Stuart Millard's Blog, page 6

Prank You Very Much: Noel’s Christmas Presents

…

This video first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could watch it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my podcast and videos, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s over 660,000 words of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Hardman Humbug: A Kempmas Carol

…

This video first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could watch it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my podcast and videos, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s over 660,000 words of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Roland Rat: The Series

In the pantheon of British puppets, wretched Orville aside, Roland Rat’s the one I’ve got the least affection for, with an entire routine consisting of “I’m a world famous superstar, yeeeeah!” Created by the man who does the voice and sticks his hand up there, David Claridge, Roland’s personality was expanded on by writers Colin Bostock-Smith and Richard Curtis — adding to the latter’s extensive rap-sheet — before debuting on TV-am on good Friday 1983. Initially conceived to entertain young viewers during school holidays, within two months of his first appearance on a dying show, TV-am‘s audience had skyrocketed from 100k to 1.8m. The reputation as saviour of breakfast television earned Roland a much greater life span than that of the average rat, still making occasional appearances today.

But it’s the eighties where he truly thrived, a multi-media celebrity with legion television shows, three separate runs in the pop charts, and his own video game. Those days, the biggest validation of success was ‘do impressionists do them?’ and indeed, every comic had a “Eeeeeh, rat fans!” in their arsenal. But let’s not pretend otherwise; Roland was a real Poochie, with a cool denim jacket, sunglasses, and most importantly, some serious attitude — or rather, rattitude. His entire personality amounted to “I’m famous and brilliant!” which appealed to kids because most similarly think that they’re both. I certainly did in 1985, the year Roland transferred to the BBC, in the rare high profile poaching of a puppet. It’s here Roland Rat would leave early mornings to front his own show, Roland Rat: The Series.

Going out at 5:20pm of a Saturday night on BBC 1, it’s the old ‘chat show and its backstage antics’ format. In a gag which dates weirdly, the series purports to broadcast on Roland’s personal channel, BBC 3, mocked up indents an’ all. More and more with period shows, I can’t stop thinking about the evolutionary process of culture. For example, how would you go about making a period film noticeably set in 2005, and not 2015 or even 2025, besides just putting flip-phones in people’s hands? The cultural gulf in the twenty years between, say, 1982 and 2002 is vast, but it’s as though everyone spent the next two decades arguing so much on the internet, they forgot to come up with new fashion. There’s no such issue with the 1980s, the most visually identifiable ten-year period, and Roland Rat: The Series wears its date in every frame; in every line of dialogue and celebrity guest. The very first image in episode one, from 6th September 1986, is Roland being stroked by Samantha Fox.

The opening theme’s by Stock Aitken Waterman, heavy with era-compliant sa-sa-samples of Roland — “going un-un-underground! I’m fresh-fresh!” We’re in the Rat Cave, a high-tech base in the sewers beneath King’s Cross, and everything’s scored by a laugh track from an audience of scarf and flag waving kids and whichever adults got talked into taking them. Alongside Roland, it’s a large puppet ensemble, with Kevin the highly strung hamster (always needing a nervous piss), Roland’s little brother Reggie, girlfriend Glenis the Guinea pig and pet flea Colin, plus Errol the Welsh hamster and Fergie the Scottish ferret — the CU Jimmy kind of Scottish; Tam O’ Shanter and calling everyone Jimmy. There’s also a pair of flesh and blood characters, with Roland’s put-upon secretary, Maureen, played by Olive from On The Buses, who must feel right at home, glasses held together with tape and repeatedly told she’s got a face like the back of a bus. Most week’s plots revolve around the get-rich-quick schemes of Darcey De-Farcey (James Saxon), head of light entertainment, who calls Roland ‘Reynard’, and has an obvious toupee balanced on his bonce.

Chat show bits see Roland behind a desk for the full Johnny Carson, while each ep’s introed and outroed by a celebrity VT; names like Parsons, Blackburn, Floella Benjamin, Patrick Moore, and Rene off ‘Allo ‘Allo. One has Colin Baker in full Who gear, as the show will be followed by Trial of a Time Lord Part II, and then The Noel Edmonds Late Late Breakfast Show. Guests don’t get much to do; the ones that are actually there, and not big celebrity names like Stallone, whose appearance is built up all show before being replaced by Darcy dressed as Rambo. Thatcher turns out to be Steve Nallon, receiving a genuinely interesting mix of cheers and boos from the young audience, and with a good line in “even though I laugh at the Two Ronnies, I often wonder, could one Ronnie do the job just as well?”

Celebrities mostly cameo in Roland’s film parody sketches, with Brian Blessed (“Mr. Bless-This-House”) in A Tale of Two Cities where he’s accidentally decapitated by a prop guillotine, in a moment I can’t believe didn’t cause half the chaos of Paul Daniels’s death hoax. Wendy Richard observes an EastEnders sketch, while castmate Ross Davidson does a Bridge on the River Kwai, where a tashless young Boycie shows up. Wonder if he ever shared Roland’s rapping with his mate Ice T? Frank Carson does a turn with a false beard and silver-sprayed paper plate strapped to his head as dentist Hans Q. Crackenspiner, in an episode where Roland’s got toothache, and couldn’t find a cheap dentist in Harley Street because “it’s like a Bedouin encampment round there, nobody speaks English!” Alright, Laurence Fox!

