Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Doctor Who — The Deadly Assassin (1976, directed by David Maloney)

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Having had a vison of the President of the Time Lords being assassinated, the Doctor returns to his home planet to prevent it from happening.  Instead, he ends up framed for the crime.  The Doctor insists that he is innocent and then announces that he will be a candidate for the presidency.  Under Time Lord law, a candidate for president cannot be prosecuted for any crimes in the run up to the election.

The Doctor’s investigation leads him into the Matrix, a virtual reality world that is the collection of all the Time Lords’s consciousnesses.  He discovers that the assassination was actually masterminded by The Master (Peter Pratt, replacing the late Roger Delgado).    Having used up all of his previous regenerations, The Master is now a decaying skeletal figure who can barely speaks and wears a black hood.  12 lifetimes of evil appear to have caught up with him.  The Master’s plan is steal the black hole nucleus that was captured by the first Time Lod, Rassilon (sorry, Omega!), and use it to give himself a new set of generations.  Doing so will also destroy Gallifrey.

This was an important serial for many reasons.  It was the first serial to feature The Doctor on his own, with no other companions.  Having a companion usually gave the Doctor a chance to explain things that might seem strange or alien to the audience at home.  For The Deadly Assassin, we learn that Gallifrey has a BBC-like television service that provides coverage of political events and helpfully explains what is happening even though the audience of Time Lords would presumably already know.  The Doctor also spends a good deal of time talking to himself.  Normally, that could have been awkward but Tom Baker was a great talker and very good at handling solo conversations.  This serial also fully introduced us to Time Lord politics and featured the first appearance of the Doctor’s former teacher, Borusa (Angus MacKay).  Finally, and most importantly, it featured the return of the show’s greatest villain, The Master.  The Master hadn’t been seen since Roger Delgado’s tragic death in 1973.

The Deadly Assassin was one of the more violent of the Doctor Who stories.  The President was assassinated.  Time Lord anchorman Runcible (Hugh Walters) ended up with a dagger in his back.  The Master’s ally, Chancellor Goth (Bernard Horsfall), attempted to drown the Doctor in The Matrix.  After receiving outraged letters from parents, the BBC actually edited out the scene of Goth holding the Doctor’s head underwater from rebroadcasts.  The Deadly Assassin was also one of the scarier serials of the classic era.  The Master was truly a frightening figure with his raspy voice and his burned-out, skeletal appearance.

I’ve always liked The Deadly Assassin.  It features a genuinely interesting story and Tom Baker gives one of his best performances.  (Baker had specifically asked to do one serial without a companion.)  The serial’s cynical view of politics almost made it ahead of its time.  The Deadly Assassin ends with The Doctor being told that he’s won the election and that he is now President of the Time Lords.  He’s also told that it’s far too early for him to even think of resigning.  Of course, the Doctor makes a run for his TARDIS.

Doctor Who — The Hand of Fear (1976, directed by Lennie Mayne)

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The TARDIS materializes in a quarry and, for once, it’s an actual Earth quarry and not just an alien plant that looks like a quarry.  An explosion both knocks Sarah Jane Smith out and also exposes a fossilized hand that has been hidden away under the rocks for centuries.   The hand belongs to an executed alien was criminal named Kastrian Eldrad (Stephen Thorne, playing yet another Doctor Who baddie).  When the hand is found, it starts to search for sources of radiation so that it can fully regenerate back into its original form and then seek revenge on its home planet.

The Hand of Fear would have been a standard Doctor Who adventure, except that it ended with Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) announcing that she can no longer handle the death, violence, and occasional mind control that goes along with being the Doctor’s companion.  She asks the Doctor (Tom Baker) to return her to South Croydon.  The Doctor reluctantly agrees.  While Sarah is packing her things, The Doctor suddenly gets a telepathic message telling him to come to his home planet of Gallifrey and he realizes that, even if Sarah wasn’t leaving, he would not be able to take her with him.  When The Doctor tells Sarah this, it upsets Sarah.  Even though she impulsively decided to go home, it’s obvious that it’s not really what she wants.  When The Doctor drops her off on Earth, she tells him not to forget her and we know that he never will.  As the Doctor dematerializes, Sarah looks around and sees that she’s on Earth and probably in England  but nowhere close to South Croydon.Plenty of companions had come and gone before this episode but none of them had quite the impact of Sarah Janes Smith.  Sarah was one of the few companions to actually be viewed as being an equal of the Doctor.  Even though she spent a lot of time doing typical companion things like being menaced by aliens and asking the Doctor to explain things, Sarah Jane still always projected a determination and inner strength that made her more than worthy to be traveling through time and space.  Even dressing like Andy Pandy during her final appearance couldn’t diminish Sarah Janes Smith as a character.

