Revenge of the Revenant Review 12: The one with gore measured in gallons

 

Title: Dead Alive aka Braindead aka Your Mother Ate My Dog

What Year?: 1992

Classification: Unnatural Experiment/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Ow, My Brain!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

We’re now at #12 in this series, and if you’ve been with me since #1, I’m sure you’re expecting something really off the wall. In fact, I was planning to give this slot to Video Dead, but I did that one first because I needed a little more time for one more that was always going to be on this list. I’ve had several movies on this list I had to go back to just to make up my mind about; this is the one I have been back to again and again without deciding what to make of it. As you can undoubtedly guess from the rating, I still have mixed feelings with this one, to the point that I very much expected this one to end up with an “unrated” ranking. With that, I present Dead Alive.

Our story begins with an expedition to Skull Island (seriously) in the year of 1957. A small band are running from a group of natives with something called a rat monkey that the natives warn to be cursed. Apparently, the members of the expedition aren’t above superstition, because when their leader takes a few superficial scratches from the creature, the others dismember and kill him (in that order). We then meet Lionel and his alternately coddling and overprotective mother. After he meets a new lady friend named Paquita, his mother spies on them during a trip to the zoo, where she is bitten by the seemingly undead rat monkey. The movie then follows her deterioration as she sickens, dies and then returns as a singularly aggressive revenant. Lionel tries to keep her contained  along with a growing number of reanimated victims, all while trying to continue his romance with Paquita. Further complications arise when his Uncle Les moves in, and promptly throws a roaring party while Lionel is trying to get the undead to stay buried. Naturally, the zombies get loose, and Lionel, Paquita and Les must fight for their lives against a growing horde. But waiting in the wings is his mother, now grown into the biggest monster of all.

Dead Alive was a relatively early film by Peter Jackson, future director of the Lord of the Rings movies as well as 2005’s King Kong. The movie was made in his native New Zealand, with a cast of homegrown talent including Timothy Guy Balme as Lionel, Cosgrove Ian Watkins as Les and Stuart Devenie as the martial arts-proficient priest Father McGruder. Spanish actress Diana Penalver was cast as Paquita, while English-born Elizabeth Moody was featured as Mrs. Cosgrove. The filmmakers reported that 300 liters (between 75 and 100 US gallons) of fake blood was used in the production, giving it the status of the goriest movie ever until the 2013 remake/ reboot of Evil Dead. The film was titled Braindead but changed to Dead Alive for US release due to a similarly titled 1990 science fiction/ horror film Brain Dead that starred Bill Pullman and the late Bill Paxton. (I might get to that one…) The film was deemed a financial failure, though its exact box office is unclear. Multiple versions were released, usually censored to varying degrees. Some foreign disc releases feature a title or subtitle Tu Madre se ha Comido a mi Perro, literally “Your Mother Ate My Dog”.

For my personal impressions, this is another movie I first watched soon after getting Netflix in  2008 or so. I had certainly heard of it before, though I don’t recall looking for it as hard as I did for some other semi-obscure zombie movies. On occasion, I have tried to work out if it was an influence on my own novel Walking Dead, but the scenes in this movie that parallel my own work (especially the giant Mrs. Cosgrove and my incarnated Tiamat) were ones I’m certain I hadn’t seen or heard of until long, long after my story was fleshed out. One more thing I can add that this is one of only two or three zombie movies with a scene I refuse to watch, and not the kind one might think.

What’s hardest to explain about this movie, and easiest to forget if you’ve seen it, is that most of the movie goes by without much happening. The first hour is like a soap opera with occasional gore and “gross out” gags (including a dining room scene alluded to above).  This includes some genuinely entertaining social satire, but far too much else that’s either vaguely awkward or comically bad. The main relief is a cemetery scene where Father Magruder shines, pummeling several of the undead with his immortal battle cry. Also of some interest are Lionel’s unaccountably successful efforts to corral the undead. These zombies do not follow the stereotype of the vicious and constantly aggressive revenant, at least not all the time. Some are merely confused and frustrated, like a graveyard punk who can’t quite figure out what to do with a spoon. Undead Magruder and a nurse are inexplicably lustful, leading to the completely inexplicable arc of a zombie baby. Even Mrs. Cosgrove herself leaves Lionel alone.

