Movie Review - Twins of Evil

I'm approaching my 50th birthday which means that when this film was released, in 1971, I was four years old and certainly not able to enter a cinema for what was an 'X' certification at the time. The 'X' was a great certification as it let everyone know that they were in for blood and some gratuitous nudity in varying amounts of each. These days you're not entirely sure what you're going to get in a PG film.

Strangely enough I came to this movie via the BBC as much as by the colour stills in my Hamlyn Book of Horror Movies. As a ten-year old (going on ten and a half) the BBC ran horror double bills on Saturday nights during the Summer under the title "Dracula, Frankenstein and Friends". The first movie was always a classic black and white movie, usually from Universal's 30's and 40's list. The second, well that was the territory of Hammer and Amicus International mainly and while rebooted is the current vogue word, back then they were just colour remakes.

Now the chief difficulty for a nearly-ten-and-a-half-year old was how to watch them. As it was Saturday in Summer, this would be post village cricket time. My parents often went out on Saturdays leaving my 7 year old brother and I in the hands of a babysitter. The deal was that my brother went to bed shortly after my parents went out and I got to stay up until the end of the black and white horror. Whilst it may have started like this, it quickly moved on to me watching as much of the next colour movie as possible before the headlights of my parent's car appeared in the driveway, at which point I would scarper up the stairs. I guess I was just lucky that the babysitter liked horror movies too.

Twins of Evil is neither a reboot or a remake, but it is part of a trilogy loosely based on Seridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla'. It never showed on the Summer movie double bills as far as I can recall, but I'd seen enough of Hammer that by the time the VHS video boom occurred it was high on my list of priorities.

Hammer, for me, were never better than when they did period movies with the whole 19th Century Victoriana feel. I like some of the modernised movies, such as Dracula AD 1972, just not as much as the movies that reminded me of Bram Stoker's novel.

This movie is set in an Eastern European village at a time when horse and cart was the mode of travel, barmaids were voluptuous women in Bavarian style clothing and Peter Cushing and his Sunday School friends leant an air of Puritanical intollerance. The local aristocracy, in the form of Count Karnstein, is a ruthless playboy who toys with the Dark Arts, tormenting village girls provided by his aide.

One night one of these rituals goes wrong culminating in the release from interrment of the Count's long dead vampiric ancestor Mircalla. She subsequently initiates her descendant into unlife as a vampire in what is a very well put together sequence.

The story moves along briskly enough, bringing the Count into immediate conflict with Peter Cushing's equally sadistic guardian of the local morals and the handsome, liberal, atheist librarian/music teacher. The arrival of Cushing's twin nieces is perfectly opportune and the Count wastes little time in getting his teeth into one of them. Which one, however, is a plot device that is well used throughout the movie.

I will say no more about the story and instead point out that this movie looks much more professional than some of the earlier Hammer movies. An absence of creaky scenery, some good supporting roles and a solid story, help what could have been a pretty rotten idea.

The Collinson twins, fresh from appearances in Playboy, appear to have been dubbed and fortunately aren't really called on for too much in the acting stakes. Cushing is his usual reliable self, here playing a different character to any I have seen him play before in Hammer movies.

I really do just love the feel of this movie. It's easily my favourite Hammer Horrors and if you are prepared to accept that it's now over 40 years old and not filled with modern special effects, you just might enjoy this eerie romp.

Movies, Movies, Movies

Yesterday I talked about cooking as one of my main hobbies, but the one hobby that tops the list, that always has, is watching movies.

I have been a fan of movies ever since I can remember. I will watch any genre, however my tastes are more towards horror, sci fi, action and comedy, although not in the same movie so much. I have extremely fond memories of watching Spaghetti Westerns with my Dad as a kid growing up and I think this is also why I have a penchant for a good western movie too. It's also telling that I preferred Lee Van Cleef to Clint Eastwood. So while the man with no name went on to Dirty Harry and acting with Orangutans, I still preferred Van Cleef's more anti-hero style.

As a kid, I used to devour horror movie books too. I don't mean novelisations of horror movies, I mean things like the Hamlyn Book of Horror Movies. Containing stills of strange and wonderful movies that looked awesome to a kid, especially when taken out of the context of a plot or acting. To this day the image of Lon Chaney in London After Midnight sticks with me as one of the most terrifying things my young eyes had ever seen.

Inevitably these books would turn up in my Christmas present pile and where some kids would head straight for the shiney flashing game, I would listen to the vinyl album that my hip aunt and uncle would have bought for me and disappear with my head in the book to re-read stories of silent movies, make-up, characters and actors. These compendiums always contained the same movies, but by getting the latest editions they were updated to include the latest releases. They were nothing short of a feast and whilst in some cases I was disappointed to eventually see the actual movies, I still buy DVD 'B' movies today in the hope that they'll live up to my expectations.