Elisabeth Sladen had the perfect rapport with both Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.  Sladen and Baker were apparently close enough that they improvised their final goodbye and the emotions in that scene feel very real.  For viewers like me, who were introduced to Doctor Who by PBS airing the Fourth Doctor’s adventures, Sarah Jane was the first companion that we met and her suddenly leaving came as a shock.  She just seemed as if she was meant to be a part of the TARDIS crew forever.

Sarah Jane Smith would return, of course.  There was K-9 and Company in 1981.  There were the Sarah Jane Adventures, which ran from 2007 to 2011.  Sadly, the wonderful Elisabeth Sladen passed away in 2011.  For many of us, it felt like losing a valued a childhood friend.

Call Girl Of Cthulhu (2014, directed by Chris LaMartina)

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I guess it was inevitable that a movie would be made with that title.

Carter Wilcox (David Phillip Carollo) is a virgin artist who draws pictures of ancient symbols for the one-eyed Professor Edna Curwen (Helenmary Ball) and who meets and falls in love with a call girl/stripper named Riley (Melissa LaMartina).  Because Riley has got an octopus-shaped birthmark on her ass, she gets kidnapped by a cult who tries to turn her into the bride of Cthulhu.

You pretty much know what you’re going to get when it comes to this movie and it pretty much delivers.  There’s plenty of nudity, blood, juvenile humor, and references to the work of H.P. Lovecraft.  The pacing is abysmal and the acting is terrible but surprisingly, the gore was disgustingly realistic and the special effects were not awful.  The tentacled monster was probably about as convincing as it could be in a film like this.  You can tell where the most of the money in the budget went.

The actors playing Carter and Riley are forgettable and chemistry-free.  The one good performance came from Dave Gamble as the smug cult leader.  Never allow yourself to get too smug when dealing with the Great Old Ones.

Music Video of the Day: Spirit by Bauhaus (1982, directed by Christopher Collins)

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In this video, the members of Bauhaus perform their song Spirit for an audience of actual spirits.

Director Christopher Collins is directed with overseeing three other videos, all for Bauhaus: Bela Lugosi’s Dead, Mask, and In The Flat Field.

Enjoy!

Doctor Who — The Seeds of Doom (1976, directed by Douglas Camfield)

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Working on behalf of World Ecology Bureau (?), the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Slader) are sent to a remote research station in Antarctica where an expedition has unearthed two mysterious plant pod.  The Doctor recognizes the pod as a Krynoid, an alien that survives by laying its seeds in a host organism who is then slowly and painfully transformed into a plant.  One of the members of the expedition, Winlett (John Gleeson), has already been infected.  The infection is so bad that the Doctor is forced to say that there is nothing that can be done to save Winlett, other than amputating his arm to try to slow the infection.

While the Doctor and Sarah Jane try to deal with the Krynoid, a pant-obsessed millionaire named Harrison Chase (Tony Beckley) learns of the pod’s existence.  He sends two of his henchmen, Scorby (John Callis) and Keeler (Mark Jones) to collect it for him.  While the now fully mutated Winlett kills the other members of the expedition, Scorby and Keeler steal one of the pods.  Scorby blows up the base, killing Winlett and nearly killing the Doctor and Sarah Jane as well.

That’s all in the first two episodes of this six-episode serial.  The remaining four episodes find the Doctor and Sarah Jane (and eventually UNIT) invading Chase’s estate and trying to destroy the Krynoid before it grows big enough to destroy all animal life on Earth.  Chase becomes possessed by the Krynoid, Keeler turns into fungus, and several people are strangled by plants.  There’s even a death by mulcher.

