Battletoads & Double Dragon soundtrack: SNES vs. Megadrive

I’ve recently been listening to some of the Battletoads & Double Dragon SNES soundtrack pretty obsessively (God knows why, maybe I’m pregnant), but it was only today I bothered to seek out the Mega Drive/Genesis version of the game’s music. Carumba! What a difference. Evidently the two machines’ soundcards were worlds apart when it came to quality/fidelity. The SNES sounds like a decent quality boom-box; the Mega Drive like a swarm of angry, shrieking metal wasps (not that that's a bad thing). Compare these examples and marvel at how not all 16-bit games consoles were created equal…

My Secret Knife: a review of Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession

Where would Whitechapel-based walking tour companies and fly-by-night paperback publishers be without the public’s continued fascination with Jack the Ripper? Yes, ever since Saucy Jack stalked those darkened backstreets near the old City at the close of the nineteenth century, the Ripper legend has continually piqued the interest of generation after generation of rubbernecking gorehounds and Angela Lansbury-esque armchair sleuths alike, resulting in an almost endless stream of theories about his identity and almost as many gaudy books to back them up.

And so we turn to the latest offering from the Ripper mill, Jack the Ripper’s Secret Confession, a book in which David Monaghan and Nigel Cawthorne claim that the man who made whoring in the East End decidedly dangerous was none other than ‘Walter’, the author of the infamous (and voluminous) Victorian erotic memoir, My Secret Life.

For anyone unacquainted with My Secret Life, the story goes something like this. Between 1888 and 1895 a Belgian peddler of erotica, Auguste Brancart, was summoned from his adopted city of Amsterdam to London by “a rich old Englishman, who desired to have privately printed for his own amusement a huge MSS”. What this manuscript contained was nigh on a million words of an anonymous erotic memoir, allegedly drawn from the author’s diaries of his day-to-day amatory life. Over a period of some years, and involving a chain of smugglers, stooges and rogue printers, this manuscript was printed up in 11 volumes, comprising some nearly 4000 pages in total (including a more-than-thorough 56-page index). According to the author only six copies of the whole work were printed, although as researchers Ian Gibson, Steven Marcus and others have demonstrated, a great many more copies were printed up than that. The book sold for the then-astronomical sum of £100 a set and was marked ‘Not for publication’ on its title page. This isn’t surprising: the content of the book is about as obscene as it’s possible to imagine. The author narrates his sexual development from childhood onwards, detailing literally thousands of copulations and other sexual indiscretions and exploring every possible type of perversion. Attempts to publish the book over the course of the 20^th century met with bans, obscenity judgements and prison sentences, and it wasn’t until 2004 that all eleven volumes were finally made available online (at this location).

The author of the text has never been definitively identified (much like the Ripper), but the most convincing attempt at identification I’ve read is Ian Gibson’s masterful and endlessly entertaining book The Erotomaniac, in which Gibson asserts that the author of My Secret Life was Henry Spencer Ashbee, a bibliophile, traveller and industrialist who wrote three huge bibliographies of erotic literature under the name Pisanus Fraxi in the last half of the nineteenth century. I have neither the time nor desire to attempt outline Gibson’s reasoning here but it seems to me pretty watertight and that Ashbee was indeed the author of the My Secret Life – he had the time, inclination (after a lifetime’s immersion in the field of erotic literature) and most importantly the wealth to see the book through the press. According to publisher Charles Carrington, who acted as the book’s distributor, it cost the author £1100 pounds to produce the work – a staggering sum of money, which would place the author in the country’s financial elite.

However, Gibson’s work and research rather scuppers Monaghan and Cawthorne because of one crucially important conclusion reached by the author: My Secret Life is a work of fiction. Despite the book presenting itself as memoirs drawn from a diary, a number of internal inconsistencies coupled with the sheer unlikelihood that anyone could possibly live as ‘Walter’ purported to do, mark it out as a fantasy autobiography rather than a true record of a life lived. Beyond this, Gibson demonstrates fairly conclusively from comparisons with Ashbee’s diaries that he and Walter share the shame stylistic tics as writers, the same problems with spelling and syntax, and the same character traits. And if Ashbee was the writer of My Secret Life, which he is generally assumed to have been, any possible link between ‘Walter’ and the Ripper completely breaks down. The very nature of Ashbee’s life as a businessman, author, head of a family and social butterfly are utterly at odd with what we know of the Ripper’s character and the facts of his killing spree.

I have to confess a personal fascination with the life, work and character of Ashbee. As he is described in the few books which exist about him, he amuses me enormously, and so I thought I’d buy …Secret Confession to see if there was any possible way that Henry Spencer could have been the Ripper. Unsurprisingly I came away from the book unconvinced.

