tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-228588112026-04-14T20:48:19.441+01:00"Scraping Along The Bottom!"Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.comBlogger4237125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-57261281547369224702026-04-13T23:17:00.001+01:002026-04-14T06:34:08.409+01:00

Look, the media really do have to stop 'sane washing' Donald Trump.  Lately, I've come across even otherwise sober outlets like The Guardian and the BBC discussing how Trump's erratic behaviour in terms of his foreign policy are down to him employing the 'Madman Strategy'.  The thinking goes that this approach -  which supposedly originated with Richard Nixon - involves

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-56626956776550409102026-04-10T21:01:00.001+01:002026-04-11T00:02:53.884+01:00

Some historical movies really need to run a disclaimer in the opening credits, along the lines of 'any resemblance to historical fact is purely coincidental and completely unintentional on the part of the producers'.  I watched a couple of such movies, both from the sixties, which fell firmly into this category over the Easter weekend.  One was Battle of the Bulge (1965), a war movie

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-17285511747899893332026-04-09T22:36:00.004+01:002026-04-10T00:40:53.468+01:00

Times change.  It occurred to me the other day that, once upon a time, I'd have been all over the coverage of the Artemis II moon mission.  I mean, I go way back with this stuff - when I was a child the Apollo missions dominated the news and fascinated us all.  I remember the anxious days and hours of the Apollo 13 mission, when there was a very real chance that they wouldn't make

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-55974386057869183212026-04-07T22:53:00.006+01:002026-04-08T00:51:57.805+01:00

Death Screams (1982), part of the cycle of slasher movies that followed the success of Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980), certainly gets off to a brisk start, with a pair of young lovers gorily murdered by an unseen assailant before even the opening titles have rolled.  Unfortunately, we then have to wait to virtually the end of the film before we get any more slasher action. 

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-62838701508397709812026-04-06T22:09:00.000+01:002026-04-06T22:09:04.723+01:00

What an Easter!  Every time you think that Trump and his buddies can't possibly do or say anything crazier, well, they just up the ante!  Who'd have thought that we'd ever see the day when a President of the United States would be publicly effing and blinding at the leadership of another sovereign state?  'Open the fuckin' Strait!'  I mean, I know that the US is at war with

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-79529255185799018072026-04-03T20:42:00.004+01:002026-04-03T20:43:35.186+01:00

The Pete Hegseth Story, Episode 241, 'A Crisis of Confidence':   Happy Easter!

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-64504284275923978282026-04-02T21:31:00.001+01:002026-04-08T03:54:35.566+01:00

So, JD Vance thinks that aliens are actually demons, rather than beings from other worlds.  Really?  I mean, is that the best you've got, JD?  With all the shit going down in the world today, (most of it perpetrated by a US administration of which he is part), that's what he spends his time worrying about?  Now, at this point, I could go off into a diatribe about how

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-74410876335726466452026-03-31T22:13:00.004+01:002026-04-01T20:50:29.186+01:00

  Another episode of 'After Hours', my new podcast.   I have to admit that it isn't as polished as I'd hoped, not to mention the fact that it should have seen the light of day at least a week ago, unfortunately, however, everything got delayed by events beyond my control culminating in a family bereavement.  I'm not going to go into further detail, but it all blew off

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-24576594502942884642026-03-30T21:34:00.002+01:002026-03-30T21:34:20.423+01:00

At first I put it down to the clocks having gone forward over the weekend, but no, it turned out that I wasn't sleep addled and misreading the breaking news I had woken up to - the world it seems really has gone mad.  I mean, this morning was already confusing enough as it was - being the start of the Easter break, it meant that the early morning sounds I woke up to didn't sound right. 

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-591672474066398822026-03-27T22:43:00.001+00:002026-03-30T20:28:50.202+01:00

I'm afraid that, right now, I'm running on empty.  I have stuff going on in the real world I have to deal with, so I'm pretty much out of creative inspiration, even if I had time to develop any ideas.  So, rather than skip today's post entirely, I dug this out of an old memory stick - it was the script for what was, essentially, a precursor to my current podcasts, (I actually re-used

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-90720139455321793372026-03-26T21:04:00.001+00:002026-03-27T00:39:51.565+00:00

People worry about AI 'hallucinating' stuff and fabricating completely untrue information, yet we currently have a US president who is apparently hallucinating entire 'peace negotiations' with Iran.  Where are these negotiations taking place, through what channels and who is involved, (bearing in mind that the Trump administration keeps insisting that they've decimated Iran's leadership, it

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-35109727174060707872026-03-25T00:47:00.005+00:002026-03-25T00:47:59.402+00:00

Cannibalism - is that going to be next racist trope peddled by extreme right and their enablers in the British press?  Obviously, they might have missed the boat on that, as cannibalism was always - wrongly - associated with 'darkest' Africa.  Well into the seventies: I well recall seeing as a child all those cartoons in newspapers and comedy sketches on TV involving hapless white

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-15506514624289817682026-03-23T23:31:00.003+00:002026-03-23T23:31:39.833+00:00

