Picture of Therese Coffey as the Butterball Cenobite from ‘Hellraiser’

I couldn’t help noticing a certain resemblance between our Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Health Service, Therese Coffey, and the Butterball cenobite from Clive Barker’s 1980s ‘Orror flick, Hellraiser. So, I thought I’d put the two images together.

Therese Coffey.

Butterball Cenobite

Therese Coffey Monstrosity

Don’t have nightmares, as they used to say at the end of Crimewatch UK.

Sketch of Truss, Kwarteng, Coffey and Friend

I made this sketch of the three leading Tories yesterday with a view to drawing a satirical version of them all later on. The figures underneath them is the Butterball cenobite from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. I included him because I thought there was a certain similarity to Coffey. I based the picture of Truss from a photograph of her on the cover of last week’s Private Eye, which showed her in a pose that truly suggested she was wide-eyed and bonkers. She doesn’t always appear like that, obviously, but she’s still pretty bonkers.

Eddie Izzard to Star in Gender-Flipped Jekyll and Hyde Movie?

Clive Simpson is a gender critical gay YouTuber. Today he posted up a little video commenting on a press report that comedian Eddie Izzard was to star in a new version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Except the genders were now flipped so that the heroine, whom Izzard would play, is now Dr Nina Jekyll. Izzard’s a transvestite, who has now declared that he is in ‘girl mode’ and the piece reported how Izzard had struggled with his gender identity while calling him ‘she’ throughout. Simpson was much less supportive, complaining that Izzard wasn’t a woman and had taken the role away from a real one. But I wonder if one of Simpson’s commenters wasn’t closer to the truth when she suggested that this might actually undermine Izzard’s desire to be accepted as a woman, because it occurred to her that they had cast him precisely because he didn’t look female.

I think the commenter has a point. A few years ago Tilda Swinton would have been the go-to actor for this type of role. Decades ago she starred in a film of Virginia Woolf’s book, Orlando, about an Elizabethan boy who changes sex and lives for centuries. She also appeared as an angel, Gabriel, in the film version of the comic book Constantine. My guess is that the producers were similarly looking for an actor able to play androgynous roles. I don’t think its just this movie which as a transgender hero/heroine. Mr H, of Mr H Reviews, reported a little while ago that the forthcoming Hellraiser reboot would have a transgender Pinhead, played by a woman. This is, he said, in line with the original book. Rather than being powerfully masculine, in the source novel, Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart, Pinhead is actually rather camp. The pins hold jewels, and his voice is said to be that of an excited girl. Mr H was looking forward to it, as no doubt were many fans of Barker’s original film and horror fiction. Unfortunately, we haven’t heard much about it since.

There has been a craze in recent years for gender-flipping the central characters in remakes of old movies. I’m not sure any of them have done well. The 2016 feminist reworking of Ghostbusters was a flop and torn to shreds by a fandom that really wasn’t impressed. There have been very many successful films with a powerful, strong woman as the central character ever since Ripley in Alien. People don’t like favourite, legacy characters being changed into the opposite gender, so it would be far better to make original films instead with a strong female central role. My guess is that a gender-flipped Jekyll and Hyde will suffer the same fate as the other gender-flipped movies.

But I also foresee an additional problem. It has a kind of predecessor courtesy of Hammer. Way back in the 1970s this mainstay of British ‘orror released Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde. In this reworking, Jekyll’s potion transforms him into a sexy, glamorous, murderous woman. Of course, this classic of British cinema was made nearly fifty years ago in 1971, but somebody will no doubt remember it and comparisons may well be made. Unless it’s done very well, this movie could be doomed.

Here’s the trailer for the Hammer flick:

Mr H Reviews the Concept Art for Neil Blomkamp’s Aborted Alien 5

Mr H Reviews is a YouTube channel devoted to SF, Fantasy and Horror TV, film and comics, and particularly Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, which is one of Mr H’s favourites. Over the past months and weeks he’s posted a number of pieces about the concept art for Alien 5 which is just being released. Alien 5 would have been directed by Neil Blomkamp, the director of the awesome District 9. This was an SF film in which alien refugees arrive in South Africa, and are isolated in shanty towns, where they’re oppressed by a government determined to stop them breeding, and preyed on by criminal gangs who want to use their body parts for muti sorcery. The hero was a government official in one of the government anti-breeding teams, who starts to mutate into one of the aliens after an accident destroying one of their makeshift hatcheries. He is then sought and has to fight in his turn government agents, who wish to use him to unlock the secrets of the military technology the aliens have brought with them.

