Movie Mania: Conan the Destroyer expanded soundtrack

 

Once again, I needed something quick for Thursday, and I decided it was time to cover one of my proudest acquisitions. In my encyclopedic collecting of movie soundtracks, I've had some shifts in my interests. I still love John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, whom I all but grew up with, but their music no longer dominates my listening. On the other side, I've gotten to better appreciate some of the less well-known composers. Of these, the one that has loomed larger and larger for me is a composer who should never have been considered anything but first-rank, Basil Poledouris (1945-2006). He was never as famous as Williams or as prolific as James Horner, but he turned out music for some of the most successful sci-fi/ fantasy and action titles of the 1980s and 1990s, including Robocop, Hunt For Red October, and Starship Troopers. But the movies that brought him into the limelight were the Conan franchise, consisting of Conan the Barbarian and its less successful sequel Conan the Destroyer, and I count the latter movie as his greatest work.

For background, my first recollection of the Conan movies is seeing what must have been the end of the second movie on TV. In college, I finally looked up the movies (along with the fiction of Robert E. Howard), and my strongest reaction was that I just couldn't get into Conan the Barbarian. It wasn't bad by any means, but there was more gore and nudity than I cared for, as well as what I found to be surprisingly limited action for its genre length. By comparison, I was very impressed with the sequel. It was "old school" even for the 1980s, short and fast-paced with lots of over-the-top action and fights that still stopped short of gory for its own sake. While it was understandable it did badly when it was released, on the last legs of the 1980s fantasy boom, I have never understood why it still hasn't received a kinder reappraisal from critics and fans.

The one thing that's inarguable is that the music is great. The main them is the perfect heroic score, with refrains carried over from the first movie. Then there is the Crystal Palace sequence, where Conan is stalked by a seemingly invincible sorcerer, all accompanied by a few ploddingly grim notes that continue right up to a stirring counterpoint as our hero discovers the foe's (obvious) weakness. Per the lore, it was scored for a full orchestra, but budget cutbacks scaled back the number of performers. There were further cuts when the soundtrack came out, leaving the total length at just barely over 30 minutes. And that was the last word until the unstoppable City of Prague Philharmonic stepped in. Here's more pics of the album that resulted.

The City of Prague crew began by performing the score with the full complement of their orchestra. They followed that up by performing many more tracks, bringing the full length of the main disc to 61:33. Then they added a bonus disc with alternate tracks and versions, including an "Adventures of Conan" suite apparently arranged for a Universal Studios live show. Unfortunately, the one thing they didn't get was digital distribution in the United States, which made it necessary to buy the album and black-market rates. After a great deal of waiting, I finally got my copy for a price in the $20-30 range. I can't say the odds are good of finding your own, but I have had glimpses of a digital version available in European markets. If you live outside the US, or have the means to work around geographic rights restrictions, you just might be able to download your own copy. Robert E. Howard would be proud!

That's all for now, as always, more to come!

Space 1979: The one I thought was too bad to review

 

Title: War of the Planets aka Cosmos: War of the Planets

What Year?: 1977

Classification: Anachronistic Outlier/ Runnerup/ Evil Twin

Rating: Dear God WHY??? (1/5)

 

Back when I reviewed Laserblast, I first discussed whether there were movies too bad to be included in thisfeature. What this means to me is that all the movies included here have been chosen because there was something about them I found interesting and insightful, however unintentionally. That, in turn, comes down to the simple fact that, despite all appearances to the contrary, I don’t normally watch movies just to laugh at them for being “bad”. If a movie doesn’t offer something intriguing, I usually don’t watch it, and I don’t normally have much to say about it if I do. This time around, in keeping with the broadening of the field, I’m going back to a movie that put me to the test, a film I found so incompetent that I decided I could not work with it. I’m back for a rematch, and now it’s personal. Wait, no, that would be… boredom. At any rate, here is War of the Planets.

Our story begins with a shot of a spaceship that might be genuinely impressive on a good print, accompanied by music and sound effects that seem lifted directly from Space Invaders. We meet our crew and their captain, Mike Hamilton, a tough-guy captain who keeps getting in trouble for trusting his gut over the ship’s computer. We get some further misadventures for exposition, including a rescue of a panicky idiot (he might not have made it) and an encounter between Hamilton and a lady friend who further debates man versus machine. Something finally happens when they detect advanced incoming spaceships that aren’t from Earth. They follow the intrusion to its source, where they discover the remnants of an advanced civilization. Unfortunately, they also discover the cause of the race’s decline, a giant robot that stopped taking orders (possibly in anger at being cut from a Dr. Who episode) and its deadly mechanical warriors. It’s up to Mike to defeat the machine, and the machine certainly can’t count on intimidating him with superior reasoning.

War of the Planets was part of an estimated five science fiction movies directed by Italian veteran Alfonso Brescia, reportedly in response to Star Wars. The movies were known for heavily interchangeable sets, costumes and effects, to the point that casual researchers have been known to confuse them with each other.  War of the Planets was probably the first and most well-funded of the group, with a cast that included English actor John Richardson of One Million BC as Hamilton and Finnish starlet Yanti Somer as one of his lady friends. Accounts conflict whether the movie was made in 1977 or 1978, raising some further question how directly it was influenced by Star Wars. It is agreed that it was followed by the films The War of the Robots and Star Odyssey, of which the latter (featuring Somer) was released in Italy in late 1979.

For my personal experiences, this movie first came to my attention as part of a cheapie bulk DVD set I looked through very soon after thinking of this feature. The set listed it as from 1977, the same year as Star Wars, which was enough  to put it on my radar. I watched it not too long after that, and my immediate reaction was that this was a movie where calling it a knockoff was giving it too much credit. Everything about it feels like the true antithesis to what Star Wars and its better knockoffs and runnerups (especially Star Crash) accomplished. The dialogue is woody with a generous undercurrent of pompous smugness. The characters who aren’t actively annoying are barely there. Then as the cherry on top, most of the effects are painfully outdated they compare unfavorably to films from the 1960s, and not the “good” ones. Of course, my copy came with maximum public-domain indifference to quality, making the whole thing feel like Skynet sent its consciousness back to 1984 on a VHS tape. (See The Horror Express, because this isn’t even worth a new joke.)

After all that, it took me months to get back to this one. I finally watched it the day before writing this review, after literally going a night without sleep, because I keep  saying what other people consider “stoned” is what I go through without pharmaceutical intervention. For maximum effect, I got through most of it while working on a review of something else, more or less on the theory that peripheral awareness might better capture the essence of the film. After that experience, I won’t claim that I understand it any better. What I can say confidently is that I did not underestimate it before. Whether you’re carefully studying it or all but tuning it out, it will still feel the same: Inept, dull, and annoying.

