M.NIGHT SHYAMALAN'S FILMS

M.Night Shyamalan's films are Marmite. You either love them or loathe them.

My feelings fluctuate depending on the film and its largely his earlier films that I know, beginning with his famous debut the Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis, which probably everyone on the planet has seen. Hard to believe its only 25 years ago. It seems older than that.

Signs wasn't too bad either, the crop circle suspenser starring Mel Gibson and the Happening starring Mark Wahlberg held great promise, especially the mysterious apocalyptic opening before it became mired in melodrama.

And so to Unbreakable, the Shyamalan super-hero flick featuring Bruce Willis as the eponymous 'unbreakable' super-human The Guardian [I think he's called that]. An unusual super-hero film unlike Marvel or DC's cache of Metas, Unbreakable also introduced us to the 'breakable' Mr. Glass played by Samuel L. Jackson, nearly ten years before he worked with Marvel. Again, all this was nearly 25 years ago.

This week I dipped my toe into Split, a much later effort by the Director and the second part of a super-human trilogy beginning with Unbreakable. Split stars James McAvoy as a person with 23 split personalities [Sybil only had 13!]. 

As I've only seen half an hour of the film so far I've only had the pleasure of about five of them. Mention has already been made of a sacred being and reading up I see its a personality called The Beast. I'll carry on watching tonight as I'm intrigued by the thought that McAvoy physically changes somehow.

Glass is the latest and final part of the Director's super-human trilogy, a film I've yet to see, where all three of his characters come together in one movie.

Have you seen this trilogy and or any of M.Night Shyamalan's films? What do you think readers?

BUCK ROGERS' RING OF SATURN

Ever since I got my copy of the book Comics Collectables and Their Values in the early 1990's I've adored vintage American comic hero rings.

I've been especially in love with the 1946 Buck Rogers Ring of Saturn.

Interestingly, there were three different heroes using this ring with different stone hues as merchandise, the other two being the Shadow and Jack Armstrong.

You can read about them on the Hakes auction site

https://hakes.com/Auction/ItemDetail/225793/JACK-ARMSTRONG-THE-SHADOW-BUCK-ROGERS-GLOW-IN-THE-DARK-PREMIUM-RING-TRIO-WITH-MAILER-BOX-PAPER

Costing a Cosmic Ransom online nowadays and basically practising making rings I began to mess around with some of my late Father in Law's plumbing parts.

And voila! Before I knew it I had my own Saturn rings, gas rings and rocket rings! Well, sort of. See what you think.

I think my personal favourite is this simple blue and red plastic ring.

Have you any super hero or cereal rings?

KEVIN'S SCRATCHBIULT CHIVE

I've made another Herbs TV character, one of the Chives!

Herbidaceous!

Kevin

UK

SCHLEICH!

When it comes to toys, Germany, where we recently visited, is a land of Playmobil, Kinder and Schleich. These brands are massive there.

Always expanding and reaching out, the ever-heavy Schleich now do DC Batman and Joker figures, together with countless fantasy creatures and heroes.

They even have their own kids comic, which includes a collectable figure, like this bio-biollante-esque Dschungel-ungeheuer.

But it's one toy from the Neue Helden line that stopped me in my tracks at a fleamarket, the big white battle elephant.

Large and solid, Schleich's models are always top quality and they've even made an add-on for this one, an intricate Moorish battle platform.

Together they look superb!

Have you any Schleich?

M U T A N T : The Movie

As last night's TV was so mind-numbingly safe and utterly dire I have resorted to You Tube and an old Roger Corman Sci-Fi production called MUTANT, which I've never seen.

Released in 1982, it has to be the biggest pile of derivative tripe I've ever had the dubious pleasure of watching. Mixing ALIEN, Star Wars, The Thing from Another World, some 2001 Space Odyssey score and clumsy sex with the finesse of a Kenwood Chef, it slides along dreadfully like something that has missed the bin and oozes down the wall towards the floor.

The acting is awful, the effects are laughable and the Mutant itself is as scary as a bowl of Reddy Brek. Its only redeeming feature is allowing you to shout at the screen when you spot the brazen rip-offs of costumes and effects from Hollywood's Sci-Fi successes from previous decades.

We see their brand of Stormtrooper and Tuskan Raiders [pictured], ALIEN computer text reflection and many many more laundered parts.

I understand that MUTANT was also known as Forbidden World and Subject 20. It doesn't matter what its called, it's still dross. So much so, I have turned it off three-quarters of the way through! Any more and I may have mutated myself.

Am I being unduly harsh?

have you seen MUTANT readers?

*

Addendum:

Surprisingly, another interesting aspect of this flick particularly for video collectors like me are the various VHS covers for it. Here's a selection highlighting the different covers and names it tormented its hapless viewers with across the world back in the lawless Eighties. Do you recognise them?

and one for Arto, the Finnish cover!

*

POSTSCRIPT:

I mentioned that I might have seen this image before. Well here it is, not quite the same at all! Its Gandalf and Balrog by the Brothers Hildebrandt from a book I had as a teenager.

*

his post was first published in 2016

The X-Files Second Movie: I want To Believe .... but I couldn't!

Recently I watched the first and last X-Files Movies with the Missus.

I've written about the first one already last week, a really brilliant film adaptation of the early series we adored.

The two films couldn't be more different if they tried. The second one was dire!

It's tired, old and bored, a lot like the two main characters, Mulder and Scully.

As far removed from the global alien conspiracy as you can get, this second movie focused on illegal organ transplants. I wouldn't have minded if they were for aliens but the transplanters appeared to be Russian. Is that really the best they could come up with?

Even poor old Billy Connolly looked non-plussed by the whole affair, tearing around on the ice looking for ex- limbs. 

I know early on the X-Files wavered between aliens and monsters and did so quite superbly as a series but this was neither. Not extraterrestrial or monstrous in any way, just deplorable human vice. OK, its a very nasty subject but its not the X-Files.

Admittedly I stopped watching the series about half way, several seasons in in the 90's and have a lot of catching up to do one day - for instance I didn't know that Mulder and Scully had a son called William - so maybe the original X concept had waned as the many seasons rolled on.

Is the second movie representative of later seasons of the X-Files?

I still want to believe!

ANT'S COUSIN, THE M O L A B

And speaking of cool lunar concepts that remained squarely on Earth, here's the ANT's cousin, the MOLAB, one of a number of mobile laboratory designs. 

Do you prefer this style of MOLAB to the one Triang opted for for their SpaceX range? 

The A N T

Check out this amazing old footage of a test run of the real NASA concept vehicle that the Project SWORD Annual called the ANT.

It looks great doesn't it!

What a Century 21 toy it would have made!

 https://youtu.be/44hApNzmS_Q?feature=shared