The reasoning advanced by Monaghan and Cawthorne is at times ingenious and a glowing demonstration of their ability as lateral thinkers, but rests largely on the Christian names of one or two of the prostitutes mentioned in My Secret Life corresponding with those of the murdered girls in Whitechapel, as well as a few overlaps in locations described in the book and those in which the Ripper crimes took place. The writers also place their own interpretation on phrases in My Secret Life, making assumptions and guessing at (nonexistent) double meanings in order to bolster their case. Beyond this they rely on amateur psychoanalysis to arrive at the conclusion that Walter was a killer. The writer of My Secret Life certainly put a great deal of aggression into his work and expresses a fascination with the blood associated with sex acts (although it must be said that he expresses a fascination with anything even remotely connected with sex), but the authors’ assertion that Walter was a murderous paedophile who killed the girls who procured him young virgins is overstating the case and a quite unsubstantiated assertion. And besides, if My Secret Life was the work of Henry Spencer Ashbee, the book is very unlikely to bear much, if any, relation to the author’s actual life, movements and experiences.

That said, Jack the Ripper’s Secret Confession is quite the page-turner. The authors quote liberally from the more lurid episodes in My Secret Life, which are as shocking (and consequently entertaining) as you might imagine, as well as from reports into the underworld of 1890s London, and spare no detail in describing the Ripper murders. Of course this is material that’s been reshuffled many, many times for countless Ripper books, but not being particularly interested in Jack the Ripper myself, the book revealed to me a wodge of facts about the case and Victorian society at the turn of the 20^th century of which I was previously unaware. The writers’ tactic of alternating chapters which focus heavily on the facts of the Ripper murders with others focusing intently on My Secret Life is effective and makes the book seem pacy and urgent. And, as My Secret Life is not easily available as a book, nor a particularly quick or easy read, the quotes picked out in …Secret Confession are of such a length as to be almost a précis of that work, which is jolly useful. The mixture of extreme sex and extreme violence, which is what the book essentially boils down to, is well chosen, and the authors have been able to serve up their lurid source material in great and graphic detail whilst maintaining a scholarly air. While this book won’t tell you who the Ripper is (nor indeed will it firmly settle on the authorship of My Secret Life for that matter), it will entertain and engage you ‘til its end. Even approached with as sceptical a set of prior assumptions as my own, the book is an entertaining summary of the agreed facts around Jack the Ripper, a whistle-stop tour of late-Victorian London and an engaging discussion about one of English literature’s most hotly debated and notorious works, all of which are assets of the work to be commended. Well worth a read, but make sure to pick up a copy of Gibson’s Erotomaniac as a companion to avoid the potholes of occasional far-out and slipshod reasoning within.

Waiting for Bottom

“Oh come on, Eddie. There must be more to life than jugs…”-Richie

In their musings on drama the Greeks decided that the life was ultimately a curious blend of tragedy and comedy - hence those twin masks, one grinning, one in tears, which are the universal symbol of theatre. And nowhere is this idea better explored, understood and trumped than in Bottom, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson’s existentialist-slapstick comedy which ran for three series on the BBC in the early ’90s, and carried on life as a series of stage shows for the rest of the decade.

Apparently Bottom was conceived by Rik and Ade while the pair were co-starring in a West End production of Waiting for Godot and the stamp of Beckett’s work looms large in the series. The pair, long-time comedy sparring partners, distilled their double-act in Filthy Rich and Catflap, an overlooked Ben Elton/Rik Mayall satire of showbiz life which succeeded The Young Ones in the mid ’80s. In the series Mayall played Richie Rich, a temperamental, narcissistic, self-pitying, sex-obsessed artiste while Edmondson played Eddie Catflap, a phlegmatic alcoholic. They’re basically Rik and Vyvian all grown up and the embryonic forms of the people who would take centre-stage in Bottom.

Waiting for Godot centres around two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, a pair of itinerant fools who spend both of the play’s acts sat by a roadside waiting for someone named Godot to appear, all the while discussing nonsense and triviality. It is obviously a symbolic work and one interpretation of the play is as a satire on the pointlessness of life, an idea which remained central to Beckett‘s work. Bottom is very similar in set-up: it is staged largely within the confines of the living room of a grubby Hammersmith flat and peopled almost uniquely by Richard Richard (Mayall) and Eddie Hitler (Edmondson).

The two are life’s losers writ large: middle-aged, single, largely unemployable, moronic and pig-ignorant. They’re like an all-male Wayne and Waynetta Slob, only deprived of even the most festering sort of romance. And like Wayne and Waynetta, the relationship between the two characters is that of a co-dependent but loveless marriage. Eddie is the drunkard husband with one foot in reality: he occasionally brings home money from some job or scheme, or else counterfeits it himself. He’s constantly pissed, supports QPR and occasionally gets out of the flat to hang around with his misfit friends, Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog, who refer to Richie as Eddie’s ‘wife’. It’s a role Richie fulfils well. He’s long-haired, does all the cooking and ‘cleaning’ around the flat and, from time to time, has to put Eddie to bed when the latter’s had a few too many. Through it all they profess to hate each other, but Richie owns the flat they share and allows Eddie lives there rent-free. It’s a marriage of convenience but, when push comes to shove, they’re all each other have.