Occasional Rat Fan Reports connect Roland with his fans, like a phone-call to a lad linked up via a camera in his bedroom. The boy’s questions are every bit as weird as a Saturday morning phone-in — “Do you like swimming? Do you believe in horoscopes?” — but he seems to answer Roland a bit too quickly for a satellite link, almost talking over him, and the cynic in me wonders if they’ve not just built a bedroom set next door. Sure enough, later in the show, freeze framing a fleeting shot of the audience confirms the boy’s sat there applauding. Scrap the licence fee! Other fan questions include “what is your favourite holiday resort?” and “does Darcy make much money?” from a pair of brothers, and a 14-year-old girl who enquires “how often do you have a bath?” Roland gives her a prize before asking for “a quick smacker on the lips,” telling the studio audience “a very attractive rat fan, there.” It’s not too late to get Yewtreed, you know.

So childish and lacking in any content, with modern eyes it’s amazing to think of this going out on Saturday evenings, but evidently the series coasted by on the popularity of its star, plus the big name bands it managed to land. Each week has a musical performance, ‘live’ in the lip-synced 80’s sense of the word, by musicians like Ultravox, Howard Jones, Nick Kershaw, Curiosity Killed the Cat, Swing Out Sister, Dead or Alive, The Stranglers, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Amazulu. A real Now That’s What I Call Music roster, the bands make strange bedfellows with near-weekly performances by Roland and his mates.

Music was a huge part of the Rat brand, releasing a number of singles and albums during his peak, and reaching a high of #14 in the charts with 1983’s Rat Rapping. Such was ratmania, even Kevin broke the Top 50 with a cover of Summer Holiday. Second album, Living Legend, was comprised of songs — courtesy Stock Aitken Waterman — performed on the series, along with the theme and a cover of Bowie’s Fame, and consequently giving the feel of a advert whenever they pop up in-show. During episode one’s rap, there’s a momentary shot of full-length Roland stood in silhouette, which isn’t quite as scary as bipedal Cuddles, but unsettling all the same — “Listen to the rat, I’m Mister Cool, I’m a rapping superstar, I’m no fool…” In backing dancers The Sewer Sensations, they’ve got their own Pan’s People, just as raunchy and straight-faced as if on TOTP or Summertime Special, even while high-kicking their way through a felt gerbil’s love song to a human dinner lady.

Other songs include Roland’s rap about living underground; a Fergie the Ferret number where he rhymes losers and boozers with troosers; and Glenis with the country and western A Guinea Pig in Love, singing of the children she and Roland will have someday, forcing you to imagine the pair of them at it. Even Darcy gets one; a calypso about being bald — “let’s all sing the hair loss song, come on boys and girls and sing along!” I’d like to imagine Willie Thorne starting each day with a bracing chorus in the mirror of “lyrics to songs don’t mean a thing, as long as you’re bald, the phone will always ring!” They’re mostly forgettable, barring Colin the Flea, rapping poolside in a pitch-shifted squeak “I’ve got a computer and a BMX bike, I can sit on the saddle whenever I like.” As far as earworms go, they’ve got a fucking savage one here, and “I’m a parasite in paradise, I’m the envy of all other lice” will be going round my skull for months.

Roland Rat: The Series is very thin gruel indeed, having to watch a full 13-episode run just to dredge up enough worth talking about, so it’s a blessed relief when frequent topic on these pages, Uri Geller, walks out as a guest. Judging by his tweets about the authenticity of alien fannies, he probably thinks Roland and co are real, and right before his entrance, Roland makes a — unrelated, I’m sure — comment about a hatred for people who exploit dumb animals. Uri, jeans hiked above his belly button, is asked to explain his “psychotic powers,” which he reckons we all have within us; “I just have it a little stronger than others.”

Skirting Roland’s challenge to bend a massive ladle, he does the old ‘moving a compass needle.’ I quite admire the way Uri co-opted panto into his routines, getting the audience at home to help by concentrating our minds. Needle moving just a little the first time, this is the classic light entertainment compare; the old rule of three “Good evening everybody! I said, good evening everybody! We can do better than that. GOOD EVENING, EVERYBODY!” but as telekinesis. Come on, Roland, you really have to want it! This big rat, the studio audience, the audience at home; men 37 years in the future watching this for a Patreon instead of kissing ladies or doing wheelies on a motorbike; you must believe!

The second time, the needle does visibly move, to audible gasps and audience murmuring, as Uri assures us, without prompting, there’s nothing in his hair, mouth, ears or fingers. Although suspiciously, as he told us himself, it only works when he leans right over it, but “it’s not a magnetic force that moves the needle… it’s some kind of an unusual power.” I’m sure he’s telling the truth, using his mind and not just a magnet inside his shirt. Uri seems confused at Roland’s question to whether he’s got fleas, and sadly we don’t get to see his face as Roland informs him his pet flea will now be singing a song.