Then there is the finale, which makes the film as a whole feel like a car that goes either 10 miles per hour or 100. The violence and gore are outrageous, yet cartoonishly unrealistic. Again, this leads to plenty of good moments, but others that don’t work. I count among the former a disembodied set of organs and a zombie left incapacitated hanging from a light fixture. Among the latter are certainly the attacks of the baby. When Lionel and Les counterattack, it becomes found-object homicide, right up to Mrs. Cosgrove’s arrival. This leads to one more effective moment when undead Les enters, reduced to a head and snake-like spinal column on legs. Then the enlarged revenant enters, represented by a rig that makes the gore effects look top-notch.

For the “one scene”, however, I was always going to go with the stop-motion scene. Originally introduced as the unseen contents of an improvised crate, the rat-monkey finally appears in the scene at the zoo. Our first glimpse comes when Paquita throws an apple core to the regular monkeys in a cage. It lands on the ground, and a seemingly skeletal clawed hand snatches it up, in itself one of the finest and most unnerving stop-motion effects I have ever encounters. We then get a look at the creature, and it is a literally Hellish vision, with huge teeth, long wraith-like arms and utterly malevolent black eyes. Not content with the prize, the creature stuns a monkey that reached for the morsel right through the bars. A keeper intervenes, telling an inconsequential tale of the creature in the process. Meanwhile, Mrs. Cosgrove arrives, clearly looking for an opportunity to break up the date. It comes when the rat-monkey bites her from behind, and she gives her finest conniptions, only after decisively disposing of the rat-monkey.

In closing, all I can add is that this movie has me at a loss, which makes it fitting enough to end this list. I certainly can’t say it’s bad, nor can I recommend it as good. But if you want freaky and over-the-top, this is the one that will be featured in the textbook. With that, finally, I am done, at least for a while.

Space 1979: The one with cartoon robot genocide

 

Title: Transformers: The Movie

What Year?: 1985 (preproduction and recording)/ 1986 (US release)

Classification: Evil Twin

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

 

When I wrote up my Introduction for this feature, my main ground rule was to focus on films from 1975 to 1985. You can judge how this went from the fact that I’ve already reviewed 3 movies from 1986 alone. I also announced that I would be sticking to live-action releases, a rule I’ve so far only broken (or bent) for ThePhantom Tollbooth. Since most of my rules are already getting shot to Hell, I decided I might as well double dip and go back to 1986. This time, we have not just a cartoon, not just an ‘80s cartoon, but the ultimate ‘80s toon. Welcome to Transformers, the first movie.

Our story begins with views of a planet inhabited entirely by peace-loving humanoid robots, complete with happy robot kids. The idyllic scene is interrupted by a planet-sized ship that looks like a cross between Pac Man and the Death Star, which the planet’s inhabitants identify on sight as Unicron. The invader literally devours the planet, complete with loud chomping sounds, sucking in the refugee ships that try to escape… and this is all still in the first ten minutes. Meanwhile, on Earth in the far off year of 2005, the civil war of the Autobots and Decepticons heats up with a battle where several bots actually die, including Optimus Prime. His opposite number Megatron escapes, only to be overthrown and cast into space by his second-in-command Starscream. The Decepticon runs into Unicron, who upgrades him with new powers and a higher-budget voice actor. He then sets out on a new mission, to hunt down the surviving Autobots and their human allies before they can unlock the Matrix of Leadership, a mysterious object (to the extent it’s never been seen or referenced on the show) capable of destroying Unicron. Meanwhile, the heroes face new perils and find new allies who seal their alliance with… a musical number? To a Weird Al Song???

Transformers: The Movie was a joint production of Sunbow Productions, Marvel and Toei Animation. The finished film was distributed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, the offenders responsible for Flash Gordon. The voice cast featured Peter Cullen, Frank Welker and the late Christopher Collins in their roles as Optimus Prime, Megatron and Starscream from the show. Collins also voiced Cobra Commander in the Sunbow GI Joe cartoon. The movie added Leonard Nimoy as the upgraded Galvatron, veteran actors Lionel Stander and Robert Stack as Autobots Kup and Ultra Magnus, and Orson Welles in his final role as Unicron. It was made for $6 million and made a US box office of $5.85M. Orson Welles was quoted as telling a biographer, “I played the voice of a toy… My plan to destroy whoever-it-is is thwarted and I ter myself apart on the screen.”

