THE NEW AVENGERS: 'THE MIDAS TOUCH'

 

A photo-still depicting Midas in his 'Masque of the Red Death'-lookalike costume from The Midas Touch episode of The New Avengers (© Brian Clemens/Albert Fennell/Robert Fuest/The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises Ltd/London Weekend – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Imagine a young man inoculated with every deadly disease known to humanity in a manner ensuring that he himself is immune to all of them and shows no outward sign of being such a horrific carrier, but also ensuring that anyone who touches or is touched by his bare skin is fated to die within minutes – of everything, suffering from and killed by all of the countless diseases with which the young man has been inoculated.

Imagine, still further, that the diabolical germ-warfare scientist responsible for this heinous feat, a Professor Turner (played by David Swift), is hiring the young man out to the highest bidder, to use him for whatever dreadful, murderous purpose the bidder chooses. In return, Turner is paid in gold – lots and lots of gold, to which he is totally addicted, like a small-screen Auric Goldfinger. The young man therefore serves not only as a veritable Grim Reaper, with his touch of death, but also as a veritable King Midas, with his deadly touch creating gold, literally, for Turner.

Little wonder, then, that Turner has dubbed the young man Midas. And now a princess is about to become the next unsuspecting victim of Midas and Turner – unless Steed, Gambit, and Purdy can stop them!

Yes indeed, this episode – 'The Midas Touch', directed by Robert Fuest – is my all-time favourite from the mid-1970s, 2-series British secret agent TV show The New Avengers, created by Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell, constituting an official direct sequel to the very popular 1960s show The Avengers, creatwd by Sydney Newman, with Patrick MacNee starring as the archetypal super-suave British secret agent John Steed in both of them, but ably assisted in this new incarnation by Purdy (Joanna Lumley) and Gambit (Gareth Hunt).

I watched 'The Midas Touch' on 28 August 2023, for the first time since it was originally screened almost 50 years ago, and it was just as good as I'd remembered. Here's Midas (played by Gilles Millinaire) in his usual form (below) and in his 'Masque of the Red Death'-lookalike costume (above). Vincent Price would have approved, I'm sure.

Click here to watch an excerpt from this episode's opening scene in which Midas makes his deadly debut at a costume party, dressed as the Red Death (inspred by the famous Edgar Allan Poe short story), to plunge his hands into the punch bowl from which all of the guests are innocently imbibing its now-lethal contents.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Midas in his usual form ((© Brian Clemens/Albert Fennell/The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises Ltd/London Weekend – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

ORC WARS (aka DRAGONFYRE)

 

Publicity picture depicting Rusty Joiner as John Norton alongside one of the orcs from Orc Wars (© Kohl Glass/Uncorkd Entertainment/Arrowstorm Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 4 June 2025 was Orc Wars (aka Dragonfyre), a low-budget but very entertaining action/fantasy movie in which the monstrous orcs inhabiting a parallel dimension threaten to invade and conquer our own world via a magical gateway linking the two.

Directed and also co-written by Kohl Glass, and released in 2013 by Arrowstorm Entertainment, Orc Wars features as its lead character a shell-shocked, traumatised American ex-Special Forces operative, John Norton (played by Rusty Joiner), who buys a ranch out in some remote American wilderness many miles from anywhere (the movie is shot on location in Utah) where he hopes to find peace and seclusion. Some hope!

For instead, what he does find is that, firstly, he is in fact the latest in a long line of world sentinels born to guard gateways to eight other parallel worlds that periodically open when our moon and theirs overlap in the sky; and, secondly, one of these gateways, situated inside a cave on his own land and near to his new home, is presently releasing from their world into ours hordes of savage, sword-wielding, arrow-shooting orcs. In addition, they are empowered but also subjugated by an insubstantial, floating witch-like entity, Anathema (great name!), veiled and shrounded in white but irrevocably evil. Anathema is played visually by Samantha Law, but with Clare Grant providing this weird character's ear-piercing, banshee-like shrieks (which occur often, albeit for no apparent reason in most cases!).

