Trollheart

It's always nice to have a surprise at the movies. We all think we can predict how something is going to go, and nine times out of ten we're right, so whenever something unexpected happens --- be it good or bad --- we usually end up remembering that movie based on the unpredictability of the event that occurred.

Here I'll be running examples of the occasions when this happens. The first one I want to look at is from this movie



Samuel L. Jackson is a corporate exec brought in by the financial backers of the facility where the "super sharks" are being kept and experimented on. During a dramatic speech about keeping together and facing the odds, Jackson's character is suddenly and unexpectedly eaten by one of the sharks and dragged away. It happens here:

What I particularly love about this moment is that a) you never expect a star of Jackson's calibre and movie net worth to meet such a bloody end, b) there is no, repeat no signposting of the event --- you don't see the shark slowly circle around him or anyone gazing fearfully to his side; it just happens in a flash, literally in midsentence and is over as quickly and c) the scene continues, to show another shark rip him in half, in case anyone had the idea he might somehow survive and make a reappearance.

When this character died, he was not coming back!
One of the many things that allows this movie to stand out from the plethora of shark movies that have proliferated ever since "Jaws" brought our attention to these hunters of the oceans.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

days to go!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I'd just like to point out that your graphic already says all of what you just took a paragraph to say again, making one or the other redundant. I suppose you can take that as a compliment, as your graphic is informative enough that it does not require explanation. I know you like to Trollheart on at length when given half a chance, but I just thought that worth mentioning.

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Thelonious Monkey

I've never watched Star Trek. Where should I start, and is it on Netflix?

Trollheart

Depends on what you want.
Original is a bit campy at times but you really need to see it to appreciate Trek. It's just called Star Trek or sometimes TOS (The Original Series) or Classic Trek.

The followup to that, the 80s version, "The Next Generation", is more serious with a much bigger budget, and with the series already established they knew they had a willing audience so there was no real fear of cancellation, as in the original.

Deep Space 9 came next. That's great if you're into political intrigue, religious themes and a huge overarching story that spans most of the series from season three onwards. It's also much darker and more adult-themed.

Voyager went back to being more or less lighthearted, with a soap-in-space idea. There's a female captain in that one.

Enterprise went backwards to even before TOS, but mostly it failed. Yer man from Quantum Leap is the captain in that.

Yeah, they're all on Netflix.

Personally I'd suggest starting at the start with TOS, though if you go straight to NextGen you won't be missing very much. TBH, you could start with any of them as they don't really crossover all that much, though the beginning of DS9 refers back to a serious plot strand in, and spoiler for if you haven't seen it, TNG. I watched them all as they aired, so I can't really say how you should approach it. Like I say, I guess it depends on what you want to get out of it. Also how much time you have. TOS=3 seasons. TNG/DS9/Voyager=7 seasons each. Enterprise=4 seasons. That's a lot of telly!

But worth it.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

Just start with Next Generation. It's a more mature and better made show--the B-rate acting is still there--while still giving you pretty much the exact same experience as the original series. After that go back and watch TOS, though I actually think some of the movies were better than much of the series. But if you're starting to fade out by this point, drop everything and switch to Deep Space Nine. It doesn't have the feel of pure exploration that the first two series do, but for the most part it has the best characters, and a plot that actually goes somewhere.

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Unknown Soldier

Great advice, now he'll spend the next decade watching them all

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Trollheart

Step right up ladies and gentlemen! You are about to witness that which no living human eyes should ever see, and discover truths too awful for the human brain to comprehend. You have, I trust, all signed the disclaimer waivers you were presented with at the door? Ah yes, good, good. And the price was only that of your immortal souls. Pfah! You have no need for that, right? Most of you don’t even believe it exists. Indeed. So really, you’ve paid nothing…

Ahem! Where was I? Oh yes! Then right this way please, and take your seats. The show is about to start. Do be advised the doors will be locked upon commencement of the film and there is no escape, and certainly no refunds. You have all come here of your own free will, and have signed affadavits to that effect. What happens next is entirely consensual and the dangers have already been pointed out to you. Please note we have one of the finest legal teams in the world on our books, so any attempts to sue us for, oh, I don’t know, mental anguish or trauma experienced during our presentation will be fought to the very best of our ability.

