this week's armload

--Why I had never heard of Manchild before astonishes me. It is a riotously funny, piercingly honest and sweetly sad look at a quartet of British men in their 50s, close friends who have established themselves and revel in the best years of their lives, all with assorted issues to keep them on their toes.

Terry (Nigel Havers) is the narrator, a divorced man who dates models, drives a different piece of image-conscious machinery in every episode, and cannot relate to the younger generation without it becoming painfully awkward. Gary (Ray Burdis) is The Married One, happily bedding only one woman, connecting faintly with a teenage son and fighting off age less successfully but more realistically than his pals. James (Anthony Head) is Terry less the suavity and self-assuredness. And then there is connoisseur and human-experience anchor Patrick (Don Warrington). Terry catches the eye of every young woman he encounters. Gary wants excitement but doesn't stray from the comfort and safety of his loving wife. James deals with investment and erectile dysfunction issues. Patrick delights in every natural, cultural and social experience life has to offer, perhaps to counter the fact that his old mum is at death's door.

Catch Manchild on DVD. It is a surprising, highly-enjoyable series.

There, I didn't reference Sex and the City once.

--Burnt Offerings is one of those old-school haunting flicks from the early seventies, when Rosemary's Baby kicked off a literary horror trend. The film is all about a ghostly presence in a house that drives a family apart, but it's much more than that, and much less. What it comes down to is this: no one was a wilder mad-Englishman than Oliver Reed, and no woman was ever as creepy/scary as Karen Black. The film is a bit kooky 30 years later, but still has some heft to it. Don't miss Bette Davis as The Cryptkeeper.

--My wife LOVES the crap. She sucks down z-grade horror films the same way a vampire doffs type O negative. In that light, I present you with the following:

The Prophecy: Uprising - Kari Wuhrer in the fourth or fifth Prophecy sequel, all about angels and devils duking it out in Romaniazakistan over a woman with a bad scratch under her eye and a big book under her arm. Not as reprehensible as you might imagine. With Jason London as an outline.

Dracula III: Legacy - As bad as you might think. Jason London, this time with the acting prowess of an outline, and Jason Scott Lee, who eventually went on to film the next Prophecy sequel with Kari Wuhrer and Jason London (and Tony Todd! My wife just hit the Z-Horror trifecta!), battle cranky, overly made-up vampire-king Rutger Hauer. Except they don't really do much at all, except get into bad situations repeatedly because stupid-king Jason London keeps wanting to get out of the car.

Hellraiser CVXIII: Deader - Holy crap! Kari Wuhrer is a tabloid reporter who gets all messed up in the name of important journalism. A really, really uncomfortable flick. Doug Bradley appears as Pinhead for about three minutes, probably because of his sterling representation ("Jimmy, I've been thinking about doing Polonius in the upcoming run of Hamlet." "Aww, Doug, I just got you your thirty-eighth Pinhead role. We haven't got time for that artsy prat!") Bradley, it should be said, also starred in Prophecy: Uprising. Wuhrer also starred in The Hitcher 2: I've Been Waiting (which did not star Rutger Hauer, though I'm sure Jake Busey was channeling his spirit) and King of the Ants, a grotesquerie disguised as a movie.

Come to think of it, the low-end horror industry seems to be a pretty in-bred little world. Kari Wuhrer, Jason London, Tony Todd, directed by Rick Bota and based on the collective works of Stephen King and Clive Barker, and produced by Wes Craven. Put a colon in the title, and that sums up the whole unholy affair.