Well, the first part is a true story. The bottom part is kind of my own opinion. But it is a truthful opinion, so that works, too.

On the one hand, Villain is a mostly well-acted gangster film with a noteworthy cast (Richard Burton, Ian McShane, a bevy of popular British supporting actors). On the other, the plot is rather thin, and the film sometimes feels like it’s a Cliff Notes version of a longer and better movie.

The film’s central character is Vic Dakin, played by Burton. Dakin is an unpredictable and paranoid English gangster who enjoys beating up foe and friend alike and is quick with the razor for anyone whom he suspects of being an informant to the police. He also apparently is a devoted son to his aging and infirm mother, and at times moralizes with disgust at the peccadillos of people who engage in behaviors he considers sleazy or deviant. The latter seems to stem at least partly from an internal conflict about his own sexual orientation.

I have read the character of Dakin is a thinly-veiled portrayal of Ronnie Kray, an infamous east London crime boss during the 1960s. It is said that Ronnie and his twin brother Reggie were two of the most feared men in England. If Vic Dakin is anything like the real Krays, I can believe it.

Also prominent in the film is the character of Wolf Lissner (Ian McShane), which sounds vaguely like the name of the hero in a John Carpenter movie. This wolf is nobody’s hero, however. He specializes in pandering to wealthy elites, pressuring his partners and others in his debt, to partake in the desires of the rich and powerful. He’s a thoroughly amoral and manipulative bastard, who manages to use his good looks and the honeyed words of a pimp to coerce young women and men into doing his bidding. Wolf also engages in a bit of drug-dealing on the side.

Dakin and Wolf have had a prior association, though it’s only briefly touched on in the film. At some point, it had involved a sexual relationship as well as being one of Dakin’s henchmen. It is clear that Wolf fears Dakin, and is taking great steps to avoid him.

The plot revolves around a plan to rob the payroll of a large plastics factory. Armed robbery isn’t Vic’s usual bag, but the prize is too great to pass up. He even enlists the help of a rival “firm” (slang for another criminal family/organization) to assist in pulling off the job.

While the scenes of the planning and carrying out the heist are handled well, they feel more like they came from a tv series than a big screen movie. There’s just not a lot of meat to the script. There’s also some by-the-numbers characterization, with the usual tropes of the hothead who might screw things up with his recklessness, the nervous crook who doesn’t really want to be there, and is constantly fretting about his health, etc.

When things start to go a bit awry after the fact, the plot takes a bit of a turn to the silly, as the various leaders of the heist concoct schemes to get themselves off the hook, ranging from blackmailing a member of Parliament to faking a seizure. It’s actually more engaging that I’m probably depicting it, a testament to the acting skills of the actors involved. But typing it out on a screen, it really does seem just a little comical in places.

Countering all this criminal nastiness is the always reliable Nigel Davenport as Inspector Bob Matthews. His writing in the film is filled with “determined, honest cop” tropes, but Davenport does a good job with what he has to work with here. I especially enjoyed a couple of scenes where he was leaning on a snout (British slang for a confidential informant). Inspector Matthews isn’t quite Jack Regan from The Sweeney, but he isn’t afraid to frighten the wits out of a snitch if it helps him catch Vic Dakin.

The climax of the film, like so much of the plot, would have been more at home on a good tv drama than on the big screen. It’s engaging, but leaves the viewer wishing there had been more to it.

Final rating 6.5/10.

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Let’s turn the clock back to the mid-1970s (yes, I am that old, shut up!) when I was about four or five. One summer day, my sister and I stopped over at one of her friend’s house. I’m pretty sure we were going up to the local park for a picnic and were stopping by to pick her up. Something like that.

Anyway, I had to use the bathroom before we left. I noticed a spray can of ladies’ underarm deodorant on the counter. I remember thinking it must have been really fancy stuff, because I didn’t recognize the name.