As a set up, it’s almost a throwback to Hancock and Sid James living together on the breadline in East Cheam, but where Bottom differs from Galton and Simpson’s series is in its subtext: Hancock was very much a character study, while Bottom is more universal in scope.

There are moments of genuine poignancy in Bottom which escape obvious notice on first viewing. A recurring joke in the series is for Richie to reproach Eddie with a variation of the quote which heads this essay, and for the pair to stare contemplatively for a moment or two before affirming that there isn’t. Telly, booze, jugs, that’s all there is in life when it’s boiled down to its core. Even when the characters’ lives are saved by the hand of God at the end of one episode, they damn themselves by declaring their atheism and fall to their deaths. And indeed, death means nothing in Bottom. The characters ‘die’ at the end of each series (and occasionally at the conclusion of individual episodes) only to return, safe, well and no wiser at the beginning of the next. There’s no escape. This isn’t just a show about knob-gags and knockabout physical comedy, it looks at life deeply. And darkly.

If there’s one word which best sums up Bottom it’s ‘squalid’. The characters are all dirty old men, figuratively and literally, and the sets are a study in grime. Dirt streaks the walls of every set in the series and decay runs riot. Even Dick the Barman’s phone has its roto-dial caved in and boasts a shameful layer of grease. The show’s humour is similarly filthy, with most of the jokes concerning the toilet or a Fat Slags vision of sex. Of course there’s cerebral stuff in there too, and the humour arising from the characters’ relationship is first-rate but, well, the programme’s called Bottom. That one words sums it all up.

Eddie sums up the hopelessness faced by the characters, and by extension the rest of us, in a reproach he gives to Richie at the end of series three: “Look, you get born, you keep your head down, then you die. If you’re lucky.” Their lives are testament to this fatalism: they’re both too old and completely unsuitable for work or marriage, their day-to-day life is a pointless repetitive existence in which the only thrills are occasionally getting drunk and wanking. Their plight is hopeless; they’ll never achieve anything, they’ll never progress as human beings and are doomed to live this way until they die. If there is a message in Bottom it is this: life is meaningless, but that doesn’t mean you can’t laugh at it.

Each episode of Bottom sees the pair failing to engage with activities which most people see as life’s pleasures: when they go out and try to get laid they end up embarrassing themselves in front of a pubful of locals as Eddie, pissed as a newt, tries it on with Richie. In another episode they go camping but end up doing so on a field bearing the notice ‘Dog Toilet’ on Wimbledon Common. And then go condom fishing. When they try to play chess they completely fail to understand the game and beat each other senseless, and so it goes ever on. But in debasing each and every ‘positive’ thing about life, Rik and Ade are slyly affirming Beckett’s beliefs about life’s meaningless: even the joyous things are purposeless and crap. It’s a bleak vision until one looks at it all through the lens of the absurd.

Richie and Eddie are utterly human and depressingly normal men but are not bound by the same laws as the rest of us. When they wallop each other senseless and set each other on fire, or even blow themselves up, they’re never actually hurt. They’re like cartoon characters. And like cartoon characters, other concerns of the real world are meaningless to them. Bottom is more of a vehicle for looking at events of life in absurd, good-humoured isolation. We sit there laughing at these two arse-heads pitching camp on a dog toilet, but then remember when we ourselves accidentally pitched a tent on a cow-pat. Bottom is a sitcom and thus an exaggeration of reality, but the kernels of truth present in it are deeply, deeply resonant.

Even if you’re not naturally depressive, you have to concede that the chaps have a point in their nihilistic take on existence. The existentialist thinkers of the 20^th century, who were paid to gaze at their navels and contemplate life, concluded that life was ‘absurd’ and that man is a ‘meaningless passion’. A lot of them ended up as Catholics in a search for real, genuine, meaning in life. Not to disparage catholic, or indeed any other spiritual beliefs, but the conclusion we can take away from their work is that meaning in life is, at best, elusive and at worst nonexistent. But the thing seized on by Bottom is this idea of the absurdity in life which Camus popularised. Indeed, the very slant of Bottom’s writing is to expose and burlesque all that is absurd about being human and being alive. Deep down, we’re the same as Eddie and Richie -grasping for gratification, be it sexual or otherwise, and comfort, and their plight is an exaggeration of our own.