Gravity-defying but in grievous need of a manicure, this airborne multi-taloned terror is seeking to capture a fair elven princess named Aleya (played delectably by Masiela Lusha) who has fled into our world to escape Anathema's stiletto-nailed clutches, because the shrieking one plans to sacrifice the regal elf in order to gain supreme power, or something like that. Anyway, the witch has also weaponised a fire-breathing winged dragon of colossal size and seemingly unstoppable power, to add to her planned devastation of our world and ensure that the orcs recapture Aleya.

For his part, Norton can rely only upon three (briefly four) brave helpers. Aleya herself is one, a fairly diminutive but feisty long-eared lady who is immensely skilled as an archer. Another is Katie (Clare Niederpruem), the estate agent who had recently arranged Norton's purchase of the ranch and soon after his moving in there calls around to see how he is settling in, only to become an unwitting but willing – yet tragically short-lived – ally in his bid to conquer the orcs.

Then there is a blind Native American warrior named Whitefeather (Wesley John), whose family was slaughtered by orcs during an earlier incursion into our world when he was a child. Moreover, although sparing his life, they gouged out his eyes. As a result, however, Whitefeather developed mystical powers, not to mention some highly effective martial arts moves, and thereafter, as a means of avenging his family and himself, he devoted his life to helping the then sentinel of the world gate to defend it from invading orcs, before the sentinel was eventually slain by them. So now, Whitefeather has transferred his allegiance to the new sentinel, Norton.

Last but not least is Scooter (Maclain Nelson, who also served as one of this movie's co-producers), a stereotypical good ol' boy from Hicksville. Originally one of three such characters who at the movie's beginning encounter a group of Aleya-seeking orcs, he is the only one to survive that meeting. However, although he may be dumb, Scooter is also heroic and loyal, unlike his two compatriots who were nasty pieces of work (so their respective but equally gory orc-engineered demises are guaranteed not to be grieved about by the film's viewers!).

But can Norton and his small, oddly-matched band of supporters nullify the grandiose schemes of Anathema and a seemingly limitless contingent of ornery orcs? What do you think??

 

The full cover of my official UK DVD of Orc Wars (© Kohl Glass/Uncorkd Entertainment/Arrowstorm Entertainment/High Fliers – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

For a low-budget movie like this one, the orc costumes, especially the facial masks used, are very impressive, and I'm guessing that they may have been inspired by those from Peter Jackson's mega-budget LOTR movie trilogy. Speaking of which, the sentinel's sword is claimed by some reviewers to be a dead ringer for the sword utilised as Sting in this same trilogy. (Quite frankly, however, as I have more to do in my life than spend it conducting pedantic, ultimately unimportant comparisons like this, I cannot pass any opinion regarding such claims.) As for the CGI-rendered flying dragon, this is very well designed, and delivers satisfactorily too, engaging my attention whenever it appears on screen.

Although they all perform their roles well, the cast members are for the most part virtual unknowns. Indeed, prior to this movie I hadn't even heard of or seen anything featuring its lead actor, Rusty Joiner. So I looked him up online, and learnt that he is one of a growing number of former male fashion models who have since moved into the acting profession, including such now-famous screen stars as Channing Tatum, Kellan Lutz, and, perhaps most successfully of all, Mark Wahlberg. Joiner's filmography contains a fair list of film and TV credits from 2004 onwards, with perhaps his most famous role being that of Eddie in Resident Evil: Extinction (though I haven't watched this movie).

In Orc Wars, Joiner plays his Mad Max-like role very serviceably, albeit a tad heavy at times on the taciturn, laconic persona, as he seeks to rescue Aleya specifically and save the world in general, In theory,, Aleya serves as Norton's love interest. but in practice they never even share as much as a kiss – no time for romance when you're decapitating orcs by the dozen, I suppose…

The concept of this movie is potentially interesting – a fantasy world and our real world clashing in open warfare. Yet in spite of their far greater numbers, the sword-slashing, bows-and-arrows brigade of orcs never really stand a chance against Norton and his literal armoury of guns, rifles, pistols, bazookas, grenades, etc etc, all of which have been left behind by his late sentinel predecessor, Indeed, so superior are these weapons to any technology familiar to the orcs in their own world that they consider them to be magical and the sentinels, now including Norton, to be wizards. Needless to say, however, such a mismatched set-up somewhat reduces the suspense and tension that this move's frequent and full-on battle scenes might otherwise have generated.

