds it occupied by the US army.  There's been an accident with some dangerous bio-weapons, you see, and the residents of the town may all have been exposed to a bio-agent that causes either death or a homicidal frenzy in all of its victims.

Now Judy and David and the other folk of the town - as well as the basically well-intentioned but completely out of their depth and overwhelmed members of the military - must try to survive an ever spiraling cycle of suspicion and violence.

The Crazies is written and directed by George Romero of Night of the Living Dead fame, and it shares a fair few similarities with his most famous film.  You've got an outbreak of violence behaviour, a group of ordinary people trying to survive it, and growing tensions among said group as their situation becomes more difficult.  You can also see some of the themes of his later zombie films getting an early work-out here, e.g. the authorities flailing ineffectually to contain the situation, and frequently make things worse as half-trained and barely-informed soldiers are sent to do a dangerous and difficult job with inevitably tragic results.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that old George made a movie about dangerous military chemicals/bio-weapons just a year or two after the US discontinued use of Agent Orange.

I would describe this film as more entertaining than it is good.  Romero was not a subtle film-maker, and this is not a subtle or nuanced film, with performances to match.  It's also afflicted or blessed (depending on your perspective) with an incongruously chirpy soundtrack.  On the other hand, it moves briskly and I was never bored.  If you liked Night of the Living Dead, it's worth checking out what Romero was up to before he finally pulled the trigger on a sequel to that film.

Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

American executive Linda Westinghouse finds herself experiencing recurring erotic dreams about a beautiful brunette.  It's probably no surprise that when her work takes her to the remote home of Countess Nadine Carody, the Countess turns out to be the brunette in question.

The two women immediately become lovers, but of course Nadine is actually more interested in Linda's blood than she is in rest of her body, what with that whole "being a vampire" thing she has going on.  She's not your common sunlight-fearing bloodsucker though, as she emphatically proves by gambolling naked on the beach with Linda.

Despite the passion she feels for Nadine, Linda finds herself unnerved about their relationship, especially when she meets a Doctor who warns her of the Countess's true nature.  Will she succumb to the vampire's sensual charms?  Will she survive if she denies them?

Vampyros Lesbos basically steals the plot of Dracula, but combines the Mina and Jonathon Harker roles together, with lashings of nudity on top of it.  I actually rather like the idea of a Dracula adaptation where Mina Harker is more than just a victim to be rescued, and would be keen to see someone seriously take that approach on.  Alas, writer/director Jesus Franco is most definitely not the man to do that, as he's an unabashed exploitation-based film-maker.  Bare bosoms and bottoms (and the occasional artsy bit of shotwork) are his stock in trade, and the story takes a very secondary role to the titillation.

The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Seven members of a sorority plan a graduation party, despite the objections of their domineering house mother, Mrs Slater.  When the older woman demands they cancel the party and take down all the decorations, they plan to prank her in revenge.  Alas, things get out of control, and the repercussions could well be deadly ...

The House on Sorority Row (AKA House of Evil or Seven Sisters) is a fairly formulaic slasher coming from toward the end of the genre's roughly five year 'golden age' between Halloween and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.  Despite the provocative title and cover image, the film's pretty tame in terms of both sex and violence.  Particularly violence, really.  There's a fair bit of "here are the shadows of someone being murdered" rather than "here is someone being murdered".  This was possibly partly due to the then current furore about "video nasties", but I suspect a bigger driver was probably just that it's a lot cheaper to film shadows than a convincing on-camera 'kill scene'.

The problem with this (presumed) cost-cutting measure is that it needs a quality director to keep up the tension and creepiness in the face of the lack of "payoff" (because let's face it, the kill scenes are a key draw for slasher movies).  This movie would need someone like John Carpenter at the helm to really make it work, and well ... it doesn't.  The script doesn't do itself many favours in the tension stakes by making the 'final girl' so transparently obvious from the start (and also by failing to actually establish discernible characters for five of the seven young women at all).

This is only for slasher fanatics, and even they are unlikely to find a whole lot to really enthuse about, here.