Yes Minister is one of my favourite comedy programmes for almost the exact opposite reasons that I enjoy Bottom: it’s cerebral, concerned with gravest matters of human life and somewhat aspirational. To draw a crude analogy: it is the Freudian superego to Bottom’s id. Bottom, in its lowly setting and brutish characters explores life at a much deeper level than most other TV series’. Again it was Freud who suggested that humour and our deeper subconscious are closely linked, and in Bottom this is entirely borne out. We laugh at a show like Yes Minister for its mastery of language, that very human trait. We laugh at Bottom for its burlesquing of our more primal nature.

Bottom then entirely encapsulates the two elements the Greeks saw as fundamental to life: it is tragic in its premise and characters, yet comic for those same reasons. It is a shame that Bottom is thought of by most people as mere crudity. Like Viz comic, there’s much more to Bottom than meets to eye. Indeed, once you peer deeply into Bottom, you’ll be surprised at how much there is to see.

Click here to watch Bottom on Seesaw.

Drunken Bakers

Drunken Bakers is probably the most subtle and, in a way, philosophical Viz strip ever. Unlike the rest of the comic's more usual fare, it's not a satire on anything in particular and, despite the subject matter, is totally dissimilar to Eight Ace, the other regular Viz dipso. I've seen Drunken Bakers compared to Beckett in print before and think that's about right. The characters' drunkenness isn't funny, they're not comedy drunks - these are broken men, and men whose pain and suffering we only come to understand slowly through tiny snatches of information which occasionally bleed into the strip.

This edition of Drunken Bakers, taken from the October 2009 issue of Viz, is a probably the best yet published and one in which we learn a great deal more about the downfall of at least one of the titular dough-kneeders than ever before. Their presence in Viz might not elicit the same sort of broad, hearty belly-laughs as, say, Johnny Fartpants, but to my mind they lend Viz a literary air and hint that beneath the jokes about knobbing and farting, the people behind Viz are in touch with the same thoughtful, despairing view of human life which drove Beckett to create Vladimir and Estragon and Rik 'n' Ade to pen Bottom. Or at least, as this strip demonstrates, that they know how to draw a very funny depiction of a bloke wearing a dead man's glasses.Enjoy.

Dickie Peterson, RIP

There have been a lot of fairly hefty celebrity deaths in 2009: Farrah Fawcett, Ludovic Kennedy, David Carradine… when the lead singer from the Jackson 5 went off to that great theme park in the sky, the world at large took note. Another mortal coil was shuffled off this year, one which the tabloids didn’t pay much attention to but which meant a lot more to me, that which belonged to Dickie Peterson, who died on October 12.

Peterson was the vocalist and bassist of Blue Cheer, a band held sacred these days by the type of rock enthusiasts inclined to dip into the Woodstock generation‘s stash for thrills. The Cheer (who probably aren’t ever referred to as such but, m’eh) are one of those bands along with Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Budgie and doubtless others who ‘invented heavy metal’in the late 1960’s. While that fact’s debatable and the subject for far more scholarly work than my own, what’s not up for debate is the quality of the music they made.

Blue Cheer, like countless other bands made up of kids who love rock ‘n’ roll but can’t play, initially specialised in chunky renditions of blues standards in their salad days in the bars of ‘Frisco. Their one and only big hit was a cover of Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues and their first album, Vincebus Eruptum, is a six-track, 30-minute blast of raw, heavy blues. Three covers and three Peterson-penned originals, the album is a perfect snapshot of the musical period’s transition from Yardbirds-style cutesy blues appreciation to the sort of shit-yer-pants experimentation that Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi were beginning to unleash on the world.


However, the Cheer’s only drawback was that they really couldn’t play very well. I’m not being a snob and, frankly, I think Peterson’s bass lines, his singing and the drumming on the record are punky-to-good, but the band’s guitarist was no Clapton. It’s intriguing to note the ways in which the band tried to get round the fact that their guitar parts sounded more leaden that lead, such as recording two solos and using both at once in the same portion of a song, but while Page would lay down solos which dropped the jaws of anoraks and novices alike, the Cheer did more to try and convey a feeling or energy. In their approach they were like a punk band who’ve smoked that bit too much pot and discovered the joys of side two of My War, and they made music that, for anyone who’s ever felt the sheer exhilaration which comes from getting a twelve-bar blues progression right on guitar or bass for the first time, was just…well, right on.


Live, they must’ve sounded phenomenal. They were managed by a Hell’s Angel fantastically named Gut and apparently were the loudest band in Frisco. Considering Canned Heat were playing around this time with a rig so loud that their guitarist could stand in front of his amp, lean back and remain supported upright on the sound-waves alone, they must’ve been ear-splitting.