Later, Roland shows off Uri’s book, The Geller Effect, before Uri begins gently stroking a handful of radish seeds from a sealed packet while imploring them to grow. A tiny white sprout emerges, in a display Roland dubs “telepathetic,” and I’m suddenly aware I’m watching a man fingering seeds to impress a puppet. There are other, briefly enjoyable appearances, like Tim Brooke-Taylor having a pixie picnic, Alexi Sayle doing his shouty shtick as Darcy’s long lost brother, Luigi ‘Madman’ Marcello, and Stanley Unwin confounding everyone with Unwinese. Getting famous was easier back then, you just had to devise your own gibberish language then do guest spots where nobody knew what the fuck you were talking about, before toddling off with a cheery “goodly byelode!”

Episode seven’s got a Scottish theme, with an intro by Lulu, and a set filled with wriggling haggises, Scottish flags, tartan and sporrans, like Russ Abbot’s gooncave. Och Aye the Noo count for this 25-minutes: a rather sparse three. The following week, airing before Halloween, is a horror special, where Richard O’Brien gets covered in a mountain of crisps, and a ghostly arm reaching round the set making spooky noises reveals itself to be Gary Wilmot, in the midst of a Brucie — “alright my loves? Nice to scare you, to scare you, nice!” Roland greets him with “hello, it’s Lenny Henry.” Later, a ghost runs on under a black sheet, its ghoulish howls of “Ooooh! Ooooh!” turning into “Oooh, Betty!” as underneath is Wilmot in a beret. “My cat’s just done a whoopsie!” He’s eventually removed by literal men in white coats, dragged offstage while screaming “Mr. Grimsdale! Mr. Grimsdale!”

The horror special’s one of the rare television shows to feature puppets holding a séance, although every episode’s made frightening with the presence of Errol the hamster. The human-sized head; black eyes with white irises as though trying to hypnotise you; creepy sod looks like he should be popping up over someone’s shoulder in Insidious. Another week’s guest is allegedly Sir Robin Day, heard only via an impression from behind a toilet door, accusing an eagle puppet of doing a very smelly poo in the next cubicle. Later, it’s John Hurt, Alec Guinness, Russell Harty, Roger Moore, and then Connery. A first in all my years of covering impressionists, they just do him as a regular Scottish accent, not bothering at all with any of the “sscchh” noises. Extraordinary. Imagine how spectacularly awful these voices are that I’m still shocked when it turns out to be Rory Bremner, resembling a ten-stone Sid Justice.

The two main veins of humour here are mispronouncing famous people’s names — Vincent Price-is-Right; Sir John Feelgood; William Shakin’Spear — and farts, with Roland’s little brother Reggie forever rearing up into frame to let off a rippling parp. In one intro, Roland promises a “brill, ace and skill show,” but it’s Darcy who’s unintentionally closer to the truth. “Have we got a show lined up for you? No we haven’t, we’ve got a right load of old drivel!” You’re lucky to go thirty seconds without a puppet peeking round a corner to deliver a shite joke. Even the catchphrase Roland makes his audience shout in unison at the end of each episode is a dreadfully uninspired “yeaaa!” What with the celebrity/puppet interactions, and the mix of behind/front of camera stuff, it feels like a very poor imitation of the Muppets, but at least it’s not yet been rebooted with Ricky Gervais as the baddie.

Series closer makes for the most fitting statement on how terribly Roland Rat has aged, outside the bubble of its contemporary popularity. Focussing on Roland’s upcoming nuptials after accidentally proposing to Glenis, he’s unable to wriggle out of it, culminating in a top-hatted rat waiting at the altar, thinking to himself “goodbye freedom… I’ll be stuck with her for the rest of my life.” In a last second gasp, when it gets to the bit where any persons who know such cause “why this rat and this Guinea pig should not be joined together” must speak up now, the church door bursts open. Take a guess at who stops the wedding. Another puppet? A weasel or something? It couldn’t be — surely couldn’t be — Gary Glitter, could it?! It is. King of Beasts himself.

Gary Glitter storms into God’s house, demanding “stop this wedding! I can’t allow this to go on, I’m in love with this guinea pig and she’s in love with me!” Romantic music builds, as Glenis declares that she is his. “Then come, my angel,” says Glitter, “and let us go,” and the rodent runs towards the paed in Vaseline-lensed slow motion. Given she only comes up to his waist, it makes for a disturbing visual, like Gal’s swanning out with a child bride. But in a post-credit twist, Roland paid Gary Glitter to ruin the wedding, so he could fall into the arms of his one true love, Samantha Fox. The bleedin’ eighties, eh?

…

This piece first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could read it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my videos, my podcast, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s a ton of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Millard’s Halloween Fright Bag II

…

This video first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could watch it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my podcast and videos, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s over 660,000 words of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Have They Been Here Before? – Celebrity Reincarnation

…

This video first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could watch it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my podcast and videos, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s over 660,000 words of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Walker Does Halloween

Since last we sampled Walker, Texas Ranger, it’s become another series, along with McGyver and Magnum P.I. that nobody knows nor cares has been on air for ages as a modern reboot. But in the original, we learned that Chuck Norris really loves Jesus, so it seems like the last show to be hurling its audience into the pagan sin-pit of a Halloween special. However, Walker‘s moralistic world of conservative religion is surprisingly laissez-faire with supernatural elements, with various episodes about telekinetic boys, reincarnated Buddhist monks, and even UFOs. As one features an angel issuing direct orders from God to stop all gang violence, it was only a matter of time before my pal the Devil got involved.

