Trouble Man - the real Mr T

Directed by former actor, Ivan Dixon (last seen in Hogan's Heroes and Car Wash) and released in 1972, Trouble Man was one of a series of hard-edged blaxploitation movies popularised by such hits as Shaft and Superfly. Alas compared to those genre defining examples,Trouble Man was a flop, though it spawned a superior score penned by reigning Motown monarch, Mr Marvin Gaye.

Trouble Man starred Robert Hooks as Mr. T, an LA-based pool shark, private dick, and all-purpose Mr Fixit. Despite this promising premise, contemporary reviews for the movie were negative in fact Vincent Canby from the New York Times described Trouble Man as "a horrible movie." The same cannot be said for Marvin Gaye's soulful score.

In a similar vein to his innovative What's Goin' On released the previous year, Trouble Man is full of great moments such as the sublime title track featuring Gaye's gliding ethereal vocals and magnificently moody arrangement. There's some memorable tenor, alto and baritone sax from Trevor Lawrence while Marvin contributes some excellent 'moog, ivory tickling and sweetening.' Overlooked perhaps in favour of Curtis Mayfield's Superfly and Isaac Hayes' Shaft, Trouble Man is actually a more complete and enjoyable experience. Well that's my opinion anyway. I'll leave it to you to decide.

Antarctica - Vangelis' incredible journey

Koreyoshi Kurahara's 1983 movie Antarctica is based on Japan's first scientific expedition to the Antarctic in 1958. Inspired by a true story and filmed in a semi-documentary style, Antarctica attempts to piece together dramatically how the expedition's sled dogs cope when they are abandoned by the team forced to return to Japan because of bad weather.

Following in the footsteps of those great weepy creature features like Born Free, Ring of Bright Water, The Belstone Fox et al, Antarctica has some major eye-dabbing moments and by the time Vangelis' majestic and moving score kicks in, you may find yourself transformed into a blubbing heap of weeping humanity. There's no comic turns and funny voices applied to the dogs - they are given a dignity as befits them. Disney tried to remake Antarctica in 2006 as Eight Below but it lacked the power and raw emotion of the original.

Ken Takakura is magnificent and restrained as one of the guilt ridden scientists who returns to Antarctica to find the dogs. Takakura, you may recall was the Japanese policeman assigned to watch over Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia in Ridley Scott's Black Rain.

Vangelis really pulled out the stops with his rousing soundtrack for Antarctica, conveying the vast wilderness of the region as well as the many deeply emotional moments of the movie. An official soundtrack was released but an unofficial recording exists originally issued by Off World Music, who brought out some of the early Blade Runner bootlegs. It was later rereleased in equally unofficial form by Arkhan Records. The unofficial recording contains music taken directly from the film, and as a result certain tracks are a little muddy sounding but they are nevertheless beautiful to listen to. The sharp-eared among you will notice that one cue was recycled by Ridley Scott for the Unicorn Dream sequence in Blade Runner. It's worth purchasing the original soundtrack as well as hearing the unoffical version to get a real feel for the music.

I can't urge you enough to check out Antarctica. Those of you with multi-region players will be able to track down a region 3 copy easily. But a word of warning you may need to invest in industrial quantities of Kleenex whilst watching it. It's a bit like The Shawshank Redemption for animal lovers. You'll never look at a Husky the same way again. Long live Taro and Jiro.

One Million Years BC - Men in furs, women in bras

One Million Years BC was Hammer Film's most expensive production to date. Released in 1966, the adventure fantasy ignored history and pitted cavemen against Ray Harryhausen's stop motion dinosaurs.

Apart from the prospect of being eaten by your lunch and having no form of language other than grunts, Cavemen did manage somehow to invent the fur brassiere and decent haircare products for cavewomen like Raquel Welch.

A sort of follow up was made in 1970 called When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth which had a lower budget, even less dialogue - one word "Akita". On the plus side it starred the curvy Victoria Vetri who in a reflection of a more relaxed censor and an AA certificate showed innocent schoolboys like myself what was underneath the furry bra!

Hammer's third caveman picture, Creatures The World Forgot was released in 1971 and abandoned any pretence of dinosaurs and concentrated on the life of cavemen and how they coped with a grunt based language and providing Norwegian lovely Julie Ege with bras.

Italian-born composer Mario Nascimbene supplied a primitive-sounding score for all three movies featuring as one would expect percussion wordless vocals and Morricone style strings. Although the score for One Million Years is the strongest, I still have a soft spot for When Dinosaurs ruled the Earth specifically the Love Theme and the Boom-Chak Boom-Boom-Boom Boom-Chak percussion for the caveman scenes. Whilst the recording quality is a little abrasive, presumably mastered from the actual movies, the scores are fine examples of Nascimbene's 60's /70's film work.

Viva Blackpool!

Blackpool was a BBC production, part musical, part thriller, part drama filmed in the English seaside town of Blackpool. The series was notable for its comic touches and in a nod to Dennis Potter used pop music to underscore the narrative.

