Something Deadly

At the time it was released, I can remember 'Outland' being described as 'High Noon' in space and, indeed, it shares several plot points / motifs with the famous Western, although all the stetsons have been replaced by baseball caps.

It's the future, and Sean Connery (speaking in a particularly deep voice for some reason. Lower gravity?) is a Space Marshall sent to keep order at a huge mining complex on the Saturnian moon Io (according to a helpful caption, it's pronounced Eye-Oh). He soon uncovers a friendish Corporate conspiracy to feed the workers amphetamines to massively increase their productivity. Which sounds okay, except that, after sustained use, the drug turns the user loopy and suicidal / murderous, which is a decidedly bad thing in a confined space. The powers that be assume that Connery will take a bung and just let them get on with it, but, as his wife and son have just left him, he's in a funny mood so decides to take a stand - completely alone - against the hired killers subsequently sent to silence him.

There are four main problems with the film: it's a bit slow; Connery doesn't put much into it; Connery's son has a 'gee whizz' American accent although both his parents are British, and, at the end, a marginal character is suddenly revealed as the main villain, which is a bit of a cheat. Other than that, it's rather good.

Firmly in the post-'Alien' mode of making the future look really scuzzy and drab rather than shiny and spacey, the sets are excellent, and enormous (there's a continous shot of Connery chasing a suspect around that seems to go on for about ten minutes). My favourite bit is the nightclub, where the miners unwind with the numerous prostitutes that live on the base. With its vaguely rave-y electronic music and spotlighted performers doing unspeakable things to each other, it's like Aya Napa in space and is extremely camp. When Connery walks in, everyone stops talking and moving to look at him like something out of, well, 'High Noon', and that's funy, too. I particularly like the fact that the music sounds like it was made in 1990, i.e. it's futuristic, but only a bit.

Occasionally violent (at least two heads explode), tolerably tense, 'Outland' is a pretty satisfying film, especially as it has a nice happy ending. Even Connery's toupee behaves itself. Shplendid.

Outland

Makes Your Blood Run Cold

Sieges are great subjects for films, aren't they? Tense, exciting - and even more tense and exciting if you have a mix of ruthless criminals and sympathetic innocents, say an international criminal and a trigger happy drunk holding an asthmatic child, an old man and a lady doctor at gunpoint? No? Not exciting enough? Well, what if there was a Black Mamba loose on the premises? What about that?  Yep, now you're interested...

'Venom' is really stupid. But as really stupid films go, it's a corker. I needn't go into how the deadliest snake in the world was given to a small child by accident, or how that very snake gets loose in a house and inadvertantly becomes a key character in a foiled kidnapping attempt, so let's just say that it happens and move on. I also won't go into why the house in question, a large Georgian terrace, was thoughtfully built 250 years ago with a massive stainless steel air conditioning system for the venomous killer to slither around in.

What I have to say, however, is that this film has one of the most eclectic and downright bloody dangerous casts ever assembled: Oliver Reed, Klaus Kinski, Nicol Williamson, Sarah Miles and Sterling Hayden - a collection of unreliable nutters, troublemakers, malcontents, free spirits, drunks and degenerates that shouldn't even be able to co-exist in the same small space in the universe. The insurance premiums must have been through the roof. Shame Brando wasn't available.

Throw in Susan George as a scheming maid who gets her kit off in minutes and then turns dying from a snake bite into something wanton and erotic and you have half a dozen reasons for watching, and that's before you even get to the quite amazing finale where an out of control Kinski grapples frantically with a rubber snake, trying to blow the synthetic serpent's head off as he himself is shot repeatedly by Police snipers. It's like something out of a Norman Wisdom film. That one with the guns and the snakes.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention that Ollie Reed gets bitten on the bollocks. That's one brave hisser. Mr. Reed also suffers the indignity of a really nondescript credit, and I say that as someone who (much like everyone else) has several mates called Dave.