The Children of Halloween came on the night of October 31st 1998; a true Halloween special. Even as early as the late nineties, Chuck’s looking very face-lifty, with teeth like expensive crockery, and a beard which seems airbrushed. The cold open has him take down baddies in gorilla masks shooting up a pawn shop with Uzis, before a shot of a moon above a graveyard, at what a spooky font informs us is Halloween night. Down in a crypt, scared kids huddle in the corner as a black-robed figure with echo effects on his voice informs them “time to die!” A woman’s gagged and tied to an altar, in a faun-coloured top I briefly confused for nudity on Walker, Texas Ranger.

Flash back to one week earlier, at Thunder Karate dojo; presumably where every person in town learned how to roundhouse; for a long montage of children kicking and blocking, clean-cut sensei nodding approvingly, to the applause of wholesome parents with their shirts tucked in. Not just trying to convert viewers to Christianity, Chuck’s clearly evangelising for karate too, and if only everyone would get in their PJs and start breaking very thin bits of wood, all the world’s problems could be over! Case in point, the transformation of young Joey; parents thanking sensei for encouraging the little tyke to keep his room clean. It’d be a real shame if Joey was kidnapped by a Satanic cult.

After celebratory pizza with his karate mates, Joey’s lured by children’s voices crying for help into an abandoned warehouse with a pentagram on the floor. One chloroform rag to the gob later, he’s bundled into a red van. Our villain, believing himself to be the son of Satan, is literally named Lucifer, and Walker takes its definition of Satanism straight from the Satanic Panic; experts with occult knowledge gleaned from a single issue of Shiver and Shake. The baddies all have leather jackets, and a cop who’s dealt with Satanists before confirms “they mutilate animals, vandalise graves, churches.”

The episode’s interesting, because the theme of a Satanic cult kidnapping children — if not for one brave Consecutive in a cowboy hat — would become the mainstream conspiracy theory de jour 25 years later. I covered the Satanic Panic in a video both YouTube and Vimeo banned, and Walker‘s portrayal of Satanism is right in line with both those 80’s ‘experts’ and modern QAnon. Lucifer’s in a skull belt and lovely (if evilly-coloured) black sweater, with classic heathen wrong’un eye-liner, nail varnish and long hair. With a hot goth girlfriend accomplice in a netted top, he’s living the (my) dream! As you’d expect with Walker, Wiki page of the actor portraying Lucifer, Erik Dellums, confirms he’s since earned a regular spot on Fox News through his anti-Obama blog posts.

With Joey missing, Chuck corrals a posse of parents to search the town with torches, in one of many obvious day-for-night scenes, shot at lunchtime but tinted blue with the contrast way down. Chuck immediately wanders into the warehouse, finding Joey’s gi on the floor and spotting the pentagram — “call the FBI.” Then more kids are lifted from their own front yards, leaving nothing behind but pentagrams daubed on fences and garage doors. A tiny subplot takes us to the Dallas Hope Centre (Help Our People Excel); a group home for troubled teens, where a girl named Melissa in a big 90’s hat is caught by a grown-up just considering reaching into a wallet with notes poking out of it. She too, will end up getting snatched, along with the grown-up, who’s the bound and gagged (but not nude) lady, thanks to these long-running episodic shows needing every little background-character-of-the-week to have their own tiny arc.

Seeking answers, Chuck visits a store whose sign is a cauldron with YE OLDE MAGICK SHOPPE on it, in a rough part of town where bikers in bandanas sit nearby astride their hogs. Inside is beautiful ‘occult episode’ set design, with plastic skulls, a beaded curtain, and a lava lamp (still boxed), while the sexy Wiccan shopkeep (Downdown Julie Brown) gets saucy sax as she descends a spiral stair. After Chuck (or rather, one of his egregiously obvious stunt doubles) roundhouses some “nutjob” customers — mohawked punks in leather jackets — Brown describes a certain Lucifer, who purchased a book titled Secret Satanic Rituals off her a few weeks ago. His address? 2727 Mockingbird Drive, which for all its Munsters spookiness, is a shithole in the middle of nowhere, walls plastered in black magic posters and graffiti reading COME DIE WITH ME, and booby-trapped with a bomb which sends Chuck and his deputy flying through the window. “Ooh, that was close,” says the deputy. “Too close,” replies Chuck. Reading aloud from his book, Chuck realises Lucifer’s plan is a ritual of ascension, opening Hell with a blood sacrifice to his dad, the Devil, which is why he needs the kids. “Sacrifice must take place in a cemetery at exactly midnight on Halloween” — that’s tonight! Note that Chuck’s ranger badge is identical to the satanic symbol on the cover.