Alien 5 would have followed on directly from James Cameron’s Aliens, making Alien ³ and Alien 4 elseworlds stories set in an alternative timeline. In the universe of Alien 5, corporal Hicks and Newt would both be alive, as would Ellen Ripley, and ready to fight H.R. Giger’s most infamous brainchild yet again. The film was apparently all set and ready to go into production with Cameron scouting out locations for filming. It was stopped because Ridley Scott, Alien’s director, didn’t want it interfering with his Alien films. Scott claimed that Alien 5 didn’t have a script, which has been contradicted by the concept artist, Geoffroy Thoorens, who said his paintings were based on a preliminary treatment. Apparently the real reason Alien 5 was cancelled was Scott’s ego. He was jealous because Cameron’s Aliens was more popular than his, the film which launched the franchise.

Whatever the personal politics and clash of egos behind the decision, it’s a pit that Alien 5 wasn’t made because it would have been awesome. The art shows Hicks as a combat vet, scarred from the acidic blood with which he was sprayed during his battle with the evil critters in Aliens, but ready to put on that combat armour. From the art, Mr H. surmises that the plot is about Ripley and her team coming aboard a facility somewhere – there are paintings of a space station and a oil-rig like structure on a storm-tossed ocean. This facility may not be run by Wayland-Yutani, the evil company in the Alien movies. There are no Wayland-Yutani logos or markings. However, it seems the facility has got a Leviathan spacecraft, which is covered in the resin secreted by the Aliens. This also seems to be taken apart in an attempt to back engineer it. The company are also harvesting the eggs, and it seems that the company has actually won. They’re farming the Aliens to use them as bioweapons. A queen alien escapes, and all hell breaks loose.

The film adds a new stage to the Alien lifecycle. This is the trematode, a wormlike creature with pincers and proboscis, which eats its way into its victim’s guts and lays tiny facehuggers. The art shows one marine pulling one of these little bastards of his stomach, while another character is attacked while pinned under a door. There’s also a nod to the cityscape of Blade Runner, in that one of the paintings shows a futuristic city very much like Scott’s depiction of the LA of 2019. But this has a gigantic tower, which may be a space elevator or space bridge, and which contains a hollow running its length, possibly to throw something up into orbit. The company appears to have produced biomechanical armoured suits, resembling the Alien exoskeletons. Ripley dons one of these to fight the queen, who is killed by fire from a railgun or something similar. Another painting shows the space bridge or whatever it is on fire. This suggests that it’s the corporate head office, and that not only has Ripley or her successor defeated the Aliens, but she’s also taken down the company that thinks it can cultivate and control them. Here are the videos.

I’m afraid I’ve posted these videos out of chronological sequence, as I haven’t watched them in order. I hope you can still follow the progress through them, however.

Mr. H speculates that the art may be released because there is renewed interest in the movie. However, he eventually settles on the explanation that the Non-Disclosure Agreements that have prevented release of the art have finally lapsed, as Disney is on the point of buying Fox. I find this a particularly grim prospect. I don’t think it’s at all healthy for a sizable portion of Hollywood and western film entertainment to be part of a giant, global monopoly. I also don’t think Disney are the corporation that’s best suited to real, innovative Horror or dark SF. They’re based on family-friendly entertainment, and while they have considerably diversified, especially with the acquisition of Lucasfilm and Star Wars, I really don’t think they’re suited to managing darker films and concepts.

It’s a pity that Alien 5 wasn’t made. It would have been far better than Alien: Covenant, which I found disappointing and uninspired. It got rid of the interesting ideas and sole remaining character in Prometheus. The Engineers are all wiped out by the evil robot David, who has also murdered Shaw, and is now just keen on breeding more of the proto-Alien creatures, until one finally appears at the end. This threatens the new heroes, is defeated, but not before the heroine finds out right at the end as she’s going into hypersleep that the robot she has trusted up to now isn’t the ship’s good android, but David, who has smuggled the Alien eggs and embryos on board.

I think part of the problem is that Scott simply has lost interest in the Xenomorphs. He’s said that they’re not scary anymore, and that robots are more frightening. Hence the appearance of the evil robot, David. But I think he’s misunderstood the situation. People still want to see the Xenomorph. A year or so ago there were a series of short films released on YouTube by various directors set in the Alien universe and where different characters have to fight or deal with the Aliens. These generally speaking weren’t long – about 15 minutes or so, more or less. But they were well done with some interesting ideas. They showed that directors could still make an entertaining and original story with the creatures, and that there were more than enough fans willing to watch them.

It also seems that Scott’s role in the original movie has been overhyped. Some of the creative decisions that built the franchise were not his, but came from the two producers, Hill and Giler. These included the appearance of an android and the hiring of H.R. Giger as concept artist for the creature. Scott was brought on as director at the very last minute. It’s an excellent movie, and Scott is a brilliant director – I rate Alien and Blade Runner as masterpieces of 20th century cinema – but he isn’t the be-all and end-all of the Alien franchise. I agree with Mr H that the studio shouldn’t have bowed to him and cancelled Blomkamp’s flick.