As a wise man once said, you pays your money and you takes your chances…

Now, quiet please. Extinguish all cigarettes and combustible materials, turn off all mobile phones and tablets and please do not attempt to record the film; nobody will want to see it anyway. The burly gentlemen stationed at each exit are there for your protection, and for no other reason. May we just please remind anyone of a weak disposition or who has a history of heart problems to reconsider remaining before the doors are sealed? No? Nobody. You’re all quite happy to remain where you are. Do remember later, I asked.

Then let the lights go down, the curtain raise and prepare once more, you brave and foolhardy souls to


Back in the 1970s it was easy to spot a bad movie. Usually they were the ones with the likes of Doug McClure in them, scantily-clad young ladies running from monsters, or martians, or perhaps prehistoric creatures like dinosaurs. These days, things are a lot more subtle but you can still spot the dubious movies, often by their titles. I mean, “Strippers vs Werewolves” doesn’t exactly sound like anything that’s going to tax your brain too much, now does it?

But this one. Well, this one really has Oscar nominee written all over it. And yet, when I watched it for the first time I was shocked to find that --- yeah, right. This belongs on the cutting room floor with all the other unnecessary shots that were ripped out of it, leaving us with ninety minutes of preposterous garbage that goes by the glorious title of


You can just sense the class reeking from it as you look at the poster, can’t you? Not even McClure would be seen dead in this, in fact nobody who is anyone is in it. All these actors (I use the phrase loosely, of course) are unknown to me .. wait a moment! Dominque Swain? She was in “Face/off” wasn’t she? And isn’t Jake Busey the son of that action-movie powerhouse madman Gary? What ever possessed them to get dragged into something like this? Could it be blackmail? Are there compromising photographs floating around somewhere, or held under lock and key by the, um, director of this, um, film?

Title: Nazis at the center of the Earth
Year: 2012
Writer: Paul Bales
Producer: David Michael Latt/David Rimawi/Paul Bales
Director: Joseph Lawson
Genre: Science-Fiction/Horror
Stars: Dominique Swain as Paige Morgan
Jake Busey as Adrian Reistad
Joshua Michael Allen as Lucas Moss
Christopher Karl Johnson as Dr. Josef Mengele
James Maxwell Young as Adolf Hitler

Germany, May 1945 and Dr. Josef Mengele makes his escape as the Americans close in. Cut to present day and we’re in Antarctica, as a crew begins to drill into the perma-frost but their drill stops after a few moments, hitting metal! Scraping the ice away they reveal, of all things, a swastika. A moment later three gas-masked Nazis appear out of nowhere and knock the two scientists unconscious. They then blow up the drill. Back at the research station. Dr. Reistad (Busey) seems to be something of a Mengele character himself. His superior reminds him that he once infected a whole team with influenza, just as an experiment, and now he has been caught with a deadly flesh-eating bacteria, no doubt about to try something similar. It’s pretty uncanny how like his father Jake Busey is; it’s almost like looking back in time.

A quick break to explore some scintillating dialogue from the movie so far: one scientist, out in the freezing sub-zero temperatures of Antarctica, remarks “It’s cold!” Uh-huh! Where did you think you were going, idiot? The freaking Bahamas? When they get to the drilling site and see nothing there they think it might have been an explosion, Dr. Ross says “There’d be wreckage” to which another scientist nods and says “He’s right!” Yeah, he’s right. Was that necessary? It’s fucking obvious he’s right. Does this guy have so few lines that he needs to make pointless statements? Ans why isn’t there wreckage? All the Nazis did was throw a grenade at the drill. Wouldn’t that have caused wreckage? How about Busey when he leans down and sees red spots on the ice. After carefully examining them he declares knowledgeably, “It’s blood.” No shit, Sherlock!