After a brief roundhouse-heavy stop-off to a biker strip bar called Hell’s Belle’s, where the sole dancer’s in a bikini, Lucifer’s tracked down to an “old farmhouse” ten miles outside of Denton, which is where the Von Erichs lived. After sacrificing a goat with a hearty “Hail Satan!” it’s now end game at the cemetery, Lucifer ordering hooded disciples to “bring the children!” As he’s about to plunge a knife right betwixt the lady’s milkers, (someone dressed as) Chuck runs in with a flying kick. The graveyard goon-fight feels like your crush doing fire poi on the beach, with Satanic bad guys swinging flaming torches and getting wiped out by backhanders. Chuck straight-up pulls a gun on Lucifer, who claims he can’t be killed, but it turns out even the Devil Jr isn’t immune to the power of a roundhouse kick. In the process, he accidentally stabs himself, and as goth gf weeps, he dies against a tombstone, with flickery-flames editing and a sinister laugh suggesting he’s gone to Hell. Back at the dojo, sensei whitebread introduces the class to newest student, Big Hat Melissa, and has Joey “take her to the back and work with her on the proper method of punching.” Meanwhile, Chuck’s at a bar with Wiccan Lady, politely informing her the love spells didn’t work. She calls him “handsome” and plants a kiss, no doubt sad he won’t be roundhousing her right in the fanny.

One of Walker‘s most overtly supernatural hours came on November 4th 1995, a date which pegs Evil in the Night as a de-facto Halloween episode, and it’s set the week-of, with pumpkin bunting set-design, and orange and black garlands hanging from the ceiling in Chuck’s office; a spooky-season extravagance I certainly didn’t expect from such a man of God. Cold open has a horse sent mad by a falcon that won’t stop staring at it; Chuck watching from the porch as an ill-wind ruffles his lovely fudge-coloured mullet, as through judicious editing of head-bobs, the falcon appears to be hypnotising the horse. Chuck soothes the beast, then basically gets in a staring contest with a bird, and when it does an aggressive fly-past, Chuck has a quick vision of a Native American man’s face.

Down at his feet, a black feather. Lightning strikes; a falcon passes the moon, above a taped-off hole in a building site, where teens in tie-dye dare each other to break in — “you’re not gonna wimp out on me now?” We’ve all done it, haven’t we? Mucked about in an Indian burial ground with actual skulls sticking out of the dirt, and pranking our mates with a skeletal hand, before a ghostly falcon transforms itself into a medicine man right before our eyes? Yes, Evil in the Night is notable for an early onscreen portrayal of a Skinwalker, played here by villain in a thousand B-Movies, Billy Drago. Drago teleports around the freaked-out hooligans before using a chant to raise Native American ghosts; proper translucent ones; even with a skeleton face like when they open the ark, for a whole four frames.

The boys’ bodies are found the next morning, literally scared to death, with sole witness an elderly security guard who’s talking a load of old willy about a fella with dead eyes and a load of ghosts. Ship him off to a home, the mad old duffer! But hold on; Chuck’s not so quick to disbelieve, and spots another black feather stuck to the fence. A fat-cat councilman from city hall’s pissed at Chuck for not solving the case, costing the city a fortune by holding up construction, in a scene featuring the amazing line “these rumours about killer ghosts already have the public worried, the press is gonna have a field day!”

The site foreman was found dead a fortnight ago, electrocuted in his bath after digging up the bones, and now the Skinwalker’s scaring an architect to death in his own office! Coincidentally, Chuck and his deputy arrive just in time to hear his final screams. At least, that’s how most shows would’ve done it; only finding the mysterious aftermath, leaving but a tantalising hint of evidence right before the credits, for a “ghosts aren’t real… or are they?!” But this is Walker, and they open the door to catch ghosts flying round, dragging the architect through the air by his tie like the Scoleri Brothers. After shooting the tie and saving him, Chuck Norris’s acting of seeing real proper ghosts try to kill a man registers on his face like he’s just opened a fridge to see some milk in there. “What was that?” asks the deputy. “Bad medicine,” says Chuck, “real bad.”

Chuck’s half-Cherokee in real life, which is often a plot point in the series, as it is here, visiting his mate White Eagle who senses “there is sorrow in your heart and worry in your eyes.” Imagine if he could convey some of that onscreen. Chuck shows him the black feather, which White Eagle confirms are from a witch who can turn into a raven. Despite this line, and the fact the dropped feathers are all jet black, the bird is very clearly a falcon. Was it written as a raven but they could only wrangle a falcon on the day of shooting? Why not change one word in the script? Warned he’ll die against a Skinwalker, there’s a montage of shirtless Chuck sat in a sweat lodge, with our man looking the most Canon-era Chuck Norris yet. Blessed by the tribe, White Eagle’s words echo in his head like Obi Wan’s when Luke’s flying down the trench, as he almost crashes his truck swerving to avoid Billy Drago stood in the road.

Shit gets wilder, as the crooked councilman who covered it up gets accosted by Drago into jumping in front of a bus, while the architect’s been found hung inside his locked house. In home-wear of bodybuilder shirt and stripey Zubaz, Chuck tells the deputy he’s taking on the Skinwalker alone. “It’s a tribal thing, white man’s rules don’t apply here.” The deputy is black, although Chuck says he dances like a white man before sending him on his way. Then we’re into a dream sequence which puts him a white suit and dickie bow in a 1920’s neon expressionistic set, marriage proposal to a sexy DA accompanied by a live violinist. Hope he doesn’t lurch awake with “I’ve cummed the bed!” But Drago’s outside in his garden, and then inside the dream, where Chuck strangles the DA, before ghosts start strangling him. White Eagle’s advice pulls Chuck out of it, and he snaps awake, alone, and — as far as we know — in an un-cummed in bed.