And beyond their passion and volume lay the band’s counterculture credentials in the form of uninhibited drug experimentation and promotion. The fact that they were named after a type of high-grade blotter acid and played a song of Peterson’s called ‘Doctor, Please’ left no doubt in the minds of listeners and fans that this was a band who were turning on and tuning in as well as dropping-D. Peterson regretted the band’s youthful enthusiasm for late-night pharmaceuticals later in life, but this was a band in touch with the sort of Tim Leary, Discordian idealism which permeated the mainstream and which these days seems incredible. In their personal lives, Blue Cheer were a sort of musical version of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, an artefact of a more hedonistic, carefree age.

It’s the band’s first album that it’s fashionable to cite as a favourite in stoner rock circles these days but the band’s post-Vincebus career was replete with glory too. Their follow-up, Outsideinside is a gem of a record, which sounds these days like a precursor of grunge, not least for Magnolia Caboose Babyfinger, which Mudhoney paraphrased on their first LP. Subsequent albums saw a huge number of line-up changes and Peterson relinquishing sole vocal duties, but they still churned out some cracking tunes. Good Times Are So Hard To Find is a song which perfectly encapsulates the souring of the hippie dream in the early ‘70s and Pilot is as good an example of a beautifully realised red-eyed pop song it’s possible to find. The band’s activity became more sporadic as the ‘80s hoved into view but rock’s nice habit of paying heed to its founding fathers meant that again, like Budgie, the band’s memory was kept alive.


In later years Peterson moved to Germany and Blue Cheer capitalised on the vogue for Woodstock-generation bands, playing their greatest hits around the world. In fact it’s funny to note how they took note of the nods given them by heavy metal bands over the decades on their Live in Japan album. If you’re on Spotify give the solo on this version of Out of Focus a listen. See what I mean?

Dickie Peterson means a lot to me because, when I was a struggling young dreadlocked student, fumbling away on my bass, I listened to his music and thought - ‘great, that’s the sort of thing I’m trying to do!’. I remember the evening when I first cracked the bass line to Out of Focus and the glee I felt at playing along with a righteous tune from an era that fascinates me by musicians who were as unpretentiously keen as myself. Blue Cheer inspired a lot of people, made a lot of brilliant music that we’ve got forever and are rightfully acknowledged along with their Woodstock contemporaries as being one of the more important bands of the mid-twentieth century. Dickie might’ve only been 63 when he headed off into the sunset but, wow, what a life he led…

The Dragon Lives Again

I’ve often wondered what the most patently absurd film in existence could be. Before last night I’d always assumed that it was a toss-up between The Hottie and The Nottie and Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler, but it turns out I was wrong. You see, before last night I’d never seen The Dragon Lives Again.

In order to understand this film, it’s necessary to learn a little about a movement in Hong Kong cinema known as bruceploitation. The term’s a portmanteau of Bruce, as in Bruce Lee, and exploitation. When Bruce Lee unexpectedly died in 1973, movie producers in Hong Kong panicked, fearing that international audiences wouldn’t care for films from Hong Kong not starring The Little Dragon, and subsequently produced a slew of Bruce Lee-themed movies, some bearing titles similar to genuine Lee movies (Re-Enter the Dragon leaps to mind) and others starring Bruce Lee lookalike actors, most of whom sported names like Bruce Li, Brute Lee, Lee Bruce and so on. Most of these so-called bruceploitation movies were pretty generic martial arts flicks, released purely to cash in on audience ignorance and confusion, but The Dragon Lives Again is a different beast indeed: definitely the most bizarre of the bruceploitation films, and probably one of the craziest movies ever committed to celluloid.

The movie opens in the Underworld, a place apparently between Hell and Earth, where departed pop culture icons go to…well, it’s not entirely clear what they’re supposed to be doing in the Underworld but, m’eh, they’re there. We open on Bruce Lee (well, actually, Bruce Leung) lying in state before the King of the Underworld and his court, apparently suffering the effects of rigor mortis most profoundly.

In fact Bruce’s dong is discussed at some length in this film, if I can put it that way, with the King’s concubines wittering endlessly in stilted Dublish about his ‘endowment’. But to the court’s shock and disappointment, the bulge only turns out to be a set of nunchucks, which Bruce awakes from his eternal slumber to retrieve from the King.

It is worth pausing at this point to consider one glaringly obvious problem with this film: Bruce Leung looks nothing like Bruce Lee. Not even a hint of a resemblance. Nada. I mean, look. However, the writers get around this monumental problem by having the pair of penis-obsessed courtesans discussing Bruce’s ‘changed appearance’. Apparently ‘when you die, your body and face undergo a profound change’. So that’s that, then.

