Weird Tales: Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin (Four Square, 1965 / first published 1946)

Though on the face of it this paperback looks to be yet another enticing, horror-adjacent offering from ‘60s New English Library imprint Four Square, readers familiar with Bruce Montgomery aka Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen novels will realise that the publishers have actually been pretty disingenuous in presenting this reprint as a straight Satanic thriller.

As the aforementioned readers will be well aware, the Fen novels are in fact broadly comedic, foregrounding an idiosyncratic campus humour pitched somewhere between P.G. Wodehouse and Bruce Robinson’s ‘Withnail & I’, leavened with cheeky, fourth wall-breaking asides and enough literary/classical in-jokes to make anyone who has not committed Palgrave’s ‘Golden Treasury’ and Bullfinch’s ‘Age of Fable’ to memory feel slightly inadequate as a human being.

Not everyone’s cup of tea, to be sure, but personally I’m happy to indulge Montgomery/Crispin’s whims, and find his books fairly amusing. More-so, I suspect, than the hypothetical 1965 reader who came into this one expecting some serious, Dennis Wheatley type affair, only to find our protagonist, retiring church music composer Geoffrey Vinter, blundering around causing havoc in the sporting goods section of a London department store during the first chapter, as he struggles to obtain the butterfly net which his friend, Oxford literary professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen, has ordered him to bring forthwith the the fictional Devonshire cathedral city of Tolnbridge.

Vinter, it transpires, has been summoned to Tolnbridge to stand in for the cathedral organist, who has been hospitalised after being bashed about the head by unknown assailants. Before he gets there however, we get to share at some length Geoffrey’s dismay at navigating Paddington Station during rush hour, his attempts to buy and imbibe several glasses of beer as he awaits his train, his developing friendship with the hapless shop clerk who has followed him from the department store in search of adventure, and his lengthy and tormented interactions with the other occupants of his train carriage, only a small handful of whom will go on to play any role in the unfolding mystery.

Amidst all this, the fact that several shambolic attempts are made on Geoffrey’s life during his journey thickens the plot, but otherwise scarcely seems worthy of note.

By chapter three (page 31), our man has finally arrived in Tolnbridge, which I take to be modelled to some extent on Montgomery’s adopted home of Totnes, although it differs from that fine town in a number of important details, not least the dominant presence of a cathedral, around which most of the book’s subsequent “action” (if such it may be termed) accumulates.

Significantly, Tolnbridge is also notrorious for “..a frenetic outburst of witch trials in the early seventeenth century, and the equally frenetic outburst of witchcraft and devil-worship which provoked them, and in which several clergy of the diocese were disgracefully involved”;

“‘This was the last part of the country,’ said Fen, “in which the trial and burning of witches went on. Elsewhere it had ceased fifty or sixty years earlier - and then hanging, not burning, had been the normal method of execution. The doings in Tolnbridge stank so that a Royal Commission was sent down to investigate. But when the Bishop Thurston died, the business more of less ceased. One of the last celebrated witch-trials in these islands was the Weir business in Edinburgh; that was in 1670. Tolnbrige continued for forty years after that, into the eighteenth century - the century of Johnson, and Pitt, and the French Revolution. Only a step away from our own times. A depressingly fragile barrier - and human nature doesn’t change much.’”

After arriving at the wrought-iron gates of the clergy-house, Vinter and newfound pal Fielding are introduced to the assortment of ecclesiastical hangers-on who will go on to comprise the story’s pool of suspects (if you don't know difference between a Precentor and a Canon, you’ll be pretty much at sea here). With Fen - effectively the Holmes to Geoffrey’s Watson - stubbornly failing to make an appearance however, there’s little for the pair to do but retreat to the nearest pub - which in this case is the ‘Whale & Compass’ (perhaps based on Totnes’s late lamented Kingsbridge Inn, or so I’d like to imagine).