Anyway, when they realise that the two scientists who went out to drill have not reported in a search party heads out onto the ice and find drag marks, which they begin to follow. Down below the ice (presumably) Paige and Mark, the two who were abducted, find themselves in a cell. Mark is taken from there by the Nazi soldiers and strapped down on a table, towards which a man (who is clearly the monstrous doctor who fled Germany) approaches, makes a cut across the top of his forehead and then Mark literally loses face as the Nazi rips the skin off, exposing the skull beneath. Yuck! It’s pretty gory, and I would assume also inaccurate. Surely the skin is anchored to the face, the head by more than just one point? I mean, it seems unlikely you could pull someone’s face off like stripping wallpaper! Mind you, I’ve never tried and never wish to, but it sounds a bit too simple.

(Somebody get my agent on the phone --- NOW!!)

The search party meanwhile finds a chasm or sinkhole or crater, or whatever you call it when there’s a big deep hole in the ice, and they abseil down, finding themselves in a massive cavern under the ice. But all is not as it should be. As if there being a bloody cavern under the ice is not odd enough! It seems to be warm, and the heat is coming from a tunnel off to the side, which they duly head towards. Our man of few lines again adds his wisdom to the dialogue: “I’m ready”, he tells them. Nobody asked. And what were they going to do if you weren’t ready? Wait till you were? Our intrepid Paige, face for the moment still attached, manages to escape by jamming a fork in the steel door as it shuts. Let’s examine this for a moment, shall we?

First, how stupid is the Nazi to give her a steel fork, a weapon she can use if she’s quick enough (which she isn’t?) --- surely a plastic one would have done just as well, or fuck it, let her use her fingers. Why should they care? They’re probably going to kill her anyway, so what does it matter? Secondly, are we supposed to believe that jamming a small piece of stainless steel into a massive hydraulic door will stop it closing? Surely the fork would just be splintered? And even if not, how does she then exploit the tiny gap this provides for her? They expect us to believe that she rolled back that big, heavy door all on her own? In her weakened state and also being, you know, a girl?

In the event, she finds Mark, or so she thinks, lying on a bed in a cubicle. Mark is in fact in the cubicle adjacent, and has lost not only his face but most of his skin, which appears to have been attached to the man she saw originally, thinking him to be her friend. This charming man then appears before her, speaking in German. She hits him and runs as klaxons blare. Suddenly she’s surrounded by these zombie things. Dr. Moss goes down the shaft (oooer!) into the darkness and is followed by a female member of the team, whom I am going to refer to as Norway Girl, as she says she's Norwegian and it's easier than figuring out what her name actually is. So we have Busey, Moss, Norway Girl, One-Liner and two others who I especially don't give a toss about, all of whom go down the chasm after the first two. At the end of the tunnel they find, to their amazement, a city, a world, a whole ecosystem including trees, mountains and lakes. This will of course all be explained in the best scientific tradition, and we will be left with no doubt that such a thing could indeed happen, fifty miles under the ice.

(Yes, choose beautiful Antarctica under the ice for your next holiday! Just remember to bring a spare face and brain! )

Ah, no. Busey just talks a lot of bull about people writing about this in the eighteenth century, the hollow Earth and so on. No explanation. And where does the sunlight come from? Surely the sun, powerful as it is, can’t penetrate through fifty miles of ice? Isn't that why it’s dark underwater? Sigh. Anyway, our heroes blithely blunder into a large building that looks a lot like that hangar they met the aliens in on The X-Files and rather surprisingly the doors shut and they find themselves trapped! Oh no! But worse is to come, when Dr. Mengele reveals himself and it turns out Busey is working for him, having been captured ten years previously and now turned to the Nazi cause. Just in case we’re unsure, he gives the salute and shouts “Heil Hitler!”

Mengele then weaves a rather fantastical story about having replaced over sixty percent of his skin and having survived down here under the earth, with access to all sorts of hi-tech, one of which, a sort of disintegrator weapon, he uses on one of the scientists who is --- anyone? ---- a jew. He dies particularly painfully. Good: saves me having to learn his name or refer to him again. Mengele tells the shocked crew that Busey saved his own skin by agreeing to deliver a fresh supply of “human parts” to the crazed Nazi, so that he can keep rebuilding himself as parts fail. He now shares with them his master plan which is --- anyone? Anyone at all. You there, up at the back, waving frantically --- yeah. He wants to take over the world in the name of the Nazis and bring about the Fourth Reich. Ah, bless!