Having gotten my way through this barely paying attention, there’s still the matter of the “one scene”. In fact, there’s one that’s bound to make an impression no matter how much you try to ignore the movie, and it’s when Hamilton meets the master robot. The whole thing looks like a cross between a tin toy, a slot machine and an orchestrion (look it up), and I’m absolutely sure the same prop appears in clips of War of the Robots. The  bot boasts about its power and perfection while railing against the weakness of its creators, who allowed it to be damaged by an attacking alien fleet. Of course, it then admits it needs assistance repairing its circuits, which it has totally drawn them to the world to perform and certainly didn’t run it all by the seat of its pants. All the while, its dialogue and delivery are egregiously self-confident even by this movie’s standards, and the script makes sure Hamilton points out it refers to the “Earthlings” with maximum contempt. Naturally, the tough guy momentarily gets the other hand, and the robot rattles off a last extravagant threat as it blows up.

In summary, all I can say is that if this barely feels like a review, it’s because this one is barely a movie. The one thing truly noteworthy about this movie is that it somehow got made the year Star Wars came out. What’s even more inexplicable is that it came from the same Italian studio system that gave the world the likes of Star Crash, Hercules and Zombie, a system that always nurtured pure creative energy no matter what the accompanying flaws. Call this the anti-review of the anti-Italian anti-Star Wars, and then let us never speak of it again.

Super Movies! The one that was a Superman movie without Superman

 

Title: Supergirl

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Improbable Experiment

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

I’m back with another round of superhero movies, and this time we have our first sequel. I first picked up this one on my radar when I reviewed Superman 3 for the Space 1979 Threequel Trilogy. At that point, as often happens, I reviewed several movies from that especially tangled chapter of the franchise (if you’re tired of reboots now…), before deciding that the only one I could use was the one I had in mind all along. Still (also as usual), I wasn’t about to handle that much material without coming back to it sooner or later, which I suppose was a big part of how this feature came to be. So this time, I’m back with the next installment in the “original” superhero franchise, also noteworthy as the first to try replacing the hero with a heroine. Here is Supergirl, and it’s more of a mess than you probably heard.

Our story begins in the insular realm of Argo City, a city-state in the void of interdimensional space. We follow the interactions of an old man named Zaltar and his very odd niece Kara, whom he shows a relic called the Omegahedron that supplies the city’s power, which definitely should not be accessible to him. The point is proven when Kara accidentally blows the relic into the void. While Zaltar is being very justly sentenced to exile, she bolts to a transport to search for the Omegahedron on a world called Earth, where rumor tells her cousin Kal El has been making a name for herself. Kara discovers she has superpowers in Earth’s environs, which she naively experiments with, but soon assumes the alter ego of Linda Lee. Meanwhile, the Omegahedron has fallen into the hands of a self-styled witch named Selena, who simultaneously seeks world domination and a less than consensual romance with a handyman. When a misdirected love spell leaves the boy toy in love with Linda instead of Selena, our heroine finds herself in the witch’s sights. Right when it looks like the final showdown is at hand, the villainess finds a spell to send Supergirl to the Phantom Zone, where it turns out Zaltar is cooling his heels. Our heroine and her uncle must find a way back to Earth, or Selena will rein as queen forever.

As previously recounted, Supergirl arose from an attempt by producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind to continue the franchise after the apparent departure of Christopher Reeve. To that end, they introduced the character of Supergirl with a unique adversary and a new backstory seemingly at odds with that shown for Superman in both the comics and the earlier movies (though Argo City had apparently been seen before). The film was directed by Jeannot Szwarc (see Santa Claus The Movie), with Helen Slater in the title role and Faye Dunaway as Selena, after an inauspicious turn in the bio pic Mommy Dearest. Despite the borderline “reboot” premise, Marc McClure returned in the role of Jimmy Olsen, with numerous additional references to Superman and other characters from the previous films. Other supporting cast included Peter O’Toole as Zaltar and Mia Farrow as Kara’s mother. An original theme and score was provided by Jerry Goldsmith, replacing the music of one-time upstart John Williams. Two contemporary cuts were released, a 1 hr 45 min US “theatrical” cut and an “international” cut of over 2 hours; an additional 2 ½ hour “director’s cut” would later emerge on disc. The movie earned under $15 million on a $35M budget, contributing to the eventual separate production of Superman IV by the Cannon Group. (See… oh, to Hell with it all.)

At this point, I’m ready to go straight to my experience. Quite a while back, I looked this one up based on cursory descriptions that usually emphasized how different it was from the other movies. It made enough of a positive impression that I looked it up along with other movies mentioned above, and after that, things turn into a blur for a while. Among other things, it took me several months to conclude that the actual “theatrical” version has been totally unmovied, to the point that VHS tapes listed online repeatedly turned out to be one of the 2 hour cuts. Within the last few weeks, I finally bought a copy with each of the remaining versions, and watched both before I finally got around to writing this review. That all adds up to possibly the most pure legwork I’ve put into any of these reviews, and the upshot is that I’m definitely not feeling as “friendly” as I once did.

With all that out of the way, I can start with the good. Slater (best known to me for the ‘90s made-for-TV charmer 12:01 AM) is superb both as Supergirl and her alter ego, so much so that at one point I seriously double-checked if they had a different actress for Linda’s scenes. To me, it’s somehow more convincing to see her unexplained transformations from one identity to the other. As alluded, her character is odd and often childlike (at times uncomfortably so), yet always in ways that follow quite logically from the story and situations. This allows for intriguing twists on the genre formula as she discovers her powers with varying degrees of hesitation and clumsiness. (In fact, it’s somewhat suspiciously like the transformation of Peter Parker.) At the same time, she repeatedly makes confident if potentially foolhardy declarations to Selena and others who threaten her and her friends. Most interestingly, we see a corresponding learning curve for Selena, especially as she tries to use her magic without assistance from a former partner. The balance of power quickly hinges on who can master her abilities first, with plenty of convincing back and forth.

