Malevolent is a horror film released on Netflix in 2018. It was directed by Olaf de Fleur and written by Ben Ketai and Eva Konstantopolous.  The film’s cast includes Florence Pugh, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Celia Imrie, and Stephen McCole.

A couple of siblings named Jackson and Angela run a team of supposed ghost hunters who basically scam those who believe they have haunted houses.  Then they meet Mrs. Green and find the apparitions to be more than they could ever try to concoct.  Then it seems that Mrs. Green has some very disturbing secrets of her own and some chilling methods of silencing screams.

So I found this film to be fairly good considering the genre.  It does not have a very impressive budget, but the crew seems to make good use of their limited funds.  There are some effects and moments that do cause the spine to tingle a bit.  Pugh seems to be a rising star in recent years, and I have yet to find anything wrong with that. She seems to do well enough in the lead role.  There are some odd decisions made by some of the characters toward the end.  Of course, with horror movie, I often find the endings to be somewhat problematic.

Although this falls a long way from being in masterpiece territory, it is fairly interesting enough to avoid me judging it a complete waste of time.

Only the Monstrous is a Doctor Who audio box set with three episodes featuring John Hurt as the incarnation the Doctor refused to acknowledge.  The producers and fans know this version as the War Doctor.  This gets a little tricky since he refuses to claim his usual moniker or name.  John Hurt, before his recent demise, had done some voice work for Big Finish Productions.  The War Doctor was realized onscreen during the fiftieth anniversary episode of the television series entitled Day of the Doctor, which also starred David Tennant and Matt Smith.  This particular audio saga was written by Nicholas Briggs.  I will usually go into some depth reviewing each episode, however this will be a little different since there is only author, and the individual stories all lead into one larger story on one planet during the Time War.  The War Doctor was the incarnation that fought more actively in that massive conflict between the Time Lords and the Daleks.  This was the incarnation with the stomach to cross lines that his other selves an would have blanched at.  This is not an evil version of the Doctor, but he is decidedly more dangerous in many ways.  He will make the tougher decisions when the usual merciful or humane options could prolong the agony of the War.

Hurt is joined by a pretty impressive gathering of acting talent such as Jacqueline Pierce, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Beth Chalmers, and Barnaby Edwards,  Briggs returns to the mic himself to voice the Daleks as usual.  John Banks and Barnaby Edwards are welcome reliable contributors to Big Finish audio plays as well.  Carolyn Seymour, Alex Wyndham, Kieran Hodgson, and Mark McDonnell round out the guest cast.

The Innocent is the first episode which sees the War Doctor barely survive a blast from some big cosmic bonb that destroys a Dalek fleet and crash lands him on a planet known as Keska.  Keska has its own war with a race known as the Taalyens.  He meets a woman named Rejoice and recovers a little of his previous humor from his earlier iterations.  After the War Doctor decides to help the Keskans in this small potatoes sort of war, he finds himself returned to the Time Lords where another mission awaits him.

The Thousand Worlds and The Heart of the Battle are really one story where the War Doctor returns to Keska after the Taalyens and the Daleks have joined forces to devastate the world.  The War Doctor is reunited with Rejoice, who is much older, and has to extract another Time Lord determined to find a peaceful resolution to the Time War… a task in which the War Doctor has serious doubts as to its success.

I was a fan who was not too excited about the unveiling of the War Doctor when it first happened on television.  The acclaim that John Hurt has received is well earned.  I just typically don’t like these sudden adjustments in canon when it comes to the Doctor’s past.  Still, I enjoyed this set quite a bit.  John Hurt masterfully brings out all kinds of complexities in his performance as the War Doctor.  There are times I recognize characteristics of the other incarnations, but some of these new dimensions did end up being quite captivating.  Hurt shifts effortlessly from a crushing sadness over what he has already done to preserve Gallifrey to a sudden fury over what he is left to do.

Jacqueline Pearce as the ruthlessly ambitious Cardinal Ollistra is also a wonderfully cast foil for this darker version of the Doctor.  Pearce has always been great as the icy ruler or commander of some force or entity.  It’s always great to hear her participate in these audio dramas.  It’s a shame that she has also passed away recently, but there are plenty of her works for Big Finish I have yet to hear.

Nicholas Briggs is an executive producer for Big Finish and is always busy in some capacity for the company, but he is primarily a talented writer.  His ideas rarely fail to intrigue me, He was a great choice to kick off this new exploration of the War Doctor. Only the Monstrous is the first of four sets featuring the War Doctor, and I am now intrigued enough to follow through with the remaining three.

Come to Daddy is a rather interesting if bloody film directed by Ant Timpson and written by Toby Harvard.  The stars include Elijah Wood, Stephen McHattie, Michael Smiley, and Martin Donovan.