Even little Paige seems to have given in to the inevitable, as she appears wearing a fetching Nazi uniform. But this particular group, Mengele tells them, aren’t to be recycled and used as parts. Oh no: they’re the finest minds of their generation (apparently) and they are to help the mad Nazi and his cohorts remain alive so that they can fulfil their grand destiny. We next see cliche city (as if we haven’t been living there for some time now) as firstly, with our intrepid band imprisoned one of them bounces a ball off the wall, “Great Escape”-style, while Moss goes on about evil triumphing when good men do nothing, except here Mengele is not suggesting they do nothing, but very much indeed. The best line comes from one of the other scientists (no I could not be bothered to learn all their names) when he says matter-of-factly “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Well, at the box office, yes.

I love the way the scientists get all interested and professional when they meet the guy wearing Mark’s face, and are all eager to help his issues with rejection of the facial tissue. Talk about getting lost in your work! And they’re allowed to work without supervision, with all these surgical tools, chemicals and other potential weapons to hand? No wonder the Germans lost! And nobody has yet explained why all the soldiers are wearing gas masks? Seems even Nazi zombies get hungry for a bit of t&a, so we have a gratuitous gang rape scene (or it could be cannibalism; it’s never made that clear; one thing is certain though, and that is that afterwards one of the zombies has taken part of her skin and grafted it onto his neck, so I assume she didn’t live through the ordeal!) while the other girl loses the top half of her head, as Busey extracts stem cells from her brain with a syringe.

(I must be out of my mind to have accepted a role in this picture! (Sorry...))

Now. Let’s recap. Sorry. I will have my little joke, won’t I? These Nazi lunatics, led by the insane Angel of Death himself, are below the ice experimenting on human bodies --- apparently; though there’s been no mention of people going mysteriously missing over the years, which would have been something of a clue. And this is fucking Antarctica after all: it’s not like you’re going to be able to trap unwary travellers passing through! --- and plotting the return of the Reich. Can anyone guess who’s about to step into the picture? Come on now, think hard. What’s a Reich without a fuhrer to lead it? Adolf Hitler, come on down!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

That sounds brilliant. Will watch.

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Trollheart

(Isn't this a scene from "Castle Wolfenstein"?)
Of course, now is when it gets really stupid. No, really. Norway Girl chooses this moment to tell Busey that she is pregnant, and it must be his baby because suddenly he gets all emotional and supportive, and they embrace tenderly while trying not to slip on the discarded brain of their former colleague and friend. Nice. And then he punches her out, after which she finds herself strapped to a table as loopy Busey prepares to harvest the stem cells from her baby. Now where was I? Oh yes, der fuhrer. Well, did you ever see Futurama? Of course you did. So you’ll understand when I mention how President Nixon ended up in that.

(Ach du liber! Who iz pushink who arount now, ja?)

Yep: Hitler’s a gigantic fighting robot, ready to reclaim his kingdom in the name of the German people. Oh, and in case you were wondering how they were going to get back to the surface in order to install the glorious Fourth Reich? Yeah, they have a spaceship.

(Now that's how to break the ice! Oh I really am sorry...)

Mecha-Hitler finally does us all a favour and puts an end to Mister One-Liner, slicing his head off, which I must admit is a part at which I cheered, then prepares to pilot his massive starship out of the centre of the Earth, while the others (those who are still left alive) being of no further use are taken to the labs. Now I assume that for some reason at this point the writer (I use the word very liberally, I assure you) seems to think that nobody has sussed out that Paige is not really working for the Nazis and is just biding her time, waiting for her moment. Really? So it’s a total surprise when she suddenly turns against Mengele, slicing his throat open and proving she was just playing along? Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Didn’t see that coming at all…

And come on! There has to be some weird connection between the fact that one of the major films Dominique Swain is known for is “Face/off” and this film involving people ripping people’s, you know, faces off? It’s even underlined near the end, when, having beaten the zombie who was wearing Mark’s face, Lucas rips it off saying “This isn’t yours!” Oh, the subtlety! Hitler, meanwhile, is still heading towards the surface in his spaceship, while Mark, oddly enough, is still alive, minus skin, which makes it rather awkward when they head back to rescue him and find that there’s very little to rescue. They have to put him out of his misery, which unfortunately won’t happen for me for another twenty long minutes.