Back in the US' bicentennial year, Universal Pictures decided to contribute to the celebrations with a pair of biopics of some of its best remembered stars.  Both Gable and Lombard (1976) and WC Fields and Me (1976) were critically panned and failed to find audiences.  Both have subsequently become very difficult to see.   The WC Fields movie for instance, I recall turning up

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-5882771836879892332026-03-20T23:37:21.270+00:002026-03-20T23:37:21.270+00:00

When, oh when, are large sections of Britain's media going to stop making excuses for Nigel Fartage?  Remember when all those people he went to school with came forward with their stories of how he had racially abused them and taunted others with anti-Semitic taunts?  What was the response of  the likes of the Daily Hate?  'Oh well, he was young and didn't know what he was

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-43407056043539456402026-03-19T23:34:00.000+00:002026-03-20T03:50:17.722+00:00

Despite being made as late as 1956, when nuclear bombs, mutants created by radiation and flying saucers were all the rage for B-movie topics, The Black Sleep is very traditional horror film, harking back to the Universal, or even Monogram, features of the forties.  Which shouldn't be surprising, as it is effectively a vehicle for a number of horror stars from that era and is directed by

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-34071788128436321062026-03-17T22:39:00.000+00:002026-03-18T00:29:33.564+00:00

Another one of those odd incidents of synchronicity we sometimes encounter:  I just started one of my periodic re-rereadings of favourite early Len Deighton novels last night and I wake up today to the news that he had died.  Now, there are those who would try to read something into this coincidence, prattling on about how 'the Universe' or 'fate' was trying to tell me something. 

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-51790046439603581232026-03-16T21:36:00.001+00:002026-03-17T00:31:10.027+00:00

As with all the best bad z-grade movies, a degree of confusion surrounds The Revenge of Dr X (1970).  For one thing, I sat down to watch this thinking that it had been made in the Philippines.  After all, not only did the streaming channel where I watch it list it as such, but the opening credits seemed to confirm this, crediting direction to Eddie Romero, a prolific producer and

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-60335565260262991572026-03-13T23:18:00.000+00:002026-03-13T23:18:01.128+00:00

Could we be about to see a renaissance of traditional porno mags?  I only ask because it seems to me that it is getting ever more difficult to just casually browse porn online, what with all these dodgy age checks and requests for ever-increasing amounts of personal information for verification.  Which is a pity, as online porn was one of the great technological innovations brought to

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-86254229000792220922026-03-12T21:48:00.001+00:002026-03-13T00:18:27.744+00:00

It seems that nowadays nobody believes anything until they've seen it on TV.  Not as a news item, that is, but seen it dramatised with familiar actors playing all of the main participants.  Take the Post Office scandal, for instance, when all those sub-postmasters were wrongly accused of stealing from the Post Office - some even going to jail - due to a fault with an IT system. 

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-10282149225320287002026-03-10T22:03:00.004+00:002026-03-11T01:35:06.948+00:00

Another of those days where I'm left without a clue what to post about.  I'm sure that, yesterday, I had a vague idea as to what I was going to say today, but I've had a lot of distractions since then.  I'll doubtless remember at some point and it will become a future post.  But for now, I'm contemplating the fact that my back aches - I've had a niggling back injury for a couple of

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-48483191288245147172026-03-09T22:47:00.002+00:002026-03-10T00:26:11.158+00:00

It's always tempting to think that all of the developments we see around us, be they in society, technology or politics, for instance, are brand new and unique to our current age.  Yet, surprisingly often, we are jolted by some artefact from the past which reminds us that, in truth, there is nothing new under the sun.  Quite recently, for example, I finally watched the Peter

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-46210984364385114252026-03-06T22:15:00.001+00:002026-03-11T04:48:13.843+00:00

So, just what is the 'Hamasutra'?  It's a word that sprang into my mind the other day for no good reason.  As they sometimes do.  The 'Hamas' bit suggests a connection to the militant Palestinian group of the same name.  You know, the one that is frequently dismissed by politicians as being a terrorist group, yet still enjoys the support of Palestinians in Gaza, despite the

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-69568646973629951922026-03-05T21:51:00.003+00:002026-03-05T21:51:59.076+00:00

The right-wing press in this country really can't help themselves, can they?  If there's any opportunity, no matter how ill advised, to attack a Labour government, they'll seize upon it.  Witness their recent gleeful reporting on Trump's criticisms of Starmer for having actually shown a bit of backbone with regard to Iran - all trumpeted in huge headlines.  Yet, in this instance,

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-76212319907673945952026-03-03T22:05:00.000+00:002026-03-04T03:07:40.420+00:00

For fuck's sake!  Right in the middle of trying to watch something via my Roku box, I suddenly lost my internet connection!  Checking my router, there was clearly no broadband connection. Which meant, of course, that I couldn't use the broadband I pay for (and have just been billed another month for) to check the status of my ISP and find out what the fuck was going on.  I had to

Doc Sleazehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09939793278552442225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22858811.post-42657061995181367412026-03-02T21:50:00.001+00:002026-03-03T01:28:11.441+00:00

The title of this Roger Corman produced and directed AIP cheapie just about sums the movie up, although, to be fair, the sea serpent is the least of their worries, with most of the film's action centring on their conflict with the Grimaults, a savage tribe who take them prisoner.  The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, to give the film its full

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