Wood plays a young man named Norval, who has answered a summons from a father who abandoned him many years ago.  He finds Gordon, played by McHattie, living in some secluded and uniquely constructed cabin on an Oregon coast.  Gordon seems somewhat welcoming at first, but Norval starts noticing a dangerous streak in the old man.  There are also troubling sounds coming from under the house.  Anyway, Norval soon finds that his father is in darker waters than he can imagine.

This film gets rather gruesome as the story unfolds.  It’s labeled as a comedy horror, and there is a certain guilty amusement to be found here.  Nothing supernatural occurs, so I think I would define it as a dark comedy, although there is not much I found terribly funny.  I will say this is still an interesting piece with some pretty clever plot twists.  The explanations that come to light are not entirely unexpected.  Other dangerous and psychotic fellows turn up along the way adding more pieces to the absent father’s puzzling history.

The cast actually does well even during the more absurd moments of the film.  The story does have its moments of absurdity, but those seem to fit in.  Michael Smiley gets to go way over the top with his creatively vicious Jethro, but he doesn’t veer off into the realm of being totally unbelievable.

This is probably one of the strangest movies I have seen lately, but it has some strong points if one can stomach the blood and cruelty depicted here.  There is also the harsh language throughout.

The premise of the film is pretty absurd, but the performances and actual creativity in the red herrings are executed with a certain style I can appreciate.

The Vast of Night is a science fiction film in which the story takes place in Cayuga, NM in the 1950’s.  Andrew Patterson serves as director, and the script is credited to James Montague and Craig W. Sanger.  The main cast is comprised of Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer, Bruce Davis, and Greg Peyton.

The movie has a supposedly clever hook in that is presented as an episode of a show similar to The Twilight Zone.  Two small town high school students become intrigued by a mysterious signal that emerges through radio and phone lines.  Is it a malfunction, a government experiment, or something more unearthly?

I am not sure that the umbrella element of this being an episode of a science fiction anthology series was really all that necessary, however most of the film actually works quite well.  The main cast leads were not those I found familiar, however they appeared to be well chosen.  The dynamic between McCormick and Horowitz worked well.  The depiction of a small town in the 1950’s did feel genuine as I was watching it.  Of course, I have no first hand experience of 1950’s New Mexico, but it didn’t seem the producers were too far off. The movie had some moments where it dragged a bit, but it also had some pretty suspenseful moments.  A character known as Billy calls into the radio show which is hosted by Horowitz’s role and has a very compelling story to tell.  Although we only hear the voice of Bruce Davis, it really is quite a fascinating performance.  I am not sure I was that fond of how the film ends, but I will not get too much into that. Overall, it’s a pretty cool film in spite of the flaws.  The lead roles were solidly cast.  The setting looks pretty convincing.  There is some pretty engrossing intrigue for the  most part.  The main story still feels a bit overdone at times, but the presentation of this particular effort is executed well enough for me to exhibit some forgiveness for that.  Yeah, I would say this one was worth the time.

The Obsidian Curse is a B horror film that is about as B as it can get.  It could probably be considered a C movie of such a classification existed.  It is written and directed by Rene Perez.  The film has such unknown stars such as Karin Brauns, John Caraccioli, and Reggie Bannister.

Brauns is the lead here, playing a woman who is released from jail after a yearlong stay.  She is trying to get a job and is directed to try out some kind of tourist attractions concerning some caverns.  While there, she encounters some old witch who curses her with a spell that attracts all of the evil beings in the world.  So she is running around the countryside bashing zombies and assorted creatures with a baseball bat, trying to retain some kind of visitation with her daughter as well.

There is really no excuse to watch this thing unless there is an inexplicable taste for B movies of this sort.  Unfortunately, I am prone to strange bouts of curiosity that lead me to try these out, and then another peculiar compulsion to actually include the experience in this blog.  I know I could keep these indulgences to myself, or better yet not succumb to these inexplicable cinematic whims.

Anyway, it’s cheap and not that worthwhile.  I will say this though….I have still seen worse.  There was some effort for some kind of creativity in the creatures, but the costumes were cheaply constructed.

This is just a silly and rather trashy diversion for those with bizarre and macabre taste.

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The Elysian Blade is a Doctor Who BBC audio book written by David Bishop.  Frazer Hines is the reader of this new Second Doctor adventure.

The Doctor, Victoria, and Jamie arrive on a planet where the meet those who survived the arrival of Elysian Fields, a travelling hospital.  The attack of what appears to be a swarm of peculiar insects causes the TARDIS crew to be consumed by hallucinations.  Jamie imagines a return to his Scottish Highlands while Victoria sees her deceased father again.  Who knows what the Doctor faces in his mind.  Anyway, a choice is given between the Blade of Longing and the Angel of Forgetting.  Of course, it may not be that simple with the Doctor on the scene.