Anyway, when Bruce is told to show reverence to the fringe-crowned monarch he initially scoffs but is rendered speechless when the King demonstrates his power: shaking a big red pillar in his throne room, which causes earthquakes throughout the underworld. Suitably awed, Bruce agrees to respect the King before jump-cutting into a diner, apparently in the Underworld’s party district. But Bruce Lee’s not the only pop culture icon in this café. No, sir. Why, look – here’s Popeye.

Despite the oddness of his fellow patrons Bruce settles down to a well-earned meal before running afoul of Japan’s premiere blind swordsman, Zatoichi, for some trivial offense or other and it’s not long before Zatoichi brings in some of his dastardly allies – namely James Bond and Clint Eastwood. Yes, in this film 007 and The Man with No Name both work for the forces of evil and are part of a bizarre syndicate of international pop culture icons who are planning a coup to take over the Underworld.

In fact the choice of villains in this film is probably the best demonstration of Chinese supremacy I’ve ever seen in my life. The nefarious cabal consists of the following international icons, all of whom are bested by Bruce Lee (China/Hong Kong): James Bond (UK), Clint Eastwood (USA), The Godfather (a piss-poor Al Pacino lookalike, Italy), Emmanuelle (the soft-porn character, France), The Exorcist (one of the priests from Linda Blair’s pea-soup commercial, and bizarrely sporting a French accent). Oh, and Dracula acts as a sort of contractor for this dastardly team of rogues too. Initially I thought this group was pretty random, but as a collection of characters all of whom chosen to represent other cinematic territories, it’s a fairly well thought-out bunch.

So Bruce ends up meeting up with the syndicate after having the stuffing knocked out of him by Clint, Bond and a pack of zombies and predictably refuses to join them. Naturally, their only option is to snuff him out (although how you can ‘kill’ someone who’s already passed on is never touched on in the film – maybe the makers were hoping to sow the seeds of philosophical debate in the audience), and in fact the remainder of the film essentially consists of the attempts of the cabal to whack Brucie.

I was going to offer a concise summary of the rest of the movie’s plot but narrative consistency is not one of the film’s strong points. Still, pressing on, Bruce finds himself in a quarry for no particular reason where he’s ambushed by Zatoichi, who attempts to off Bruce with some of the most quirkily named martial arts moves I’ve ever heard.

But before long the nunchucks come out and Zatoichi is sent packing. Emmanuelle is up next, threatening to use her womanly wiles to lure Bruce to his doom. Alas we’re spared her seduction technique, for no sooner has she announced her intention at that morning’s Cave of Evil general meeting than the film cuts to her inexplicably in bed with Bruce. Unfortunately for Emmanuelle her decadent ways mean that she quickly moves in to give Little Bruce a kiss and reveals the evildoers sneaking into Bruce’s room. However, despite having caught him with his pants down, the baddies choose to retreat. Bruce follows, and despite both Bond and Clint pulling their guns on Bruce, he’s allowed to leave unharmed. Makes no sense, but there we are.

Next we’re treated to some Henry VIII-style marriage management by the King of the Underworld, who is gifted Emmanuelle by the Exorcist as a replacement for his two current brides, both of whom have been cursed by drinking a potion they intended to poison Bruce with, which has rendered them ugly as Bernard Manning’s greyest pants.

Bruce meanwhile bumps into and defeats Dracula and a another herd of zombies in the quarry before running into James Bond outside the King’s palace and, in the film’s shortest fight scene, accuses him of harbouring ‘stolen money’ before dispatching Bond with a flurry of roundhouse kicks. I can only assume Bond puts up virtually no resistance because the only white fellow they could find to stuff into the cheap tux sported by ‘Bond’ didn’t know any martial arts.

Clint’s up next, as Bruce once again finds himself in the quarry with no explanation. The Man with No Name puts up a valiant effort but his pistols and clumsy kicks are easily overcome by Bruce who offs Clint, reducing the evildoers’ camp down to two.

The Exorcist and The Godfather are both naturally displeased that their crew is being pared to the bone and decide to go for broke and assassinate the King. They storm the palace and confront the monarch, easily overcoming his guards and forcing the King into his chamber where, in an attempt to scare off the marauding fiends, he shakes his pillar like it’s never shaken before, causing massive earthquakes throughout the Underworld. These earthquakes raze most of the kingdom to the ground, causing many, many deaths, which angers Bruce who is caught up in the middle of it all. However, back in the throne room, The Exorcist and Godfather advance on the King, who has literally nowhere left to run…

So of course the film jump-cuts to the quarry again at this point, with both the Exorcist and Godfather striding towards Bruce, who seems to have appeared from nowhere. Combat ensues for about 10 minutes of screen-time before both are dispatched. However, Bruce can’t let the King’s negligent treatment of his subjects pass unanswered and threatens to topple the King. Enter the King’s sorcerer from stage-left, who promises to protect the King with a troupe of mummies he summons up and calls his ‘demon dozen’. While the fight initially looks unwinnable, Bruce’s allies Popeye, Caine and One-Arm come galloping in and assist with vanquishing the Andrex-clad demons. The sorcerer is drawn into the fray after Popeye wolfs down some spinach, and is eventually stabbed with his own scimitar. With no allies left, the King attempts to flee, only to be cornered by an angry crowd of his subjects. Cornered, he pleads with Bruce for his life, which Bruce agrees to grant him if only he will send Bruce back to Earth. The King readily agrees, casts a spell and, in a scene very reminiscent of Bjork’s video for It’s Oh, So Quiet, sends Bruce hurtling upwards and Earthwards, watching the crowd of Underworld dwellers wave him off from below.