The Seeds of Doom is one of those serials that has really stuck with me.  I think it’s because of how desperate the Doctor gets once he realizes that he’s failed in his mission to keep the Krynoid from escape Antarctica.  Tom Baker was usually known for being the funny Doctor but, in this episode, he’s almost an action hero, smashing through windows, beating up numerous henchpeople, and maybe snapping one man’s neck.  (It’s hard to tell if the Doctor killed him or just rendered him unconscious.)  It’s a different side of the Doctor but it’s appropriate because, for once, the Doctor isn’t one step ahead of everyone else.  There’s no time for fun and games when the Krynoid has already taken over Chase’s entire estate.

Harrison Chase was one of the best of the Doctor Who one-off villains.  Tony Beckley gave a great performance as Chase, playing him as someone who was an evil fanatic even before his mind was taken over by the Krynoid.  By the end of the serial, as he rants while bullet fly around his estate, Chase has become a truly wonderfully loathsome character.  Watching him, it’s easy to imagine Tony Beckley playing a minor villain in a James Bond movie.  (Sadly, Tony Beckley died just four years after playing Harrison Chase.)

Still, the moment that has always stuck with me is Sarah Jane discovering Keeler, covered in spores and grasping onto his last strands of humanity before becoming a Krynoid.  There was always considerable debate over whether or not Doctor Who was too scary for its target audience.  That debate usually seems pretty dumb but I imagine The Seeds of Doom inspired more than a few nightmares.

The Seeds of Doom brought the 13th season of the classic series to an impressive end.  The Doctor and Sarah Jane decided to take a vacation.  They had earned it.

Hercules In The Haunted World (1961, directed by Mario Bava)

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Returning home from his latest adventure, Hercules (Reg Park) and his sidekick, Theseus (George Ardisson), are shocked to find their home city has fallen victim to a plague that puts its victims in a trance-like state.  The woman that Hercules loves, Deianira (Leonara Ruffo), is one of the victims and, since she was also the city’s queen, the sinister Lico (Christopher Lee) is ruling in her place.

Hercules consults with the oracle, Medea (Gaia Germani).  Medea says that the plague can only be lifted by the Stone of Forgetfulness, which can only be found in the land of the dead, Hades.  Hercules and Theseus set out for Hades but before they can enter the realm of the dead, they have to perform a quest to defeat a rock monster and retrieve a magic apple from a giant tree.  Nothing is simple in ancient Greece.

The best of all the Hercules films, Hercules in the Haunted World may not have had Steve Reeves in the lead role but it did have Mario Bava behind the camera.  Bava shows what a clever director can achieve just through creative lighting, colorful mists, and detailed set design.  The film has all of the mythological monsters and toga-clad action that you expect from a Hercules film but it also has atmosphere, bleeding plants made from the souls of the dead, zombies, and Christopher Lee.  Lee may not be playing a vampire here but he still finds an excuse to drink blood in an attempt to achieve immortality.

Reg Park was a Brit who was inspired to become a bodybuilder after watching Steve Reeves in a competition.  When Reeves left the role of Hercules, Park was cast in his place.  Park only made a total of five peplum films and he was even worse at expressing emotion than Steve Reeves.  Park did have the physique necessary to play Hercules and that was really all that was needed.  Though Park tired of acting, he would still go on to mentor another bodybuilder who was inspired by Steve Reeves and would play Hercules in a film, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Music Video of the Day: Killed By Death by Motorhead (1984, directed by Rod Swenson)

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Back in the day, this music video was banned by MTV for what the channel considered to be “senseless and excessive violence.” Lemmy driving and giving everyone the finger really upset them.

Director Ron Swenson was best-known for being the manager of the Plasmatics.

Enjoy!

Doctor Who — The Brain Of Morbius (1976, directed by Christopher Barry)

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The Time Lords once again decide that they need the Doctor to do their dirty work for them.  The TARDIS, with the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) on board, is sent to the rocky planet Karn.