Some more inspired dialogue to while away the time: Airbase replies to the sighting of a “UFO” with a question as to whether it is hostile, to which the pilot replies “It’s covered with Nazi swastikas! I’m calling that hostile!”

(That is one BIG motherfuckin' ship!)

And as the group remaining below trying to get away from the Nazi zombies runs into a locked door, dead end, one of the others remarks “I think I saw some other doors along the corridor!” And you didn’t think to fucking mention this at the time? You waited till they were trapped and THEN considered bringing it up??

So now we have a sort of Star Wars escape and laser gunfight (and the bad guys still couldn’t hit a target if their lives depended on it, which of course they do) while Hitler’s spaceship proves equal to the very best the air force of, um, New Zealand can throw at it. Kind of hard to see how this thing is going to be beaten, unless there happens to be some sort of override at the base. But then, they would never be that stupid, would they? Answers on a postcard please … what? Oh, fuck off and ask your parents!

Okay, okay, they weren’t that stupid. Hitler is on his merry way, intending to bomb “all non-Aryan countries” --- that would be all of them, then, including his beloved Germany --- and has had Busey put the flesh-eating virus (remember that? Yeah, they’re actually connecting the dots up here! This is almost proper writing. Well, I wouldn't go that far...) into the bombs. Oh no, hold on: he’s returned in a “lifeboat” and is now chasing the remaining two scientists around the complex. Huh? He abandoned his spaceship to go back and deal with two of his enemies? Does that sound like der fuhrer we all know and love? Back on the ship, Norway Girl grabs a grenade and twists the cap. A chain reaction begins to tear the spaceship apart, but not before they can get off one --- Doodlebug? Seriously? They’ve had seventy years to perfect their delivery system and they’re still using the old V1 rocket? Nobody thought of upgrading it?

Ok, wait what? No, it’s not a bomb, it’s an escape craft and the two heroes are in it? When did that happen? Oh I guess this is Hitler’s lifeboat, which he used to get back to the base and which they’ve now appropriated. It flies out of the --- what? The ship? Weren’t they supposed still to be on the base? Or were they on the spaceship all along? Ah, okay, now I think I get it. When the massive ship lifted off, it was basically most of the base, so everyone has in fact been running around on the spaceship. Really, Trollheart! When someone goes to all the trouble of writing such fine dram you should really try to keep up with the intricate plot! Right. I’m caught up now. So the hero and his girl have escaped from the exploding spaceship and have landed back on the ice, just as the behemoth topples down out of the sky. Perhaps not the best of moves?

Well, the spaceship crashes and sinks through the ice, and that’s the end of that, but old Hitler is not so easily done for, and he comes snarling out of the wreckage, bent on destruction. A fighter jet distracts him just long enough --- before being blown out of the sky --- for Moss to get on his back and inject the flesh-eating bacteria into his shell, which happily chews away his flesh and Hitler’s a goner, sinking dramatically through the ice and falling into the chasm.

Just to ensure there is no cliche left unused, Moss proposes to Paige and she smiles. “Where do you want to go for the honeymoon?” he asks. “Somewhere warm!” she quips. They seem mighty happy, considering all their colleagues and friends have died in particularly gruesome ways. Oh well, at least they're still alive, though their acting career may be on life support after this!

Well, they may have saved Hitler’s brain but not the brain of the writer of this trash. Funny in its absurdity, totally failing to be horrific even despite the small amounts of gore, factually up its arse and totally unbelievable with a ridiculous ending, it’s everything that makes it a candidate for derision and review in this dark cinema of the crappiest of the crap.

Questions?
Apart from the obvious --- who would write this garbage and why? --- there are several which raise their heads.