As I’ve written in toy-related blogging, Transformers was something that I loved the idea of without getting into the thing itself. To me, the brand usually stood out as the ones that cost the most and were easiest to break. As a consequence, I got to the Transformers movie very late. As a bonus, it was the direct inspiration for most of my ratings scale, which I first considered for animation reviews. My indelible impression of it is that it feels like a twin to Heavy Metal, the “anime that’s not anime” relic from 1980. More specifically, it feels like what would have happened if the crew behind that one had done everything possible wrong, which is enough to put in the “evil twin” category in my own head. If it comes down to it, the big difference is that since the Transformers movie was made in Japan, I might be able to call it anime without inciting an angry mob. (Cue angry mob in 3, 2, 1…)

Moving onto specifics, I don’t know how far I can even go with this one. This is the kind of movie that anybody but me would find equivalent to an acid trip. But it’s not disjointed or incoherent the way the movies I would give that distinction to (see The Day Time Ended). There’s just so many bizarre images and events happening that even I can barely follow it all. It’s plagued by a more unfortunate tendency to follow everything that starts to earn goodwill with something that’s dumb and annoying. Most of the battle scenes are set to bizarrely tame ‘80s rock. The good dialogue from Kup and Ultra Magnus is mixed in with the Dinobots and (dear Logos) Wheelie. The surreally creative scenes on the Sharkticon planet are followed by the lamentable dance sequence with the Junkions. Then there is the finale, where Unicron’s mindboggling transformation is directly undermined by an outlandish disregard for scale, even by this franchise’s standards. (Shout out to tfwiki here.)

In all of this, the “one scene” might seem like a lost cause, but I definitely noticed one very early on. Kup and Hotrod are stranded on the Sharkticon planet, populated by biomechanoid sea creatures. When a group of natives approaches, Kup tries a “universal greeting” that seems to get respectful attention, then begins giving them power packs in a show of further goodwill. When Rod becomes concerned, Kup reassures him, “Don’t worry, they’ll reciprocate!” Then the natives transform into more threatening reptilian shapes, just as Kup runs out of power pellets. Rod says, “I thought they’re supposed to reciprocate!” The creatures attack, and momentarily Kup is telling one more story as they’re marched off to the dungeon of the planet’s ruler.

Needless to say, I could keep writing about this a lot longer. What’s really worth saying is that this is the kind of movie you can laugh at for doing virtually everything wrong, yet still like. The closest comparison in that respect would be Planet of Dinosaurs, or the venerable baddie Plan 9 From Outer Space. No matter how far off the rails it goes, it stays almost hypnotically entertaining, which is why I haven’t rated it quite a bit lower than I have. It’s a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure none the less. Till all are one!

Revenge of the Revenant Review 11: The one where zombies climbing out of a CRT screen is the least incomprehensible thing that happens

 

Title: The Video Dead

What Year?: 1987

Classification: Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

With this review, we’re getting toward the end of what I had planned at least for the first round of reviews. These are the ones that were absolutely going to be on this list all along, and it’s at this point that I have finally recognized a problem, particularly with the classifications imported from Space 1979. This far in, it goes without saying they’re going to be weird. Of course, they’re going to be unlike anything that would or could be made before, or since, or for that matter in their own time. To me, at least, this lends a certain feeling of the anticlimactic. After all that’s come so far, what remains may not feel any less weird, but it does get harder to really say what makes them stand out. With that, I introduce a case in point, The Video Dead.

Our story begins with the delivery of a TV set to a seemingly nondescript man, which we learn was intended for the Institute For Occult Studies (which sounds like it should be a subject of a much better movie). It turns out that this set can turn itself on and off, even when unplugged, and whatever’s onscreen can come to life. By the time the deliverymen realize their error, the guy is already dead, killed by zombies from a black-and-white movie that usually appears on the screen. However, the TV is left behind, to be discovered by the teen children of the new owners, Jeff and Zoe. Soon, the original owner Henry shows up, but by the time he gets the kids to listen, a number of the zombies are loose, led by a specimen in a bridal gown. They kill several of the neighbors, including the father of Jeff’s romantic interest April, before closing in on the house. Henry shares that they undead are nearly unkillable but can be repelled and possibly defeated. Their main weaknesses are that, as the dead, they cannot bear the sight of their reflection in the mirror, but because they believe they are living, they can be incapacitated by normally mortal wounds. If all this sounds shaky, it proves equally so when Henry and Jeff go on an expedition to rescue April. With the plan gone awry, Zoe is left to outwit the zombies as best she can.