Murderdrome (2013)

Cherry Skye just wants to play roller derby and maybe date this guy named Brad.  Quite what's so appealing about Brad is a mystery to me, but apparently Cherry's not the only one to see it.  His ex, despite being the one who ended their relationship, is determined to prevent anything happening between him and Cherry.

Naturally, said ex is also a roller derby rival of Cherry's, and somehow their romantic and professional rivalry attracts the attention of a demonic spirit that's determined to snare Cherry's soul ... though not before murdering everyone else who has appeared in the film.

I very much enjoyed writer-director Daniel Armstrong's Sheborg Massacre, and picked up this earlier effort off the back of that enjoyment.  Alas, Murderdrome is a much less effective film.  The script's a muddle, the characters paper thin, and the acting generally is merely bad, as opposed to the deliberately bombastic and over the top performances of the more recent film.  Heck, even on a technical level it's wanting: this has the worst audio I've (not) heard on a film since Invasion of the Pod People.

At the end of the day, this just doesn't have the energy or anarchic sense of fun that it really needed.  Fortunately, Mr Armstrong seems to have got better at capturing those qualities since this was made, so I am still interested to see his next effort.

Outpost 11 (2013)

It is 1955 in an alternate, steampunk-ish world, and the "Second Hundred Years' War" rages on.  As part of the war effort, Britain has established a chain of tiny, isolated outposts in Antarctica, where they monitor enemy communications and activity.  Quite why a desolate, nigh uninhabitable wasteland would be a hotbed of military activity, I am not sure, but apparently it is. 

Outpost 11 has a staff of only three men: a nervous conscript, an angry and emotionally abusive corporal, and an officer of some kind who doesn't seem to care over much about the war or their ill-defined mission.  So there is a fair bit of tension in the place even before the red warning light of an imminent attack blinks on.  So when it does, it's safe to say that things are going to get very bad indeed.

The 'alternate history' background of Outpost 11 is to my mind a distraction from the claustrophobic sense of tension the film is trying to establish.  It would I think have been better to make this a cold war base in the 'real world' 1970s.  A lot of the eclectic mix of technology could still have been explained in that context, and I wouldn't have spent half the film wondering what on Earth Britain and Prussia could have found to fight over in 1850 that they'd still be locked in a war over a full century later (you can't, after all, have a Second Hundred Years' War until it has lasted a hundred years ...).

That quibble aside, is this any good?  Eh.  The cast is solid, but the script is a bit weak.  The characters are little more than flat archetypes, with little reason for us to care about them other than that they are on screen, and a number of the plot points don't feel 'natural' in the context of the situation, but instead like the writers forcing things to lead toward the outcomes they have in mind.

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

A sudden power blackout plunges Detroit into darkness.  When the power returns a few seconds later, anyone who didn't have their own non-mains powered light source to hand is gone, their clothes in a pile wherever they stood.

Three days later, it is clear that the effects are at least nationwide, which makes the title seem rather understated (would not The Vanishing have been shorter and punchier as well as more accurate?).  It is also clear that all power sources - batteries, generators, even the sun itself - are running down.

In these bleak circumstances, a small group of survivors, dragging their diminishing sources of light with them, stumble across each other and bicker about what to do next.

After a promising opening, Vanishing on 7th Street loses momentum as the characters sit in place and squabble for an inordinately long time, pushing the threat of the shadows (whatever they are and whatever they want) into the background and eroding my engagement with the situation and the characters I'm supposed to root for.   The film's sense of progress is lost here, and it never recovers it.

I tend to feel that the root cause of the loss of momentum is a lack of purpose to the shadow vs human conflict.  What's doing this and why?  We will never know.  That sense of mystery can sometimes work: part of Night of the Living Dead's effectiveness as a film comes from the fact that no-one understand why the dead have returned as cannibalistic monsters.  But at least the characters in Romero's movie had a clear purpose in response: to survive until help comes.  The group here have given up on help and can't agree on anything, so they barely move from the spot where they meet.  Even when they do act, it's without any goal beyond "exist for a few seconds more".