As you can now hopefully understand, not much about this film makes a lot of sense. The dialogue is nonsensical and the dubbing atrocious, the fight scenes aren’t especially well choreographed, everything looks like it had next to no budget behind it, and the plot is so disjointed it feels like the kind of dream you have when you’ve been snacking on Leerdamer before bed. But despite all this, The Dragon Lives Again is one of the most bizarre but also most enjoyable exploitation movies ever. Sure, it’s not high art but it puts a whole new spin on the bruceploitation movement and, well, the site of a big-sideburned Englishman and a Chinese fellow in a beard approximating James Bond and Clint Eastwood is almost too delicious. Bizarre, hard to follow, but buckets of fun, The Dragon Lives Again comes highly recommended. As the whole thing’s on YouTube, I think all I need do now is link you to it and send you on your way…

Ten Thrillingly Tasteless Titles to Trashy Time-wasting Talkies

Ah, exploitation cinema… Like the adverts for Burger King’s ‘steal’ meal deal or the blurb on a packet of legal ‘weed’, b-movies so often promise a lot more than they deliver, and their main method of generating sizzle to disguise a lack of steak is a suitably lurid title.

I’ve been interested in cult films for a fair while now and in that time I’ve encountered some truly wonderful movie titles, usually attached to some truly lousy films, and so I thought it’d be fun to put together a list of ten suitably wonderful titles to demonstrate the range of schlock on the market. Obviously everyone’s got their own idea of what makes a cracking movie title and there are doubtless some titles so tasteless, so ridiculous and so obscure that I’ve not encountered them. Still, it’s not like I’m Empire magazine, so I don’t have to be definitive. Oh, and a word before we start – I know that the world of pornography has produced more rancid, hilarious, OTT and tasteless titles than ‘legitimate’ cinema ever could but there’s no fun to be had topping horror movie titles with The Assprentice with Sir Alan Fucker is there? By the way, I just made that one up. Any porn producers reading, I want a cut! Or possibly a role… Anyway, on with the list! And we’ll start at the bottom:

10. Zombie Strippers

The Ronseal of lurid movie titles, as the film does indeed feature strippers who are zombies. Jenna Jameson stars as a Nietzsche-reading pole-dancer who becomes zombified, only to find that wiggling her maggot-ridden backside around earns her (and the club’s seedy owner, played by Robert ‘Freddy Krueger’ England) more money than mortal gyrating ever did. I came away from this film worried that I might be a necrophile, but would sex with a zombie technically count as necrophilia? Hmm… that aside, Zombie Strippers is that rarest of rare beasts: a movie with a lurid title that’s actually well-worth watching. It’s a hoot, plus it’s got a metal soundtrack and a fat, moustachioed comedy Mexican. What’s not to love?!

9. Faster Pussycat…Kill! Kill!

Good old oedipal Russ Meyer. This is probably the most famous of Meyer’s movies, thanks in no small part to its stonking title. Faster Pussycat tells the tale of three ruthless go-go dancers who end up killing a man in a drag race, abducting his girlfriend and then attempting to seduce and fleece a farmhouse of typical dumb hicks. Unusually for Meyer there’s no nudity in this film, but it’s a fun romp nonetheless.

8. Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid!!

Gah, talk about a good title covering a shameful pile of dross. A film so poorly executed, badly written and laughably acted that it barely deserves comment. Two guys decide to break away from the 9-5 world and embark on a cross-country tour, unaware that a fat, ever-silent man has stowed away in their car. Along the way they break wind in restaurants and break up a wedding. Yawn, yawn. Interestingly, IMDB lists the film under the title ‘Zeisters’, which makes me think that crafty Lloyd Kaufmann of Troma just decided to slap this silly title on it in the hope of getting schmucks like me to bite. Your life is perfectly complete without seeing Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid.