The final confrontation contains no roundhouse kicks; instead an It-style psychological duel, where Chuck’s forced to revisit painful flashbacks of previous episodes — a botched drug raid in Mexico where a deputy died; seeing a platoon member cark it in ‘Nam, where he’s sadly played by a younger actor, missing the opportunity to cut in footage from his mental action films, though he does dub the voice. Drago takes a female reporter hostage, and Chuck gets the Jaws zoom, in a — for the show — avant-garde series of quick cuts and discordant voices; wild zooms, funny angles and distorted lenses; Walker by Stan Brakhage. The Skinwalker surrounds Chuck with multiple doppelgängers of himself, which with the 1995 effects, gives something of a Limmy’s Tina Turner sketch vibe.

But Chuck spots a bead of sweat coming from one Running Wolf (“illusions don’t sweat”), pegs it as real, and throws a knife, getting him right in the heart, before bodyslamming him into the mass grave just to be sure. The tribe do a cleansing ritual, and the building site’s cursed spirits dance off into the sky. This wouldn’t be the last episode to use ghosts of dead Native Americans, with another helping Chuck solve its own murder the following year. There’s an important lesson to be learned in these specials, and it’s not about staying away from the dark side, rather, if a man who almost certainly hands out Gideon bibles to trick or treaters is knocking it out of the park like this, the rest of us really need to up our game.

…

This piece first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could read it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my videos, my podcast, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s a ton of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Royal Variety VI: Darren Days of Future Past

…

This video first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could watch it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my podcast and videos, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s over 660,000 words of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Oh, God! – It’s Bibleman

…

This video first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could watch it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my podcast and videos, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s over 660,000 words of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Science Tests Faith: Fox News Proves God

Build-up to the coming millennium was a wild time, with round-number enthusiasts stockpiling for the end of everything. Who knew what awaited us, chugging alcopops in our JNCO jeans as the clock struck midnight? Perhaps a plane falling through the conservatory from Y2K; perhaps the fires, floods, and asteroids as foretold by multitude Doomsday cults; or maybe even that long awaited return from the big man himself, swanning through the clouds to commence Judgement Day and have us trampled in the great winepress of God’s almighty anger. On top of all this, Big Break was into its ninth series.

Like an excited family watching the odometer roll into a pleasing row of zeroes, 1999 was heavy with a collective sense it was all building to something; humanity’s season finale. But would we get renewed? Into this paranoid landscape of doomy front pages came a most expected voice, in Fox News. Signs from God — Science Tests Faith was a live special from July of ’99, ‘investigating’ (in the loosest possible terms) warnings that the end was indeed nigh, or as host Giselle Fernandez puts it, the “unprecedented wave of reports of supernatural happenings.” We’re not talking Bigfoot, UFOs or talking mongooses, but rather, divine messages from God. Voiceover to an opening montage of flash floods, tornados, earthquakes, and weeping statues informs us it’s a demonstration how “mystical events seize every continent.” Fernandez then asks “is this a warning for the new millennia, or predictable hysteria at century’s end?” Dunno, mate.

Fox had trod this path before, with 1995’s infamous Alien Autopsy hosted by Riker off Star Trek, and again the following year with Miracles and Visions: Fact or Fiction, an hour-long special of stigmatics and blokes who saw Christ’s fizzog in the knots of a tree stump. Signs from God is essentially a two-hour thematic retread of the latter, but with extra apocalyptic vibes, and despite opening text telling viewers “the theories, opinions and beliefs expressed are only the possible interpretation,” the show functions as a warning shot for non-believers to stop ignoring the obvious and repent — “are these and other phenomena a massive organised fraud, or the most important story of our time?”

Fernandez’s co-host is Michael Willesee, an Australian journalist whose career is riddled with controversies, including hosting the news while visibly drunk, and interviewing, via telephone, a pair of children held hostage by a trio of armed spree killers. But in the course of making this show, the notorious hard-line sceptic has rediscovered his Catholic faith, renewed and transformed into a bullish hammer of God by the things he’s seen. It feels like Christmas Morning with Noel, broadcasting from a studio in LA, from where we cut between globe-trotting live links to Bolivia, Mexico, Pennsylvania, and two different laboratories in California. Most Haunted style livecams point hopefully at statues of Christ, to catch them in the act should they start sobbing blood.

Main focus of the show is 54-year-old Katya Rivas, “the chosen one” who sees and hears Jesus and his mum. According to Katya, when she asked Jesus why her, he replied “if there were in the world a more needy person, a poor and more wretched person than you, I would’ve chosen that person.” Classic negging! Fox take their cameras to her house in Bolivia, where a statue of Mary immediately begins weeping oil, before a painting of the Lady of Guadalupe takes on an “inexplicable” gathering of thousands of tiny crystals. Rivas points at Mary’s shimmering belly; the womb, “where He became man,” though as the camera pans up, it just looks like someone’s chucked glitter over it.

In a potted biography, Rivas was a thrice-married “sometimes troubled” woman who strayed from religion before getting back into praying, wherein Jesus assigned her the task of personal messenger, to get his word out. Although one wonders if he actually meant it, or if it was like “oh, tell so-and-so I said hi” when bumping into a mutual friend. But convey his word she did, filling up notebook after notebook with Christ’s patter (“theologically sound; poetic”), often in languages she can’t speak, basically functioning as Jesus’s unpaid ghostwriter.