The Video Dead was released direct to video in 1987. Like many such movies, it is subject to a measure of mystery. It was produced, written and directed by Robert Scott, who went on to a career mainly in television. It was distributed by Embassy Home Entertainment, a branch of a studio that also produced or distributed The Fog, Escape From New York and several Godzilla movies. A widescreen version of the film exists, suggesting that a theatrical release was planned. The highest-profile cast member was Michael St. Michaels, a character actor who had a late renaissance in films like The Greasy Strangler in 2016. The only other cast members were Victoria Bastel as April, who appeared in The Dead Pool the following year, and Jennifer Miro, cast as a vampire-like femme fatale, who performed in a number of low-budget exploitation films before and since. In 2013, Shout released it on Blu Ray, in a 2-pack with Terrorvision for no apparent reason.

Throughout my reviews, I’ve regularly commented on what makes a film not only weird but literally like being either stoned or in a hallucinatory state. Considered in those terms, this one is high (pun not intended) if not necessarily exceptional in every category. It’s easily in the top 3 to 5 strangest zombie movies I have ever viewed, with only Shanks and The Cemetery Man really rivalling it. It obviously has a bizarre concept and completely surreal visuals, but as I’ve argued, these aren’t the biggest prerequisites for the acid-trip category. What really puts it in overdrive is the completely loopy story, not quite as disjointed or incoherent as movies like The Day Time Ended and Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, but well past the threshold of ordinary incompetence. Then, almost as an afterthought, there are the zombies themselves, easily among the most vicious, cunning, durable and flat-out putrid on record, in these terms matched only by the kyoshi of The Boneyard or the resourceful attackers of City of the Walking Dead.

The first thing to note about these revenants is that they aren’t “really” zombies. They emerge from the demonic TV set, and it would appear that they return to it after a certain amount of time, or else they would do far more damage than we see. It is also quite clear that none of their victims return to life. Something that is never quite resolved is whether the movie they come from is supposed to be “real” within the assumed world. The film-within-the-film, referred to as “Zombie Blood Nightmare”, is made to look even older than Night of the Living Dead, though the revenants clearly don’t look “old school” (see The Earth Dies Screaming). Whatever its nature, the movie is always the first thing on when the TV turns on, and seems to play long and well enough for Jeff to get absorbed.

Something that further emerges is that the zombies are relatively few in number, which allows most of them to be assigned a few identifying characteristics. The leader is the aforementioned “bride”, so withered she looks mummified, who in her finest hour gets hold of a chainsaw and turns the tables on Jeff. The one I find most memorable is a steel-gray revenant that grabs April, with a shock of perversely vivid blond hair that looks like it should be on a rock star. Others include a fedora-wearing zombie that proves to have a mice infestation, a bald zombie that takes a victim’s glasses, and an especially absurd individual that wanders around with an iron lodged in its head. Like the creatures in Killer Klowns From OuterSpace, they don’t show a lot of individual personality but share an impressive streak of almost naïve sadism. They show intelligence, including enough understanding of human speech to recognize deception. Henry says they attack the living if the show fear, which figures in the finale, but most of their attacks are clearly for their own amusement, particularly where the Bride and her companions stuff a victim into her own washing machine.

I haven’t said much about the humans, and there are certainly reasons for that. While Zoe is featured as a leading character, she doesn’t get as much screen time or development as Jeff, who spends most of his time vaguely amused and clearly high. Henry offers a more interesting character, but he comes in late and never feels fully realized; it doesn’t help that most of what he says doesn’t sound like what he could really know. The lesser victims have more to offer, particularly a maid who gets in a shot with the iron and a husband who doesn’t notice anything amiss while his wife goes in the washer. However, it doesn’t go that far, especially with the bride onscreen. What does redeem the movie are moments of self-aware social commentary, particularly in the final act, as Zoe literally entertains the zombies long enough to lead them into a trap that Henry hints can destroy them (not that his averages are that good). The comedy of manners continues with a few good gags in the hospital epilogue, right up to the nonsensical yet predictable ending. Wasn’t there a childhood keepsake to bring her?...

For the “one scene”, my pick is one that doesn’t quite fit, even by this movie’s standards. After watching the zombies actually in the movie, Jeff decides to channel surf a little. He shows no particular concern when he comes across a beautiful woman who talks to him; of course, he is smoking the whole time, and it’s obviously not tobacco. Suddenly, the woman appears before him. She soon begins shedding clothes as she flirts with him, only to retreat back into the screen. She seems ready to try to lure Jeff in after her, which would be intriguing indeed, until someone graphically cuts her throat. A disheveled man appears onscreen, identifying himself only as “the garbage man”. He further comments, “I take care of human garbage.” He reveals that the woman is one of the undead, though she doesn’t seem much like the zombies. He then proceeds to give a far more lucid account of them than Henry ever does, warning that they “have no souls”. So who is he? Is he telling the truth? Is he part of the TV world, or a human trapped inside? Alas, Jeff promptly disposes of the last of his weed, and nothing is said of him again.