Well, being a little kid and wanting to act all grown up, I decided to give myself a couple quick blasts under the arms. It was kind of flowery, being a girl’s spray, but nice. I went on with my picnic or whatever we did that day, and quickly forgot about it. If my sister or her friend noticed I smelled better than usual, they didn’t say anything.

Fast forward to when I was about 10 or 11. I was watching TV, and a commercial came on for said deodorant. I quickly remembered the event, and with an…understanding… I didn’t have when I was five.

BTW, the name of that “fancy” deodorant?

“FDS”

True story, folks…

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Such is the case of the short-lived series Wilde Alliance. First broadcast on ITV in January of 1978, the series ran just 13 episodes before being cancelled by the network in April of that year.

That a series failed to succeed is hardly unique, particularly in the late 70s when inflation and bad economic times made it just that much tougher to make a television show succeed. What is different is that Wilde Alliance had a lot going for it, at least on paper. Enough that one has to wonder about what might have been.

The premise of Wilde was that an upwardly mobile, middle-aged couple named Rupert and Amy Wilde (played by John Stride and Julia Foster) would be drawn into a mystery of the week and would indulge their passion for amateur sleuthing with a mix of humor and drama. In short, they were to be, as one reviewer (whose name I honestly can’t recall at the moment) put it, a modern-day Nick and Nora Charles.

The casting of Stride and Foster was one of the things the show got right. Stride was a veteran actor of tv and stage, and had starred in the very successful legal drama “The Main Chance” earlier in the decade. Foster, perhaps best known for her later work in the long-running comedy “Dad’s Army”, was an equally aplomb choice, gifted with an easy charm and gentle but clever wit. The two had real chemistry on screen, and felt very natural as a couple.

In a supporting role was Australian actor John Lee as “Christopher Bridgewater.” Bridgewater was the Wilde’s agent (Rupert was a writer, Amy was an artist of some sort), though his role on the show was often more like David Doyle’s “Bosley” on Charlie’s Angels than anything else. While not quite as engaging as either of the leads, Lee was pretty good in the part and provided a bit of comic relief as well.

The show never hurt for guest stars, either. Budget constraints (more on that in a bit) probably prevented the show from booking A-listers, but each episode had at least one well regarded British character actor in a prominent role — Anthony Bate, Desmond Lewellyn, Isla Blair, et al.

With all those positive elements on hand, it would seem that Wilde Alliance was on track to be a hit series. Good cast, good guests, a proven concept. What more do you need?

Well, a decent budget, for starters. I don’t know what the show’s creators budgeted for each episode, but it was woefully inadequate. The show just looked cheap. Given the hard economic times of the UK in 1978, one can forgive (or at least understand) a certain level of skimping.

Even at that, though, the show was often visually amateurish. One scene that I remember rather vividly was in the episode “Express From Rome.” The Wilde’s are supposedly on vacation in Italy and traveling by rail when they are caught up in the mystery du jour. It’s a familiar but trusty storyline, evoking everything from Murder on The Orient Express to some of the exploits of Peter Wyngarde in the popular 70’s series Jason King.

The problem with Wilde Alliance’s take on it was, they apparently didn’t have enough money to shoot on an actual train. Ponder that for a second. Instead, they shot on what was clearly a set made up to look like a train car, and blue-screened stock footage onto where the car’s window was so as to give the illusion they were traveling through the Italian countryside.

If it sounds a little cringey, it was. If you’re going to try to do stories with exotic locations, you have to find a way to make them look you know, exotic. Or at least like a real train.

The other failing of the show, and perhaps the one that ultimately doomed the show to failure, was the writing. It was bad, at times bordering on dreadful. Bad enough that it routinely undercut the talents of the cast, and made for some genuinely silly moments. I still wince at the episode where an investigation into the disappearance of a diplomat’s daughter leads to a woman named Dolores Quijano, a -wait for it — teenaged Mexican cello-playing Bolshevik. That the script also threw in some Dragnet-style “establishment vs counterculture” dialogue only adds to the pain.