Venom

 

A Far From Human Birth

‘Inseminoid’ (1981) is a pretty sleazy film, but it has some interesting moments, not least its attempts to remake parts of ‘Alien’ in Chiselhurst Caves in Kent on a vastly reduced budget.

The story (set in 2001) concerns a group of scientists / archaeologists working in an underground lab on a poisonous alien planet. Sandy (Judy Geeson) is attacked, raped and impregnated by a monstrous creature. Driven insane by the experience and under the malign control of her evil alien twin foetuses, she kills her colleagues one by one, dismembering them and drinking their blood.

‘Inseminoid’ had a budget of £1m (a pretty paltry amount in industry terms, a career high for Warren) and is surprisingly ambitious: it has an elaborate set, lots of costumes, stars (Geeson, Stephanie Beacham, some real life Americans), and even some overseas filming (Malta doubled as the alien planet’s surface). It isn’t any good, of course, and it can be quite unpleasant, but it’s an interesting film, not least because it was one of the first productions to bomb at the box office but become a success through video sales, a pattern that, with a few refinements, has become the predominant industry template / fall back position for almost every film made these days.

Inseminoid

Telly Looks At...Disco

One of the pivotal sequences in 'Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham' is the 'incredible' over forties disco competition held in the 81 acre Cannon Hill Park. Styles range from the slightly shambolic to the unneccessarily sexually suggestive, but the star has to be indefatigable, knicker flashing, high kicking Mrs.Taylor.

As Mr. Savalas rather archly remarks of Mrs. T: "I'm sure somebody loves you, baby". Cheeky twat.

Telly Looks At...Architecture

More Midlands moments preserved for posterity in 'Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham'. This time, it's some of the striking modern buildings associated with the city that have earned it the nickname 'the Brasilia of Britain'.

I made that Brasilia bit up. Sorry, I just got excited. What does Telly say? 'You feel like you've been projected into the 21st century'. Can't argue with that, as most of these buildings are still there.

Telly Looks At...Art

I am obsessed with the 1981 short film 'Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham' and have been for some time. This incredible period piece, filmed in 1979, was the work of prolific director and producer Harold Baim, and it tickles and enthralls me for a number of reasons: it's extremely funny, hugely informative and very redolent of the world at the time I was growing up and starting to take notice.

I'm not from anywhere near Birmingham, but I know the second city quite well thanks to an ex-girlfriend from Harborne, and I think it's a very under-rated place which just happens to be full of the urban architecture I'm utterly fascinated by, especially the pre fucked with civic centre, a magnificent mess of the long gone and future past, a ramshackle and run down modernist vision characterised by a sign reading 'Paradise Place' affixed to a concrete ramp leading up to the Ballardian library complex.

Anyway, I'm incapable of not sharing gold like this, so let's start as we mean to go on - randomly - with some shots from the Gerald Irvine exhibition held at the premier Strathallan Hotel.

What does Telly have to say about this dazzling visual feast? Just that he 'looked in' and it 'nourished his brains'. Beautiful, baby, just beautiful.

Spectromorphology

Denis Smalley is a New Zealand born composer of electro-acoustic music. From 1976 to 1994 he lectured at my alma mater the University Of East Anglia (although he wisely left as I arrived) and he is now Professor of Music at University College London. Smalley describes his compositional approach as ‘spectromorphological’, a term which he coined and has defined in great detail but, for the sake of brevity, is ‘the perceived sonic footprint of a sound spectrum as it manifests in time’. Now you know as much as I do.

‘Pulses in Time’ was released on the UEA’s own record label in 1981, and collects music Smalley composed between 1974 and 1979. It’s a fairly easy record to listen to, although very abstract, and the way that the compositions expand and become more complex as they progress is extremely interesting and very, um, spectomorphological indeed.   

Here’s short extracts from, respectively, ‘The Pulses of Time’ and ‘Chanson De Geste’. They are both long tracks, and the clips probably don’t do them justice, but I hope they at least give a feel of what Smalley is about.