This is one of the longest reviews I’ve written for this feature, and it should be quite clear I do like this one, a lot. Still, even I can’t avoid the honest conclusion, this movie isn’t very good. What really makes it of interest is that it was already quite late in the 1980s zombie wave, a year after Night of the Creeps among other things. At the same time, its rudimentary production values and hazy concepts feel more like a ‘70s production, or else an early preview of the 1990s direct-to-video torrent. Fortunately, its “primitive” character comes out in totally unbridled creativity. This movie is what happens when somebody has an idea and does it without going through the process of figuring out if it’s a good one. Whether it could or should ever happen again can be set aside for another day.

Space 1979: The one with the clown apocalypse

 

Title: Killer Klowns From Outer Space

What Year?: 1988

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

As I write this, it’s approaching Halloween, and I’ve been taking a bit of a break from this feature to get to a few other things. However, I have been using the time to make some further decisions and take a look at some movies I hadn’t made up my mind about. In the process, I finally got around to covering one I suppose was always going to be here. It’s one of the latest of the 1980s “cult” movies, and easily among the strangest, and if you’re into ‘80s movies you could probably guess this one without the title. I give you Killer Klowns From Outer Space.

Our story begins with a group of teenish miscreants who lounge around a lovers’ lane without ever talking about school, including our nominal protagonists Mike and Debbie. They see a falling star that also attracts the attention of an old man. They discover what looks like a giant circus tent, but is really a huge spaceship full of aliens who look like clowns. But these clowns are not out to entertain. Instead, they begin gathering the townspeople for food, preserving their victims for future consumption in cotton candy cocoons and oversized balloons. After a narrow escape, Debbie and Mike go to her ex-boyfriend Dave, a rookie cop, but the town sheriff flatly disbelieves them, even when calls begin to pour in from the rest of the town. When the clowns capture Debbie, Mike and Dave must team up to infiltrate their ship, with a little help from a pair of ice cream men. However, the rescue mission becomes a fight for survival when they run into the biggest and deadliest clown of all.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space was the only feature length film by the Chiodo Brothers, an effects crew responsible for Critters among other films. The clowns were portrayed with fully animatronic heads, though the concept called for them to be human-like in appearance. The cast included low-budget veterans Grant Cramer and Suzanne Snyder as Mike and Debbie, with eventual screenwriter John Allen Nelson as Dave and typecast authority figure John Vernon of Dirty Harry and Animal House as Chief Mooney. Despite the elaborate effects, the film was made for only $2 million (about the same as Zardoz in 1974), and by prevailing estimates made about as much at the box office. Some of the clown masks/ puppets were reportedly reused for Ernest Scared Stupid in 1991. Reports of work on a sequel or reboot have continued through 2019, when it was announced that Disney had cancelled the project on acquiring the rights from Fox.

For my own experiences, I can’t recall exactly when I first saw this movie. I did have it in mind when I first thought of this feature and especially the Irreproducible Oddity category. If anything, that’s an understatement for this one. Zardoz was made when lots of people were making post-apocalyptic sci fi, Krull was made when lots of people were making fantasy films, and Shanks was made when lots of people were making zombie movies. But absolutely nobody else was trying to make a film like this one. This was a major reason I took so long to get to it, as I considered it using it to start off another feature, but there was simply nowhere it would fit. It’s certainly not a zombie movie, though it has a lot more in common with that genre than you might think. It doesn’t satisfy me as a monster movie, either. What it really draws from is the “alien invasion”’ genre, which was in a counterintuitive dry spell in the 1980s, except there was certainly no invasion like this one. It feels like what would happen if the aliens of War of the Worlds or Earth Vs The Flying Saucers decided to skip conquering Earth and just go on one wild bender.

