War Of The Worlds (1938)

Posted on | December 8, 2009 | No Comments

Welles in full flow

Back before I knew what Old Time Radio was, I knew of Orson Welles War of the Worlds. My first exposure to it came when I bought a magazine and on the front cover was a free cassette with the complete WotW radio broadcast. That cassette and magazine has long gone now but with the advent of the internet I was able to find it again. I was able to find decades worth of radio programmes dating right back from the late 1920’s to shows that were broadcast this morning on the BBC.

Back when I first started listening to OTR regularly (about 2000) I downloaded or took part in distributions (snail mail collecting done via Yahoo Groups). I downloaded and collected everything I could get my hands on. So much so that I now have over 600 CD-r’s full of various radio shows. When you consider that the average disk has almost 90 shows each on it, you get a rough idea that I never need download anything ever again and I would be able to listen to several shows a day and never run out. These days I am much more selective about what I download and listen to. I don’t have a great deal of listening time so I need to be sure that what I listen to is quality. I don’t get it right every time but I don’t go far wrong with the staples of OTR. I’ll introduce you to some of them in future articles but for now let’s concentrate on WotW.

In 1938 there was no TV. There was the fledgling radio service and Movies in theatres. Talkies were in so people were getting used to the moving image but it would be the radio that gave people their everyday entertainment.On October 30th (it was a Sunday) people settled down to listen to their radios before the work week began. Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show meaning there were no adverts broadcast during the show. This helped the ensuing panic spread as thier was no identifiable break where the audience would have known it was just a radio play until 2/3rds of the way through when Orson Welles made an announcement.

The script written by Mercury Theatre regular Howard Koch is written in the form of a series on News Flashes starting off with “bright incandescent balls of gas” being seen erupting from Mars to the field reporter, Carl Phillips, at the Martian stand off at Grovers Mill. All of these News Flashes are interspersed with remote broadcasts from local New York venues offering music from the likes of Ramon Rocquello and his Orchestra.

Listening to WotW is an enjoyable hour when taken into context of what it is now… a radio play. What is even more interesting is looking back and realising how scary it must have been for the people of New Jersey who though the little green men were coming to invade. I suggest listening to this in a darkened room with maybe just a candle burning.

You can download a copy of this show by clicking HERE .

Enjoy.

Last House On The Left (2009)

Posted on | December 4, 2009 | No Comments

I know the trend at the moment for Hollywood types is to remake the classics from the last thirty years of genre movies. 90% of the time the remakes are pale imitations of their predecessor. So it was a big surprise to see a movie that took a plot line of a movie and adapt it for an audience of a new generation.

I must say right from the start it has been a long time since I saw the original movie and it is all a bit of a blur. If other on-line reviews are to go by, it’s either a bloody classic that should be required viewing or it’s a garbage bag of a movie that should be avoided at all costs. I have it on order and I will report back in a review of that movie.

In the new version it takes place not in the city but in a small backwoods town. There is no rock concert just a couple of old friends meeting up on the first day of a summer vacation that would change both of their lives.

The cast deliver themselves very well. it’s not a massive cast and the movie doesn’t need a long list of extras. The cast as is fill out the movie and it doesn’t seem lacking.

Sara Paxton as the rather lithe and fit Mari shines in every scene she is in. From the soul searching at the loss of her brother to the brutality of the rape scenes she handles it all rather well. Martha MacIsaac as Paige is great too and the pot smoking scene is the only let down as it just seems bizarre that in the year we are living in that going to a hotel room to smoke pot with a total stranger seems a bot off to me, and then to offer said stranger a girlie makeover is stretching things in my mind. But that is not the fault of the Actors it’s a direction and script problem. That aside everything is tickety boo.

The villains of the movie Krug and gang are Brutal and unrelenting in their nastiness (as they should be). From my limited recollections of the original the two actor who have Played Krug, the modern version played by Garret Dillahunt is the most convincing. He was evil to the core. Not just a bad man but evil. Everything was planned with him. He knew from the moment he walked back into the Motel room that the girls would end up in the shit. You sort of read that from his reaction to them being there. His girlfriend Sadie played by Riki Lindholme is a bitch, right down to stealing the clothes from Mari’s back in the motel scene (it was very reminiscent of the scene in the Rocky Horror Picture Show where Magenta is de-robing Brad and Janet… but I digress). I would class her as a low rent trailer trash Cruella D’Ville and if that was the original aim it worked.

Skipping to the meat and potatoes of any exploitation movie… The Kills.

I won’t say who gets what or how but needless to say that some of the kills are inventive and made some of the people I was watching the movie with squirm a bit…me i just whooped it up, but then again I am like that. The rape scene is uncomfortable to watch and I agree with certain on-line reviews that t went on a little to long…after a while it seemed that the scene was going on just for the sake of making the audience squirm more than necessary.

The revenge aspect of the movie more than makes up for the rape scene, you as the viewer get to share in the parents revenge. It’s like the bastards made me watch the young girl being raped now these two people are gaining revenge for us all. Don’t be mislead in thinking that these two parents are superheroes, they are not and Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn are quite resourceful in their dispatching of the gang. The final scene is one you won’t forget and even though it seems improbable I have read on-line the justification for the scene working… I suspended my disbelief for it to work.

Last House on the Left is a great movie and should be on every horror fans viewing list. If you like movies like The Devils Rejects then you will love this one.

Rating: 4/5

IMDB Entry

Last House On The Left Trailer.