Things get hit or miss precisely when the movie tries to tie in to the preceding franchise. Far too much time is used with backstories that tie to characters we never see, obviously but not exclusively Superman himself. Again and again, it begs for the true reboot treatment; start with Supergirl, and let the big guy sit this one out. In my own personal quest, there were times I itched for a look at the theatrical cut just as proof that the movie could be cut down to size. An extra annoyance was the soundtrack, which was entirely disconcerting. I have previously written at length about my profound admiration for Jerry Goldsmith, but this movie’s theme sounds like what he might have turned in in exchange for his morning coffee. It’s still certainly not “bad”, and I won’t say the guy didn’t try, but for a composer who delivered the Deep Rising soundtrack for, well, Deep Rising, this is extremely disappointing.

Going back to the positives, the one thing this movie doesn’t get credit for at all is that it succeeds  in being “dark” long before the “gritty” reboot became compulsory. The key consideration is that this doesn’t happen all at once. We get touches when Selena turns to malign entities for power, and when the one-sided romance blooms for Linda. Then things get a big jolt when the witch summons an elemental entity to challenge Supergirl, visible only from the devastation in its wake. It’s a scene that gets made fun of, but I absolutely defend it as one of the best effects sequences in the whole 1970s/ ‘80s franchise. Finally, we have the big drop when Supergirl is dropped into the Phantom Zone, where she finds herself literally powerless.  (This coincides with an overtly comical yet reasoned sequence when the college kids try to meet Selena with protesting.) It’s wrenchingly pitiful to watch her try to fly and then crush or ignite the rocks. It’s all the more dispiriting when she meets Zaltar, already resigned to comforting himself with “squirts” from a flask he repeatedly offers, further musing, “Once you get used to it, I think it’s delicious.” Of course, the outcome is never in doubt, but it’s the journey that matters.

Finally, we’re overdue for the “one scene”, and I’m going with an early one. On first venturing into an Earth city, Kara draws the attention of two leering thugs. They openly comment on her figure, without showing any concern at her familiar uniform. She is unafraid, but innocent enough to question their behavior, which on consideration ought to have practically been weeded out by natural selection in a world where superheroes exist. In their replies, they come across like the toughs of Heavy Metal, articulate enough to express their urges without feeling a further need to justify themselves. It’s just enough to drive Supergirl to take action before departing. As the bad guys begin to recover, one says to the other, “Let’s keep quiet about this.”

What movies like this make me think of is watching a top-secret experimental Mach 3 stealth bomber crash because the pilot couldn’t relieve himself correctly. The actual fantasy/ superhero elements work perfectly well, at least when they are allowed to. It’s the mundane elements that fail over and over, a problem that similarly afflicted a film as distinguished as Hancock, but this time far too often when they were never needed. It still does enough right to rise to the rating I have given rather than getting docked down to it, but that does not dispel the feeling that it could have been so much better.

Image credit collectors.com.

Space 1979: The one with the worm apocalypse

 

Title: Squirm

What Year?: 1976

Classification: Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: What The Hell??? (3/5)

 

Something I’ve commented on in the course of this feature is that there were some counterintuitive dry spells within the broader science fiction genre. The big one I have previously pointed out was the “alien invasion”, which had its heyday in the 1950s but became uncommon by the 1980s. (See Killer Klowns From Outer Space.) Another subgenre with a surprising gap is the “monster movie”, by my definition a conflict with a creature or creatures without advanced weapons or technology. The arc of that subtype is more difficult to define, but it definitely went through a major decline during the 1970s, arguably right up to the surge of interest that came with Alien at the very end of the decade. In fact, when I really considered the matter, there were only two examples that stood out which also satisfied me as in the sci fi category. One was Phase IV, previously reviewed. The other is the current selection, a very odd little entry with the charming title Squirm, and we’re going to see why.

Our story begins with an expository block of text, outlining a purportedly true story of an incident involving a downed power line. We then meet a young lady named Geri living with her mother and younger sister, all with accents so thick one might wonder if they got the news the South lost the war. The family is receiving help around the house from a neighbor named Roger, who clearly hopes for something more, but Geri is clearly more interested in a newcomer named Mick, who comes from the big city on the pretense of looking for antiques. Meanwhile, a major storm has disrupted power and transportation, and for some reason, a number of large earthworms are turning up. Soon, the creatures are becoming s nuisance or worse, clogging pipes, contaminating food and drink, and possibly leaving behind a skeleton. (I honestly couldn’t tell.) As the worms overrun the town, Roger goes berserk from his hatred for worms (tied to his family’s bait shop) as well as his yearning for Geri. As night falls, the heroine finds herself in the path of both the worms’ onslaught and Roger’s rage, and only time will tell which is deadlier.

Squirm was written and directed by Jeff Lieberman, reportedly based on a childhood experience where a family member caused worms to emerge with electricity, as shown in the film. (It is possible this was really an effect of heavy rain.) It was part of a minor wave of ecologically-themed “killer animal” horror and science fiction films following 1963’s The Birds, with other notable examples being Phase IV and The Frogs. An estimated 3 million live worms were used in filming, though about half of those shown onscreen were rubber. Patricia Pearcy, also known for the horror film Delusion , was cast as the heroine, after Kim Bassinger was auditioned for the role. The film was distributed by the infamous B/ exploitation mill AIP (see Futureworld and The People That Time Forgot), apparently based on the further hope that it would receive a PG rating. The film received mixed reviews but won favorable attention in genre reference works like Peter Nicholls’ Fantastic Films. The 2003 DVD release appears to be a 93-minute R-rated cut; versions available for streaming may be an edited 92-minute “PG” cut.

This is yet another movie that I heard of well before I saw it, except this time, I still only read about it in a handful of places. I can’t recall when I first looked it up, though I think it’s very possible that was more than 10 years ago. After watching it for this review, all I can say is that this is still one of the most surreal movies I have encountered. What stands out, as with quite a few of these movies, is that it all sounds quite routine when recounted on paper. The concept is as standard as you can get within its relatively peculiar genre; it’s worth further note that it’s free of the supernatural overtones of Frogs or the arguable psychological horror of Willard. The further love-triangle melodrama is entirely routine, with the Deep South trappings only adding to the checklist of cliches. If one read about it in cold blood, one might well take it for a routine monster movie and move on.

What a straight recounting can’t easily convey is the atmosphere of the film. It isn’t stylish enough to capture the “Southern Gothic” atmosphere of classic horror tales like “Pigeons From Hell”, nor does it try to catch up with newer films like The Frogs. What it does provide is a genuine sense of isolation, heightened by effective establishing shots, convincing sets and locations, and a surprising amount of humor that sets just the right dysfunctional tone. In overall effect, the movie does at times reach toward the feel of Robert E. Howard’s tale, while at others, it feels as clinical as Phase IV or The Andromeda Strain. Matters are helped by decent acting and dialogue, made far more believable by the low-profile cast. Then… then there are the worms. Dear Logos (by the way, that's a name of God in the actual Bible), the worms.