That brings us to the clowns. About four of them stand out to me: the dwarf clown, who gets a sympathetic moment when a group of bikers harass him; a mischief maker who shows up at the police station; an old, sleepy-looking clown that wanders the mothership; and an absolutely demonic specimen that races along on a motorcycle. One gets a sense of personality from the individual clowns, but all of them show the same malevolent indifference toward humans; most of their “pranks” amount to toying with their victims like a cat with a mouse. I cannot avoid associating them with the “uncanny valley” debate. The creatures are clearly intended to look human or humanoid, but are all the more unnerving for it. At the same time, they are far more convincing and naturalistic in their expressions and mannerisms than any number of more sophisticated creations then and since. The strongest comparison that rises to my mind is Howard the Duck, which literally turned a cartoon character into live action, and there is very much a sense of that here. One more thing easily overlooked is that, apart from the dwarf clown, they tower over the human cast members. Looked at with a critical eye, it’s clear that this was as much a technical limitation as a specific decision, yet there’s no denying the effectiveness in the surprisingly few scenes when they get close to the human characters.

It is in fact the human characters that are the weak link here, and the main reason I don’t rate the film even higher. From the start, the quite thin story isn’t the kind that would support a lot of character development. On the other hand, there are plenty of movies with premises just as simple (The Last Starfighter comes to mind) that make up the difference with good dialogue between interesting and likable characters. Here, most of the characters including the damsel hover between bland and annoying. By my appraisal, the one character likable enough to root for is Dave, to the point that I can picture remaking the movie just to put the focus on him. Better still, let Chief Mooney, who is at least funny, stay alive long enough for some kind of redemption arc. Alas, these are all firmly in the realm of “what if”.

As it is, Dave gets in with the “one scene”. A bit past midpoint, he returns to the police station after witnessing the clowns’ mayhem, where we already know one of the clowns has overpowered Mooney. Now, we see the aftermath. The walls of the station are painted brightly with polka dots and oversized footprints. Then the clown comes into view, a moment before Dave sees him, with Mooney in his lap in a mockery of a ventriloquist’s act. Of the “character” clowns, this is perhaps the most cunning, and the scene and shots make him more genuinely menacing than usual. Mooney speaks in a distorted voice, briefly glancing toward the clown. At first, he seems to mention Debbie; I honestly can’t make out the line myself. Then he says far more clearly, “Don’t worry, Dave, all we wanna do is kill ya.” Then the clown withdraws a bloody hand from the back of his neck and advances, ignoring several hits from Dave’s revolver, right up to the movie’s biggest twist.

Of all the things one could say about this movie, the one thing that sums it up is that it could only have been made in the 1980s. It is all the more noteworthy that it came so late in the decade that it almost overshot the emergence of CGI with 1989’s The Abyss. Even more that Critters, it marks both a high point and swan song for practical creature effects. Fortunately, this is one movie that has been appreciated far more in recent times than it ever was on its own. It may not be as “great” as some make it out to be, but it is creative and above all fun, and that’s a fitting enough epitaph for an era.

Revenge of the Revenant Review 10: The one where the zombie apocalypse is unleashed by a lady with no clothes on

 

Title: Lifeforce

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Mashup

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

For anyone who’s been following this blog, this feature may seem like a “spinoff” to my Space 1979 review feature. In reality, while I probably wouldn’t have gotten to this without that feature, I came up with an incarnation of this feature way back on my Exotroopers blog. What may be a bit more surprising is that the two features haven’t really overlapped with each other. The zombie movies I covered or considered in Space 1979 were ones I find quite different from those I’ve chosen here. This time, I’m back with the exception to prove the rule. It was on my lists for Space 1979 from the very beginning, but once I thought of getting back to this feature, there was absolutely no question it was going to be here. With that background, I present Lifeforce.

Our story begins with a space shuttle on a flight toward a comet. As they approach, they detect an enormous alien space craft over a hundred mile long. In an eerie sequence, they explore the ship and discover the drifting remains of the bat-like crew and the bodies of what appear to be three perfectly preserved and beautiful human beings. By the time the shuttle returns to Earth, the crew is dead except for an astronaut who bailed out. The scientists back on terra firma prepare to dissect the humans from the spaceship, only to discover they are neither human nor dead. The only female of the group escapes with minimal effort, leaving behind several hapless victims reduced to zombie-like creatures by the draining of their vital energies. Meanwhile, the surviving astronaut is discovered, and warns that the creature is a vampire come to Earth to feed on human souls. However, he is fixated on her, and soon reveals that they are psychically linked. While the space man leads the authorities on a hunt for the vampiress, she moves forward with her end game, unleashing a plague of the undead on London. As the story races toward its finale (just ahead of common sense), the astronaut and the alien woman come together beneath St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the human must choose between his attraction and the survival of the Earth.