Rivas’ brainwaves are tested with an EEG hairnet like Egon puts on Rick Moranis, to see if she’s reaching the Delta State while awake — impossible! We’re told Delta State only happens when you’re asleep or comatose. When Jesus shows up and she begins drowsily passing on his messages, Rivas does indeed reach Delta, brainwaves slowing; which a doctor suggests could be epilepsy, a claim she pre-emptively denies. It’s unclear why this is proof Jesus is actually speaking to her, and not the exact opposite; that she’s imagining things like people do when they’re asleep or hypnotised. It’s the old ghost hunter problem, having to set arbitrary parameters on tests, and this proves Jesus is there the same way an EMF reader confirms there’s a spirit in the room.

It’s not enough to convince a priest on satellite link from Mount Pocono, reckoning Katya’s powers are “possibly from the God; possibly from the Devil… from a sick mind, or even worse, someone who’s engaged in fraud.” Willesee’s visibly pissed off by this, before Fernandez practically answers her own question of why such events are confined to poor people in small Catholic countries. Next, a whistle-stop tour of Mary’s miracles over the decades; levitating peasant girls in 1960’s Spain, weeping statues in Japan, Korean stigmatics, warnings of catastrophe and rivers-of-blood visions in Rwanden teens; and of course the Miracle of Fatima — the latter weirdly not when Fatima Whitbread got mentioned on telly in the 80s without someone joking she was a man. Yet, there’s a pattern; a pattern which rings dire warning — “stop offending God. You have yet to see the forces of nature, if you choose to live apart from God, then you will fall.” You’re hard, Mary, mate.

Ad breaks are the most 1999 imaginable, for bigger fridges, The Blair Witch Project, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin at the Teen Choice Awards, and forgotten Farrelly Brothers movies, with a trail for upcoming regional news teasing “killed by a Pepsi can — a local boy dies trying to puncture a can with a pin!” But we must return to the divine, and a satellite interviewee who tellingly notes all cases are from “simple” people (monetarily; not that they’re Benny from Crossroads) who spend their lives praying. Then a lady’s blood-crying statue has a CAT scan to prove there’s no hidden trickery, though it’s impossible not to read BLEEDING STATUE OF CHRIST in a Steptoe voice — “what’d you bring home that bleedin’ statue of Christ for?” Also, the formation of blood makes it resemble a bust of Matthew Kelly going through a Norwegian black metal phase.

A sample’s dropped into a biohazard specimen bag, then tested for DNA, which a forensic scientist in a white coat confirms to be human blood; female human blood. Oh dear. But this is proof enough for Willsee, believing that Christ, who had a mother but not a father, would have female blood — “Could Jesus be of the blood of his mother?” It’s definitely that, and not the owner pricking her thumb and wiping it under its eyes. Then another home; another South American woman in deep poverty; this time with an image of Mary appearing in the concrete of a freshly mopped floor. It’s no Faces of Bélmez, with all its Beadles and Sutcliffes, and the tiny home’s got a massive shrine of Our Lady taking up one room, so given a different cultural frame of reference, she might’ve pegged ‘Mary’ as the sun-baby off the Tellytubbies.

But Mary’s been going hogwild, making her presence felt with crying pictures and rose petals — left on the altar by visitors — forming into “mystical images” when flattened inside a bible. Honestly, while some are the ‘vague smear of a possibly-bearded shape’ style, others are far more detailed, with the eerie quality of the Turin Shroud. Wonder what would happen if you slipped the petals into other books, say Little Goes a Long Way by Syd Little? They’re investigated by an art expert, who suspects something was intentionally pressed into the leaves, a process he uses to exactly replicate the images, for which the presenters patronisingly thank him for “his attempt.” But Willesee is clearly seething, lost for words when trying to address it. “It doesn’t completely, uh… answer it. Let’s get a botanist to look at it. Let’s try again.”

The botanist too, reproduces the miracle in seconds, by pushing a religious medallion into the petals, and further rubs it in by describing “my bible, the botanical book,” but Willesee’s not having it. “We now see that man can make them, we don’t know that God isn’t also making them.” Plus, he adds, if they’re frauds, how come the perpetrators aren’t selling them? Perhaps ask the woman who’s now a local celebrity believed to have been chosen by Jesus for a direct line to God, and currently has a TV crew in her home, which is constantly packed with visitors. And certainly nobody ever lied to perpetuate the spread of their religion.

Their big knockout blow to doubters, saved for last because of its gruesome nature, is stigmata; those who exhibit the wounds Jesus suffered on the cross; and there’s footage of a million people gathered in Rome to witness the beatification of Padre Pio by Pope JP2. Pio was canonised as a Saint for bleeding sweet-smelling blood out of his palms and feet, and if you Google him, one of the first suggested questions is ‘What did Padre Pio smell like?‘ What’s not mentioned are accusations by a local pharmacist of Pio purchasing large quantities of carbolic acid (with which to burn the holes) and a pain-relieving neurotoxin; though Pio said he only bought it for a practical joke, to get revenge on the priests who’d previously mixed the neurotoxin with his snuff, which made him sneeze like mad.