To cut a long story  short, Gervase Fen eventually makes his appearance a few pints later, on page 58. Each of Crispin’s books seems to feature the detective adopting a new, loud and disruptive hobby, and in ‘Holy Disorders’ he is inexplicably fixated with capturing, and apparently performing unspecified experiments upon, various insects - hence both his demand for a butterfly net and his extended absence during daylight hours. The reason why Fen is residing in Tolnbridge, apparently at the expense of the church, is never sufficiently explained insofar as I recall, but be that as it may - with our sleuth finally accounted for, we can finally get on with the murder mystery component of the novel.

In addition to the fate of the aforementioned organist (who has been poisoned in his hospital bed, following the earlier assault), this comprises a ghoulish and somewhat surreal variation of the Locked Room mystery, in which the widely disliked Precentor, a Dr Butler, is inexplicably crushed beneath the colossal tombstone of ill-regarded medieval luminary St Ephraim - a tragedy which seemingly occurred when all doors to the building were locked, and no one else was inside.

Eccentric though his writing may be in most other respects, Montgomery/Crispin remained staunchly dedicated to the conventions of the old fashioned whodunnit, and as such, much of the text from hereon in is taken up with the gathering and consideration of alibis, methods and motives, all of which is unpacked at a length liable to prove excruciating to readers who are not fans of classic drawing room mysteries, including the provision of both a map of the crime scene and a lengthy suspect-by-suspect recap to help logically-minded readers reach their conclusion prior to what passes for ‘the big reveal’.

Although published in 1946, ‘Holy Disorders’ was evidently written during the war years, which lends an interesting backdrop to proceedings, reminding me somewhat of Powell & Pressburger’s bucolic wartime fantasias (particularly ‘A Canterbury Tale’ (1944)). 

There are frequent references to the war effort, to idle soldiers hanging about hither and yon awaiting orders, and to the latest news from overseas, and it is little surprise therefore that a further quirk is added to the already over-stuffed plot when it is revealed that the powers-that-be have detected illicit radio transmissions emanating from the vicinity of the cathedral, leading the discovery of a radio set hidden in an inaccessible part of the building, and the subsequent assumption that a cabal of Nazi spies must be abroad in sleepy Tolnbridge.

Amidst all this incident meanwhile, there is even room, surprisingly, for a little romance, as Geoffrey Vinter finds himself smitten with the daughter of the ill-fated Precentor - a graceful and demure young lady who, much in the manner of female characters in novels like this one, uncomplainingly acts as den mother and cook to the assorted oddballs hanging around the clergy-house. Like any good ‘Brief Encounter’ era Englishman, Geoffrey delivers his proposal of marriage whilst staring fixedly ahead at a row of radishes. (“Brutish roots,” he reflects, “what do they know of the agonies of a middle-aged bachelor proposing marriage?”)

This whole business is actually surprisingly affecting, forcing us to reflect on the fact that, whilst Edmund Crispin may have adopted the voice of a gout-addled college rector for his writing, Bruce Montgomery was actually only twenty-five years old when he completed this novel, and presumably subject to the same passions as other young men making their way in the world, and what have you.

With the novel’s rambling plotting already so loaded with under-developed tangents, it’s no surprise meanwhile to discover that the Black Mass / devil worship angle - though assuredly present - never amounts to much more than fairly half-hearted diversion. The irony here however is that the brief passages in which Crispin’s writing shifts away from comedy to explore more macabre subject matter are actually extremely effective, evoking an atmosphere worthy of the era’s horror/weird fiction greats;

“They paused by the hollow where the witches had burned. It was overgrown, neglected. Weeds and brambles straggled over it. The iron post stood gaunt against the fading light. They found rings through which the ropes and chains had passed. The air of the place was almost unbearably desolate, but in imagination Geoffrey saw the hillside thronged, above and below, with men and women whose eyes glowed with lust and fright and appalling pleasure at the spectacle to be offered them. […] A woman they had known - a next-door neighbour perhaps - a familiar face now become a mask of fear in whose presence they crossed fingers and muttered the Confiteor. Who next? And in the breast of that woman, what ecstasy of terror or vain repentance or affirmation? What crying to Apollyon and the God of Flies…? It needed little fancifulness to catch the echo of such scenes, even now. And here, they had accumulated - week after week, month after month, year after year, until even the crowds were sick and satiated with the screaming and the smell of burned flesh and hair, and only the necessary officers were present at the ending of these wretches, and the people stayed in their houses, wondering if it would not have been better to face the malignant, tangible living rather than the piled sepulchres of the malignant, intangible dead.”