Ultimately, Wilde Alliance is an interesting failure on its own merits. It does offer an opportunity to enjoy the talents of Stride and Foster, who were always enjoyable on screen no matter what else was going wrong in a particular episode. Overall rating: 6/10.

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As I mentioned previously, prepping covers a lot of territory, and it’s important to tailor your emergency bag to your specific goals and needs, as well as being within your budget. Fortunately, getting started isn’t hard. There are some basic items that should be part of any emergency bag. These items will not only serve you in any situation, but can also be the foundation on which to build your bag’s load out. This week, we’ll look at 3 “C’s” — Carry, Cover, and Cutting.

#1 — Carry — A bag (duh, right?) Sorry to be Captain Obvious, but this really is an important place to start. The bag you choose will not only determine how much gear you can pack, and will also play a role in how well you can handle some situations.

The first question you need to ask yourself is what do I need this bag to do, and under what sort of conditions do I need it to hold up? An inexpensive bag is not necessarily a bad idea. The one I keep in the trunk of my car is a $20 backpack from Wal-Mart. It’s rarely exposed to the elements, and if I ever break down somewhere and have to hoof it to a nearby town, I only need it to stay together for a few hours to a day or two. If it is the worse for wear after that time, well, it has served its purpose.

That same $20 bag would be a disaster (no pun intended) if I were prepping for an extended period outdoors in the wake of a hurricane or other natural disaster. My $20 bag wouldn’t hold enough gear or be particularly comfortable for long treks. Not to mention I wouldn’t bet on it holding up to the sort of abuse it would likely take in such a situation.

So, as always, focus on what you need from your bag, and go from there. For rugged/long-term scenarios, look for a reputable outdoors or wilderness supply outfit. Skip store brands here. For less extreme scenarios, a decent quality backpack will often be plenty. Look for things like good stitching, the quality of the bag’s zippers/buckles/snaps and so on.

#2 — Cover. Getting caught outdoors can suck. Getting caught outdoors without some sort of protection from the elements can really suck. Always have some sort of personal cover or shelter (preferably both) in your emergency bag.

One of my must-have items here is a rain poncho. Ponchos aren’t expensive, and having the ability to stay dry is crucially important. Beyond being a miserable experience in itself, being soaked through from rain or from making your way through a wet forest or field can lead to hypothermia in cooler weather.

For the cost and space conscious, emergency ponchos are a great alternative to the standard poncho. Often selling for less than $1, weighing an ounce or two, and no larger than a deck of cards, the emergency poncho is accessible to any budget or space requirement. They are little more than thin plastic sheeting with a hood, so don’t expect them to last more than a use or two, but they will keep you dry when it counts.

Another must have for me is the emergency space blanket. These are loosely based on the space blankets used by astronauts back in the heyday of NASA space flights. Emergency blankets are a sheet of plastic with an reflective aluminized coating. They work by reflecting the user’s body heat back at them, helping to maintain body temperature in cold weather.

Emergency blankets, like ponchos, are not expensive. They start around $1 for the thinnest and lightest versions (about the same size and weight as an emergency poncho), and go up to around $15 or so for thicker, more deluxe versions. It’s worth it to buy better quality here, but even the cheap ones can make a significant difference on a cold day.

While not necessarily essential, a square or rectangle tarp is an extremely useful bit of gear if one wishes to prepare for the possibility of needing to shelter in place outside. With a tarp, some rope or other line, a few tent stakes, and a little practice, one can easily set up a personal shelter for nearly any weather situation. Dan over at Coalcracker Bushcraft has a wonderful video on ten different shelters you can make from one tarp. He even has a separate video for a prepared tarp set up. I’ve used the latter, and even a klutz like me can set it up in a couple of minutes.