7. KISS meets the Phantom of the Park

So KISS, already one of the most OTT rock bands ever to take to the stage, decide to up the ante even further by granting themselves super-powers in a made-for-TV movie from the late ‘70s. So Family Guy already exploited this – so what?! Any film which features Peter Criss blessed with the actual abilities of a cat is worthy of further acclaim. The film concerns an evil scientist who’s created an evil robot version of KISS in order to take revenge on the band for a perceived injustice. The film culminates with a good KISS vs evil KISS brawl on-stage, before a KISS concert is played. Campy? And how! See it and you’ll forgive Gene Simmons that reality series…

6. Horrifing Experiments of SS Last Days

And naturally I follow that with a hearty (sic). This film is more commonly known as either The Beast in Heat or SS Hell Camp and follows the attempts of a Nazi dominatrix in the Ilsa mould to genetically engineer a creature which will, literally, hump Jewish POWs to death. A funny little fellow called Sal Boris plays the horny little goblin and has a whale of a time mugging to camera and wolfing down pubic hair, but the film is hampered by its budgetary constraints and lack of technical expertise. The director, Luigi Batzella, didn’t have enough footage or money to make a complete film, so while the torture scenes all take place within one room, they are bookended with footage spliced in from one of his earlier (and dull as dishwater) war movies. The result isn’t impressive but this is probably the only film of its ilk in existence. By the way, the film is also known as ‘Horrifying Experiments of the SS Last Days’, but the title card reads as I have rendered it above. That should tell you all you need to know.

5. Blacula

Bloodsucka! Deadlier than Dracula! Yes, with the ‘70s came blaxploitation and after the action genre had been done to death, directors turned their attention to other areas, in this case Hammer Horror (God alone knows why…). In 1780, Count Dracula, who turns out to be a racist, places a vampiric curse on an African prince condemning him to immortality in the form of Blacula, who goes on to terrify Los Angeles two centuries on. Blacula is hugely entertaining and blaxploitation aficionados will love it. I’ve never been able to track down a copy of its sequel, Blackenstein, but with a title like that you know it’s got to be worth a look…

4. SS Experiment Camp

“You bastard! What have you done with my balls?!” is probably the best line in this movie, and indeed the best thing about it full stop. An absolute waste of time on all fronts, this film. The plot revolves around a concentration camp commandant who had his testicles bitten off by a Russian POW and seeks to acquire himself a new pair of Nazi knackers. To do this, he enlists some very Italian-looking Aryans to come and stay at his camp to use the female POWs as temporary sperm buckets. One of these hunky guards proves to have the gonads the commandant wants and is relieved of them, apparently without notice, causing the poor eunuch to come crashing in to the commandants office, demanding to know the whereabouts of his manhood. All this sounds entertaining but the film is so dark, grainy, poorly-paced, badly acted and boring that there’s literally no point in putting yourself through the ordeal of watching it. I read a book through the film the first time I saw it; my brother fell asleep. You have been warned.

3. The Black Gestapo

Another film with Nazi themes, although this time with a more unique spin on things. The citizens of a town called Watts are under constant assault from the Mafia and form a people’s army to combat the Mafioso, the titular Black Gestapo. However, a power struggle between the group’s leaders cause one leader to become vilified and attempt to avoid being wasted along with the Mafiosos. Not remarkable as blaxploitation films go but the sight of black fellows in SS garb will linger, and mentioning the title to a film bore at a dinner party will make you seem the wit of the evening. I think…

2. Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler

I wanted to include They Saved Hitler’s Brain on this list but then I read about this lil’ nazisploitation atrocity. As is typical for the genre, this film follows the plight of a Jewish POW who is ensconced in a concentration camp that acts as a bordello for German soldiers. Naturally the film’s choc-full of sex scenes, torture and perverse scientific experiments but the cake has to be taken by a dinner scene in which a pot roast of Semitic foetus is served up. Lovely. I doubt you’ll be able to track this one down but it makes the film Caligula look like Bambi by comparison.

1. Porno Holocaust

Possibly the best movie title ever. Just try and imagine all the possibilities open to a director charged with lensing a project called Porno Holocaust. Oh, and before anyone shouts, this was marketed as a legitimate horror film back in the day, hence its inclusion on this list. How could a project which sounds so very, very promising possibly fail? Sadly, director Joe D’Amato just doesn’t deliver with this sorry cheapie about a group of scientists on an expedition to a tropical island to find out about a monster, which is apparently murdering local fishermen. There’s lots of sex, granted, but it all involves people so unattractive it’s like watching cattle rut and despite the film’s ‘monster’ boasting a third leg which could legitimately support his weight, which he uses as his primary weapon (no double entendres, please), the whole exercise is a fairly pointless, grainy mess. It does star George Eastman from Anthropophagus the Beast, which is a bonus of sorts, but ultimately Porno Holocaust is a title better savoured by the imagination than a film to be watched.

So there we have it. Ten of my favourite movie titles, definitely not ten of my favourite movies. If you know of any better titles which didn’t make my list, do let me know. Happy viewing!