One of the commenters on one of these videos suggests that, if the film isn’t going to be made, then a comic or graphic novel should appear to tell the story. Apparently this has been done with the alternative Alien ³s that were submitted and scripted. I think it would be an excellent idea. I’d also like another Alien movie to appear, though I’m not sure I’d like it to be the final episode of the trilogy Scott set up with Prometheus. Not after Covenant, unless there’s far more interest in the Aliens. Scott’s a great director, and part of me thinks that it would be good to see how his trilogy ends, but I also think that it’s time the franchise was perhaps handed over to someone younger and with a greater appreciation of the Xenomorph’s popularity.

But the release of this concept artist shows not only the imagination and skill of Thoorens, the artist behind it, but also that there is still considerable interest in Alien movies and that they haven’t been exhausted of ideas. Not just yet. They just need the right director.

Cartoon: Hellbender (Hellraiser Parody)

Hello, and welcome to another of my cartoons. This one isn’t political. I thought it would be in very poor taste to mock Boris now that he is in hospital with Coronavirus. Not that it changes what his party is, or what it’s done to Britain – wreck its economy, destroy the welfare state, continue privatising the NHS and cause massive poverty and suffering to its working people. All the while proclaiming very loudly that it’s done the opposite of the above. So instead of attacking Boris, I decided to have a little fun parodying one of my favourite ‘Orror flicks: Hellraiser.

Released in 1987 and directed by Clive Barker, Hellraiser was based on his novella, The Hellbound Heart. This was the story of a family, American Larry Cotton, his daughter Kirsty, and her British stepmother, Julia, who move into a new home in Britain. But Julia has had a secret affair with Larry’s brother, Frank. Seeking extreme sensual pleasures, Frank obtains the Lament Configuration, a mysterious puzzle box. He solves it, only to find that it opens a gateway to hell, and he’s literally torn apart by barbed hooks at the end of chains.

Frank had been living in the house just before the Cottons move in. Looking around the attic room, Julia catches her hand on a nail, bleeding on the floor. The blood brings back Frank as a flayed corpse. Frank explains to her that he has escaped from hell, and must run. However, he needs her to help him. He therefore gets her to lure men back home, where they’re killed so that Frank can use their bodies to make himself whole.

But Kirsty also finds the Lament Configuration. Solving it in her hospital room, she summons the Cenobites, the demons that drag whoever solves it back to their dimension to endure an eternity of pain and suffering. The Cenobites are bald, deathly white, their flesh scarred and mutilated, and clad in black leather. Their leader, Pinhead, who is never actually called that in the original movie, got his name from the nails driven into his head. They differ from other demons in that they derive pleasure from pain. In one of the classic lines from the movie, Pinhead answers Kirsty’s question of who they are: ‘Explorers of the further reaches of experiences. Demons to some, angels to others’.

The film was made for a mere $1 million. Unlike the majority of low budget films, Hellraiser was actually very good. So good in fact that Stephen King declared that he had ‘seen the future of Horror, and it was Clive Barker’. Sadly, that early promise was not fulfilled. Barker has continued writing, adding painting to his skills, but his output is viewed as patchy by critics. Nevertheless, Hellraiser spawned a series of sequels, the first of which, Hellbound, portrayed hell as a kind of demonic Max Escher drawing. It produced a series of comics, and the Cenobites, and especially Pinhead, joined the ranks of great movie monsters.

There’s a type of salamander living in the southern USA called a hellbender. Looking at the similarity between its name and that of Barker’s movie, I simply thought it would be funny to draw a spoof of it in which Pinhead appears as a salamander. The Axalotl is another such creature, though it differs from other species in that it retains it gills throughout its adult life. And the punchline at the bottom is simply a play on the movie’s slogan, ‘It’ll tear your soul apart’.

Incidentally, Andrew Robinson, who played Larry in the film, went to play Garak, the Cardassian tailor/spy in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I hope you enjoy it, and can read the script. Unfortunately, the red doesn’t really stand out against the purple background. Here’s the cartoon. Don’t have nightmares.

 

Cartoon of Tories as Demons; Ian Duncan Smith as Pinhead from Hellraiser

Earlier this week I posted up a cartoon I drew of Iain Duncan Smith, the former head of the DWP, as a ‘leatherface’ style serial killer. The sanctions system, introduced by New Labour but massively expanded by Cameron and the Tories, have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people. After much struggle with the DWP, which really, really didn’t want to release the figures, might managed to get hold of a set of stats. These showed that within the period Mike requested, 13-14,000 people had died after being found fit for work, and so had their benefits removed. Researchers at Oxford University found that in 2015, austerity had killed 30,000 people. Assuming these figures are constant year by year, and adding the number Mike revealed, this means that the Tories have so far killed 87-88,000 people. And that’s a minimum.

