Classic Doctors New Monsters Volume One is a Doctor Who audio box set from Big Finish Productions.  The theme here is to match Doctors from what is now known as the classic era to the enemies introduced since the 2005 revival from the BBC.  There are four stories here all directed by Barnaby Edwards.  It’s an inevitable and fun premise.  So what do I think of the stories? Well, let’s get into it, shall we?

Fallen Angels starts this collection off with Peter Davison’s version taking on the Weeping Angels, arguably the most popular menaces of the new series.  Phil Mulryne is the writer here who presents a pretty decent episode.  Sacha Dhawan, who is now the current incarnation of the Master in the television series, is paired with Diane Morgan as a young married couple get caught up with the Angels and the Doctor, transported back to the seventeenth century where they meet a temperamental artist known as Michelangelo, played by Matthew Kelly.  Joe Jameson, Dan Starkey, and the director himself, Barnaby Edwards, round out the guest cast.  This is a great start to the collection with a fairly complex paradox story mixed in here.

Simon Barnard and Paul Morris continue with the second entry entitled Judoon In Chains which stars Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor.  Nick Briggs lends his vocal talents as the Judoon.  The guest cast includes Kiruna Stamell, Nicholas Pegg, and Trevor Cooper.  The Judoon resemble rhinoceroses and they’s sort of mercenary bureaucratic law keepers.  I like them because they are not necessarily inherently evil beings looking to conquer anyone, but they are quite single-minded and ruthless.  One of their number ends up stranded in Victorian England in the hands of a circus ringmaster.  The Judoon have their own grievance with their wayward captain and are on the way to reclaim him, however there needs to be trial.  The Doctor ends up defending the Judoon captain who dared to show some compassion and individual thought.  Stamell sort of fills the void of the companion as someone known as Thomasina Thumb, the diminutive circus attraction with a large spirit. To lend some authenticity to the role, Big Finish found an actress who actually has dwarfism.  The story has a bit much going on that can easily confuse the listener, however Baker’s usual bombastic energy and charm helps the minor incoherence become more forgivable.  The setting of Victorian England could be a bit overused for this series, but it’s still a favorite era that I enjoy learning about.  The story has a few cracks, but Colin Baker’s presence and a well-chosen guest cast does make it very easy to overlook them.

Harvest of the Sycorax is the next entry written by James Goss.  Sylvester McCoy is tasked with bringing his Seventh Doctor toe to toe with these ritualistic, space-faring barbarians.  Giles Watling plays the Sycorax chief.  Nisha Nayer plays the young woman who gets swept up in the Doctor’s challenge to the Sycorax.  She has the unique moniker of Zanzibar Hashtag.  Alex Deacon, Jonathan Firth, and Rebecca Callard.  The episode was not terrible, but I just find myself not all that interested in the Sycorax.  McCoy was pretty good, but he ought to be after all of the hours he puts in with Big Finish productions.

Finally, Andrew Smith finishes this collection off with The Sontaran Ordeal.  Paul McGann returns as the Eighth Doctor.  The Time War has started, and the Sontarans want in.  Dan Starkey returns as a Sontaran named Jask.  Josette Simon, Christopher Ryan, and Sean Connolly also lend their talents here.  The Doctor and the Sontarans see the consequences of the Time War on a planet caught in the crossfire.  I found this to be a pretty interesting idea.  I have been following the other audio sagas about the Doctor’s participation in the Time War.  It also gave Jask a bit of depth which is sometimes hard to convey considering the militaristic mindset of the Sontarans.  Of course, having the Sontarans in this collection is a bit baffling since there were introduced in the classic era.  The Sontarans may not have had the frequency of appearances as the Daleks or Cybermen, however they did make their mark decades ago.  Oh well, it’s still a decent story to complete this set.

It was inevitable that Big Finish would indulge themselves once the licensing restrictions with BBC were alleviated.  Although I have become to enjoy all of the Doctors featured in this set, my enjoyment of the stories varied quite a bit.  I will say that none of the stories I found particularly terrible.  There is a second volume out there, and I hope that one will have more of a punch.  Either way, I will let you know.

Kid Glove Killer is a crime film released in 1942 and was directed by Fred Zinnemann.  The screenplay is the work of John C. Higgins and Allen Rivkin.  The cast includes Van Heflin, Marsha Hunt, Lee Bowman, and Samuel S. Hinds.

