Graeme’s Retro Classics! ‘Childs Play’

I spent a great deal of the Bank Holiday Weekend watching movies (yet still somehow managed to miss ‘Ironman’, I’ll get there yet!) Some were good (‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, more on that another time), others were not so good and some were so bad they were actually rather good. ‘Childs Play’ is one of those films and is a film with ‘Retro Classic’ written all over it…
If you had to make a list of all the iconic horror figures of the eighties, and early nineties, then Chucky the ‘Good Guy Doll’ would be right in there alongside stalwarts such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. He’s a cute little doll who would be a boy’s best friend if it wasn’t for the fact that he has the soul of a disembodied serial killer that wants to get back into a human body again. That human body belongs to Andy Barclay, who Chucky was given to as a Birthday present, whom no-one will believe when he says that his doll killed the babysitter…
‘Childs Play’ is one of those films that looks really dated (it’s twenty years old so that’s not surprising) and not as scary as it would have been back in the day. I think it also suffers from the hype generated from the whole ‘do violent movies encourage violence’ debate that arose from certain court cases in the nineties. I watched it for the first time, over the weekend, and couldn’t see what the fuss was about. It is a good movie (more on that in a bit) but it feels like a film that got caught up in the hysteria rather than a film that caused it. The premise is good and I liked what they did to make Chucky come to life (animatronics?) but there is something faintly silly about a woman having a fight with a toy doll… Having said that though, that’s partly why ‘Child’s Play’ is such great fun to watch. It’s obviously not taking itself too seriously :o)

At the same time though there’s something really sinister about a doll that’s alive, as well as evil, and that’s where the film becomes something that you have to keep watching as well as being something you can laugh at over a beer. For a film that doesn’t take itself that seriously, it’s actually really scary and full of moments that had me on the edge of my seat in suspense. I’m thinking about the scene where Andy’s mother makes the discovery that Chucky has been talking non-stop for the last couple of days but doesn’t have any batteries in him… I shouldn’t mention this (although I’m blatantly going to!) but a certain someone who shall remain nameless, who I’m married to, got so scared at one point that she managed to give herself a nose bleed! My wife’s education in horror is going to have to continue at an even slower pace than it already is…
As is only right and proper, Chucky steals the show with a mixture of snappy one liners and a great line in ‘creative killings off’ that had me looking nervously at the toys my neighbour’s children had left downstairs…
‘Childs Play’ is a film that isn’t actually as bad as everyone made out; a decent mix of horror shocks and laughs. ‘Retro Classic’ status is duly conferred for Chucky’s iconic presence as well as it being a great film to have a few beers to…

Graeme’s Retro Classics! ‘Blake’s 7’ (Season One)

The BBC TV show ‘Blake’s 7’ ran from 1978 to 1981 (thanks Wikipedia!), four seasons in all. As a child, I probably only saw a few episodes from the last two seasons but ‘Blake’s 7’ is so great that I’m going right back to the very beginning…
‘Blake’s 7’ recounts the tale of Roj Blake and his crew of renegades and criminals, fleeing justice (of a repressive Federation) in a stolen alien spacecraft of unknown origin. The first season mainly deals with the crew’s attempts to determine the capabilities of their new vessel, ‘The Liberator’, as well as their initial attempts to strike back at the Federation. Relationships between the crew are given time to develop and the villains of the piece are introduced. While there is a lot of scene setting that takes place; individual stories still have room to shine with action, intrigue and plenty of impressive looking spaceships (that somehow looked a lot more impressive when I was five or six years old…)