I mean, you certainly don’t get that sort of thing in the middle of a Jeeves & Wooster.

Thereafter, this sense of a lurking evil underlying the city is given an atavistic twist via an extremely sinister (though underdeveloped) sub-plot which sees Fen interviewing a teenage girl who has been brain-washed through the use of drugs into participating in the Black Mass and carrying out the diabolical whims of her masters.

Sadly, the contemporary Satanic ceremony which Fen and Vinter subsequently manage to infiltrate proves both boring and rather farcical - it seems that the novel’s villains are merely using diabolism as a front for their more legitimately nefarious goals, again for reasons which remain somewhat unclear - but those ‘Witchfinder General’ / ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’ vibes are really nailed down again during a section of the book in which (for reasons which appear entirely superfluous to the central narrative) our heroes are invited to read the long supressed secret diary of seventeenth century witch hunter Bishop Thurston. A section of this diary is reproduced in full, effectively comprising a short-story-within-a-novel, and once again, it is excellent stuff - a nasty little tale with a supernatural twist which could easily have found a home in any given ‘70s horror/ghost story anthology.

More representative of overall tone of the novel however are incidents such as that in which Fen and Vinter encounter a ‘Royal Professor of Mathematics’ who seems intent on reciting the entirety of Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ from memory, only to lose him again a few pages later following yet another visit to the pub, or the chapter which finds the investigators extracting much merriment from a visit to a potential suspect whose home boasts a pet raven resting upon a bust of Pallas above a chamber door, and a wife named Lenore, yet who pleads complete ignorance of the work of Edgar Allan Poe. (“I haven’t much time for verse - he’s good, is he?”)

In conclusion, you might say that, if Montgomery/Crispin had taken a slightly more serious approach to is storytelling there and had engaged more thoroughly with the more macabre elements of his tale, he could have written an absolutely splendid horror novel here. But, I suspect that’s rather like saying that if Noel Coward had ditched all that camp stuff and got a bit more into the rugged outdoors, he could have written a cracking western. 

At the end of the day, the Crispin/Fen novels are what they are. They are entirely reflective of the peculiarities and obsessions of their unconventional creator, but if you can angle your antenna somewhere in the vicinity of his preferred wavelength, they remain thoroughly entertaining, and certainly a little different from anything else you’re liable to find knocking about in your local Oxfam. 

 

Golden Queen’s Commando (Chu Yen-Ping, 1982)

Although I can’t find a way to shoehorn it into any of my existing blog categories, today I’m going to go off-piste to tell you all about ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, a lackadaisical action spectacular from the depths of Taiwan’s b-movie netherworld which charmed and mystified me in equal measure as it unfolded before my sleepy, post-midnight eyes last weekend.

[Quick note: Where possible, I’ve tried to present both the Chinese and English names of cast members when crediting them, but given the extent of misinformation and general obscurity which surrounds the Taiwanese popular film industry, confusion is bound to ensue, so apologies in advance for any mistakes.]

On first glance, ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ seems like a pretty fool-proof proposition: an all-female riff on ‘The Dirty Dozen’, set in war-torn Manchuria circa 1944. Pretty straightforward stuff, you may think, but just try telling that to director Chu Yen-Ping, a man best known in the West for bringing the world the unforgettable, allegedly Triad-financed all-star headfuck Fantasy Mission Force a year later.