Mike, Johnny Void, DPAC and Stilloaks have also produced lists of disabled individuals, who have died, and the circumstances in which their lives ended in misery, poverty and starvation thanks to the DWP.

Mike and Jeffrey Davies, one of the great commenters on this blog, have described this massacre as what it is: murder, and the genocide of the disabled.

After I put up the cartoon, Jeffrey commented

‘hmm that doesn’t do him credit hes a devil full stop’.

Funny you should say that, Jeff, because that’s exactly what I drew him as, along with David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and their mistress, Maggie Thatcher.

I tried to draw IDS himself as Pinhead, the main cenobite from the film Hellraiser. This was a 1980s movie, written and directed by the horror novelist Clive Barker, and adapted from his book, The Hellbound Heart. The movie features an ancient puzzle box, the Lament Configuration, which if you solve it, opens a door to hell. The cenobites, led by Pinhead, then come through to drag you off to an eternity of sadomasochistic torture.

I drew IDS as Pinhead because of the sheer sadism built in the DWP, a sadism that comes from its leaders, firstly in New Labour, and then the Tories. The clerks interviewing jobseekers seem to delight in humiliating them, demanding to know why they haven’t looked for certain jobs, or not used the job hunting site created by Iain Duncan Smith, so they could see what jobs you’ve applied for online. As well as these interviews, jobseekers could also be tormented at home. The DWP set up a series of ‘job coaches’, who, as far as I can see, offer no practical advice for finding a job whatsoever. They just badger benefit claimants, subjecting them to more harangues about them not doing all they should to find a job.

The humiliation and belittlement is quite deliberate. It’s part of the principle of ‘less eligibility’ that Margaret Thatcher took over from the 19th century workhouses. For the poor and unemployment, the life on state aid is to be made as degrading and harsh as possible, in order to dissuade them from taking it up unless it is absolutely necessary.

Hence the sadism with which claimants are treated.

And it has worked. Many people don’t go into job centres to claim benefits until their private sources of money – borrowing from friends, or the savings they have in their bank accounts – run out, because of the ill-treatment and disrespect they receive there.

And for the Tories, this is a good scam. The fewer people sign on, the more they can claim that they have been successful in getting more people into work. The reality is that they probably haven’t got more people into work. They’ve just got fewer people signing on. And tens of thousands of those are dying.

And so you get scenes, like the one reported by Mike a couple of years ago, where ordinary people in the street comforted a young man, who came out of the jobcentre literally in tears, because he was desperate and the DWP would not give him any money. And this guy is just one example.

Not that the staff of the DWP appears to be treated any better. Former workers in the DWP have said that the department is keen to cut staff numbers, and so the clerks are terrified for their own jobs, while their superiors belittle and humiliate them. And whistleblowers also report that in order to motivate them to through more people off benefits, some Jobcentres ran competitions, giving out gold stars, sheriff’s badges and other prizes to the clerk, who got the most claimants off their books.

This system has to come from the twisted psychology of those, who set it up right at the very top in government. Remember the Russian proverb, ‘A fish rots from the neck down?’ Organisations frequently take on aspects of their leaders’ personalities. The Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were all brutal, oppressive regimes that murdered millions, because they were headed by brutal, murderous people – Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. And so the British state has become brutal and murderous, because it has been led by sadists like Thatcher, IDS, Clegg and Cameron.

I’m not saying that Thatcher, Cameron, Clegg and aIDS are personally murderous or violent. They may well have been perfectly genial people in private. But they clearly had a sadistic need to inflict pain and suffering on the various poorest, simply for being poor, and incorporated that attitude into their policies and the management of the DWP.

There are, however, some psychological differences between IDS and Hellraiser’s Pinhead. Pinhead, as played by Doug Bradey, had far more dignity and personal gravitas than Ian Duncan Smith. Smith, by contrast, comes across as vain, and actually rather petulant. This was shown quite clearly in an edition of Question Time a few years ago, when he angrily rounded on another panellist to lambast them, as he saw it, for not doing anything to tackle the mythical generations of families, who have never worked.

He has tried to pose as a compassionate individual. In a documentary Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, made about poverty and state support, IDS wept on camera. He had, he claimed, met a young woman, who didn’t believe she’d ever have a job. ‘She could have been my daughter!’ he cried.

All fake, crocodile tears. Earlier he and his master, Dodgy Dave, had been film having a right old guffaw on the green benches in parliament when one speaker was describing the personal hardships a particular claimant had suffered due to Cameron’s and IDS’ system. The two obviously found the suffering of this disabled person hilariously funny, and didn’t bother to disguise it. It was caught by the Beeb on the Parliament channel, and Mike posted a clip of it on his blog.

Never mind the tears, that’s how IDS and Cameron really see the poor. They’re just plebs and proles, who are there to be laughed at and humiliated for the pleasure of the upper classes.