Lifeforce was one of the later productions of Canon Films and its senior producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, also responsible for Superman IV and the Lou Ferrigno Hercules movies. The script was written by Dan O’Bannon, the creator of Alien (and Dark Star) based on the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, who would denounce the film. It was directed by Tobe Hooper, who broke into film with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and achieved a mainstream foothold with Poltergeist, in arguably his last “major” film. The film cast Steve Railsback as the astronaut and Mathilda May as the lead vampire, referred to simply as “Space Girl” in the credits. Filming occurred mainly in England, with a supporting cast included Patrick Stewart and John Hallam of Dragonslayer and Flash Gordon as the staff of a mental institution. The score was composed by Henry Mancini, who had been shifting to television at the tail end of a career that included The Pink Panther theme. The movie was made for $25 million and received a US box office of $11.6 million, one of the first of a series of disappointments and failed projects that led to the decline and bankruptcy of Cannon in the next decade.

 For my personal experiences, I remember hearing of Lifeforce when I was a kid, then simply because it had the same name as a Konami NES game. (Needless to say, I used the game for the image, because the posters for the actual movie were a choice between printable and good.) In hindsight, that horrifies me more than anything about the movie. I got my first inkling of what it was like when I saw a trailer on a VHS copy of the first Re-Animator movie. I first looked it up when I first got Netflix, and I kept looking it up occasionally until I finally bought the Blu Ray, which has both the theatrical version and a longer “international” cut. My strongest feeling about it going into this review is that it feels like it should be an Italian film; indeed, given Cannon’s role in the Hercules movies, I assumed the Italians had to be involved in some way until I determined otherwise. I can think of no better way to sum up what is good and bad about this movie. On the good side, it looks amazing, it defies genre boundaries and it’s bonkers creative. On the downside, it’s sleazy, willfully overdone, and makes almost no sense whatsoever.

The linchpin of this movie is the villainess, who spends virtually all her screen time unclothed. Whether one finds this pleasing or offensive will be the first test of goodwill toward the film. The movie spends a great deal of time attributing various powers to her, but what it all comes down to is that she literally sucks the life out of humans and she enters and exits anywhere and at any time she pleases. Her attacks are accompanied by surges of visible energy and the total dessication of the victim, which I will get to in a little more detail. In the midst of all this is a surprisingly subtle performance from May. She has very limited dialogue (somewhat more in the longer cut) but shows a good command of expression and mannerisms, if one isn’t distracted by other things. The problem is that this is too much and not enough. Her main emotion seems to be a kind of predatory lust, which certainly fits the posited traits of the character. However, there is little about her that feels truly inhuman, and that might have been better conveyed by an actress with even less range. She ought to view humanity the way a blue whale would regard plankton; instead, she just seems vaguely petulant.

Meanwhile, her victims are what make the movie of interest in the zombie genre. The problem here is that there is a distinct discontinuity between the first and final acts. The first victims look like mummies, literally shriveled to the point it looks like they should be no more mobile than beef jerky. When the first of them starts to move, it is completely unnerving. We then see them attack in the manner of the vampiress, temporarily regaining their human form at the new victim’s expense. Unfortunately, these are clearly far to elaborate to produce in the numbers needed for the apocalyptic finale. Here, we see comparatively conventional zombies, with some good makeup and gore including a still-animated severed arm; this stage is definitely better developed in the international cut. It would all be good fun, if not for the high mark set by the rest of the film. Again, the overall impact is disappointment.

Now we get to the “one scene”. Like many of my choices, it’s a minor scene at face value, as the vampiress makes her way down from the lab after zombifying an examiner. We get our first look at her shadow as she walks past a guard at his desk, her attributes already clearly visible in profile. The first guard belatedly sounds the alarm, in time for three more guards to intercept her as she descends a flight of stairs. Two of them block her path, while the other comes up behind her. However, they seem reluctant to shoot her, and they clearly aren’t keen on tackling her. One of them remarks that she seems “not in her right mind”. When she smiles, it’s unclear if it is their words or ineffectual posture that amuse her. Of course, she promptly plows through them, surprisingly without appearing to kill any of them. That brings her to a corridor with one wall almost entirely of glass. Then, in one of the most truly mindboggling sequences of the film, she literally explodes the glass across a courtyard outside, and promptly strolls outside without any further concern for the shards underfoot.