Suffice to say, anyone familiar with that film will anticipate trouble brewin’ with this one, and indeed, the same delirious mixture of full-spectrum sloppiness, misplaced ambition, relentless forward momentum and sheer, unadulterated craziness is already in full effect in ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, as Yen-Ping leaves any semblance of real world logic way back in the rear view mirror right from the outset.

As seems fairly sensible, the film begins with a series of short vignettes introducing us to each of our ‘commandos’, illustrating the circumstances which led to them being incarcerated together in what we’re forced to assume must be some kind of hellish, pan-Asian prison camp.

And, boy howdy, what a fantastic line-up of ladies we have to root for here! Much in the spirit of Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s ‘House’ (1977), each of our heroines has a simple, one-personality-trait identity, a distinctive costume, and an easy name to help us remember them.

There’s a tattooed lady wrestler from Inner Mongolia (‘Amazon’, played by Chun-Chun Hsu/Theresa Tsui), a master safecracker and cat burglar (‘Quicksilver’, Hsueh-Fen (Silvia) Peng), and ‘Sugar Plum’ (Joyce H. Cheng), who appears to be some kind of man-eating femme fatale / call girl with a cupid’s bow tattooed on her cheek.

 Even more memorable though is ‘Brandy’ (Hao-Yi (Hilda) Liu), an alcoholic swordswoman who we we initially see debasing herself terribly as she tries to scrounge a drink in a filthy, crowded bar. Once she’s managed to glug down a flask of wine however, it’s ‘Drunken Master’ time, as she is transformed into a fearsome fighter, slicing up her goon-ish tormenters in classic chanbara fashion! Wow!

A somewhat more aesthetically complex creation, ‘Black Cat’ (Hui-Shan Yang / Elsa Yeung) meanwhile boasts a spectacular, period-defying teased hair-do, new wave make-up and ray-bans, as well as wearing an oversized black cross around her neck.

Apparently some kind of Old West-styled outlaw / gambler / preacher(?), Black Cat makes up for the fact she was born forty years too early to audition to play bass in The Gun Club by bringing her own brand of rough, frontier justice to the saloons of old… Asia?

In one of several tributes to ‘For a Few Dollars More’ scattering through ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’, we initially see her calling out some no good varmint who’s unsuccessfully tried to stack a card game against her, blowing him away with a hidden pistol concealed inside a bible.

Eventually emerging as the movie’s Charles Bronson / second-in-command figure, Black Cat is undoubtedly pretty awesome, but when it comes to picking my favourite Golden Queen Commando, she narrowly loses out to ‘Dynamite’, played by Sally Yeh (who went on to star in Tsui Hark’s ‘Peking Opera Blues’ and John Woo’s ‘The Killer’ (both 1986)).

Swaggering across the Tibetan Plateau in hot-pants and a red bandana, Dynamite keeps a lit cigarette permanently dangling from her lips and specialises in – you guessed it – blowing stuff up, sometimes even using an oversized, cartoon-style detonator. (At one point later in the film, Dynamite further cements her infinite coolness by literally bringing a knife to a gunfight, and winning. Too much, man.)

As you can imagine, the various episodes required to introduce us to this mob of ass-kicking oddballs eat up so much screen-time that I was wondering whether there would actually be any time left for them to be assembled into a crack team of commandos and sent on a dangerous mission. Not that I’m complaining you understand - I could happily have watched a few dozen more of these action-packed vengeance vignettes, hit the end credits and headed off to slumberland feeling pretty satisfied.

But, ‘Dirty Dozen’ movie’s gotta do what a ‘Dirty Dozen’ movie’s got to do, and so eventually the aforementioned bad-ass dames find themselves incarcerated together in the aforementioned prison camp, being bossed around by soldiers who, in view of the historical setting, must presumably be Japanese, even though their uniforms and equipment appear to be German. Seriously though, let’s not even go there. They’re just baddies, ok?

