Escape Into Night (1972)

Escape Into Night (1972)

Dir. Richard Bramall | 6 episodes, approx 25 mins each.

Adapted from British novelist Catherine Storr's Marianne Dreams (1958), Escape is the story of what happens when a young girl's dreams become a kind of second reality for the incapacitated youth.

Marianne (Vikki Chambers) is confined to bed by the family doctor, on account of a cracked leg bone obtained in a riding accident. She's told it may take up to six weeks to heal. The news displeases Marianne, who's normally a very physically active child, so to pass the time she picks up a drawing pad and an old pencil and exercises her imagination.

When she dreams her drawings are brought to life in a peculiar way. She's able to walk around inside and around them. But when the young girl's thoughts become troubled in real life her dream place takes on a similarly dark tone, shaped by her adolescent frustrations and troubled, emotional outpourings.

Real Lies (2006)

Real Lies (2006)

Author + Illustrator: Lee SiYoung  |  Page Count: 230

"I want to share a drink with her at a street bar and talk about life..."

Stylised as ReaLies on the cover but referred to as Real Lies inside, it's a Korean manhua with three short tales about human interaction. It's labelled as Volume 1, but to date there hasn't been a Volume 2, at least not one translated into English.

The first story is the longest of the three, How Martians Conquer the Earth. The title makes it sound straightforward enough, but it's not like that at all. It's really quite unusual and I admit that I didn't grasp all of it until afterwards, when I read the short author's note at the end of the book that clarifies a little of what the aim of the work was.

It's partly because I wasn't yet attuned to Lee SiYoung's methods and partly because those same methods are structurally messy. It's something that's perhaps exacerbated by the translation, but the confusion itself is very much there, in the presentation, in words spoken and even in timing.

Payback Time Triple Feature (2017)

Blind Fury (1989)

Dir. Phillip Noyce

Three movies on one Blu-ray disc. There's no special features, but PQ is decent, at least.

First up is Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury (1989), an American remake of Japanese director Kenji Misumi's Zatoichi Challenged (1967) that somehow isn't as bad as I'd feared it would be.
Rutger was a good choice to play the blind swordsman; his cheesy factor is balanced out by his strength of character and his ability to play it wryly comical when needed.

The plot has the sword-wielding Vietnam vet taking on the role of protector to a kid who's wanted by the one-note villains. It's part escort mission and part revenge drama that descends into something resembling an episode of The A-Team that, for me, worked in its favour because I love The A-Team.

Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos (1986)

Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos (1986)

5 episodes, approx 22 minutes each.

Chuck's cartoon counterpart is a United States government operative who moustaches his way through five chucklesome episodes with the help of his ethnic stereotype Karate Kommandos.

Chuck and his righteous team fight for freedom against the evil Claw, the leader of VULTURE and owner of a dangerous metallic fap hand. I've no idea what VULTURE stands for or if it's even an acronym.

The Claw has his own team of subordinates that he sends into battle against the Kommandos; among them is the awesomely named Super Ninja. Being a villain means he's doomed to never win, but with a name like that he's a winner every day of the week.

It's a good thing that the neckerchiefed hero has "nerves of steel and strength to match," because his recklessness gets him into all kinds of near-death scrapes. And it's because of him that his Kommando friends get into fights, too. Sort your shit out, Chuck. It's also rather worrying that he's a role model who teaches by example but allows a teenager with nunchucks on his team! The kid even gets kidnapped more than once. Sheesh.

Django (1966)

Django (1966)

Dir. Sergio Corbucci

Corbucci's notorious Spaghetti Western is surprisingly less violent than its history of classification in the UK implies, but BBFC decisions being 'partially reactionary' shouldn't really be news to anyone, right?

Franco Nero is the charismatic anti-hero dressed in black coat and hat, dragging a full-sized coffin behind him. The mysterious figure and his deathly cargo arrive in a mostly abandoned town that's under siege from a gang of Mexican bandits and a racist ex-Civil War Confederate Major (Eduardo Fajardo) who kills Mexicans for sport, a situation that was no doubt inspired by Yojimbo (1961).

Django stands up for the abused when it suits him, including coming to the aid of a beautiful prostitute named Maria (Loredana Nusciak).

Supernatural: Season 01 (2006)

Supernatural: Season 01 (2006)

22 episodes, approx 42 mins each

The excellent pilot episode kicks off with an unforgettably dramatic event that sets a precedent for the whole season to follow.

It effectively lays the groundwork for an intriguing story arc that resurfaces from time to time - in about 8 of the 22 episodes.

It could be argued that its influence is ever-present because it's the reason that the Winchester family are driven to do what they do (i.e. battle supernatural forces, hunt and kill demons, banish evil spirits, etc), but in reality it gets pushed so far into the background that it's often forgotten about.

Even Ep 02 is a disappointing drop in quality, chiefly little more than another X-Files clone but with male leads that can actually act.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Hive (2013)

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Hive (2013)

Authors: Brannon Braga (story) / Terry Matalas + Travis Fickett (script)  |  Artist: Joe Corroney | Page Count: 104

"The last world of the old Federation fell over a century ago. Resistance was futile."

That's quite the cover art: the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E, Borg cubes, Borg spheres, Borg drones, the Borg Queen, Seven of Nine, Locutus of Borg and Captain Picard arranged like a first year art student's scrap book. Something tells me it might be a Borg story.

It also suggests that what's inside is either very exciting or a desperate 'all eggs in one basket' bullshit ploy.

With expectations set for the latter, I discovered that it's really neither. It's standard non-cannon comic book nonsense that's set sometime after the end of TNG's Nemesis (2002) film and the Voyager TV series.

Jean-Luc Picard is still captain of the Federation's flagship, but he has a new number one because Riker is off being beardy and smug on the Luna-class USS Titan.