Ultimately, this one runs out of juice even faster than the draining batteries the characters have to deal with.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Season 1 (1974)

Chicage in the mid-1970s.  Carl Kolchak is an experienced reporter with the Independent News Service.  He works a lot of crime-related stories, which often puts him into conflict with the Police Department, due (a) to his "creative" ways of getting information and (b) his equally creative - one might say "crazy", given that they usually involve supernatural creatures - theories about who the culprits might be.  Vampires and werewolves and witches, oh my!

Of course, this is a TV show - one that Chris Carter cited as a big influence on The X-Files - so Kolchak is invariably right about who or what is responsible, and almost as invariably manages to find and defeat them.  Though somehow, of course, he always does so without finding any concrete proof of what he saw.  Kolchak's inability to take a decent photograph, for instance, is one of the show's several not-as-funny-as-the-writers-think running gags.

Alas, misfiring humour is far from the only problem with this show.  The writing in general is formulaic and thin, the recurring supporting cast is too divorced from the supernatural shenanigans to ever really connect, and the production values are ... not good.  The last episode in particular has some very ill-advised costume work, though frankly, it may be my favourite of the season since it's one of the few times the show manages to inch toward the "so bad it is good" line, rather than just being dull.

Kolchak might indeed have been a big influence on Chris Carter, because I can't help remembering the confused, "we haven't actually got a plan or a point" mess that The X-Files descended into, and seeing a connection.

Bereavement (2010)

A boy named Martin has a medical condition that means he is unable to feel pain.  At the age of six, he is abducted by a serial killer, who plans to use the youngster as a kind of acolyte.

Five years later, teenager Allison Miller moves to the area - which seems to have become a whole lot more rural in the meantime - to live with her uncle after her parents die.  She's a bit of a fish out of water, though she does strike up a friendship with a young man named William.

Naturally, that serial killer is still at work in the area.  Which is frankly ridiculous given the rate at which he seems to capture and carve up women (and of course it's always women).  The sheer numbers of disappearances - especially in a lightly populated area - would surely have prompted an official response.  or at least some kind of public anxiety.

Equally naturally, Allison is inevitably going to stumble across the killer and his creepy boy sidekick, despite no-one else doing so in the intervening time.

You can probably tell from my griping above that I was not a big fan of this film.  It failed to grip me, leaving me plenty of time to pick holes in the plot-line.  I suspect that even if it had gripped me, the relentlessly mean-spirited nature of the narrative would have eventually turned me off; at least up until the point where it became so gratuitous that it became almost funny.

Mind you, it's probably that very mean-spiritedness that will be a selling point for some people: this is certainly not a typical Hollywood film in that regard.  I can't say I would recommend it, though.

Autumn (2009)

In the space of a day 99% of humanity starts spewing blood from their mouths and then drops dead.  One city's frightened survivors gather in a local recreation centre, but soon fall to squabbling over whether to remain where they are on the hope of rescue, or try to get out into the country and away from the rotting piles of corpses.

That question becomes even more pressing when the corpses get up and start walking around.  I mean sure, they seem to be completely oblivious to outside stimulus and just shamble about aimlessly, but it's still seriously creepy.  And they are still rotting.

So yeah, we're now living in a post-Walking Dead world and I'm pretty sure you're all already  thinking the "Zed word" (or Zee word, if you're American).  And yep, eventually the newly reanimated plague victims begin to become aware of what's around them, and to display signs of aggression ... no surprise there.  Honestly, even in 2009 I doubt it was much of a surprise.

So yep, we're in super low budget zombie movie territory here.  But is it good super low budget zombie movie territory?  Well, I'm not sure such territory actually exists, but if it does, this is not it.  Autumn is ponderous, tedious stuff, with a human cast that show little more initiative than the corpses that "threaten" them.  The sum total of their response to the realisation that the walking corpses might be dangerous is to build a fence.  That done, they just kind of sit in a house for most of the movie.  They don't even try to secure it in any way, or make plans about how to maintain their food source, or ... well, do anything.  Not that they need to do much, since even fifteen minutes from the end of the film, it is still pretty easy for a lone human to safely shove their way through a whole crowd of zombies.