On Karn, the crazed Dr. Solon (Phillip Madoc) lives in a castle and is kidnapping shipwrecked travelers and using their limbs to build a body for Morbius (Stuart Fell with the voice of Michael Spice).  Morbius was once a Time Lord but, after being found guilty of war crimes, his body was destroyed but his disembodied brain survived.  It now sits atop a makeshift body that has been constructed out of several different alien races.  Solon takes one look at the Doctor’s head and decides that it would be the perfect house for the brain of Morbius.

There’s a subplot about the Sisterhood of Karn and the Elixer of Life but make no mistake.  This is Doctor Who‘s take on Frankenstein, with the Baron reimagined as a mad scientist on a distant planet and the Monster reimagined as being not at all sympathetic.  When I was a kid and first watching these episodes of PBS, The Brain of Morbius was one of my favorites because of the Frankenstein connection and also the look of Morbius.  The original Doctor Who was known for its often-shoddy monsters but Morbius was a definite triumph.  The brain sitting in a transparent bowl atop a stitched together body was one of the defining images of classic Doctor Who.

The Brain of Morbius is also known for a controversial moment during the final episode, where the Doctor and Morbius engage in a battle of the minds.  On a view-screen, the faces of the three former Doctors appear, followed by several faces that had never been shown before.  It was actually an in-joke on the part of production.  The faces were all members of the Doctor Who crew.  For decades, though, this in-joke led to a fierce debate whether or not William Hartnell was actually the first Doctor.  This, of course, was back when it was still believed that a Time Lord could only regenerate 12 times.  The Doctor Who revival tossed out that idea, along with a lot of other good ideas.

All these years later, The Brain of Morbius still remains one of my favorites of the Fourth Doctor’s adventures.  This serial was the Tom Baker/Elisabeth Sladen era at its best.

Hercules (1958, directed by Pietro Francisci)

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In ancient Greece, Hercules (Steve Reeves) saves the life of the princess Iole (Sylva Koscina) when she nearly loses control of her chariot.  Iole tells Hercules about how her father, Pelias (Ivo Garrani), become the ruler of the kingdom after the murder of the previous king and the exile of the rightful heir to the throne, Jason (Fabrizio Mioni).

Hercules accompanies Iole back to the kingdom, where he proves himself by doing typical Hercules things like defeating both a lion and a bull.  When Hercules’s discovers that his best friend, Chiron (Alfo Poli) is the number one suspect in the murder of the previous king, he goes on a quest with Jason to recover the Golden Fleece, which will reveal the truth.

All sorts of Greek myths are crammed together as Hercules and Jason search for the Golden Fleece, fight a dragon, and are briefly held prisoner by Amazon Queen Antea (Gianna Maria Canale).  (The dragon’s roar was lifted from a Godzilla film.)  Hercules was the first of several Italian film to be made about Hercules.  American bodybuilder Steve Reeves had the right physique for Hercules but the wrong voice and, even in the English language dub, it’s obvious that we are not actually hearing Reeves when he speaks.

Hercules has a deserved reputation for being campy but it’s not as bad as you might think if you’ve only seen the washed-out and heavily edited version that was used for Mystery Science Theater 3000.  (I say that as someone who loves MST 3K and who dreamed of being one of their writers when I was growing up.)  If you can actually see a restored print of the film, ancient Greece actually looks pretty good and the the deep colors go a long way towards establishing the grandeur of a mythological age.  It’s easy to laugh at Steve Reeves and his expressionless acting but he had the right look for Hercules.  The only thing really required of Hercules in this movie is that he be strong and Reeves was definitely that.

Distributed in America by Joseph E. Levine, Hercules was a worldwide success and there would be 18 sequels, with Reg Park eventually taking over the role.  Steve Reeves, having been seriously injured while filming The Last Days of Pompeii in 1959, eventually retired from acting and spent the rest of his life running a ranch in Valley Center, California and promoting drug-free bodybuilding.  Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently cited him as an inspiration for his own acting career.  Steve Reeves passed away at the age of 74 in 2000.

Music Video of the Day: Devil Woman by Cliff Richard (1976, directed by ????)

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Cliff Richard sings about how he became cursed after seeing a black cat with yellow eyes.  Cliff went to a fortune teller, asking her to lift the curse but it turned out that the fortune teller was the one who cursed him in the first place!

The message?  If it can happen to Cliff Richard, it can happen to anyone.

Enjoy!