What role does Norway Girl play in the movie? She seems linked to Busey’s character, as if she’s working with him, but then she slips Moss a surgical scissors, which seems to have been noted and ends up with the three girls heading off to the showers, one to be gang-raped and presumably killed, one for experimental brain surgery, and she’s left alone, until Busey discovers she’s pregnant, whereupon he helps himself to the embryo’s stem cells, which I imagine kills her baby in the process. Then, later, she seems all sort of pally with Busey and when she grabs the grenade and he takes it from her (not sure who activates it but I think it might be her) they embrace just before the ship blows up. So, were they in it together, was there a relationship, was the baby his and did he regret his actions at the end? Seems unlikely at least for the last, since he’s grinning like an idiot and saying “Bomb them all!” Very confusing.

Speaking of bombing, what exactly was Hitler’s plan? He says to bomb all non-Aryan countries, but lunatic though he was, and not averse to the odd spot of genocide, Hitler had enough sense to know that you need to leave a living workforce to carry out your labours. If he infects the entire population of the Earth, who’s he gonna rule? The Fourth Reich will be a very sparse population indeed. And isn’t he going to need servicing, regular battery charges, oil and a tuneup, that sort of thing? Who’s going to do this if there’s nobody left alive? Maybe he means to bomb a few cities, show his enemies that, to quote the Borg, resistance is futile, and expect then that everyone will be his slaves? But of course he is mad, so maybe he hasn’t thought that far ahead. Like the writer…

How did good ol’ Mark survive for as long as he did without any skin? Surely shock and trauma at the very least would have done for him? Yet it’s nearly the end of the movie before they come across him again and put him out of his misery. Could he really have lasted that long?

How did the sun manage to shine through all those layers of ice, and allow crops, to say nothing of trees and hills, to grow?

What is it with Mengele’s “explanation” of his death being misreported? He goes on about replacing body parts but is told that his bones have been conclusively identified, so how does that work? He tries to tells us that by replacing his endoskeleton (outer skin) this stopped the decay of his bones and any health problems, but that’s just ridiculous. You may as well say you can stop a car from seizing up by giving it a new coat of paint. The skin is just a shell; replacing it doesn’t stop any problems going on inside.

And how is it that if this massive research lab is here, deep under the ice, it’s manned only by Mengele, his zombie, Hitler in a box and a few drone soldiers? If this is to be the birthplace of the new Reich, don’t you think there’d be thousands, even millions of staff here? We’re supposed to believe that a few hundred --- or less --- built the staggering technological marvel we see take to the sky? Even in seventy years that’s far beyond belief without a massive army of technicians, engineers, scientists and all the backup crew.

And how have they been eating? Sure, they’re the next best thing to zombies but they can’t replace their body parts all the time. They must have to eat. And yet there are no visible sources of food. Perhaps they grow crops, but who harvests them? Don’t see no agricultural machinery, nor no slave labour force toiling in the fields!

Oh, and we still don’t know, even at the end of the movie, why those Nazis are wearing gas masks! Maybe the actors were just too ashamed for their faces to be seen. I wouldn’t blame them.

Not to mention that if we're to believe (oh dear God Trollheart, stop it! Believe! If we're to believe. You're killing me...) --- oh-kay. If we're to believe within the context of the movie that Hitler has just been brought back to life just recently by the stem cells so generously donated by Norway Girl's baby, then why should he choose America as his first target? Why not go for the nemesis of his winter campaign and bomb Russia to hell? Would that not make more sense? And why go bombing the Falklands? What's there: a few thousand farmers and a bunch of sheep? Great way to start your world domination, mein fuhrer!

So that’s our feature presentation for this time around. Makes “Battle beyond the stars” look like “Star Wars”, don’t it? One thing is certain though: while there are some very good movies out there, there are some unbelievably bad ones, and I fear the latter outweigh the former by some considerable margin, which means we will never be short of chum to throw into these particularly dark and choppy waters as we sail on another voyage of decrepitude and into the very heart of this huge cemetery where bad movies go to die.

As the man says, we’ll be back!

And once again, may I repeat, there are no refunds. As a suitably crappy science-fiction anthology programme that really wishes it was “The Twilight Zone” but is nothing close once declared:

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018