As child watching ‘Blake’s 7’ I never really saw past the laser guns, spacecraft and talking computers. Nothing wrong with that, that’s what being a child (and watching sci-fi on TV) is all about! The last few days though have seen me watching Season One and realising that there is a lot more to ‘Blake’s 7’ than I originally thought. It’s so dark for a start, the first ever episode opens with revelations of a population kept docile through Federation administered drugs and a crowd of protesters are gunned down by security forces. For your money, you also get scenes of torture but this is torture ‘nineteen seventies TV’ style so it’s nothing to get too scared by. Having a ‘rebel’ crew consisting of thieves, smugglers and murderers also turns things upside down in terms of who you’re supposed to root for. Do you go with the oppressive regime (that is fighting to maintain law and order) or do you side with a bunch of criminals (who want to bring down said oppressive regime but for differing and ulterior motives)? It’s a real grey area that isn’t helped by the fact that the crew of the Liberator seems to fight amongst themselves almost as much as they do the Federation. The dynamic between Blake and Avon is particularly compelling, as they are two strong characters with very clear (and differing) ideas of what they want and how to get it. As the more self serving of the two, Avon’s character stands out and it is interesting to see how he develops over the course of the season.
Whichever side you choose (and I’m guessing you’ll make the same choice as me!), ‘Blake’s 7’ offers a ‘Robin Hood in space’ slice of sci-fi where plot and character development more than make up for the ‘card-boardy’ feel of some of the scenery. My favourite episodes, for Season One, were ‘The Avalon Project’ and ‘The Web’. I’ve got no idea if ‘Blake’s 7’ is being repeated on TV anywhere but I think it’s well worth your time if it is!

Graeme's Retro Classics! 'Flash Gordon' (1954-55)

If you're anything like me there's a cynical voice in your head that always interrupts every time you're watching a TV show or movie. Sample 'rants' will generally include such gems as 'that doesn't even look real', 'that looks more like a deserted quarry than an alien planet' (one for the old-school Dr. Who fans) and 'they've blown the entire budget on getting the cast and completely forgotten about the special effects'... We've all been there and it's seldom pretty.
This was the case with me until a couple of days ago when I was reminded that although there is room for improvement things could be a lot worse... Let me take you back to a time when everything was in black and white, a time where the main reason that space was coloured black was so that you wouldn't notice the strings holding up the spaceships. We're talking about a time when heroes were so heroic they forgot to check behind them for enemies and a disembodied voice provided commentary just in case the viewers forgot who the bad guys were (Hint: they were the ones with foreign accents). Yes I'm talking about the TV series of 'Flash Gordon' that ran between 1954 and 1955, and a series that achieves 'retro classic' status by being so bad that it's actually very good. The fact that you can pick these DVDs up for 33p on Amazon is a sure sign that this series is the poorer relation of the Buster Crabbe 'Flash Gordon' shows. Steve Holland does a good job of looking like Flash Gordon (on his mission to rid the universe of evil on behalf of the Galactic Bureau of Investigation) but his acting isn't quite so good and that's saying something. In his defense though, nobody else's acting is any good either... Every planet that Flash lands on looks the same as the last and that pretty much goes for the sets as well. The only thing that really saved it for me was that, despite the wooden acting, the actors really look like they're going for it and making the best of a bad job with a naivety that seems typical of an age when television was in it's infancy.
On the face of it, the 'Flash Gordon' TV series doesn't do an awful lot else than remind us that even bad CGI is still a whole lot better than things used to be. I'd say give it a go though. Each story is refreshingly simple and gets to the point with no fuss and at least one guaranteed cliff hanger during the course of the episode. And it's in space! :o) At the end of the day, what more do you want?

Graeme’s Retro Classics! ‘It’ (1990)