There is also a highly dramatic event that is frequently shown during this movie but which yields a major plot hole needing to be circumnavigated if attempting to suspend disbelief regarding the movie's storyline. The gateway between the orc world and ours opens briefly whenever our moon and theirs overlap, an event that can be readily seen in our sky, and which culminates in fiery lightning flickering upon their surfaces when the two moons are perfectly aligned. So how come such a readily observable, spectacular astronomical event has never once been documented by any of the countless professional and amateur sky-watchers throughout our world's long history??

Never mind, watching Orc Wars was a fun way to pass 90 minutes or so, which after all is what a movie is all about, or should be. So I'm readily able to recommend it to anyone who can enjoy fantasy without taking it seriously.

 If you would like to watch an official trailer for Orc Wars, please click here to do so on YouTube, where you can also currently watch the entire movie free of charge if you click here.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

A somewhat busy publicity poster for Orc Wars, featuring its alternative title of Dragonfyre (© Kohl Glass/Uncorkd Entertainment/Arrowstorm Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

THE ARTIFICE GIRL

 

Publicity poster for The Artifice Girl (© Franklin Ritch/Paper Street Pictures/Last Resort Ideas/Blood Oath/Tiberius Films/Jack Rabbit Media/XYZ Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

This afternoon, I watched an extraordinary science fiction movie entitled The Artifice Girl.

Directed and written by Franklin Ritch, who also plays its lead human character, and released in 2022 by XYZ Films, The Artifice Girl is all about an incredibly advanced and ultra-realistic yet nonetheless a wholly virtual CGI girl created and named Cherry by troubled computer genius & anonymous online vigilante Gareth (Franklin Ritch, and with Lance Henriksen playing him as an old man) to use as bait (hence this movie's title) for ensnaring vile child predators lurking on social media.

Moreover, once he successfully confirms during interrogation that he himself is not an abuser, by revealing to them the existence of Cherry and her astonishing capabilities, Garth is thereafter assisted in his heroic endeavours by two top-secret American government investigative agents, Deena (Sinda Nichols) and Amos (David Girard).

However, Cherry swiftly and unexpectedly evolves into a super-intelligent, sentient, independent AI entity with a mind and ambitions of her own, which complicates matters very profoundly. So too does Gareth's intensely personal and tragic secret motive that perpetually haunts him and drives him on unceasingly in his determined quest to expose as many paedophiles as possible for the authorities to arrest and imprison.

The film is split into three separate segments, each successive one focusing upon a different, ever more advanced stage in Cherry's development and evolution from sophisticated computer program to self-aware AI being to eventual cyborg.

Although filmed entirely in just a handful of small, sparse sets, The Artifice Girl is absolutely engrossing and fascinating throughout its 93-minute running time. This is due in no small way to the extremely thought-provoking scientific and associated moral issues discussed at length in the gripping, brilliantly-scripted dialogue ricocheting back and forth between the four principal characters, in which not a single word is superfluous.

In addition, young actress Tatum Matthews is truly spellbinding as Cherry (she apparently learned how to talk robotically for this movie by studying the speech patterns of Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa). For even though she is seen merely as a disembodied on-screen talking face for almost the entire movie (only in the final section has Cherry ultimately acquired a physical cyborg body), she always totally dominates the viewer's attention – a major acting career awaits, surely. Incidentally, please rest assured, there is absolutely NO visual representation of any kind of abuse in this film, and only some plot-essential but wholly non-descriptive references within the characters' dialogue.

The Artifice Girl premiered on 23 July 2022, in Canada, at Montreal's 26^th Annual Fantasia International Film Festival, where it won the coveted Gold Audience Award for Best International Feature, but it only received a very limited USA release, in just a few select cinemas, on 1 May 2023. Following this, it has only been available in Video On Demand format, which is a crying shame, as this riveting but little-known, hidden gem of a feature so deserves to be brought to the attention of a much wider audience – hence my reason for reviewing it here on my Shuker In MovieLand blog.