Boring.

The Nightmare Gallery (2019)

A young man calls his professor, gleefully excited about an ancient book he's located.  But when he starts to look through the tome, some bog standard "spooky" stuff happens and he vanishes.

Three years later, the professor is still putting up "have you seen me?" posters at the university.  I admire her tenacity, though not her technique.  I'm not alone in this, since her obsessive behaviour is causing some issues for her professionally and personally.  Though at least she is a lesbian so we don't have to sit through the tired old professor/student romance (or suspicion thereof) storyline.

Of course this status quo wouldn't make for much of a movie, so soon enough a mysterious package turns up for the Professor, seemingly offering the first hint of finding her missing friend.  Sadly, this also won't make for much of a movie.

Because alas, The Nightmare Gallery really hasn't got much of anything new or interesting to offer in its roughly 100 minutes of running time.  Our professor (played by Buffy alumnus Amber Benson) is soon experiencing a muddled collection of the same kind of bog standard "spooky" stuff as her missing protege, though whatever occult force is at work is much less eager to grab her than it did the kid.  I admit there is a decent reason for this reticence, as well as a decent reason for why she would care so much about her former assistant.  Still, for all I can give a nod of appreciation for such details, they do little to offset the fact that the lion's share of the film is just a bunch of tired old horror movie tropes inelegantly stitched together.

Oh, and there's a post credits scene which makes the whole movie even less interesting than it was to begin with, so if you do find yourself watching it, maybe bail out before you get to that.

October 2019 Schedule

Reviews this October will be posted on Tuesdays (except today), Thursdays and Saturdays.  As usual, they will focus on horror films.  So if you're not into that genre, you can probably safely skip visiting here for a month.

The regular Tuesday and Friday schedule will resume on November 5th.

Sheborg Massacre (2016)

Dylan and Eddie are a pair of disaffected young women; Dylan rather more so than Eddie; who don't care much for the expectations and rules of mainstream society, but don't really have any constructive ideas for how to change things.  So when they agree to take part in a plan to free dogs from the local puppy farm, it's more because Eddie fancies the guy organising the plan than because they're looking to be heroes.

But heroes is what the world is about to need, because a vicious cybernetic alien just crash-landed at the puppy farm, and is set on converting the whole of humanity into her semi-robotic slaves.  Together with a purple-haired Star Trek fan and a couple of token male sidekicks, Eddie and Dylan are all that stand between humanity and destruction in this anarchic, gore-laden film.

Sheborg Massacre is not going to be to all tastes.  It's profane and off-colour, deliberately going for "Gross!" moments, and the protagonists aren't exactly the most likable of people when we first meet them.  On the other hand, if you find its unashamedly puerile comedy amusing, you should enjoy it.  I certainly did, including its sly digs at typical movie cheesecake.

I also need to give the film props for its performances, effects and stunt work.  While the fact that the film was cheaply made is still readily apparent, it's pretty slickly put together for all that, and notably more ambitious than many of its compatriots in the cheap end of the cinematic swimming pool.

I've already picked up MurderDrome, an earlier film by writer-director Daniel Armstrong, on the strength of how much I enjoyed this movie.

Californication, Season 5 (2012)

Season 5 of Californication picks up nearly three years after the end of season 4.  Hank Moody is living in New York, and ruining the dreams of yet another woman, when a phone call from his agent brings him back to the "Left Coast".  En route, he has a dalliance with an attractive stranger (beautiful and much younger women inexplicably throwing themselves at Hank is something of a Thing with this show), then stops in to see love-of-his-life Karen - who is now married to someone else - and daughter Becca, who has just entered her first really serious relationship.  Hank immediately hates Becca's boyfriend, which is not surprising, since he's pretty much exactly like Hank, and no sane person would want someone they cared about to date Hank.

Anyhow, if you've already seen at least one season of Californication, none of what happens here will really surprise you.  Hank's penis gets him into trouble.  Hank's temper gets him into trouble.  Hank and Karen yearn for one another.  Self-absorbed and dysfunctional people make self-absorbed and dysfunctional choices that inexorably come back to bite them.  A parade of minor female characters appear on screen for just long enough to take off their clothes.  Pamela Adlon's foul-mouthed character Marcy steals every scene she's in.