It’s the worm sequences that are truly indescribable. As already noted, the movie used a combination of genuine worms and rubber effects, and there is never much doubt which is which. The closeups of the live worms are utterly unnerving; these are bristling, toothy monsters that look about as much like a cartoon-cutesy earthworm as a teddy bear looks like a grizzly, only slightly detracted from by weird bestial sound effects. The few attacks start to cross over into straight-up horror, notably a sequence that leaves Roger disfigured and more enraged than usual. But the movie doesn’t hit its hypnotic stride until the finale, as the worms literally destroy the farmhouse where Geri resides. What’s unique and impressive is that by this point, it’s not clear that the worms are actively attacking (the state of the effects mostly just lets them pulsate), but then, they don’t really have to. Their sheer mass is enough to overwhelm anyone and anything in their path, as established in one ludicrous shot after another. When Roger (literally!) pops up again, he feels like just one part of the elemental mass.

For the “one scene”, I had a harder time than usual. Still, there was one that stayed with me from the very first viewing, involving a sheriff I haven’t even mentioned. Towards the end of the film, we leave the farmhouse long enough to visit the jail in town. We discover the sheriff with the waitress and proprietress of the town’s bar/ restaurant, whom we previously met in a dispute over a worm in Mick’s drink, under the covers on a bunk in the jail cell. As they snuggle together, the lady looks bemused, but then says, “Stop that.” When the sheriff acts confused, she simply says, “That.” Of course, we then see that the worms are literally pouring in, and the camera cuts away to the sound of their screams. It’s corny, it’s distasteful, but like many things here, it does its job.

All in all, this is one I “should” like a lot more than I do, and I certainly don’t dislike it. I suppose there’s just a little too much that doesn’t quite resonate with me, and it doesn’t help that there’s at least one whole subplot I can’t follow. Still, I can certainly appreciate it for what it is and what it did well, and that’s enough to keep it solidly middle of the road. It’s worth a watch, and you just might like it even better than I do.

Miniature Giants Part 9: Mexican Scooper and Marvel guy

 

It's time for another installment of giant Marx figures, and this time I have two new acquisitions, one that I've had for a little while and another that I got just this weekend. They also represent two different directions; one is part of a rare if not entirely obscure Marx line, while the other is a Mexican reissue/ copy of a famous Marx set already covered several times. Here's a few pics of the pair, a Marx Daredevil figure and a Mexican astronaut.

"Whatever you do, do not try to fix your own lawn mower."

Of the pair, the Mexican astronaut had interested me longest. I believe I saw the same item listed several times before I finally ordered it. It's a copy of the astronaut I call Scooper, which I had previously acquired a possible variant of. Something I noticed from photos is that he looked rather different in expression; however, this did not bear out when I inspected the actual figure. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by the color variation. What had looked gray in photos for the online listing turned out to be a metallic sheen, brighter than may be apparent from the pics though a bit too dark to be considered "silvery". Another interesting discovery was a unique mark on the base. Rather than the Plastimarx logo of the company's Mexican division or the simple sticker I had seen on the reissue Japanese soldiers, this one has a large and attractive "Hecho En Mexico" stamp, which appears to date the figure after Marx's 1979 bankruptcy. Here's a closeup of the base with Daredevil for comparison.

On further comparison, the reissue Scooper is rougher and cheaper-looking than his "vintage" counterpart. Fortunately, this mostly shows in rough edges where the molds would join. There's also a strange injection mark, which sinks down as a hole on one side and sticks out on the other. I was most interested in the pack, which was "bulgy" in the variant I previously discovered. In fact, the shape of the pack is nearly the same as in other figures, but maybe just a little more filled in than some. This reinforced my suspicion that differences in the packs are at least partly the result of the use of different plastics and certain variables in casting. Here's some pics of the three together.

Meanwhile, I have been genuinely baffled by the Daredevil figure. As usual, it was part of a group of six, the others being Iron Man, Spiderman, Thor, the Hulk and Captain America, released in 1967 and sold through mail-order ads in comic books. They are agreed to be among the rarer Marx figures, and even more difficult to find in good condition. I suspect the mail-order figures may have been available for a limited time without corresponding distribution in stores, which would certainly further account for their rarity. Because of these issues, it was necessary to settle for one in comparatively poor condition. However, I still cannot fathom how it ended up this badly preserved. Compared to intact figures, he is missing not only all the fingers on one hand, but also a club and a pair of horns. Here's a comparison pic of Daredevil with my authentic "casualty" figure, itself practically all red flags for condition issues, yet still in vastly better shape.

Here's another pic of the Marvel figure with the Mexican reissue Japanese officer and a Ukrainian figure. Even these outright copies compare favorably both in condition and the quality and detail of the sculpt.

What I very quickly noticed is that the plastic is very different than any figure I have seen. It's an oddly dull color, and almost rough to the touch. Put through my usual "clack test", it made a lighter sound, though not nearly as loud as the reissue Japanese soldiers. But what stands out even more is the quite limited detail of the sculpt. The whole thing feels as if the designers simply weren't trying, or else they couldn't quite adjust to the stylization of a comic book. Still, it's one more intriguing chapter in Marx's history covered here. As always, more to come!

For links, see ToyMania and Back to the Past for details of the Marx Marvel line.

Space 1979 Holiday Special: The one that's a cop movie

 

Title: Lethal Weapon

What Year?: 1987

Classification: Evil Twin

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)

 

Throughout the time I’ve done this feature, there have been movies here and there that I knew didn’t “fit” but still wanted to review just to say something about them. I still reviewed a few that remained broadly in the SF/ fantasy genre, like House and Phantom Tollbooth. Quite a few more got farmed out to other features, like An American Werewolf In London and Hancock. But there was one that kept coming to my mind, not because I find it “science fictional” but because it kept intersecting with other movies I was covering. After a while, still well before the present review, it helped put the idea in my mind to do one or a few movies out of “genre”, simply as a kind of control group for what was going on in the wider world. With the holidays just around the corner, I decided it was time to get to it, and that I still wanted to do it here. With that, I present Lethal Weapon.