Incredibly for a film of this vintage and general type however, the rote ‘Women In Prison’ segment which follows is entirely lacking in the kind of exploitative sadistic / sexual content one would usually expect of such material. In fact, the evil Asian Nazis don’t even so much as leer at any of the attractive women under their command, insofar as I recall. (There is a food fight instead though, if that’s any consolation.)

It’s almost as if Yen-Ping was setting out to make a family friendly movie or something. Albeit, one of those family friendly movies which involve hundreds of people being slaughtered, dismembered body parts flying across the screen and so forth - but still.

Anyway, it is whilst hanging around in this strangely non-threatening prison hell-camp that our heroines first encounter the formidable Brigitte Lin, heading up the cast list as our eye patch-sporting Lee Marvin surrogate, ‘Black Fox’.

“The Black Fox was really hot before the war – her two guns were enough to panic any mobster from Hong Kong to Chicago,” Black Cat helpfully explains. (Yes, there’s both a Black Cat and a Black Fox in this film, get used to it.)

[Hopefully Brigitte Lin will require no introduction for many of this blog’s readers, but given that I rarely cover Chinese-language cinema to any great extent, let’s just say – deep breath – ‘Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain’ (1983), ‘Police Story’ (1985), ‘Peking Opera Blues’ (1986), ‘Dragon Inn’ (1992), ‘The Bride With White Hair’ (1993), ‘Chungking Express’ (1994). You get the idea.]

Masquerading as a fellow inmate, Black Fox undertakes assorted chicanery in order to get our six heroines committed to the prison’s ‘black hole’ punishment room (basically it’s just an empty room with no lights where they hang around together, smoking cigarettes), from whence she orchestrates their escape.

Unfortunately however, the lengthy ‘prison break’ sequence that follows takes place at night, rendering the action largely incomprehensible on the badly degraded print of the film included on Golden Ninja Video’s recent Ninja Vortex compendium of IFD/Joseph Lai related films.

Presumably sourced from a Japanese VHS release if the burned in subs are anything to go by, this sadly seems to represent the only version of this film currently available in any format. Looking on the bright side though, at least it’s widescreen. Given that about 90% of the soundtrack consists of stolen Ennio Morricone music, I’m not really expecting a legit, remastered blu-ray edition to pop up any time soon either, so let’s just be thankful for what we’ve got.

A typically moody nocturnal action shot from the extant print of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’.

So, as you’ll appreciate, I don’t really know how the ladies get out of prison. There seem to be a lot of soldiers being massacred, some jeeps zooming around and some buildings catching fire, but the whys and wherefores are all lost in the tape-sourced murk. Eventually though, they regroup in some kind of hideout which Black Fox has set out for them, where they are – finally! - briefed on the details of the mission they are supposed to carry out.

A spectacularly half-hearted attempt at exposition, this briefing lasts around thirty seconds, accompanied by a single chalkboard map, and basically consists of: “so there’s this underground enemy chemical lab, and some revolutionaries are threatening to unleash a chemical attack, so we get there first and blow it all up before them, any questions?”

Well, ok, how about - whose enemies? What revolutionaries? What the hell is going on here? I seem to recall there was also some reference made to a ‘queen’ at this point, which I suppose goes some way toward addressing this film’s grammatically awkward English title, but… which queen would that be then? I confess, the complex politics of war-time Taiwan and mainland China aren’t exactly my area of expertise, but… on reflection I should stop tormenting myself with these questions and just roll with it really, shouldn’t I?

I mean, I suspect I’ve already put more effort into trying to set the scene for this thing than Yen-Ping ever did, and even if he did deign to address his story’s historical background to some extent, you can be damn sure none of his efforts would have survived IFD’s typically horrendous English dubbing process (and make no mistake, this one is an absolute shocker in that regard).

Anyway, next thing we know, we’re in some dusty rural locale, and our heroines are all riding horses! They all seem to have reclaimed their preferred costumes and weapons from the pre-prison section of the movie, and Brigitte Lin has acquired a big, furry hat which she proceeds to wear through the remainder of the picture, even though the weather looks quite warm.