Once again it’s the scariest month of the year and I thought I’d share my favourite ‘all time scary movies’ with you. At least that’s what I thought to start off with… In the end what I’ve decided to do is share my favourite ‘they’re not actually that scary but they’re still fun to watch’ movies with you lucky people. And what better place to start than with Stephen King’s ‘It’…
New Stephen King movies aren’t doing too badly these days (‘The Green Mile’ for one) and there was a time long ago when they were just as good (‘The Shining’). It’s a real shame that there was a long ‘middle period’ where movie adaptations of King’s work were ‘straight to TV’ travesties of the novels. For every ‘Green Mile’ there was a ‘Tommyknockers’ or ‘The Stand’. ‘It’ falls into this ‘best forgotten’ period but two redeeming features lift it out of mediocrity and give it ‘classic’ status in my book. More on that in a bit though…
You know the story so I’m not going to go into it at great length. Evil clown killing kids, kids hurt evil clown bad, kids grow up and have to return to hometown to face evil clown again (now that’s paraphrasing!). It’s a film of two parts where the main characters are shown as children and adults. It’s the children’s scenes that make the show worth watching; clown aside, some of the stuff that they have to deal with really makes you feel for them and remember what it was like to be a child yourself (and the sadness of leaving childhood behind). The scenes with the adults only really serve as introductory pieces to the ‘childhood’ scenes and the overall ending seems rushed and tacked on. Before it sounds like I’m doing this film down, it does have bits that will make you jump and moments where the crossover between weird horror and regular suburbia is genuinely unsettling (clown’s head down a drain anyone?)
Despite all this, it doesn’t seem like there’s much to separate this film from any other ‘TV horror’, or is there? I give you five words; Tim Curry, Pennywise the Clown. Redeeming Feature number one. Tim doesn’t care that this is a TV movie and he certainly doesn’t care that TV movies generally signal a downturn in your acting career. Hell no! Tim Curry is Pennywise the Clown and he is going to be the best damn clown you ever saw… Right from the start, he hams it up like nothing I’ve ever seen before and switches between comedy and horror with the greatest of ease. Tim makes the character his very own and I’m pretty sure at least half of what his acting must be improvised. He’s very much like his character Frank N. Furter (‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’) but with a bright red wig and balloons with messages for every occasion… Tim was never going to win any Oscars for this performance but it is the reason why this film gets ‘cult classic’ status in my book.
Redeeming Number Two? Oh yes… This won’t apply to you (I’d be surprised if it did!) but it does to me. I was watching this film in my room, at college, and a friend of a friend came in and watched it with me. Not long after that we got together and (quite a while after that!) we eventually got married. I reckon I must be the only person I know who found his future wife through a ‘shared appreciation’ of Pennywise the Clown! Now if only I could get her to like ‘Labyrinth’ or ‘The Dark Crystal’…

Graeme’s Retro Classics! ‘Flash Gordon’

It was my birthday last week and one of my presents was ‘Flash Gordon’ on DVD. I rang one of my brothers and, during the conversation, told him that I now had this film. His immediate reply was, “Gordon’s alive??” He even managed a passable impersonation of Brian Blessed. Bearing in mind that my brother really cannot stand science fiction, doesn’t it tell you something about this film?
I was about five or six when I first saw ‘Flash Gordon’. It’s one of the first films I can remember seeing at the cinema and I’m pretty sure my Dad used me as an excuse to get into a film that he really wanted to see (“oh go on, Graeme will love it!”). I did love it; I loved it to pieces, put the pieces back together and loved it some more. I watched it again a couple of days ago and, through the eyes of someone a lot older than five, much has changed. The script is wooden and some of the main character’s acting is clunky to say the least. Sam J. Jones, in particular, displays why he was never seen again in any film of real note. I even cringed a little when Dale Arden called out, “Flash! I love you but we only have fourteen hours to save the earth…” And despite everyone’s best efforts, a certain swamp monster just looks like an oversize beach ball…
Despite all of that, there is still something about this film that reaches out to both the adult and the child in me saying, “you still love this film, don’t even try to deny it…”
Dino De Laurentis delivers a film that is brimming with colour and spectacle. A trip through space (or across an alien planet) is just the way you imagined it as a kid and the spaceships are what you always wanted to fly. Ming’s palace could be the very definition of opulent while Arboria captures the spirit of an alien jungle. Everything about this film pays homage to the comic strips and Saturday morning serials that inspired it in the first place.
Despite all the pomp and splendour, ‘Flash Gordon’ doesn’t take itself too seriously and is all the better for it. Perhaps you need a couple of drinks before watching Flash play American football in Ming’s palace but any film that puts Brian Blessed in a leather nappy and straps golden wings on his back is going to take some beating in terms of sheer camp value.

Talking of Brian Blessed, he manages to encapsulate the spirit of the entire film in a performance that is loud, verbose and full of manic energy. This is surely the sci-fi film that he will be remembered for, not a Star Wars film that was well below par.
If any film ever deserved the title of ‘retro classic’, ‘Flash Gordon’ would surely take it. It’s truly retro both in age and spirit and it will be interesting to see how the new Flash Gordon TV show shapes up in comparison.
And there I was, so nostalgic that I almost went an entire post without mentioning the musical score by Queen. Best film score ever? Maybe…

Graeme’s Retro Classics! ‘Labyrinth’ & ‘The Dark Crystal’

Normally I would only write about one film at a time but these two are so wrapped up together, in my childhood, that they are impossible to separate. I was a big fan of the Muppets as a kid, as with many other families they were essential Saturday night viewing. The thing was, no matter how entertaining they were I knew they weren’t real. When placed against a real life backdrop there was something cartoon-like about Kermit/Fozzie etc that meant while you enjoyed watching them you were never going to make a real connection. They were just puppets; bits of material on string, not real at all. At least that’s what I thought until I was taken to see ‘The Dark Crystal’ and ‘Labyrinth’.