So with this in mind I thought I'd try to review a few of my favourite classic movies, not as an attempt at being a professional critic, rather from the point of view of someone who just loves to be whisked away for ninety-plus minutes. I thought I'd get started with classic Hammer Horror, "Twins of Evil".......

Cooking for Fun

As well as working hard it's obviously important to play equally hard. Plus when you're not starting until later in the morning it's surprisingly easy to let those hours slip away from you. Some people I know are studying for extra qualifications, others have a gymn membership, me? I like cooking.

Actually both Yohana and I like to cook and we devote a certain amount of time each weekend to this mutual hobby. It may be that only one of us is cooking but we'll both get involved in the preparation. This way we get to see each other's technique and learn more about the cultural side of cooking. What eventually arrives from the oven or the pan is often a fusion of Eastern and Western styles and flavours.

I'm very much of the school that you use your experience to build a dish, referring only to recipes if you're trying something new or if the recipe calls for very specific measurements. Yorkshire puddings, or pancake batter for instance I judge ingredients from experience and any sauce is often done from splashes of this, that and the other with a 'finger taste' to check. Yohana is very much the same when cooking Indonesian food. Her experience allows her to casually throw stuff in and of course it comes together perectly.

The difficulty for me living here, and for Yohana to adapt recipes, is that many of the ingredients are subtly different if not completely unavailable whatsoever. So some trial and error is to be expected. For instance, spicing up a Shepherd's Pie with chillies took a bit of balancing as well as for the Indonesian equivalent of Worcester sauce, called saus Inggris or Kecap Inggris, which is a little sweeter than Lea and Perrin's. Also flour where for a long time I was having to add baking powder to regular flour to get self raising flour whereas back home we'd just buy it as is. (Self raising flour is now readily available in most supermarkets in a pink box.)

Ingredients and shopping for stuff is an adventure. Sure you can go to the supermarkets and find most of what you need but scouring the traditional markets for bargains and haggling with the stall holders turns up some interesting discoveries. For instance, you could buy frozen filo pastry to make spring rolls, but the sheets that they sell in our local pasar don't stick, are bigger, are way cheaper and taste better!

As for equipment, well for the first few years here I saw no need to have anything more than a two ring gas burner and a small electric toaster oven and it was surprising what you could actually get from those. But recently we have upgraded to a free-standing, 4 burner hob and oven affair. I'm not convinced the gas marks on it are too precise, but we've done everything from casseroles and roasts to scones, cookies and crumbles, so it can't be that bad. A pestle and mortar is a good investment but again, if you don't want to have the hard work of breaking down all of the ingredients the local market stalls will sell you the sauce ingredients already broken down. We recently invested in an electric hand whisk and at some point a food processor will be useful but we're certainly not restricted by the lack of one.

We've made some damn fine marmalades and jams over the last year as the varieties of fruit available here stretches your imagination away from the regular UK options of strawberry or raspberry jam.  So much so in fact that our first attempts were making kiwi and lime marmalade, mangosteen jam and some pretty awesome satsuma marmalade too. I want to experiment a bit with dragon fruit and papayas next.

We're also at home for Christmas this year so I guess we'll have a go at roasting a turkey and if it doesn't work out we'll just make satay for the barbecue!

Pineapple and chicken stir-fry 

Homemade beer-battered fish

Homemade Lumpia (Spring Rolls) Yogyakarta-style 

Homemade Beef Rendang 

The finished satsuma marmalade waiting in the fridge 

marmalade bubbling away

finished Kiwi and Lime marmalade

Prep for the kiwi and lime marmalade

Mangosteens 

Homemade Minced Beef Pies

 Mini blueberry and vanilla muffins

 mini Yorkshire Puddings

 Homemade Peking Duck and pancakes

 Roasted vegetables in an electric toaster oven!

 BBQ chicken satay

 Homemade Scones

 Basic Ingredients for many Indonesian dishes

 Homemade Sunday Lunch

 Thai Green Curry

Yohana and her homemade chocolate cake

 homemade cupcakes filled with jam and topped with peanut butter icing

Homemade chocolate chip cookies

Abandon hope all snowmen who enter Indonesia.....

Christmas is coming

For the first year in a while we're going to be spending Christmas at home. Partly due to financial constraints through buying the house, but also because it's going to be different.

When we went back to the UK at Christmas last year we were lucky enough to buy a Christmas tree for a bargain price. It's a black, six-foot tall, fibre-optic lit beauty with a staggering array of copper and gold baubles with which to decorate it. It also wouldn't fit in our luggage to return home!

Fortunately, having just returned from another trip back home, we were able to bring it back with us and it was only made finally possible by my parents lending us a conveniently handy seven-foot long travelling bag that must have originally been intended for transporting a surfboard or Dracula.