Meanwhile, someone in the editing room is absolutely caning their old copy of the ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ soundtrack LP, and ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ seems determined to transform itself into a western. There are many bad men on the Commandos’ tail, which we know because we see atmospheric, low angle shots of the black-hatted riders thundering over the camera, wielding flaming torches. Cripes! 

From hereon in, the narrative more or less degenerates into a series of unrelated set pieces with zero connective tissue linking them together. So, at one point, the Commandos enter a forested area, where they all ensnared by a variety of elaborate booby traps, one of which involves Black Fox getting clobbered by a bunch of human skeletons which swing down from the sky (or something).

Unfeasibly, the instigators of these traps turns up to just be a bunch of slobbish militia type dudes. Could they those ‘revolutionaries’ we were just hearing about? I’m not sure, but whoever they are, they’re a fairly good natured bunch, which leads us to our next set piece, wherein they promise our heroines their freedom, provided they can prove their mastery of various disciplines by defeating their captors in a series of challenges involving noodle-eating, beer-drinking, archery etc.

Sadly, whilst all of these hi-jinks are going on, there’s very little time for us to spend getting to know the individual Commandos, which is a shame, because they’re all such outstanding characters I could easily have watched a spin-off solo movie featuring any of them.

There is some rather minimal back-biting / in-fighting along the way, but the chief takeaway from this is simply the realisation that Quicksilver is by far the most annoying member of the group, prefiguring Winona Ryder’s angsty android character from ‘Alien Resurrection’ by several decades as she brings the action grinding to a halt on several occasions in order to start whining about the fact that she’s an orphan and had to make her own way in the world, and so on and so forth.

I mean, I’m sure each of these women has just as much of a hard luck story to tell, but do you see them tearing up and complaining about it every five minutes? Just look at poor Amazon – she’s been snatched away from her prize-fighting career in darkest Mongolia with nothing but an animal skin bikini to her name, and she barely even gets any screen-time. She’s just quietly takin’ care of business, trying to get this action movie / western / whatever thing done, as should you Quicksilver, you ungrateful cow. Just because you’re slightly less cool than the other characters, you think you’ve got a right to monopolise our attention. Go and crack a safe or something, why don’t you!

Sorry, where were we? Oh yes, the next big set piece finds the Commandos holing up in some sand dunes for a showdown with the army of baddies who have been following them – apparently led by the heretofore unmentioned “Flash Harry, the best tracker around”. (“But it can’t be him, he’s in Brazil,” Quicksilver exclaims, inexplicably.)

This sequence soon develops into a seemingly endless series of stylish, low angle shots of silhouetted stuntmen being thrown from their horses in slow mo, as multiple explosive charges set in advance by Dynamite explode around them.

Grabbing these extremely effective pyro / horse stunt shots was presumably a big deal for director Chu, and he seems determined to milk them for as much production value as he possibly can, throwing together what I imagine must have been every single piece of footage shot for these sequences and looping ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ endlessly behind them, creating a slo-mo, cowboy blasting montage which goes on for so long it eventually blurs into complete abstraction, resembling some avant garde / psychedelic re-appropriation of violent western imagery – an impression only intensified by cutaways to close-ups of the warrior women, rocking their assorted early ‘80s fashion statements as they blast away at their attackers with rifles.

After all this, we’re left feeling thoroughly discombobulated as the surviving Commandos (yes, some of them have sadly copped it, but no spoilers here) finally reach their destination, which appears to be a system of caves. Here, after more close-quarters soldier slaughter and more weepy shit from Quicksilver as she finally serves her purpose by cracking the lock on the big, metal door, they infiltrate the “chemical plant”, where…. well… good grief. I think this is where I finally lost it.