Our story begins with a spaced-out lady gazing down from a hotel room balcony, before taking a swan dive almost as an afterthought. We then meet Murtaugh, a friendly black detective, and his new partner Riggs, who the less-than-helpful police psychologist insists is suicidal. After a few minor adventures that seem to fully justify the assessment, we get back to the girl on the balcony. It turns out that she was poisoned before taking her own life, and that she is the daughter of an old friend of Murtaugh’s. When their leads keep dying, the two hero cops suspect they have found something bigger. That’s when the lady’s dad confesses that he has been part of a drug-smuggling ring run by a former (?) general and his crew of mercenaries. His big confession is cut short when he is picked off by the leader of the henchmen, Mr. Joshua. But the cops are in the bad guys’ sights, and shortly, Murtaugh’s own daughter is captured. Riggs and Murtaugh are on the warpath, and it’s personal!

Lethal Weapon was a Warner Brothers film released in 1987, part of a wave of action/ adventure films that also included Predator, Robocop and The Hidden . The feature was directed by Richard Donner, who had directed the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie. The film and subsequent sequels were remembered as a breakthrough for Mel Gibson, previously best known for the Mad Max movies. Danny Glover was cast as Murtaugh, shortly after a turn in the historical drama The Color Purple. The additional cast included Tom Atkins of Night of the Creeps as the grieving father Hunsaker and Gary Busey as Mr. Joshua. Producer Joel Silver also produced Predator, while writer Shane Black played a supporting role in that film. Glover and Busey were again cast together in 1990’s Predator 2, along with the late Bill Paxton of Aliens.

This is one of the movies where my memories go further back. To begin with, police-procedural movies were a big part of what pop-culture exposure I did receive in the late 1980s to early ‘90s, maybe even more so than sci-fi films. I’m sure I saw Lethal Weapon and the first sequel on TV in junior high if not a bit earlier, and I recall having a tape of the original at one point. Anything I saw would certainly have been edited/ censored, including the tape. I can further remember being fully aware of the Christmas setting and references, including a clip from the Alistair Sims version of Christmas Carol, well before I saw Die Hard or heard it mentioned as a “holiday” film. I was watching the franchise well into college, before it finally dropped off my radar. Moving forward, I first thought of covering this movie when I reviewed The Hidden, and again around the time I covered InnerSpace. I gave the most thought toward creating a separate feature for police movies. In the end, however, I decided it belonged here.

Now backing up a little, I finally looked up this movie just a few years back. At the time, I genuinely expected nothing more than fond memories. Going in, I didn’t have any high expectations; under normal circumstances, evaluating an ‘80s actioner for its realism or even coherent plotting would be like critiquing a Godzilla movie for its paleontology. The recurring problem is simply and precisely that this was the one that was going to be “serious”, when in reality it fares worse than many of the ones that were “supposed” to be dumb. It’s one thing to have highly trained paramilitary mercenaries who are massively over-equipped for their job yet still bad at it. It’s another to openly show most of the real work being accomplished quite handily by an expendable dirtbag or two. To me, it takes an extra hit for its handling of mental health, which would be a trigger for a much longer rant. Anyone who talked about checking himself out as much as much as Riggs is the kind who’s already trying to talk himself down. It’s the eerie silence of the girl at the beginning that rings chillingly true.

Of course, this isn’t to say there aren’t good points. The acting and dialogue are good, as they should be for the cast. The action sequences still hold up better than plenty of far more recent blockbusters. It’s worth further note that these include a surprising number of near-static visuals, especially a shot of a smuggler trapped with a pile of drugs and a clutch of grenades. Most importantly, there are a lot of genuinely fun moments, especially from Busey. What I find myself wishing for is that it could be done over as a “real” police procedural. Replace most of the mercenaries with thugs out for a buck. Show Murtaugh fighting for an investigation of what amounts to scum killing other scum. Let the paramilitary conspirators tell the “other side”, especially about all the dealings they must have had with politicians and officials who pulled them out of Vietnam but then backed the “drug war” at home. While we’re at it, let Hunsaker stay alive long enough for a redemption arc, or at least a talk with Riggs about grief.

For the “one scene”, as a first, I’m going with one that was deleted from the theatrical release, something I didn’t figure out until I went looking for it on a DVD I acquired for this review. In a sequence originally near the beginning of the movie, Riggs responds to a report of a sniper shooting up a school, something which had in reality happened only once. He learns that offender is firing on both children and police, all while an officer carries away a wounded child. He then approaches the building, ignoring warnings from another cop and a volley of fire from the shooter. Riggs promptly calls out, “Why do you only do kids?”, then returns fire. It’s a bizarre and baffling sequence, especially for its time, but it is certainly as effective as anything that stayed in the movie, to the point one may wonder not only why it was cut but why it wasn’t the main storyline.

The bottom line here is that this movie suffers most when compared to sci-fi genre films. Look at Robocop and The Hidden, released the same year, or Night of the Creeps, made a little earlier with Atkins in a starring role, all movies that worked as science fiction and police adventure without skimping on story, character development and social commentary. Look at Deep Space from a year later, a direct-to-video knockoff that still got the police-procedural part mostly right and worked in some decent gags about ‘80s masculinity. You can even count The Punisher, a revenge story that made the good guy and the bad guys interesting in the midst of literal comic-book action. They might not be counted as better than Lethal Weapon (though I would absolutely say that some of them are), but they were covering the same ground in the same time period without expecting the rest of the world to give them a pat on the back. If anyone questions whether 1980s science fiction has remained relevant, this should be all means be the answer, that the genre films were handling “serious” themes at least as well as “straight” ones and sometimes doing it first.

Holiday Special: Depressing Xmas playlist!

I have been trying to plan out what I want to do for the holiday season, and there's one thing I decided I definitely wanted to get done. For quite a while now, I have had my own Youtube channel, so far consisting entirely of playlists. Over several years, I'v put together quite a few, and I've tried to keep them... interesting. There's one in particular I'm ready to curate. I had previously tried my hand at listing "weird" Christmas songs, which by now is practically "mainstream". I then decided it was time to make another go at it, and my working title was my "depressing" Christmas playlist. My ground rules were that these wouldn't just be songs that are "dark" in a funny way, but the ones that absolutely mean it. So here at last is what I have to say about it.

1. "Christmas Day" (Squeeze, 1996): This was one that I first considered for an earlier playlist, chosen in part because it sounds cheerful. In brief, it's a satirical song that puts Mary and Joseph in the amenities of a cheap, very modern motel room. I'm genuinely unsure what they were going for, but to me, it's always had a slightly-askew feel that really ramps up as you go. It might take a few hearings to start to "see" it, or maybe you won't; if not, feel free to move on.