The downsides to tarps are they can be a bit bulky and hard to handle. A lot depends on the type of tarp you buy and how much you want to spend. A plastic tarp will run you less than $10, but once unfolded, they can be a pain to fold back into something even close to as compact as they were in the package. Oilcloth tarps tend to fold up more easily, but are more expensive. Super high-end tarps can be had that are light, compact, and durable, but can be more expensive than a good backpacking tent.

The last bit of cover I would definitely recommend is a big trashbag. A 55-gallon contractor-type “drum liner” type is ideal, but good brands of the bigger garbage bags made for home use are useful, too. A good-sized trash bag can be a poncho, a tarp, a ground cloth, even a mattress. Best of all, they can be almost free. Set a couple aside from your normal purchase, or ask the janitorial staff at your work if you can have one.

#3 Cutting — knives and other cutting tools. I think this is one a lot of people just starting out might not see as important. Especially people prepping for an urban or home setting emergency. It’s easy to dismiss the idea of a knife as something you’d only need out in the woods.

There’s some truth to that, but only some. A good knife is one of the most useful tools a person can have — opening packages, cutting lengths of rope or line, preparing food, starting a fire (the spine of a knife can be an excellent strike for a fire rod), first aid, etc. There are an almost infinite variety of knife types and brands to choose from for the beginning prepper. Keeping it simple, let’s start with the importance of understanding the difference between cheap and inexpensive.

Never buy a cheap knife. Ever. A cheap knife is worse than useless. Not only will it not do the jobs you need it to do, it can be dangerous to the user.

As an example, one time I bought a $2 pocket knife from Wal-Mart (I forget the brand). The blade was not particularly sharp and was made of some low grade stainless steel. That was not unexpected. What did come as a surprise is that the blade was attached so poorly to the handle that I could wiggle the blade side to side almost a quarter inch each way. If I had put any real pressure on the blade, I’m quite certain it would have snapped free and flown into my hand or back into my face. So in an emergency situation, I would have not only been without a knife, I would have been without an knife and probably injured. Do not, do not, do NOT buy a cheap knife!

Now, there is a difference between buying a cheap knife and buying an inexpensive knife. A decent knife does not have to cost $100+ There is a place for those knives, and yes they perform great. You might want one of those more expensive knives, and more power to you. A really good knife should last as long or longer than their owner. If you can buy the best, then by all means, do so!

There are budget-friendly options, however, that make a decent knife affordable to almost everyone. The trick is finding which knives are garbage and which are good buys for the money. I have a couple of budget suggestions for the two most common types of knives: folders and fixed blade.

Folding knives are knives that have a blade that well, folds. This includes your basic pocket knife, multi-tool knives like “Swiss Army” knives, and more exotic fare that aren’t really relevant to prepping (switchblades, Butterfly knives, etc.) Folding knives have the advantage of being light, easy to carry, and handy for most light tasks. They aren’t really suited for the heavier work a fixed blade knife handles.

There are plenty of useful reviews and guides on line to help you pick out an affordable pocket knife. One I often carry and like quite a bit is KA-BAR’s “Bob Dozier Folder”. It’s not a fancy knife by any means, but it’s well-built and rugged. I’ve used mine on everything from trimming drywall to cleaning fish, and it keeps taking the abuse without complaint. The blade is a pretty decent quality stainless steel (AUS-8, for those keeping notes). It requires sharpening more often than a more expensive “tool steel” knife a professional might use, but it sharpens eaesily and will taken a nice edge without too much effort. Prices vary, but I got mine for less than $30 a couple years back.

Fixed blade knives are equally self-explanatory. The blade doesn’t fold into the handle and is generally sturdier than a folding blade knife. A really good fixed blade will handle nearly prepping task you’d care to throw at it and handle it well.

One of the things you want to look for in a fixed blade knife is a full tang blade. That simply means the metal of the blade extends all the way down the handle in one piece. A full tang blade is stronger and can handle more and harder use than non-full tang blades.