Happily, I was able to watch this film today on Daily Motion's website, and in just three days' time, on Tuesday 22 April 2025, it will be broadcast on British TV, at 9.00 pm on the terrestrial TV channel Film4 (indeed, it was seeing a mention of its upcoming Film4 screening in this weekend's TV guide for next week that brought the movie to my attention, as I'd never previously heard of it). So if you live in the UK, you can view it on there next Tuesday.

But wherever you're based, if you'd like to watch The Artifice Girl online, and free of charge too, please click here to do so on Daily Motion.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

LIKE A BAT OUTTA HELL (aka BAT OUTTA HELL aka NOWHERE ELSE)

 

Publicity poster for Like A Bat Outta Hell (aka Bat Outta Hell aka Nowhere Else (© Danial Donai/Forescene Films/Tricoast Worldwide – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 17 October 2024, my movie watch was the Australian cryptozoology-themed horror film Like A Bat Outta Hell (aka Bat Outta Hell aka Nowhere Else, the last-mentioned being its original title).

Directed and written by Danial Donai, and released in 2013 by Tricoast Worldwide, Like A Bat Outta Hell is all about a team of four young surfing film-makers – Randy (played by Marco Dapper), Jack (Dan Balcaban), Bianca (Rachael Murphy), and Chris (William Wensley) – sent by their bosses/funders into a vast barren region of South Australia's Outback to film a new but unspecified subject; they'll only be told what it is once they reach their remote location. So far, so sinister…

And indeed, one of the four team members, Chris, is secretly serving as an inside man for the team's bosses, so he does know what the subject is that the team is to film – a scientifically-unrecognised form of human-sized carnivorous bat indigenous to this wasteland and exceedingly dangerous, ripping off the faces of human victims. This is why the other three film-makers were not told about it, as they would never have agreed to set out if they had known

 

One of the giant humanoid bats from this movie (© Danial Donai/Forescene Films/Tricoast Worldwide – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But as any clear film footage that proves this mystery beast's reality will net the team's bosses a fortune, they are most anxious for the team to locate and record these monstrous entities, regardless of what terrible fate may await them. The usual mayhem and carnage typically depicted in monster movies like this one duly ensues, but the viewer has to wait an agonisingly long time before some full. clear views of the voracious man-bats (created for the movie via CGI) are finally shown.

They resemble an unsettling hybrid of the giant moths from The Blood Beast Terror and the vampiric Mr Kurt Barlow from the original TV mini-series version of Salem's Lot, but are presented as corporeal cryptids rather than supernatural bloodsuckers or suchlike. Indeed, when the team reach in the afore-mentioned barren Outback a ghost town named Nowhere Else and find it  inhabited by only one elderly man, Simson (Vernon Wells), they also find that he is equipped with some decidedly physical, tangible weaponry and also that he is a closet cryptozoologist, not a private paranormalist.

Moreover, director Donai has stated that he was inspired to write and direct this movie after being informed in the real-life South Australian outback town of Nowhere Else he was visiting that a team of documentary film-makers had lately claimed that while filming in that area they had been attacked by a human-sized bat. Yeah, right – if so, how come the notably rich vein of Australian cryptozoology is entirely dry regarding mystery man-sized Australian bats?

 

Publicity poster for the movie Chiroptera(© Danial Donai/Forescene Films/Tricoast Worldwide – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

After running for 92 minutes, Like A Bat Outta Hell finally reaches an ending but one that comes unexpectedly and is very disappointing, as it provides no resolution whatsoever to the plot. However, in 2019 a much longer version, containing a lot of additional footage, yielding a total running time of 130 mins, was released, and retitled Chiroptera. I have not seen that version, but it apparently includes several fully-shot scenes that were only spoken about in the 2013 movie.

Like A Bat Outta Hell is an interesting but decidedly odd, offbeat flick, and it doesn't even feature a cameo or any song tracks from the now late but always great Meat Loaf. Shame.