Only 12 stigmatics had been verified by the Catholic church, and Willesee’s hanging his hopes on Katya Rivas being lucky thirteen. There with a crew on Good Friday, they’re hoping for some bleeding, only to be told by Jesus (through Rivas), not on your Nelly. Willesee, arms folded as he listens to the translator, sadly narrates “there would no stigmata. We had come all the way to Bolivia, it seems, for nothing.” But hold on, Jesus ain’t finished, and through rather savage eye contact from Rivas, he warns the crew “learn to trust me more. This is not the right time.” Jesus H. then gives “an incredible prophecy,” on when the next stigmata will occur — June 4th, the day after Corpus Christi. If Rivas was faking it, how could she possibly know when it would happen?!

The entire stigmatic process plays out in front of camera, Rivas hangdog and moping like a sulky teen the night before, undergoing the mental anguish of Christ in Gethsemane, riddled with profound sadness. Next day, the prophecy is fulfilled, groaning and writhing in bed, forehead starting to bleed like Abdullah the Butcher, Willesee bedside in the cuck chair, and a priest praying as marks begin to appear on her hands and feet. Like men who get a tummy ache when their wife’s giving birth, Rivas feels the sensation of her lungs filling with liquid, in sympathy for the dying Christ, and we reach crucifixion end game, gasping and bucking in an extended death scene. It should be noted that while she does bleed from multiple wounds, Rivas clutches a chain of prayer beads and crucifix, and the parts of her body which bleed will constantly disappear beneath the sheets. Regardless, Willesee’s beside himself with the possibility they may have some of Christ’s actual blood, though once again, it’s confirmed as female; its DNA matching exactly with that of Katya Rivas.

But cynics beware, as we reach the fear-mongering montage it’s all been building to, with Fernandez warning “if man does not turn back to God, there will be a steady increase in natural disasters,” and even a quote from the Pope telling us darkness will fall on human souls at the end of the second millennium. He wasn’t wrong. Over ominous news footage of burning buildings, tornados, volcanos, tsunamis, earthquakes, and bodies carried out of rubble on stretchers, it’s clear God wants us dead. Representees from insurance firms confirm the 90s saw an increase in natural disasters, i.e. Acts of God, and a priest cautions us to sit up and take notice; floods and earthquakes are a “call to repentance,” to return to God. He’s gonna keep fucking us up until we love him. Also, the priest uses the brilliant phrase “church-approved apparitions,” which is how I now wish to identify.

Rivas leaves viewers with one final message from Jesus, but this time; for the very first time; he appears to her in full. “How did he look?” asks Willesee. “Beautiful… he was in a white tunic, smiling.” Gotta give it to Jesus, 2000 years on, he really stuck with a look. No haircut, never went clean shaven, still rocking that 33AD fit. Even Superman had a mullet in the 90s. But knowing Jesus is stood right behind him, Willesee goes doe-eyed and star-stuck, all “tell me what you see when you’re looking over my shoulder,” like someone who’s been told ‘don’t look now, but Adam Woodyatt’s at the next table!’ Rivas says Jesus is smiling, and what a scoop for Willesee, one-on-one with the son of God (albeit through a completely honest middle-aged woman). Asked if anything offends him, Jesus replies “all sins are an offence to God.” At least he didn’t single out wanking.

Cut to the edit suite. “While we were editing this footage, one of our editors noticed a strange reflection in katya’s left eye.” 1999 standard-def tech enhancements reveal yet another blob of light, but could it be — is it possible?! — that they’ve captured a reflection of Jesus Christ? “That,” says Willesee, with his entire 52-inch chest, “is one question in this investigation that science can’t answer.” Up your arse, Neil deGrasse Tyson; all the way up it! In a final thought, Willesee notes he’s been changed considerably through production, and hopes the show gives viewers a lot to think about. Whether it did or not, there were plenty of them, with 28 million tuning in, although the following day’s reviews were damning.

As for God’s chosen one, Katya Rivas, she was since accused of plagiarising a book titled (in English) Training Preachers; the content of which coincidentally comprised her messages from God, word for word, sixteen years before she begun dictating the almighty, explaining how she was writing in languages she didn’t speak. And as for the prophecies, the millennium was, what, a hundred years ago? And we’re still here, making memes and hoping nobody saw when we tripped in the street. That said, if you did a show like this now, with crying Funko Pops and countless hours of recent natural disaster footage to choose from, I might not think God had a hand in it, but I’d certainly have no trouble believing the end was coming.

…

This piece first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could read it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my videos, my podcast, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s a ton of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.

Royal Variety V: The Greatest Show Ever Staged

…

This video first appeared on my Patreon, where subscribers could watch it a month before it landed here. If you’d like to support me for as little as £1 a month, then click here to help provide the world with regular deep dives about weird-bad pop culture, early access to my podcast and videos, and all kinds of other stuff.

There’s over 660,000 words of content, including exclusives that’ll never appear here on the free blog, such as 1970’s British variety-set horror novella, Jangle, and my latest novel, Men of the Loch. Please give my existing books a look too, or if you’re so inclined, sling me a Ko-fi or some PayPal cash.