Many fixed blade knives don’t have a full tang, but have what is called a “rat-tail” tang. The blade is attached to the handle by a thin piece of metal (i.e. the rat-tail) that is riveted or welded in place. Chances are the knives in your kitchen and silverware drawer are of this type. There’s nothing wrong with a rat-tail tang in those circumstances.

For the knife in your emergency bag, though, you probably want to steer clear of this design. It simply isn’t as sturdy as a full tang and more likely to fail after repeated hard use. Some very cheap “survival knives”, like the ones with the hollow metal handles that contain fishing line and a few hooks, use this design. Buyer beware.

A decent budget-friendly fixed blade knife I like is the Morakniv Companion. It’s about $20-$30, and comes with a cheap, but useful plastic sheath. It’s not quite a full tang, running about 3/4’s the way down the handle, but it is quite sturdy. Again, maybe not the knife for a professional, but solid overall. The blade is made from Sandavik, another pretty good stainless steel that takes a keen edge, and sharpens easily.

Next time: Choosing a good light source, making fire, and threading the needle.

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I don’t have any grand statement beyond that, other than I make this promise: I’m going to give this blog a lot more attention and effort for the rest of 2021 and beyond. Ya’ll have lit a bit of a spark in me, and I hope to repay you with new writing pieces at least semi-regularly.

Thanks again!

Burchard of Worms, then the powerful bishop of that city (Worms is near modern Frankfurt), got involved in these reforms. He is credited with penning some of the major religious tracts of the era. He was also known, however, as having a few, shall we say, “quirks.”

Burchard had this great concern and fear about medieval women tempting their husbands into sinful behavior through the use of magic or wanton behavior…while in the kitchen. His concerns were so great that he even wrote a penitential, advising women not to be naughty while making bread.

Translated from the original Latin, he insisted that a virtuous woman “would refrain from inflaming her husband’s passions by kneading the dough with her buttocks.”

True story.

Actor Peter Mark Richman passed away on January 21st of this year at age 93. A veteran of stage, screen and television, he was one of the most prolific character actors of his and several other generations. He was also someone I admired and take inspiration from as an example of life’s possibilities, and the things one can achieve through hard work and persistence.

Richman did not initially start off as an actor, though the desire probably was always there. He began his career in sports. He played for one of the early professional football leagues (the Allegheny League, to be specific) as a running back for several seasons before a leg injury cut his career short.

After football, his elder brother convinced him to get an education at pharmacy college. Richman recounted in one interview that he figured he’d wash out within a couple weeks and be back home in Philadelphia. He stuck it out, however, and became a successful pharmacist managing his own pharmacy in suburban Philly.

For most people, the story could end happily there. Local boy makes good, and all that. But for Richman, it was only the beginning. The draw of the stage and his ambition to be on it reached critical mass, and Richman gave up a secure, very comfortable middle-class life to pursue his passion and gambled that he could make it as an actor in New York.

It turned out to be a good gamble. After some lean months, Richman landed his first role in 1953, and never looked back. By the time of his retirement in 2011, Richman had become a familiar face in almost every genre television had to offer. He had 500 individual appearances in no less than 111 different television series. He also appeared in several feature films and a number of plays.

No, Richman never took home an Oscar, or an Emmy. He was a “jobbing actor”, through and through. But he was prolific, and always in demand. There are thousands of actors out there right now who would happily trade their own grandmother (and probably several other relatives) for a career like that.

Ah, but the story still doesn’t end there. As roles continued to come in, Richman scratched other creative itches. Not merely satisfied with reading scripts, he began to write them, writing and starring in several small, but well-received plays. From there he also wrote several fiction novels, and even began painting, with over a dozen successful exhibits in the Los Angeles art scene.

Perhaps most impressive of all, at least by Hollywood standards, is he met the love of his live in those early days in New York, and remained married to her until his death, 67 years later. They raised five children, including award-winning composer Lucas Richman, who has scored several major films.

