Well, neither of them were science fiction, but yesterday did develop into a day for slobbing around watching dvds and playing games. I did do some washing and ironing in the morning so I didn’t feel too guilty … :-)
The afternoon matinee was ‘The Italian Job’ – a classic 60s crime caper that I picked up from the bargain bin in Tesco last week. I’d only ever seen the butchered pan and scan version on tv before, and this is a film that really benefits from a crisp, vibrant wide-screen picture to show off the shots of the Italian Alps, the 60s cars and fashions and the iconic car chase through the back streets of Turin. The plot doesn’t really make all that much sense, and it takes a while to kick in, but the minis are what we’ve paid for and the movie doesn’t disappoint. Excellent fun.
Following that, what could we do but play a bit more Midtown Madness 3 with me driving the mini and Jamie taking in a police car playing tag in Paris. At one point we ended up on the roof of a building jousting and trying to ram each other off the side. ACEBEST!
A break to walk the dog in the nippy twilight – I really must find my wooly hat and gloves before it gets much colder – and then a couple of hours on Call of Cthulhu. This game continues to amaze me with its audacity and inventiveness. The plot took a left turn (I’m now on a gangbusters raid with J Edgar Hoover and his FBI goons), but the mechanics are quite unlike anything I’ve ever played before. At one point I was edging across planks through the rafters of an old warehouse – so far, so Tomb Raider – until I made the mistake of looking down and suffered a highly convincing attack of vertigo. The screen blurred and swam in a most disconcerting fashion until I looked up again – wooah! I’ve also caught sight of my first Shoggoth and am currently hiding behind a pile of crates on the verge of insanity. Eeeek!
What could top that, but the late night horror of ‘Dagon’? Made by the team of producer Brian Yuzna and director Stuart Gordon who seem to have carved out a niche for themselves in the low budget Cthuloid horror genre, notably in the schock gorefest of Reanimator, this was superb. This takes the original HP Lovecraft story and sets it in present day Spain, where a yacht with four wealthy young dilletantes is dashed onto a reef by a violent and unexpected storm. Struggling ashore for help they find themselves on the run from a town full of strangely deformed half human villagers and weirdly tentacled creatures.
There are plenty of in-jokes and sly references for fans of the genre – the protagonist wears a Miskatonic University sweat shirt, and a sequence in run down hotel with much frantic bolting of doors and shoving of wardrobes will be very familiar to players of Call of Cthulhu – but it is not a post modern, ironic horror flick or a big budget CGI creature feature. Rather it has much more in common with the Hammer Horror B movies of the seventies – a bit of gratuitous nudity, a bit of gore, some effective monsters and a lot of genuine shocks. There are one or two CGI shots – and one very effective money shot of the title creature – but this is perfect low budget film making. It’s a Spanish co-production, which means there are some sections of Spanish dialogue (which might be useful for anyone learning Spanish *coff* Will? *coff*), but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to take a holiday in Imboca (and that’s another sly reference for Spanish speaking HP Lovecraft fans). Well worth £4.99 from play.com I would say.
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