Something shady is going in some unnamed city, and forensic scientist Gordon McKay is in the middle of it.  Van Heflin isn’t the traditional leading man for a film of this era.  His sardonic yet charming performance as McKay is actually pretty intriguing.  Marsha Hunt plays his lab assistant and has quite a meaty role as well.  They do have a charming banter going on throughout the film.  This is one of those thrillers where the audience knows the identity of the culprit.

Anyway, an ambitious attorney played by Lee Bowman is in deep with the mob.  The district attorney and mayor of this once again unidentified city are murdered.  Bowman’s character is also good friends with McKay, which could make the relationship a bit strained once his culpability is unearthed.

There’s a young kid about to be framed for all of this, and McKay is not sure the police are on the right track.

The film doesn’t have a long running time, however it does seem a bit slow at times.  I did like the chemistry between Heflin and Hunt.  I’m not sure about the authenticity of the science at the heart of this, but I found myself not really caring that much.

The film is actually quite charming. It also has Ava Gardner in an uncredited appearance.  This was before she was Ava Gardner.  The story was somewhat interesting, but the charm of the lead characters is what helps this piece out the most.

Anyway, in spite of a few flaws, this one turned out to be a pretty good distraction if a pandemic is creeping through the nation.

Delirium is a horror film directed by Dennis Iliadis and written by Adam Alleca.  It was released in 2018.  Topher Grace, Patricia Clarkson, Geneva Rodriguez, and Callan Mulvey are part of the cast.

Grace plays a young man named Tom Walker who is released on house arrest from a mental institution where he spent twenty years after being involved in a murder.  Walker is confined to the house and electronically monitored through the pesky ankle bracelet.  Clarkson is the stern parole officer who may have a heart after all.  Of course, Tom’s new prison is a rather impressive mansion.  If his life wasn’t tragically complicated enough, his father had just committed suicide days before his release.  Tom, of course, has some trouble adjusting to such isolation in spite of the opulent surroundings.  The creaks and groans throughout the house do not help, especially when he finds the place riddled with secret passages and peepholes.

Now that I am seeing this in writing, it does seem a little more absurd than when I was watching the movie.  The pretty girl played by Geneva Rodriguez has some problems of her own and of course bonds with our troubled protagonist.

Tom has an older brother with much more alarming appetites, and he turns up. Of course, the writers intended it to be uncertain if the psycho was really there or if Tom was hallucinating.  So that explains the presence of Callan Mulvey.

Once again, the movie starts off with a pretty gripping premise.  Topher Grace does put in a pretty convincing performance.  Clarkson is also a welcome presence to this film.  The revelations are meant to be quite shocking but end up causing some exasperation as this film reaches its gruesome climax.

The film does have some interesting ideas, and I sort of like films with big spooky houses even if it’s an overused trope.

The film still suffers from some of the same missteps of many in this genre, but the performances weren’t that bad, and it did start off pretty promising,  It ended up not being a terrible cinematic diversion, but as I find myself noting quite repetitively, it’s not likely going to be a memorable one.

The Walking Dead being addressed in this post has nothing to do with the popular TMC series that I have to watch.  I just watched the 1936 film that starred Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Marguerite Churchill, and Barton MacLane.  The director is Michael Curtiz, and curiously this rather short film has four screenwriters attached to it. Ewart Adamson, Peter Milne, Robert Andrews, and Lillie Hayward all share the writing credit for this disappointment.

Boris Karloff plays a guy wrongfully convicted and executed for murder.  He is revived by a scientist but has no memory how he had died before.  He does eventually seek out those responsible for his frame-up.

Of course, Karloff is most famous for his performance on the 1931 adaptation of Frankenstein and a few sequels.  This film just carried too many echoes of that prior piece.

Just about everything felt like a rehash when watching this.  It just felt like something to see once, shrug and go on.

House of Usher is a horror movie that was released in 1960.  Roger Corman directed this film which was written by Richard Matheson.  It is based on a short story by the master of spooks, Edgar Allan Poe.  The small cast is comprised of Vincent Price, Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey, and Harry Ellerbe.

The dashing hero Philip Winthrop, played by Damon, arrives at the immense mansion known as the House of Usher to look in on his fiancee, Madeline and meets her strangely overprotective brother, Roderick Usher played by Vincent Price.  Harry Ellerbe plays the butler named Bristol.

The set design and the costumes are quite stunning.  The film really does look good.  The visual effects were not that bad for the era this was produced, although some of the attempted scares fall a little flat for a 21st century movie audience.

The performances were pretty good, but I am starting to think that Price was a bit more of an over actor than I remembered.  It’s still great to see one of his performances though.