If ever there were an example of “A life well-lived”, it would be Peter Mark Richman. Rest ye well.

Clean, Shaven is an unconventional film in many ways. The plot itself is deliberately minimal. Peter is searching for his daughter Nicole. That’s it. We don’t know when or how they became separated, or where Peter has been (institutionalized? in prison?) for the past several years. He just appears at the start of the film and we find out he’s looking for his daughter now. Oddly enough, that’s all the plot the film really needs. A mainstream Hollywood script would just get in the way. The alpha and the omega of the film is in Greene’s portrayal of Peter.

Often near the point of physical collapse, the agitation is palpable as Peter’s exhaustion is over matched by whatever torment is going on behind those darting eyes. We see his fear when he becomes obsessed with covering all the mirrors in his car with newspaper. We don’t understand why Peter feels the need to do that, but we implicitly understand it’s somehow important to him.

The few, brief periods of calm Peter experiences are no less fascinating. There is a scene where Peter has purchased several cups of coffee from a gas station. The method and order by which he adds sugar or creamer to each paper cup of coffee becomes his world. The deafening roar of machinery operating the next field over does not intrude upon the peculiar ritual. It goes unnoticed until Peter has satisfied the demands of this compulsion.

At times, the audience can’t be completely sure if what they are seeing and hearing on screen is really happening or is just a delusion from Peter’s mind. Director Kerrigan willfully keeps a number of scenes open to interpretation, giving the audience a taste of the constant struggle Peter and people with mental illnesses like his can face.

There is also a “B” story arc in the film that ultimately connects with Peter and his search for his daughter. A serial killer who preys exclusively on children has been operating in the area recently. The implication, of course, is that Peter might be the serial killer. In all honesty, the serial killer element is one of the less interesting things about Clean, Shaven. It serves a purpose in further adding to the mystery of Peter’s background, and perhaps also in raising questions about the public’s perception about mental illness and the mentally ill. Beyond that, it’s a bit of throwaway.

The supporting cast is generally good in their roles, if not spectacular. Checking the IMDB, most of the listed cast had not worked in a previous film, or in any subsequent productions. One wonders if at least some of them were not professional actors by trade.

The best of the supporting cast are Megan Owen as Peter’s mother, and Jennifer MacDonald as Peter’s daughter, Nicole. Less impressive are the trope-ish characters of the nosy librarian/town bigot and the cop with an inferiority complex, who is hunting for the child killer who may or may not be Peter. They are written more as plot devices than actual characters.

One has probably already gathered that Clean, Shaven is not an easy film to watch. One would be correct, but only partly so. None of the film is easy or comfortable to watch, but there are parts of the film that are damned hard to get through. Peter’s mental anguish and hallucinations are emotionally draining, and like so many real-life schizophrenics, he engages in self-harm. One scene is particularly brutal, where Peter believes he was found a secret transmitter in his fingernail. It’s an agonizing sequence that makes the audience beg him to stop hurting himself, and ache in our guts over the realization of the hell that Peter lives in every single day.

Equally disturbing is the handiwork left by the serial killer. While the writing for the B-story is not great, the visuals are chillingly well done. The killer has an obsessive ritual with cleaning and dressing his young victims, leaving them arranged in an almost peaceful pose. There’s something about the “care” taken for his victims that makes the crime seem all the more heinous.

Perhaps the most challenging thing about the film, however, is that it refuses to answer all of our questions with a neat, packaged ending. Which, in this case, is a good thing. Clean, Shaven is about the ride, not the destination. Wrapping everything up at the end would have been a betrayal to the film and the audience. Instead, we leave the film quietly disturbed, and left to brood over what we have seen for the past 90 minutes. We were we right about Peter? Were we right about a particular scene? Did our own preconceived notions color our judgment? It’s a journey that can be as difficult — and as rewarding — as Clean, Shaven itself.

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