But let's face it, after five seasons you aren't watching Californication for surprises, you're watching it for the inevitable bonfire of disaster that will engulf these people for all the short-sighted decisions they've made in the preceding episodes.  And it has to be said that, with sufficient breaks between seasons to let you forget how awful they all are, watching them get their comeuppance is generally quite entertaining.

Tomb Raider (2018)

Seven years ago, Lara Croft's businessman father disappeared.  The world has written him off, but his daughter refuses to do so, preferring to eke out a meagre living as a bike courier rather than sign the papers acknowledging his death and inherit a fortune.

Of course, there's a lot more to Daddy Croft's disappearance than just a business trip gone wrong, as his daughter begins to learn when she finally goes in to sign the paperwork and receives his final bequest.  Her father has left a recording with all kinds of wild speculation about the supernatural and an urgent plea that she destroy everything to do with "the Himiko Project".

Clearly, Daddy didn't know Lara very well.  Determined to find out the truth behind her father's urgent journey to the South China Sea, she ignores his request/instructions and instead sets out to trace his voyage.  As you might imagine, all sorts of wild adventures will ensue.

This is the third screen adaptation of the Tomb Raider series of games, and I believe draws fairly heavily from the 2013 reboot of that series.  Certainly there are scenes in the movie which are reminiscent of trailers I saw for the game.

So is it any good?  Well, it's fairly standard Indiana Jones-esque stuff on the whole, with ancient tombs and booby traps and stunt-filled fights with the evil goons that inevitably turn up in search of the same thing Daddy Croft was looking for.  I do know that the film certainly profits from the casting of Alicia Vikander in the main role, as she manages to imbue a real sense of scrappy pluck and never-say-die attitude to her Lara, despite the script rarely giving its own character beats much time to breathe.  Walton Goggins is fun as her principal adversary, too.

If you are looking for an action adventure tale to spend a couple of hours on, you could certainly do much worse.

Smallville, Season 1 (2001)

A meteor storm bombards the Kansas town of Smallville and its surrounding farms, claiming several lives and sowing the entire region with glowing green rocks.  Unknown to most, right amidst the meteors is a tiny spacecraft, containing a single alien child.  Johnathon and Martha Kent adopt the child, concealing his origins from everyone but the youngster himself, and raise him as their own.

Twelve years later, Clark Kent is a mostly regular teenage boy in most ways.  He's mooning over an unattainable girl, hanging out with his friends, and thinking about trying out for the football team.  But unless you've lived under a media blackout for your whole life, you probably already know that Clark's very much not ordinary.  The teenager who will become Superman is gifted with superhuman strength, speed and resilience, and he seems to be developing x-ray vision.  Which of course, he sometimes uses in ways that are a tad creepy, but which mostly align to "stopping whatever bad guy has turned up this week as the result of those glowing green rocks".

Smallville feels a bit like someone mashed together superheroes and one of those high school drama TV shows like Beverly Hills 90210 or Degrassi High.  It spends as much time - if not more - on Clark's everyday life as it does on him tangling with villains.

Said villains, as noted above, almost always have something to do with the glowing green meteor rocks (which also make Clark sick, since of course they're made of kryptonite).  On the one hand, linking superpowers to kryptonite is a neat way to explain why all these people with weird powers keep popping up in a small Kansas town; on the other hand, it rather stretches credulity that the only people who seem to make this connection are a bunch of kids from the high school paper.

(On the other other hand, I like that said kids pretty rapidly adapt to the reality that their town is full of weirdness.  By halfway through the season, they're no longer spouting inanities like "But people can't just (do thing X)!", they're actively coming up with theories based on "what if someone could do thing X?".  It's nice to see protagonists who actually react to the reality they are in.)

So should you watch Smallville?  Well, if you like superheroes and you aren't put off by the high school setting, with all the high school angst that implies, then yeah, you probably should.  It's not especially ambitious, but there'll always be a place for undemanding "comfort food" entertainment.