The movie does have a few flaws in performances and character motivation sometimes, but it still is has plenty of compelling elements.  Some of the overwrought outbursts were more amusing than alarming at times, but I still found some enjoyment from the film overall.  It’s been a while since I read the original Poe story, so I am not sure what liberties were taken by Matheson’s adaptation, however he was a very well known writer in horror and fantasy and with good reason.

This film is still pretty impressive in spite of the flaws that caught my eye, and I would still say that it’s worth the time.  It also helps that it’s not a very long film, but there’s a lot to admire in spite of the relatively short running time.

Where the Crawdads Sing is a novel written by Delia Owens and was first published in 2018.  It has garnered quite a bit of acclaim, which is deserved.

The story isn’t told in a very linear fashion, however it still is quite easy to follow.  It takes place in North Carolina in a place known as Barclay Cove.  In 1969, the body of the former high school star is discovered in the marsh.  Now, Owens takes the reader back to 1952 where the protagonist known as Kya is introduced.  Due to an abusive father, her family has disappeared leaving her to deal with the broken man all on her own.  When he doesn’t return home, Kya learns at too young of an age to fend for herself in the swamp.  She does meet some of the townspeople and falls in love for one.

Lots of themes are explored here.  Kya understandably has what we could call abandonment issues.  Her cleverness and determination are admirably presented here. A young boy teaches her to read which then sets her on a course where she could support herself quite effectively.

Prejudice is also explored here without Owens getting obnoxious about it.  Of course, it isn’t about racial prejudice but rather the judgments made on those that live a very different lifestyle.  Kya appears to others to be wild and uneducated, however she is considerably more savvy than the others are willing to acknowledge.

There are some pretty unexpected turns this novel takes, and Kya is a rather unique heroine.  Her story unfolds in chapters that alternate with those that chronicle the investigation into the death of the local jock.

There really is a lot to say here, but once again I am making an effort to avoid giving away too many spoilers.

Delia Owens’ own expertise in zoology is well utilized here, and she also proves to be more than a competent storyteller.  It’s not the sort of novel I tend to gravitate toward when left to my own devices, but I’m glad to have had this one suggested to me.

The next literary indulgence will be a return to 1921 England as Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge’s latest investigation delves into the world of horse racing as he reopens an old case.  Rutledge once again has to set aside the effects of his own trauma induced by his participation in the First World War as he looks into the matter of The Black Ascot by Charles Todd.

Bloodshot is a superhero film based on a character from Valiant Comics.  The main character was created by Kevin VanHook, Don Perlin, and Bob Layton.  The film was written by Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer with directing credit belonging to none other than David S.F. Wilson.  The film stars include Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez, and Guy Pearce.

So we have seen Diesel in this kind of role before.  He plays a military special forces guy who ends up getting killed just after witnessing his wife’s execution.  Guy Pearce plays the scientist who spearheaded his resurrection with the aid of nanotechnology.  Diesel, who plays this Ray Garrison or Bloodshot, leaves the nest and goes on a rampage to find those responsible for his wife’s death, however this is really some dastardly manipulation of his memories.  It’s gory, senseless, and kind of fun.

Lamorne Morris plays a likable super computer genius named Wilfred Wigans.  He was pretty cool.  This Eiza Gonzalez is phenomenally gorgeous as KT.  She looks great in her fight scenes and pretty much whenever she is onscreen.  She probably looks pretty good off screen too.

I struggled a little bit in the beginning of this due to some repetitive scenes that kind of sets up the rest of the movie.  I did end up enjoying the second half quite a bit more when some of the answers start getting revealed to Bloodshot.

The action scenes are impressive as expected in a film of this sort.  The fight scenes were implausibility fun, also as expected in a film of this sort.  Diesel actually puts in a fairly compelling performance….for him anyway.  There is nothing terrible about the performances that stood out, although it’s a comic book film so some grace is somewhat automatic here.

It’s not the greatest comic book film, but it’s a serviceable distraction from the chaos going on in the world at the moment.  It’s amusingly forgettable.

The Narrow Margin is a thriller released in 1952 and stars Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, and Jacqueline White.  David Clarke and Paul Maxey are also part of the cast.  Richard Fleischer directed this film which was written by Earl Felton.  Felton apparently got the idea from a story conceived by Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard.

McGraw plays a tough, cynical Los Angeles detective who has to escort the widow of a mob boss from Chicago in order to testify in California.  The assignment gets a bit more messy when Sgt. Brown’s partner is gunned down just as they are picking up the woman to take to the train depot.  Brown and the widow are able to get aboard the train but still have to share the close quarters with the hit men sent to eliminate them.

