Happy Christmas and New Year!

I have been busy with a new job and various other things, among which the creation of Videos for the Systema book, which after many tribulations, I have concluded is just going to happen easiest and best if I do them myself and forget about trying to rely on other people I had contracted originally. It seems the world of media people and I have different ideas about a lot of stuff concerning deadlines and agreed rates and so on. ANY-WAY…

Here is something cool for you though:

Tales of the Gold Monkey (Link to amazon UK)

Tales of the Gold Monkey (Link to Amazon USA)

The tales of the Gold Monkey was a show which I saw only a couple of episodes of when I was a kid  in the early eighties, but I was sorry the series (or more likely the reception, as we lived in Botswana then) went off air shortly after it started. I always remembered it though and looked for it online from time to time. FINALLY some genius has put it on DVD, the whole series too!

Now, I did read some of the reviews on amazon before buying it and I was worried that like so many other things from my misspent youth this would have aged badly and I would not enjoy it at all.

I am glad to report this was not at all the case. The show is indeed quite “over the top” but in the same way that Indiana Jones is. In other words, in a way I quite love. And it is a PERFECT show. The violence is somewhat theatrical, yet present, the acting is quite B-class but just kitch enough to make it brilliant and with some genuine moments of inspired B-Acting, and the plots…oh the plots…they basically make this the best damn birthday present I have bought myself in along time. The Gold Monkey has it all. Nazi nuclear bombs, lost Egyptian tribes, anachronistic elements that don’t really fit together and B-movie acting. It’s perfect. Truly a work of wonder. It has 22 episodes in the DVD pack but I am miserly with them as I fear running out of them. If you ever saw the original show you will not be disappointed if you get this. And if you never saw it before get it. Trust me…B-style films never get this good again. This is like pulp film. Brilliant. It’s right up there as one of my all time favourite film things, and probably at number one for TV series, right up there with NCIS and Dexter though these are two very different shows.

So yeah, while I avoid telling you about my life (not much new there) and work (lots new there but it’s for a wealthy and semi-famous client and he likes his privacy so he shall have it from me), be grateful I share this gem of cinematic genius with you. More than 24 hours of excellent entertainment. Not many blogs point to that today. It’s pretty cheap too at about 25 bucks. So if you are stuck for something good to see on TV, now you know what to get.

One last little bit of info…this series came out in 1982 but in it (although in classic B-cinema style) there is a semi-accurate representation of the fact that the Nazis had more advanced atomic bomb technology than the Americans. Something that is still not widely recognised today and only became public in 1992 with the release of certain documents under the FOI act. How Don Bellisario knew of it (or guessed it) before then is not known, but it just goes to show. All good B-movies really tell the deepest truths. At least about Nazis. You know it.