Friday the 13th: Part III (1982)

This film kicks off by literally splicing in the last five minutes of the previous movie.  This does serve a narrative purpose - it allows them to change the last few shots to show that psycho killer Jason Voorhees wasn't as dead as he appears.  It also serves a metatextual function, because this whole film is a lazy rehash of its forerunner, which was in and of itself a rehash of the series progenitor.

So what you're going to get here is Jason stalking and killing a whole bunch of people, because people being stalked and killed is pretty much the raison d'etre of slasher films, right?  I mean, sure, none of the motivations for killing that Jason was previously ascribed continued to apply, but surely the audience won't care if you throw enough victims and variety of kills at them, right?  And hey, if that's not enough to keep 'em distracted, let's give it to them in 3D!

Because oh boy, this movie was made during one of those sporadic spurts of enthusiasm the film industry seems to have for the tiresome trickery of this technique (most recently due to the inexplicable success of the decidedly mediocre Avatar), and it sure finds a lot of opportunities to have stuff come flying at the screen.  A rake!  An axe!  The spear from a speargun!  Popcorn!

I wish I was joking about the last one, but I am not.

Anyway, after 80-some minutes of killing off thinly-drawn characters you probably won't care about, for reasons the film never bothers to explain, Jason once more encounters the situation's (obvious from the get-go) Final Girl and has his rampage brought to an end.  At least until the inevitable sequel rolls around.

This is a lazy, lazy film - even by the standards of slasher movies - and frankly the most entertainment I got out of it was savouring how gloriously stupid all the jammed-in 3D-exploiting sequences look when you're watching a 2D print of the film.  Watch it only if you're a slasher tragic, or if you want to experience the true horror of knowing that, stupid and tawdry though it is, this is far from the nadir of the franchise.

The Shield, Season 3 (2004)

Vic Mackey and his Strike Team should be riding high.  They just stole three million dollars from the Armenian mob, and no-one knows it was them.  But there are a number of storm clouds threatening this apparent new dawn.  For one thing, it turns out that some of the cash has been marked by the US treasury; for another, the Armenians are not about to just give up on that cash, which means the streets are about to get bloody.

Oh, and there are tensions within the team, new competition at work, and problematic home lives to deal with.  Basically, the stakes have never been higher and the pressure never more intense.  It's unlikely that either the Strike Team or the other officers at their precinct will come out unscathed.

I have to give kudos to The Shield, as I feel it has grown stronger each season so far.  I don't anticipate that this will continue for all seven seasons: it would pretty much be a unique achievement if it did!  Still, if they can keep the overall quality at or about the level of this season, it'll definitely be a show worth watching.  Because this is solid TV, with a quality cast given good scripts to perform.

If you're looking for a police procedural that's not as squeaky clean as the big name franchises tend to be, The Shield is worth your attention.

Postal (2007)

I'm not sure this film's plot merits a synopsis.  Actually, scratch that, I'm actually sure this film's plot doesn't merit a synopsis.  Suffice it to say that its efforts to satirise the Branch Davidians, the Taliban, and modern consumerism through the lens of a penis-shaped kids' toy are ... well, exactly as stupid and asinine as it sounds like it would, particularly when paired with the words "An Uwe Boll film".

Because yes, this is another of the German director's video game movie adaptations, and it's about on par with the rest of its ill-starred brethren (with the solitary exception of the gloriously awful House of the Dead).  In other words, it's thick-headed, clumsily plotted, and lazy.  Not that House of the Dead wasn't those things too, mind you, but at least it had a kind of earnest incompetence that made it memorably so, and gave it a weird kind of charm.  Well, to me, anyway. 

Everything else Boll has done has failed to achieve anything memorable at all, except maybe in making you scratch your head over why so many adequately talented actors agree to be in them.

This is a bad film without any charm of any kind.

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1 (2010)

Iron Man,  Captain America.  Thor.  The Hulk.  Ant-Man and the Wasp.  Individually they are the greatest heroes on the planet, but when 74 supervillains simultaneously escape from maximum security holding facilities, it's a job too big for any of them to handle alone.