2. Father Christmas (The Kinks, 1977): This is one that could have been my anthem during chronic unemployment. A guy talks about dressing up as Santa/ Father Christmas, only to be mugged b a group of young miscreants. The setup "story" doesn't exactly work, but the chorus perfectly captures the desperation of being poor and out of work.

3. River (Sarah McLachlan, 2006): This is the one that's the "obvious" pick, a breakup song originally composed and performed by Joni Mitchell. What takes it above a standard lost-love song is the middle verse. It's an honest picture of what it's like to hurt the people who care about and for you that will really resonate for anyone with mental illness in their background.

4. Christmas At Denny's (Randy Stonehill, 1989): Now we're already up to the darkest one by far. There's simply nothing that can prepare you for this song. It starts out as "funny-dark", but when you get to the narrator's backstory, it's not just lost-love sad but outright tragedy. It's absolutely brutal, with no sign of hope outside of the refrain, "silent night, holy night/ when things were all right."

5. Christmas Card From A Hooker in Minneapolis (Neko Case, 2000): After getting the last one out of the way early, I went to one that really is "funny-dark". It's a good cover of a Tom Waits original (see, of all things, my review of The Earth Dies Screaming), by a very gifted singer. There's really nothing to add, so moving along...

6. Merry Christmas, I Don't Want To Fight Tonight (The Ramones, 1989): This was one I had to replace because a previous video was deleted, which might well happen again. It's a song that can be funny, especially accompanied by the music video, but far from tongue-in-cheek. If it doesn't make you think of your own relationship, it will probably remind you of someone else's.

7. Christmas Eve Can Kill You (The Everly Brothers, 1972): This is the song this list was created around. It was one of the last recordings by a legendary rock duo just before a 10-year retirement, and will defy any expectation you might have from their career and work. The title sounds like a theme song for a horror movie, but it's actually the meditations of a hitchhiker on Christmas eve, which quickly becomes a poignant exercise in ethics and ideals.  The chorus is all too timeless: "God forgive the man who drives on by the other man..."

8. Christmas Will Break Your Heart (LCD Soundsystem, 2015): I chose this as a "middle of the road" song before the very end. It's a reflection on being lonely, whether or not you're alone, all done in a mockingly faithful 1980s-early '90s style.

9. Joel the Lump of Coal (The Killers, 2014): I went soft picking the last song. It seems to be one of several songs from this group that make Santa the bad guy, but the only one I've explored far enough to find any further depth. It follows the main character through a genuine emotional roller coaster (with amuch anthropomorphism as needed) before a happy ending.

That's all for now, more to come!

Space 1979: The one where the brain slugs maybe have a point

 

Title: Shivers aka They Came From Within

What Year?: 1975

Classification: Prototype

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)

 

One of the first and most difficult lessons of doing reviews is the matter of timing. It’s always tempting, especially early on, to watch a few more movies and then come back to the one that’s good for the review. In practice, that hardly ever works. To start with, if you backlog one movie, you’re going to end up with 5 or 10. What you really don’t know until you’ve tried it is that reviewing a movie more than a few days after a viewing is never the same, even if it’s an all-time favorite you’re sure you can remember by heart. The kick in the pants is that if you miss that window, then sooner or later, you’re going to have to go back and watch the whole damn thing again, and if you aren’t careful, you end up in a whole vicious cycle. This review is for one of those movies, a little film called Shivers from some guy named David Cronenberg.

Our story begins with a commercial for a luxury apartment complex called Starliner. Ile a cheerful young couple checks in, we see an older gentleman murder and dissect a girl before killing himself. After other residents begin acting strangely, we meet a concerned medical man who sets out to get to the bottom of it. He discovers that a deceased colleague created a slug-like parasite that removes inhibitions and self-restraint, which is now spreading through the swanky development. Meanwhile, we begin to see why this might not be a good thing as the infected become abusive, paranoid or flat-out insatiable. The doctor must search for a way to cure the condition or at least stop the spread, but his nurse/ girlfriend is already acting strange herself.

Shivers was the third feature film by Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, following Stereo and Crimes of the Future, and probably the first to see theatrical release in the US. The movie was produced by Ivan Reitman, who would go on to make Heavy Metal and Ghostbusters, with some government funding through Telefilm Canada. The cast included David Hampton as medical man Roger, Lynn Lowry of The Crazies as the nurse, and Joe Silver providing most of the exposition as Rollo. The film received negative reviews as well as controversy for its content and the role of government funding. The feature fell out of print after a 1998 DVD release, before re-appearing on Blu Ray and streaming in late 2020.

For my history, I first heard of this one when I looked up A Boy And His Dog. My immediate reaction from casual research was that it wouldn’t be suitable for this feature. Naturally, I still watched it when I found a way to get it on streaming, and I decided it was worth consideration, at least for its similarities to The Crazies and Night of the Creeps. As outlined above, I ended up watching it again the last few weeks, and finally gave it one more go while working on this review. My first and foremost impulse throughout has been trying to reconcile the movie with its reputation. By others’ accounts, this is either an early masterpiece from a gifted filmmaker, a horrific and shocking exercise in excess, or just an overdone piece of schlock. Alas, I cannot convince myself that any of those things are in evidence here. If Logan’s Run was an emperor with no clothes, this is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, living in its own shadow.

With all of that out of the way, it’s still difficult to describe what watching this film really is like. From the start, the overall feel is that of a domestic apocalypse, which has been done well before and since. The early scenes and shots highlight commercialism as much as the clinical “body horror” Cronenberg would be best known for. By comparison, the antics of the occasionally seen brain slugs and their hosts are oddly subdued, which if anything works in the film’s favor. The horror is all in the small details: A slug that squirms into the shrubbery, a businessman who sits in his office staring into space, a newly infected woman who steps out of a bathtub without reacting in any way to glass underfoot. In place of violence and cannibalism, we see subtle dysfunctionality that grows over time, then crosses over into joyous abandon in the surreal final scenes. The story doesn’t downplay the further ironic transformation of the doctor representing authority and reason, who spirals down to almost casual homicide.

For how and why the movie goes wrong, the best frame of reference I can offer is by comparison with The Crazies, a movie I have yet to find room to review. In that very odd film, George Romero turned the “zombie” genre he had started on its head by giving the infected something like a point of view (a nuance willfully ignored in the remake). This movie clearly tries to get there, but the already uncomfortable device of the slugs keeps turning on itself. The infected men are stereotypically aggressive and bestial, but only a handful of scenes suggest a comparable change in the women. The further possibility that uninfected partners might accept or even welcome a change in their love life is made all but taboo. It’s of further note that, while much is said about the infected being “violent”, there is always some kind of interruption before their behavior can escalate to outright assault. On one hand, this mercifully spares us the worst kind of “cringe” moments. On the other, it cements the feeling that this is a movie that goes “too far” but still not far enough to follow through with its premise.