Please click here if you'd like to go batty watching an official trailer on YouTube for this movie, or here to watch the entire movie free of charge, again on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Close-up shot of one of the giant humanoid bats from this movie (© Danial Donai/Forescene Films/Tricoast Worldwide – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

"BRING ME THE HEAD OF KING KONG!" - FROM THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING TO A SCOTTISH PANTOMIME?

 

Vintage photograph of a man-made pantomime stage prop in the form of a giant primate head (but NOT derived from a real, dead animal) (public domain/Wikipedia)

Is there a connection between a certain giant movie ape that met its demise atop NYC's Empire State Building and an over-sized primate that appeared on stage in a Scottish pantomime? The visually-striking vintage photograph presented above leads me to suspect that there might indeed be one, as I'll now explain.

Needless to say, had I first chanced upon this picture only quite recently I would probably have simply assumed it to be an AI-generated image and therefore may not have investigated it, as the head is certainly far too big to be from any type of anatomically-feasible primate, even one of the cryptozoological kind.

In reality, however, I first encountered it online some years ago (on Wikipedia, if memory serves me correctly), and its arresting appearance was such that I decided to do whatever I could to identify exactly what it depicted and where it had originated. Here is what I discovered.

As indicated by this present blog article's tongue-in-cheek title, parodying the biblical Salome's imperious demand to King Herod Antipas for John the Baptist's head (served on a platter, which it duly was!), I had initially wondered whether this public-domain photo may have been in some way related to the original, classic King Kong monster movie released by RKO Radio Pictures in spring 1933, directed by Marian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and starring Fay Wray alongside this movie's titular stop-motion mega-star created by celebrated animator Willis H. O'Brien. Perhaps it was a spare giant ape head for close-up shots, or used for publicity purposes?

Although that idea ultimately proved false, I suspect that it nonetheless contains an element of relevance to the latter movie. For what I finally found out was that the object in this photo is actually a gaff, in this instance specifically a stage prop that had featured in a major pantomime performed just a few months after the release of King Kong.

 

Publicity photo-still of American actress Fay Wray promoting the 1933 film King Kong (public domain)

According to an unidentified, tantalizingly-brief newspaper report published on 11 December 1933 that had contained the photo, what it depicts is a 4.5-ft-tall giant ape or monkey head made from cardboard and paper (NOT from the remains of any real, dead animal) that had been specially constructed by a stage props company for a pantomime staged in Glasgow, Scotland, during the winter 1933/34 pantomime season. So it seems possible, even likely, that the prop was inspired by King Kong, which had proved such a massive hit worldwide earlier that very same year, especially as British pantomime tradition is famous for incorporating references to notable news stories that have occurred earlier on during the year in which the pantomime is being staged

Sadly, the newspaper report gave no further details, not even naming the pantomime in question or the theatre where it was staged. According to the Panto Archive website's comprehensive listing of Glasgow pantomime venues and productions (click here to view the entire list), however, the only pantomime staged in Glasgow during the 1933/34 season was 'Babes In The Wood', at the Theatre Royal, and featuring veteran Scottish music-hall comedian Tommy Lorne (1890-1935) as its principal star.

Perhaps, therefore, the giant monkey/ape head had appeared in it in the capacity of a guardian to the babes abandoned in the wood, or possibly as a comic bogeyman-type character. This is only speculation on my part, however, as I have been unable to discover any further information concerning either the head itself or the pantomime in which it appeared, but I did succeed in locating a second newspaper photo of it. Dating from the same period, but this time showing the head of a man inside the prop's gaping mouth and a woman standing alongside it, this second photo can be accessed here. I wonder if this eyecatching effigy still survives somewhere, stored away, perhaps, in the vaults of some theatre or stage props provider?

At any rate, we can all be reassured now by the comforting knowledge that somewhere deep within the cloud-shrouded Skull Island of make-believe movie-land, the real King Kong is still striding majestically through his stop-motion domain with his huge head held high, still firmly attached to his mighty neck and shoulders, whereas, tragically, the same cannot be said for John the Baptist's.

Speaking of Skull Island: be sure to click here to read my review of a more recent King Kong-starring monster movie Kong: Skull Island. Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

An original 1933 publicity poster for King Kong (public domain)