Windsor plays the widow, whose cynicism and mistrust is a match for Brown’s.  White plays a fellow passenger who may be more than she seems, although she quite understandably catches Brown’s eye.

There are some aspects to this film that seem a little cliche by today’s standards, however I rather liked this film.  I liked McGraw’s performance.  Sgt. Brown is rather surly and abrasive but somehow likable. Well, I liked him anyway.  He connects with a young boy with a rather overactive imagination, so there is a balance between his single minded toughness and a more compassionate streak.  McGraw and Windsor had a pretty believable antagonistic chemistry.  The story did have some interesting twists if somewhat implausible twists.  Not everyone aboard the train was just an innocent bystander.  I also was impressed with a pretty convincing fight scene between Brown and one of his would-be killers. Who doesn’t appreciate some decent close quarter fisticuffs?

There are plenty of thrillers that take place in confined areas such as trains, but this particular film was one of the better ones.  It seems like the kind of film that would have some two dimensional characters, however there was a surprising amount of complexity in the leads.

For any  movie lover who is wanting to see some more of the classics such as myself, I would recommend to catch this one.  It’s not a very long movie, but there was plenty to enjoy.

 

 

The Home Guard is a Doctor Who audio play written by Simon Guerrier and directed by Lisa Bowerman.  It is an episode from the range known as The Early Adventures.  Frazer Hines returns with his rendition of the Second Doctor, which continues to honor his late friend, Patrick Troughton.  Hines also return to the role of Jamie McCrimmon.  Anneke Wills reprises her role of Polly and serves as the sole narrator.  Elliot Chapman takes on the role initially played by the late Michael Craze, Able Seaman Ben Jackson.  It’s a small guest cast on this one which is comprised of James Dreyfus, Molly Hanson, and Brian Murphy.

Ben Jackson calls on his old friends, Polly and Jamie, who are now married in the midst of the Second World War.  They are all in service under the command of the mysterious Doctor.  Except, that’s not right.  Something has gone wrong with reality, and someone else emerges from the shadows.  He calls himself the Master and he will be obeyed.

Dreyfus is cast as an earlier incarnation of the Master.  I guess it was a matter of time before Big Finish Productions decided to take the leap and cast a Master who would be before the version as played by the late Roger Delgado.  I think he did fine job with it, but there wasn’t much that really grabbed me about his performance.  I believe he has done one or two other episodes, so I will likely get to hear more soon enough.

Hines continues to do well with his impression of the late Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor.  Wills also has done enough of these recordings that it’s a given she will also do well.

The script was interesting.  Guerrier is a reliable contributor and has a pretty engaging premise with this episode.  The appearance of the Master that would have taken place before the television series first introduced him in Jon Pertwee’s era actually seemed to fit rather nicely.

Chapman also does well with his version of Ben Jackson.  Michael Craze is still the best Ben, but Chapman does right by him.

In spite of the chances taken with a new Master and a bit of a upheaval with the relationship of the companions, I don’t really see this one as a standout.  The episode was enjoyable enough, however I felt that it should have made more of an impression with of these supposedly daring developments.  It does work pretty well though.  The performances are pretty strong.  The sound effects are pretty convincing, but Big Finish almost always comes through there.  The musical score was appropriate to the era.

I liked this episode, but I didn’t really love it.  I do still love the Second Doctor though and want Hines back behind the mic very soon.

 

Doctor Who and the Robots of Death is a novelization by Terrance Dicks of the classic Doctor Who episode that was aired in 1977 during Tom Baker’s era as the Doctor.  The original script was written by Chris Boucher, who also created the character of Leela, played by Louise Jameson.

The Doctor and Leela arrive on a desert planet aboard a giant vehicle known as a Sandminer.  A small crew of humans is charge of mining for minerals and ores.  Most of the more mundane duties are performed by robots.  The Doctor and Leela arrive just in time to be accused of murder.  They are also just in time to get caught up in a revolution that is turning the robot servants into lethal weapons.

I used to collect the Target novelizations as a youngster and still procure one every now and then.  This one surprisingly got by me for years, but I have it now.  Terrance Dicks was the most prolific contributor to this range.  Although Dicks was no master wordsmith, his impact on the series is still profound.  Dicks has a very simplistic, straight forward prose style, however there is still something distinctive about it.

This particular episode is actually a favorite as it is for many fans of the series, and Dicks doesn’t add a whole lot of anything new.  Saying that, it was still fun to visit this particular story in print for the first time.

Now, time for something a little more weighty as my next literary indulgence.  I am going with Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.