For the “one scene”, the one that stood out to me every time is a phone call between Roger and Rollo. The senior man of learning delivers the closest thing we get to an explanation of the affair, with the aid of Silver, a veteran of radio as well as the screen known for his deep voice. He reveals that their deceased colleague was something like a “free love” radical, who believed the ills of humanity are caused by too much intellect and “not enough guts”. His solution was “a cross between an aphrodisiac and a venereal disease”, in the further hope that it would unite humanity in “one big, mindless orgy”. It’s all blatant nonsense, delivered hypnotically enough for the viewer to ask, just for the sake of argument, if this would be entirely a bad thing. Meanwhile, the nurse very nonchalantly gets out of her uniform and redresses in full view of the doctor. It’s the kind of scene that can make a “bad” movie great, which unfortunately makes the rest all the more disappointing.

This movie is the kind I probably would have ignored if I had known about it when I started this feature. As it is, I’m letting it in mainly because of Cronenberg’s participation, and because it still doesn’t pose nearly as many issues as his other works. In itself, it’s flawed if not wholly forgettable. In context, it’s a significant milestone, both for the filmmaker and for Canadian cinema. Without it, we might not have had The Fly, Heavy Metal, The Gate, or… The Shape of Things to Come? Okay, you can’t win them all.

Dark Toons: The one Hanna and Barbara made about nuclear war

 

Christmas is approaching, and I decided it was finally time to do something I thought of far enough back that my other review features were directly based on it. Way back when I was first making my way onto the internet, one of the first things I tried was animation reviews. When I thought of getting back into things with this blog, I thought of going back to my roots with a series on “dark” cartoons. My ground rules were that these would be “mainstream” cartoons really (or at least apparently) geared toward kids. My reasoning for this was that the independent, adult-oriented cartoons tend to desensitize anyone but moral guardians who think anything animated must be aimed at kids. The likes of Ralph Bakshi and Jan Svankmajer do weird and freaky because people expect them to do weird and freaky. To me, the most truly subversive and disconcerting toons are the ones that seem to happen almost by accident, like a Saved By The Bell rerun interrupted by the first reports from Columbine. What I mainly had under consideration were episodes from TV shows from the 1980s to early ‘90s, but I quickly decided there was one much earlier cartoon I was going to have to do at some point. So here is “Goodwill Toward Men”, a short about nuclear war by the creators of Tom And Jerry.

Our story opens with the sound of a choir singing a carol in a snowy landscape that’s almost idyllic, except for visible ruins under the snow. Our first hint that something is “off” is the words to the carol, recognizable as “Hark The Herald Angels Sing” but subtly changed. References to Jesus become “the Lord Our King”, “nations” becomes “we creatures free”, and the chorus runs, “See at last the world set free/ Peace on Earth, forevermore.” As the song finishes, we see a choir of mice, singing in the ruins of a human church. As the song finishes, one of the mice muses, “What are men?”  The elderly mouse directing the choir than tells his tale of the bygone race that built the church and a war that destroyed them. It’s accompanied by scenes of soldiers in masks (described as “tremendous snouts”) battling each other, culminating in the exchange of two “biggest most awfulest bombs” that seem to consume the world in two bubbles of red and green (!). Then the old mouse tells his own story, huddling with the other animals in the church. There, they discover the “book of rules”, read by a wise old owl, with a dramatic pause for the command, “Thou shalt not kill.” Of course, it all ends with a hopeful scene of the happy animals gathering to worship their creator, and the song is repeated with the church radiantly lit, all to show that human religion can outlive humanity.

What strikes me about this cartoon is that it feels like the stories I was coming up with in elementary and high school, yet I can’t remember it nor think of any way I could have seen it until much later. In my further recollections, I did see some incarnation of Tom And Jerry as a kid, and if it wasn’t the original series, it still stood out to me as odd and unusually violent. On the other hand, I’m sure I didn’t get familiar with the original series until I was approaching 30. From what I know now, the franchise had the unenviable fate of simultaneously fading into nostalgia and being actively stripped of everything that had made it innovative and memorable. It’s against this backdrop that I first discovered this cartoon, mixed into a compilation of Tom And Jerry among other vintage shorts. Yet, even with all these allowances for the debasement of the memory of the original short, this is still one of the most jaw-droppingly dark vintage toons one could encounter. In the best “what the Hell” tradition, it seems to come out of nowhere, particularly compared to other work from the people involved.

The one thing that makes this toon comprehensible is that it is in fact part of a genre of anti-war animation, including the 1939 short “Peace On Earth” that it is usually considered a remake of. In my assessment, “remake” doesn’t quite fit, despite the obvious debt; “update” comes closer, but still doesn’t give the whole picture. On careful examination, the present selection leaves out a number of scenes and elements of the original, notably a melodramatic scene of two soldiers killing each other. What it adds is of course a portrayal of nuclear weapons. Here, it also contrasts with the near-contemporary “A Short Vision”, replacing the quite graphic portrayal of death and devastation with stylized images that emphasize the scope of a global nuclear conflict. What etches it uniquely in the mind is precisely how conventional it is in animation and visual style, complete with mice that look exactly like Jerry.

As for my own feelings on this, I have never been able to get around the fact that I personally took the same concept in different directions long before I knew anything about it. Even in the world of cartoons, a rat imbued with sentience still acts more or less like a rat. Among the wreckage of human civilization, their lot would be continuous fleeing and hiding from a pyramid of threats, including potentially sentient predators like the wise old owl. There’s plenty more to take issue with in the portrayal of Judeo-Christian religion as “rules”,  a humanist conceit that barely survived into the 1950s. I tried my hand working these and other things when I brought the Evil Possum back with “Trails”, which I still need to revise and edit. I will freely admit to basing the holy place in that story on both this short and its earlier counterpart; from my own stats, the chapter in the church was the one that actually got read.

In full hindsight, this is a toon that in its own way was as self-datingly naïve as more  conventional animation of its time, which is really going to be a common denominator in this feature. Still, it asks the question that is even more apt decades after: Why don’t humans obey the supposedly divine absolutes of our scriptures. The answers may be as obvious as they are depressing, but the time we stop asking will be the day all hope becomes lost.

