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.

Abigail Haunting is a horror film written by Kelly Schwarze and Charisma Manulat with Schwarze also serving as director.  Chelsea Jurkiewicz, Austin Collazo, and Brenda Daly are included in the cast.

Jurkiewicz plays a young woman who has fled an abusive relationship with some money and retreats to a former foster home.  Her former foster mother seems to be in some kind of catatonic state.  There are strange noises and a rather disturbing feminine figure lurks in a restroom menacing the young woman. A decade long secret is at the heart of the spooky occurrences.

This film was done with an obviously limited budget.  I have no idea who any of these cast members are.  It’s a somewhat interesting piece.  The effects were somewhat convincing.  The acting was fairly convincing.  It moves at a slow pace even though it doesn’t have a very long running time.  It could have been much worse considering the limitations, however there wasn’t much to make this all that memorable.

The Lovebirds is an action comedy directed by Michael Showalter.  The screenplay is written by Aaron Abrams and Brendan Gall.  Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani star as a couple whose relationship is on the ropes.  When they get carjacked by someone claiming to be a cop and are unwilling participants when a fleeing bicyclists gets run down in their car.  Of course, they fear they will be suspected and go on the lam while trying to solve the murder themselves.

The cast also includes Anna Camp, Paul Sparks, and Kyle Bornheimer.

Actually, this movie has some charm to it.  Rae and Nanjiani  have some convincing chemistry together.  Not every gag or joke landed all that well, but some did.  The plot wasn’t entirely predictable and kind of held together pretty well.

It turned out to be a pretty serviceable cinematic diversion.  In fact, it was better than I anticipated.  Not a lot better but enough to be pleasantly surprised.

The Target Storybook is a Doctor Who anthology released from BBC Books last year.  It is comprised of fifteen short stories crossing most of the Doctor’s incarnation, including a new story featuring the current iteration currently played by Jodie Whittaker.  I am not going to try to review every story here, but I will try to make my overall impression as riveting as I can.

The Thirteenth Doctor kicks off the collection with Gatecrashers by Joy Wilkinson, and it’s a decent enough start to this.  The now deceased Terrance Dicks had just enough time to contribute a story here entitled Save Yourself.  Since the idea is to celebrate the Target novelizations of the classic episodes, it would be a significant oversight to not have something from the man who penned most of those installments in that range.  It hits the right nostalgia chords to have him contribute to this one.  A couple of the series actors also had something to write.  Matthew Waterhouse, who had played Adric during the era of the Fifth Doctor, brings us The Dark River.  The Sixth Doctor himself, Colin Baker, joins in with Interstitial Security.  The Doctor has a little side journey within the Matrix during his trial where he has to outwit the Valeyard.  There are a few names not immediately recognizable to me such as Beverly Sanford and the previously mentioned Joy Wilkinson. More familiar names such as George Mann, Una McCormack, and Jacqueline Rayner are also included.

The idea here was to have stories that were in some way connected to the television series.  There was some effort to fill in a few plot holes that have floated around for decades for us fans.  The more notable attempt was Dicks’ contribution which attempted to explain how the Second Doctor was doing missions for the Time Lords when he was supposed to have been forced to regenerate and sent to Earth in exile.  This would be the fabled Season 6B which is an idea of further adventures for the Second Doctor where he was acting on behalf of the Time Lords before facing the sentence which is more familiar to the old viewers.

So how is this latest literary version of the infamous Time Lord?  It’s kind of fun in an underwhelming sort of way.  There is some creativity in some of the stories.  It’s something that turns out not to be awful, but I think prefer just brand new adventures in my Doctor Who novels and short stories.

It’s fine for the fans to check it out, but it wouldn’t be a very good introduction for those new to the series.

Sam Siciliano has returned to Titan Books pairing Sherlock Holmes up with his cousin, Dr. Henry Vernier.  The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes continue on with The Venerable Tiger.