STE586

Monkey absolutely sums up kids tv in the UK in the early 80's. If memory serves me right this was on BBC2 week nights at about 6pm.

It's so so bad (it looks cheesy, the dubbing is awful) but my god it's sooooo good!!!

I can't remember much about it other than Monkey and his band of merry men who were also other animals were on a journey somewhere and got into all kinds of scrapes along the way. Remember the crazy whistle to summons his flying cloud?

Anyway it's turned up on Prime Video in the UK (August 25) so I will definitely be sitting through all 52 episodes before the month is over.

Monkey Magic? You better believe it.

Surely this was the point where even the most cynical had to admit that Mr Spielberg was indeed the greatest filmmaker since Hitchcock. After the horror of Jaws, the sci-fi of Close Encounters and the action of Raiders of the Lost Ark Spielberg turned his attention to making a full on "kids" film, and didn't just hit a home run, he knocked it out of the park so far it possibly flew past the visitors from Close Encounters.

A box office smash, and arguably THE film that created the demand for what went on to become video piracy (the demand was so great the theatres couldn't keep up with the showings per day needed).

E. T. Is the benchmark for any film that involves creatures from another planet.

But away from E. T.'s blockbuster success it cemented for at least the next 15 years that if Spielberg was behind the camera it was box office gold for the studios and the movie event of the year for film fans.

If you had to make a list of the greatest films ever E. T. along with Jaws would be somewhere at the top of that list. Spielberg's vision is unlikely to ever be seen again - who else has a body of work like his? Films that sway so far from each other in style, topic and tone yet all reach perfection. For every E. T. there is a Schindler's List, and for every Color Purple there is a Jurassic Park.

I'd go as far as to say without Steven Spielberg would the world even have the likes of Universal Theme Parks?

As i write this, E. T. is 43 years old, your parents enjoyed it as much as you, and in another 43 years your children's grandchildren will fall in love with it too.

Is Halloween Resurrection the most film of the franchise? Personally I don't think there's much in it between this, Halloween 6 and Halloween Ends.

Let's be honest, the original was like capturing lightning in a bottle and even if John Carpenter was to make another Halloween I doubt he could repeat what made the original so damn good. His involvement in Halloween ll kind of shows that. Although it's probably the best of the films that followed it's nowhere near its predecessor.

The franchise has been plagued with jumping timelines and definitely in the case of Halloween Resurrection trying to be relevant - in this case the emergence of reality tv and the internet.

If you are a fan like me you'll find something in all of the films as they've all got the basic ingredients - you can't help but look in the shadows behind characters wondering if the icy white mask is going to slowly appear. This one does have a couple of decent jumps and kills.