Hines does well enough in his presentation, although his impression of the late Patrick Troughton doesn’t seem quite as convincing as before.  The story is told in the first person from Jamie’s point of view.  Somehow I found this decision to be a little off putting.  It ended up being a bit underwhelming.  I was curious to obtain a new Second Doctor adventure and scratched that itch.  I may like it a little better once I play it again, and I eventually will, but the first impression was that it falls short of being all that memorable.

The Underworld Story is a crime film released in 1950.  Cy Endfield serves as director of this film which was adapted from a screenplay from Henry Blankfort.  Henry Blankfort apparently got the story idea from Craig Rice, who apparently is really a female writer named Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig.  Dan Duryea is in the lead role with a cast that includes Gale Storm, Herbert Marshall, Howard Da Silva, and Mary Anderson.

An overly ambitious big city news reporter played by Duryea loses his job and end up borrowing money from a gangster to invest in a small town publication in New England. He and the young woman who runs the paper figure out pretty quickly that they have different visions for the newspaper there.  The daughter-in-law of a news magnate in the community is murdered, and suspicion falls on a young black woman.  Duryea’s character, Mike Reese, decides to use the tragedy as a means to get back into the spotlight. Meanwhile, the gangster, played by Howard Da Silva, is running out of patience.

Duryea is an interesting performer, however the story was not that interesting.  The stranger casting choice is Mary Anderson as Molly Rankin, the young black woman who gets charged with the murder.  I was terribly distracted by Anderson not being black and apparently was supposed to have some kind of dark make-up.  Except the film is in black an white, so Anderson still looked as white as could be.  This clearly has to be one of the stupidest casting decisions in cinema history.  It probably would be if the film was better known overall.  Anyway, the role of Molly Rankin should have gone to an actual African-American actress, however that is not the only downfall of the film.  I didn’t find the actual murder mystery all that interesting, and the focus of the film had more to do with the questionable tactics of Reese’s reporting and his thirst for notoriety.  Da Silva is pretty good though and seems to give his role of the crime boss a bit more dimension than others from that era of cinematic depictions. Gale Storm is not someone with whom I was too familiar, but I gathered she had a pretty robust Hollywood presence.  She brought some charm to her part and was likable enough.

The film had some potential and seems to have had a pretty solid cast overall, with the exception of the aforementioned Mary Anderson.  The execution of the story was just not that well thought out.  I found myself not that interested in the plot.  Casting the role of Molly Rankin the way they did was too distracting.  The cast performances keep the film somewhat upright but with a very noticeable limp.

All-Consuming Fire is a Doctor Who audio play from Big Finish Productions with a somewhat complicated origin.  It is based on a novel that was written in 1990’s as part of range of Doctor Who novels known as The New Adventures.  Andy Lane wrote the novel with Guy Adams adapting it to audio format.  Scott Handcock is in the director’s seat. Sylvester McCoy returns as the Doctor’s seventh incarnation with Sophie Aldred and Lisa Bowerman alongside as Ace and Professor Bernice Summerfield, respectively.  Big Finish also has a range of Sherlock Holmes audio plays as well, so of course, Nicholas Briggs returns as the iconic fictional detective with Richard Earl playing Doctor John Watson.  Hugh Fraser, Anthony May, and Samantha Beart are included in the guest cast.  Fraser’s participation is somewhat notable since he is best known as the sidekick to another iconic fictional detective in Agatha Christie’s Poirot, which starred the great David Suchet.

So the Doctor and Sherlock Holmes finally cross paths.  Holmes is engaged to solve the theft of rare and ancient volumes from the Library of St, John the Beheaded and finds that it is merely a precursor to cosmic war and the resurrection of an ancient evil that will face the combined wits and determination of a renegade Time Lord and London’s most renowned consulting detective.

This is a pretty entertaining installment here.  It’s a little jarring mashing up the worlds of Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes, but the performances and the history of this particular release sort of helps one shrug it off and just go with it.  McCoy is quite good here, and the verbal sparring between the Doctor and Holmes is worth the price of admission.  I have mentioned this before when discussing the Sherlock Holmes audio range, but Richard Earl continues to excel in his interpretation of Watson, especially as a narrator.  He just has a perfect voice to represent the classic Victorian gentleman.  Bowerman is also a welcome addition here since she has a perfect voice to represent Benny’s wry outlook when she narrates.

Aldred didn’t seem to have much to do, but someone was likely to get short shrift given the high volume of strong protagonists.  During the moments when Ace was up to the plate, Aldred comes through as usual.  She still had more to do than act as a cameo.