Imagine if you will, a cornucopia of bubbling, mad scientist beakers and chemistry equipment, full of wildly coloured liquid, all lorded over by cackling, Nazi-uniformed Asian soldiers. Meanwhile, the room’s big, raised central panel spins around (a common motif in crazy, early’80s Taiwanese films, in my experience), revealing - for some goddamned reason - the guy who was in charge of the prison way back at the start of the movie!

He is enthroned, Blofeld-style, upon a red upholstered armchair, stroking a cat, and is attended by a hefty, Eunuch-like servant wearing a one-piece yellow bodysuit. (Those still determined to wring some real world context out of this nonsense may wish to note that there is kind of white-on-red crescent/bull horns motif going on here, whatever that might imply.)

“I beg of you please, you mustn’t destroy any of this, this is not evil, it is art and science, all those wonderful theories,” the Eunuch guy pleads with the Commandos. “With this, we can take man to a higher level of civilisation, where there is peace, no pain, a paradise beyond dreams,” adds the prison boss/warlord.

“That’s a load of horseshit if ever I heard any,” Black Cat immediately responds, before opening fire and machine-gunning everything to smithereens – which I for one couldn’t help thinking seemed at least a bit premature.

I mean, admittedly, the cackling Nazis and cat-stroking Bond villain are assuredly not good signs, but this man in the yellow seems fairly sincere, at least. And after all, we haven’t actually seen any proof that this outfit are up to no good, have we? Wouldn’t it make sense to wait around and ascertain whether or not they have actually made any discoveries vital to humanity’s future, before going for full-on obliteration?

Well, apparently not. Still determined to turn itself into a western by any means necessary, ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ takes one last deep breath and goes for a kind of Bond movie-ish variation on the ‘Wild Bunch’ ending. Chaos! Blood! Screaming! Slaughter! Will anyone get out alive…?

To find out, you will simply have to commit ninety minutes to watching whatever ragged copy of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ the internet and/or grey market can provide you with. I’m confident you won’t regret it.

Resorting to a tired cooking metaphor (last refuge of the speechless movie reviewer), this film feels as if someone cleared out everything sweet or salty from the kitchen cupboard, mixed it all up in a bowl, and served it up raw for dinner. Crazy, indigestible and quite possibly dangerous to one’s continued well-being it may be… but it’s kind of irresistible too.

Filleting through errant genre tropes like an ADHD-afflicted kid trapped in a comic book archive, it finds Chu Yen-Ping dishing out happy, context free pulp adventure mayhem like the unhinged b-movie savant which for the moment I’m going to assume he is.

Justin Decloux, who compiled and annotated the aforementioned ‘Ninja Vortex’ set from which I sourced my copy of this film, informs us that ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ is “…shockingly coherent for a Yen-Ping production”. Goddamn.

‘Pink Force Commandos’, with most of the same cast and crew, followed in ’83. Wish me luck, I’m going in.

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At the time of writing, a version of ‘Golden Queen’s Commando’ comparable to the one I watched (actually, I think it might be a bit more cropped around the edges, if yr feeling picky) can be enjoyed on Youtube here.

I Want To Live In The Ukraine.

(This is the second blog post in a single day that I've copped from Everett True; he in turn picked it up from Eddie Campbell, of all people.)

So it seems that in The Ukraine recently, they had one those big TV talent contests, rather like the ones I'm led to believe dominate British TV at the moment.

Y'know, a "Ukraine's Got Talent" kinda thing, with hapless rubes seeking fame, millions of people watching the finale, a huge public vote etc etc.

This was the winner:

Breakfast / Ruins

Saw this photo on The Gunslinger this morning, and thought, well hell, this HAS to become the new title picture for this weblog.

It's London, 1940, although I'd prefer to view it as more of a universal image, outside of historical context.

I'll see if I can't knock together a new title-banner-thingy for it as soon as I've got my life & home back in one piece, an internet connection, some time etc.

How sad it is that we don't really have milkmen anymore, as this photo makes me want to raise a toast to their whole noble lineage.