The formation of the "Avengers", as they call themselves; their struggles with the various threats that menace the world; and the true story behind the sudden escape of so many villains, form the basis of this first season of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, which to this day remains one of the best regarded of Marvel's animated shows.

(Parenthetically, it's interesting how much more successful/active DC has been on the animation front, especially given that Marvel is owned by Disney - perhaps this is a result of Marvel's focus on and success with big screen live action blockbusters?)

So, this is a good animated show.  Solid art, fun stories, good voice acting.  Their version of the Wasp is a particular joy, delivering some of the show's best quips.  I admire the writers' courage, too.  They take the time to give everyone a more-or-less "solo" episode before finally teaming them up.  That shows some trust in the audience, as indeed does their willingness to engage in a season long arc without frequent recaps of that arc.

My only real complaint is that it is something of a sausage factory: the Wasp is the only female Avenger, and remains so even when the team expands, and supporting or adversarial female characters are also often thin on the ground.

Still, good stuff overall, and if you're jonesing for some Marvel action in between cinema spectaculars, this is certainly worth your time.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

A crime wave is sweeping the city.  The only person who seems to have any lead on the culprits is TV new reporter April O'Neil, but the police commissioner is not taking her theories about ancient Ninja clans very seriously.

Fortunately, there is someone who can find and fight the nefarious criminals behind the city's trouble.  Four someones, in fact.  Four sewer-dwelling, pizza-eating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  And a guy in a hockey mask.  Five someones!  Oh, and the talking mutant rat who trained the turtles in their ninja skills.  Six someones!

When our heroes in a half shell save Ms O'Neil from those supposedly non-existent ninja clan ne'er-do-wells, you can be sure that it's the start of a totally tubular, radical and awesome adventure.  Or at least, you can be sure the turtles will think so.

The TMNT (as those of us who like to type less call them) debuted in their self-titled black and white comic book series in 1984, snared a tabletop roleplaying game license a year later, and exploded onto the small screen (in highly sanitised form) in 1987 with an animated series that ran for ten seasons.  This, their first big screen outing, appeared three years later.  The plot's more or less a remix of the first fifteen or so issues of the original comic book, though the tone slants fairly heavily to the family-friendly sensibilities of the TV show.

Is it any good?  Well ... not really.  But it's actually quite good fun despite all that.  If you're in the mood for a lightweight action-adventure film that doesn't take itself very seriously (and I mean, it is about a bunch of mutant turtle ninja teenagers, so you should probably expect that), then you could certainly find worse ways to spend 80 minutes.

Sanctuary, Season 1 (2008)

Will Zimmerman is a gifted young forensic pathologist whose career has suffered due to his willingness to ask difficult questions ... and to consider outre, fantastical answers.

In the real world, he'd just be a gifted guy with a bit of a loose screw, but this is a TV show.  So when the mysterious Dr Helen Magnus first accidentally knocks him down with her car, then offers him a job, it should be no surprise that it's because the world is filled with strange and bizarre creatures that humanity has somehow contrived to never acknowledge ... despite in at least one waging an extended and active war to exterminate a whole species.

So yeah, it's a modern fantasy series, with werewolves and mermaids and vampires - and other, less traditional critters - lurking in the shadows.  Some are malevolent, some instinctively destructive, and some just want to be left alone.  In his new job at "The Sanctuary", it will be Zimmerman's role to help Dr Magnus and her compatriots to find these "Abnormals" and capture or protect them, as is most appropriate for their circumstances.  All while of course staying off the radar of the authorities or the wider populace.  Though frankly, given the wilful and deliberate ignorance it would take for humanity to not know about some of these beasties, I feel like that last task won't be as hard as it ought to be.

So how is Sanctuary?  Well ... it's okay.  I remember enjoying it at the time it was coming out, even as I was aware of its flaws.  The thing is, genre TV has evolved in leaps and bounds in the decade since it came out, and it's frankly rather been left behind.  I don't think there is much point tracking it down these days, unless you've somehow managed to exhaust the fountain of good new stuff.