I didn’t find the alien menace to be all that memorable.  The story probably does not work quite as well on audio as it does as a novel, however I still enjoyed it well enough.  Briggs is a massive fan of both Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, and I have heard enough of him in interviews to appreciate his enthusiasm.  There are better interpretations of Holmes out there, however I am getting accustomed to Briggs’ efforts. Briggs isn’t a bad performer overall.  When he shows up as other characters on other Big Finish releases, he does fine.  He is also doing fine as Holmes, so I don’t mind him indulging himself here. The real treasure is Richard Earl though on that pairing.

Even if the plot is a little confusing and does not translate all that well as an audio play, the performances are entertaining enough for me to find plenty of forgiveness for the flaws.  The elements to appreciate do outweigh the reasons for reservations in this episode.

The Venerable Tiger is a Sherlock Holmes written by Sam Siciliano and published by Titan Books.  Siciliano continues to utilize his own character, Dr. Henry Vernier, as the narrator in his contributions to the pastiche installments to the Sherlock Holmes legacy. I guess he doesn’t care much for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Dr. Watson.  Vernier is also explained as being a distant cousin of Holmes.  He is married to one of the few female physicians of Victorian London.

As Vernier arrives to visit Holmes at 221 Baker Street, he encounters a distressed woman on the verge of fainting.  It turns out that Isabel Stone has come to engage Holmes in a search for family jewels that are in the custody of her eccentric, miserly step-father.  Grimbold Pratt resides in a dilapidated estate with various examples of wildlife, including a tiger and a wolf.  Holmes and Vernier endure a rather hostile visit from Pratt and decide to finagle an invitation to spend some time on the property to see if the inheritance can be found.  Of course, a murderer lurks among the other guests, which does helps make the story more interesting.

Siciliano chooses to include some echoes of a much more famous story in the original Doyle canon.  I will resist the urge to spoil too much by revealing which story is being used as the inspiration here.  I think readers of the original Doyle canon will recognize the reminders.  It takes a very long time in this novel for the first body to drop.  The story feels pretty slow, and it takes place mostly on this isolated estate.  I don’t necessarily mind an effort to flesh out the characters, but I was starting to lose my patience with this effort.  It does get a little more interesting, however the twist and subsequent revelation just didn’t feel all that surprising.  Vernier’s wife is much more of a presence in Siciliano’s entries than Watson’s, and that does provide an interesting dynamic.  I actually rather like the addition.  Vernier also seems to be much more of a nervous sort than Watson, which could be a little exasperating, but I sort of appreciate the effort Siciliano puts into making his narrator more distinct from the more familiar chronicler of Holmes’ exploits.

The novel just didn’t leave that much of an impression either way.  I would describe it as a mediocre entry into the massive collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiche works.  Hopefully Siciliano can just write a story where he gets to the real action a little quicker and avoids a more direct correction to Doyle’s original tales unless he is actually writing some kind of sequel.

Next up on the not so carefully planned reading list is a new author to me.  I will become acquainted with The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill.

The Mega is a Doctor Who audio drama released by Big Finish Productions in 2013.  It is an episode from the range known as The Lost Stories, which were initially written for the television series but never saw productions for one reason or another.  Jon Pertwee would have starred as the Third Doctor if he was still alive, however Katy Manning returns as Jo Grant and also shares narration duties with Richard Franklin, who also reprises his role as Captain Mike Yates of UNIT.  Bo Poraj and Derek Carlyle are the guest actors who play various other parts.  Bill Strutton either wrote the script or had the original story idea which was adapted by Simon Guerrier.  Ken Bentley serves as the director of this particular episode.

Essentially, there is a new alien menace known as the Mega.  The Doctor seems to have betrayed all of humanity, but Jo as usual doesn’t believe it.  This is another six part story which really does drag on a bit.

There wasn’t much that stood out to me as far as the story goes.  It’s pretty rare that six episodes doesn’t feel too long in a Doctor Who story as much as I love the series overall.  Once again, the story doesn’t stand out for being particularly terrible, but I was just ready for this to be wrapped up.  Manning and Franklin are fine in their roles, but that is not unexpected.  Manning stood in for the late Jon Pertwee. Although it is impossible for her to sound just like Pertwee, she nails the vocal mannerisms enough where it is not too distracting when she performs the Doctor’s lines.  The sound effects and score also work well enough, but yet again, that’s easy enough for Big Finish to accomplish.

The only brief impression I can come up with about this particular release is that it’s okay.  I will likely listen to it again several more times because I like Doctor Who that much, but I am not sure that I will find anything all that unique to appreciate when I do.