Space 1979: The one where the world ends at Christmas

 

Title: Night of the Comet

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Mashup/ Runnerup

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

When I got around to a breakdown of this feature so far, one thing that caught me totally off-guard was that I have really done very little for the early to mid 1980s, especially 1982 to 1985. I could find some explanation for this. There were a lot of movies that were too successful in their own right to fit in here, like E.T., Blade Runner and The Thing from ’82 alone. There were others that I decided were better covered elsewhere, notably Lifeforce and Creature from 1985. But there were also a number of movies I had considered and even viewed, but never got around to reviewing. This is a review for one of those movies, and it’s only fitting that I’m finally getting to it just before the week of Christmas. With that, I introduce Night of the Comet.

Our story begins with a view of outer space and a comet approaching Earth, which a narrator intones has not been seen since the day of the dinosaurs. We then meet a young lady named Reg and her sister Sam, who are debating whether to stay up for a party to view the comet. In the process, we learn that it is a week or so before Christmas. In the end, Reg spends the night in seclusion with her boyfriend. When they wake up, they discover nobody is answering the phone. When the guy steps outside, he is attacked by a milky-eyed mutant, who is swift and stealthy enough that it’s over without Reg knowing what happens. Reg spends some time playing a video game she has set every high score for before she ventures out and finds the streets deserted, aside from drifts of ominous red powder. By the time she finally meets up with Sam, she is convinced that the vast majority of the human race has been reduced to literal dust by some unexplained effect of the comet. The only survivors to be found are the roving mutants, a lone truck driver, and a patrol from an outlying military outpost. The sisters must figure out who to trust, but first, they’re going to the mall!

Night of the Comet was the most successful and arguably most “mainstream” film by writer/ director Thom Eberhardt, previously featured in my original Revenant Review for the zombie/ cosmic terror film Sole Survivor. Both films are set at Christmas, though the holiday setting is far more developed in Night. He reportedly based the movie on earlier post-apocalyptic films including Dawn of the Dead, with further input from teenagers he met while filming other projects. The movie was financed by Atlantic Releasing Corporation, with a budget estimated as either $3 million or $700,000. The cast included a number of cult/ B movie personalities, including Catherine Marie Stewart of TheLast Starfighter as Reg, Kelli Maroney of Chopping Mall as Sam, and Mary Woronov of Terrorvision, Deathrace 2000, etc. as a scientist among the military types who appear in the final act. The movie made a US box office of over $14M, and was released on VHS in 1985. It has remained available on home media up to the present day, ensuring its enduring status as a “cult” film.

This is one of quite a few movies featured here that I heard of well before I saw it, and still took quite a bit longer to buy. It’s a film I never disliked but have never been able to approach outside the shadow of other films. It’s nowhere near as creepy as Sole Survivor, it doesn’t have as much humor or action as Dawn of the Dead, and it doesn’t have the less definable manic energy of the Mad Max series. Even compared to Chopping Mall, it has its hits and misses. The acting and dialogue (including from Maroney) are better, but the latter movie has a tighter story and is far more effective in developing the possibilities of the mall environment. What Night of the Comet mostly stands out for is its late use of what I think of as the “tidy apocalypse”, a dramatic conceit of much earlier science fiction where human civilization and most of the populace instantly disappear without the collateral damage of bodies, ruined buildings, fallout and toxic waste. For that matter, the idea also turned up in The Quiet Earth the following year, and that movie at least built up to a kind of explanation.

All the relative strengths of Night of the Comet lie in the story and character development, and it’s certainly enough to keep the movie entertaining. Things get off to a good start with Stewart’s early scenes playing her favorite video game (clearly Tempest); she looks so intense yet focused it’s either comical or terrifying. It’s all the more intriguing that her turn in The Last Starfighter was the same year. Sam proves less driven yet seemingly quicker to adapt, going from disbelief to giddy symbolic rebellion in a matter of a few scenes. Her high point is a scene at the controls of an otherwise automated radio station, happily sending holiday cheer into oblivion. The production gets a late shot in the arm from Woronov, at first friendly, then increasingly menacing, and finally frank as she reveals the plans of her cohorts.

Meanwhile, the movie sets up a post-apocalyptic environment in which the human characters are suitably dwarfed. Again, there is a strong start with imagery of the sleek cityscape (including several shots I could swear are some kind of CGI) both before and after the comet’s arrival, made only somewhat more eerie and lifeless by the red skies and drifting dust that follow the departure of humanity. It is the mutants, casually referred to as “zombies” at several points, that start to unravel the fine worldbuilding. Their appearance is suitably grim, but by now stereotypical. The evident behavior is much more interesting. They are clearly intelligent, able to use weapons, move in groups and communicate both with humans and each other. This is all the more impressive given that we only see them in a very few scenes. However, they do more to break the mood of earlier scenes than build on it. The big set piece scenes with a pack in the mall would be a credit to any other movie, complete with a clever twist on the human-shield scenario. Here, however, they turn an eerie movie into a merely entertaining one. In my further assessment, the horror and satirical possibilities of the zombie genre were better explored with the no-tech revenants of Sole Survivor, who blend in all too well with the superficial holiday cheer of the living.

That brings us to the “one scene”, and I’m going to give a cold account of something that would be a bit more spread out. As the finale draws near, the story follows Reg back to a military compound, where we meet the colleagues of the previously encountered doctor as well as two children they have detained. There’s an impressive rogue’s gallery of characters, but the ones that stand out to me are a pair of interchangeable female lab assistants. We get a sense of their character from one who nonchalantly discusses the fate of their subjects, and then adds, “I love working with children.” We then follow them into an interview to the children. They assure the kids they won’t have to get a “shot”, but the little ones become suspicious when they offer gas instead. One of the assistants says matter-of-factly, “It will send you to live with Santa Claus… forever.” The boy promptly declares there is no Santa, upsetting the assistants and the girl. They still manage to stay in control until Reg bursts in. Skip forward, and the edgy commander finds them “off to visit Santa”, then promptly orders the rest of the crew to leave them to their fate.

In my final assessment, this is a film I’ve grown to appreciate far more over time. It falls into a non-trivial category of big-budget “mainstream” productions from filmmakers who built their reputation as low-budget auteurs. In that context, it’s downright refreshing, even if it’s not up to par with the creator’s earlier work (if you can find it…) By any standard, it’s a smart movie that does something with its budget, and that’s a milestone in itself for a time when far too many genre films were getting more money at the expense of far greater studio interference. On top of that, it’s at least as good as Die Hard for an unconventional “holiday” movie. So deck the halls and pass the ammunition, because Santa already left town.

Image credit Night of the Comet Wordpress blog.