Suffice to say that it made it through Customs, Indonesian traffic and Lufthansa's ineptitude and currently resides in our spare bedroom, patiently waiting for December the first. There is none of this 12 days before, 12 days after rubbish in our house, the minute Halloween decorations are down it's open season on Christmas. But there does need to be a tad of decorum and so the only thing I've done so far is check the solar powered fairy lights for the papaya tree in our front garden are working, which they are. Everything else will wait for the first.

I usually bring back some bits and pieces and for my current Business English class I was able to find Advent calendars in Tescos. These were greeted with a mixture of "wow, chocolate" to "ah, it's a puzzle" A little elicitation later and everyone was under firm instruction to take it home, put it in the fridge (English chocolate melts quicker than Indonesian chocolate) and not open number 1 until the first day of December.

I would really like to make some minced pies but it's not that easy to find the ingredients, plus the booze is expensive but I think we'll shell out for a couple of bottles of red wine and turn it into Mulled Wine and invite people round to help us decorate. I think I'll also make up a plate of turkey and cranberry sandwiches! Now, where did I put that Glee Christmas album.......

The EF Spelling Bee

Every year EF has a national competition. One year it's called 'Colour Your Day' and is a colouring competition. The next year it's a Spelling Bee and they then fall  on alternate years.

Saturday 1st November 2014 was the turn of Spelling Bee and the rules haven't changed much since I joined EF. The first two rounds consist of a speaker giving the students a word, the word used in a sentence and the word again before the students have 15 seconds to spell it. They get twenty five words in each of the first two rounds with the top 10 in each age range going forward to the final. Up to this point all is fine and dandy but the final, sheesh it's tough!

Each student is guaranteed the chance to spell 4 words with 1 point for each spelled correctly. The kicker though is that in this round they only hear the word once. No context sentence. No opportunity to ask part of speech. Just hear it and then spell it.

I believe it is a credit to all levels this year that we had to dip into the 'extra word bag' so many times as they were spelling tough words with ease. Congratulations to all students involved, from all schools.

Buying a house in Indonesia - 1. finding the right place

Yes we're finally buying a house. Not the Dream House on the Sumatran island beach, not yet. After almost two years of marriage the days of renting are soon to be behind us and, following a suggestion from a friend, I thought I'd use this blog to share the progression (or regression) that we experience from day 1.

Instead of beginning at Day 1, the story actually began about 8 months or so ago. The yearly rental on our current place was going to be up in August and we started contemplating buying something in Gading Serpong, the area where I teach. The main problem with this idea was that there was nothing within our price range that also met our criteria for the house, so with that in mind I guess what we were looking for is where we should begin.

Ideally we wanted a 2 floor house with 3+1 bedrooms and 3+1 bathrooms and for this we wanted to spend about 80,000 sterling pounds or Rp 1.5 billion!

• The plus 1's are maid accommodation and maid bathroom and are pretty normal in houses here in Indonesia where many families have live-in maids. Whilst not yet being a 'family', should we wish to sell the house in the future it would be necessary to include.
• 80,000/1,500,000,000 is a realistic figure for this size of a house. In some areas we could get a lot more for that sort of money.
• In Indonesia you are basically paying for the land and the popularity of the area in which that land is situated, so pretty much like everywhere else really.
• Foreigners are not allowed to own land. 
• This means that everything needs to be done in Yohana's name or if you were in a situation where you're unmarried you could split the ownership around random Indonesian nationals. 
• Deposits are usually 30% of the purchase price, plus initial fees for administration and bank charges.

 Saying all of that, our initial inquiries had shown us that the price range was always going to be iffy in the area in which we currently live. It's not just the fact that it is an up-and-coming area, rather it is one of the places to live outside of the city and one which has seen house prices more than double in two years, so we knew our work was going to be cut out for us. Knowing this, we had already started looking into other nearby areas such as Karawaci, Alam Sutera, BSD and Tangerang.

the greater Karawaci area

Needless to say after 8 months we were no closer to finding anything. We did consider a 'compact' house but once we saw a builders mock-up of a couple of rooms we both agreed it would have to be a bloody small cat that got swung around in it.

All of this until last week when a chance viewing of a website announced a new development about to be built in Karawaci. Not only was the price within our budget, Rp 866,000,000, the deposit was only 20% meaning that we had enough cash in the bank to do this.

the development brochure

You know those moments? The ones where you experience, feelings. Maybe the raising of the neck hairs when you sense trouble or, maybe for no apparent reason, a warm feeling of good fortune. Armed with the latter, and with only a small photo of an artists impression, we headed for Karawaci and the Binong 1 Residence development.

the design we chose

We knew we were going to have to make some compromises. There were 3 bedrooms but only two bathrooms, obviously a small price to pay. And there was no additional +1's for the maid. However there was extra room at the back of the property if we wanted to develop or add anything later. Finally, the big difference between this and another that was on display was that the kitchen was inside the house. As weird as that may seem, a significant number of properties situate the kitchen outside!

I'll leave this first post with some pictures of the model we saw and the land on which our house is about to be built

the eventual development