A gripping and witty whodunnit Blackpool, told the darkly comic tale of Ripley Holden (David Morrissey) a womanising small-time entrepreneur whose bid for fame and fortune rests on his state of the art amusement arcade. The discovery of a dead body during the opening prompts the arrival of DI Carlisle played by future Doctor Who, David Tennant. Matters are made worse when Carlisle falls in love with Ripley's long-suffering wife, Natalie , played by the delicious Sarah Parish.

Blackpool features 24 songs by Elvis, Diana Ross, The Smiths, The Clash and host of other artists. However, the official soundtrack issued to accompany the series only contains a fraction of the fun music featured on the Blackpool soundtrack and replaces the missing tracks with the dreaded 'music inspired by'. This prompted yours truly to seek out all the music from the series.

Standout tracks from the first half include, Johnny Nash's Cupid, Elvis Costello's Brillaint Mistake and The Smith's The Boy With A Thorn In His Side. The second half standouts are without doubt, The Faces' Ooh La La and Queen's Don't Stop Me Now. Check out the DVD to see just why these great tracks work so well. Like Pulp Fiction, the tracks become indellibly linked to the onscreen images.

Ralph Bakshi's Lord of The Rings - an heroic failure?

Since the release of Peter Jackson's epic and generally speaking definitive adaptation of Tolkein's Lord of The Rings trilogy, Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version has become something of a filmic footnote.

Veteran animator Bakshi's Lord of The Rings is not helped by the fact that it is not only incomplete but also very condensed and to those unfamiliar with the book, it is pretty confusing. Characters come and go for no apparent reason and in the case of Saruman his name changes halfway through the film to Aruman.

Viewed today the first half of the movie is actually pretty good. The voice artists are excellent and many of the early scenes are genuinely magical. Alas the extensive use of rotoscoping during many of the action scenes is rather clumsy and makes the viewer feel slightly cheated.

Although the film actually performed well at the box-office, earning back $30 million from its $4 million production costs, the second half was never completed. Two truly ghastly cheapo direct to video family oriented versions of the Two Towers and The Return of The King complete with songs followed, but they really don't count.

Leonard Rosenman created an epic score for the The Lord of The Rings, with lots of rising fanfares and unusual intrumentation. In the first half of the soundtrack the charming Mithrandir cue uses children's and adult choruses and poetry by Mark Fleischer. The Helm's Deep cue utilises a language invented by Rosenman, occasionally using his name backwards! The main theme for Lord of The Rings which closes the second half of the score is the cue most people remember and is so hobbit forming you'll be whistling it to yourself for ages. Clearly Rosenman was so pleased with it he decided to recycle elements of it in his somewhat nautical theme for Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home.

Saul Zaentz, the producer of The Lord of The Rings may have lost out ultimately to Peter Jackson's masterful interpretation, but it didn't stop Zaentz from producing Lord of The Rings The Musical. Whilst this ambitious production has received a mixed reception, notwithstanding the problems of condensing the entire trilogy in 3 1/2 hours on stage and representing major sequences with a modest cast, it is actually tremendous fun, so make the most of LOTR The Musical before it closes.

Cinemaphonic Soul - classic 70's jazz funk

I was tidying up the loft the other day and came across a couple of little gems, Cinemaphonic Soul Punch and Cinemaphonic Electro Soul - two criminally crucial compilations of 1970's UK and US jazz/funk library music.

Considering this music was churned out on a regular basis for use in TV, movies and commercials it holds up remarkably well and has been imortalised in a pair of fine library lounge core compilations - Ready Steady Boogaloo and Blow up Vol 4..but I digress.

With cool contributions from leading library luminaries as Syd Dale, Alan Hawkshaw, Walter Murphy and Mario Nascimbene, these collections boast some wicked wah-wahs, awesome arps, menacing moogs, funky Fenders and boss bass.

Put Cinemaphonic Soul Punch and Cinemaphonic Electro Soul on the car stereo while you're on the way to Tesco's and imagine you're wearing a window pane check suit with two foot flares and lapels, packing a Magnum and driving a monster muscle car while staking out a major drugs bust. Right On!

The Black Windmill - pure Buddism

Veteran director Don Siegel's 1974 thriller The Black Windmill tells the story of John Tarrant, a secret service agent, played by Michael Caine whose son is kidnapped while Tarrant is investigating an international arms syndicate. When Tarrant discovers that he can't rely on his own people, he hunts down the kidnappers himself.

Don Siegel was of course the director of Dirty Harry and perhaps this fact was an indirect influence on Roy Budd's soundtrack for The Black Windmill . It is one of his funkiest works and is more American sounding and has more than a touch of Lalo Schifrin about it. At a risk of being lynched by the Roy Budd fan fraternity, it is for me a more satisfying listening experience than his breakthrough score for Get Carter. I'll leave that to wiser Budd (Budweiser?) fans to decide.