‘The Dark Crystal’ just blew me away when I saw it for the first time, it still blows me away when I see it now. There was no real life backdrop for the puppets to look fake against, everything that mattered was animated and that lent the affair a surreal and mystical air. At the time, it seemed like I had never seen anything more ‘real’ in my life, the level of detail (down to the tiniest insect) was astounding. The characters (actors?) were doing things that only human actors had done previously. They had families and a motivation to rail against the mortal perils they found themselves facing. They could even die. This was a world away from light Saturday entertainment. When faced with a world of such intricacy, what could I do but live in it whole-heartedly?

I thought ‘The Dark Crystal’ was a one off but it turned out that I was very wrong. A couple of years later; Jim Henson came back and did it all again but this time with a couple of differences. ‘Labyrinth’ was full of the same things that made ‘The Dark Crystal’ special. Again, everything that mattered was animated but this time with a sense about it; one that would appeal to children and adults alike. Who hasn’t laughed (at least a little) at the ‘perils’ Sarah faces when trying to find her way through the Labyrinth? Not everything was animated though, the real world finds its way into the film through settings and two of the main characters. This time, the ‘real world’ scenes, at the beginning, serve as a counterpoint to the ‘other-worldliness’ of the Labyrinth but (at the same time) the ‘real world’ comes across as slightly less real than the Labyrinth itself. Despite some wooden acting at times, I think the two human actors do a great job of interacting in a believable way with a bunch of puppets. David Bowie, in particular, hams it up superbly as the Goblin King and manages to look very impressed with a certain ‘enhancement’ given to him by the props department. Jennifer Connelly, well… I had a little crush on her…
How could I almost forget the songs? I’ll bet everyone reading this is humming one of the tunes as they do. I’ve got the ‘Firey’ song going through my head.
These films are one of the main reasons that I’m into fantasy films and literature these days. I’m just waiting for the ‘Dark Crystal’ sequel to be released and then the magic will begin all over again.

Graeme’s Retro Classics! ‘Tron’ (1982)

Welcome to an occasional feature where I realise that I’m not reading quickly enough and try to fill in the gaps by waxing lyrical about the stuff I was into as a kid…
What’s the best ‘virtual reality’ film that you can think of? ‘The Matrix’? Don’t make me laugh… ‘The Lawnmower Man’? Oh please… Any other takers? Well, whatever you think the best film is, prepare to be trumped by a film that was ahead of it’s time and (according to the fanboy in me) will never be bettered. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… ‘Tron’.
One of the best things about playing computer games, as a kid, was to pretend that you really were flying the spaceship that was shooting down hordes of alien scum. ‘Tron’ gave a generation of children a chance to experience at first hand what really goes on behind the computer monitor… It’s a world where every program ever written takes on the human characteristics of its ‘user’and happily exists to serve. It’s also a world where a power hungry AI can easily spiral out of control and threaten the safety of both the real and virtual worlds. A lowly security program and a disgruntled human are now everyone’s last hope. Matters will be settled by gladiatorial combat on the ‘Game Grid’…
What is there not to love about this film? Computer generated scenery that was years ahead of it’s time but still clunky enough that people could really believe it was the same as the graphics on their game consoles. A pseudo-religious philosophy that was original but close enough to ‘The Force’ so that people would ‘get it’. A soundtrack that was alien and haunting in it’s electronic simplicity. If that lot wasn’t enough then you also got a large slice of action packed computer games wish fulfilment for your money. The ‘light cycle’ races were tense adrenaline fuelled affairs while it was a real testament to the skills of the film makers that a fight between two guys with Frisbees could have you sitting on the edge of your seat. My favourite character was the ‘Bit’, an electronic version of a puppy that could only say ‘yes’ and ‘no’. The ‘Bit’ made me laugh then and still does now.
While ‘Star Wars’ will always be the film that had the most influence on my childhood ‘Tron’ definitely ranks up there in the top five at least. Any film that could inspire a seven year old me to pretend to be a ‘light cycle’ deserves no less.