That brings us to the rating.  It’s definitely a factor that I feel like I haven’t gotten up to the standards I usually set for myself, or said that much about the movie, despite already going on for more than my usual length. A big part of that, in turn, is my own mixed feelings. There was a time when I probably would have given this a 3 at least (or 4 on my original Space 1979 scale). On the other hand, when I watched it for this review, there were quite lengthy stretches when I was sorely tempted to give it a 1. It all gets back to that “Italian” vibe. What’s good is almost indescribable, though I’ve certainly been trying. What’s bad, above all the vast amount of absolute nonsense, is unfathomable. With all that in play, the middle of the road is downright generous. Now, I just might play Lifeforce.

Crypto Corner: The Greek vampire hunt

 

For this post, I’m finally getting to something I’ve been meaning to get to for a long time, the lore and possible “sightings” of vampires. When it comes to vampires in pop culture vs. actual belief, what people tend to get wrong or at least imperfect is where the phenomena really occurred. People working from movies will think of Germany and central Europe, where such beliefs certainly existed. However, the reputation of these nations has more to do with fine vampire movies like Nosferatu than history. People more in tune with history will think of the Balkan states, which is indeed ground zero for both belief and authentic incidents, though the lore of Dracula shifted attention toward present-day Romania rather than other countries. What even scholars easily overlook is that one of the best-documented historical incidents occurred in the sunny lands of Greece, not in the Middle Ages but in the early 1700s. Unfortunately, it stands out first and foremost as one of the most pathetic and patently nonsensical cases of mass hysteria on record.

Our source for this incident is a French man of science named Joseph Pitton De Tournefort, who stopped during his travels on an island called Mykonos, partway between the Greek mainland and Turkey. Per his evidently colored account, the populace of the island was understandably disturbed by the discovery of a dead man who had evidently been murdered. But rather than fear the murderer, the islanders became preoccupied with growing numbers of reports that the deceased had been seen wandering in the night. The revenant was soon accused of physically accosting people, damaging buildings and property and even petty or pointless thefts. The populace soon decided that it was necessary to exhume the corpse and try one ritual or another to end the nocturnal disturbances. The result was a series of comically gruesome misadventures, recounted in painful detail by De Tournefort, that culminated in the total cremation of the much-disturbed and clearly decayed remains. The narrative ends with an unhelpful diatribe: “(T)he Greeks of today are not the great Greeks… there is among them only ignorance and superstition!”

Looking to the immediate background, beliefs in vampire-like entities were recorded in Greece from antiquity, notwithstanding the Frenchman’s critique. The posited beings were associated with the mythological figures of Echidna and Lamia. The former was a sea monster, sometimes portrayed as one of the many loves of Hercules, while the latter was a possibly historical queen reputed to have ordered the massacre of a number of children. In somewhat later belief, lamia became a generic term for vampires, spirits and various monsters. Interestingly, the specific habit of drinking of blood features far more prominently in these accounts than in relatively recent lore. By the Renaissance period, Greek beliefs were amalgamated with the more notorious lore of the southern Slavs. Among other things, this led to the dominance of the term vrykolakas, undoubtedly derived from the Serbo-Croatian vukodlak (also the source for the kudlaks in my own fiction).

Something else that will be apparent from De Tournefort’s narrative is the role of ethnic prejudice in the popularization of “the” vampire. Western nations whose leaders and learned men were torturing and executing accused witches well into the “modern” era freely mocked the central and eastern lands for the actual and reputed superstitions of the peasantry, until the wide-spread belief in corporeal revenants was taken on faith by Victorian authors like Bram Stoker. Naturally, Slavic commentators then and since mused that at least their beliefs never harmed anyone who wasn’t already dead. A further characteristic of these narratives was to give rationalist “explanations” less convincing than the more convincing lay accounts, particularly premature burial. On that vein, Paul Barber’s book Vampires, Burial And Death (my immediate source for this essay and much else) surely gave the last word, characterizing it as a “hypothesis scarcely less absurd than the beliefs it tried to explain”.

What genuinely becomes baffling is what the people gripped with fear of vampires really believed they were. Even by De Tournefort’s hostile account, the islanders clearly did not believe that the suspect corpse was rising from its well-monitored resting place to prey on the living. However, they did not seem to view it as an immaterial entity like a conventional ghost, though a poltergeist might better fit the bill. The overall picture that emerges is something like a shapeshifter, which is indeed very much in line with the lore concerning not only vampires but werewolves, fairies and witches. At that point, rational hindsight would raise the question why anyone ever troubled the living or the dead over the antics of such beings. Granting that such entities might exist- a hypothesis that occultists and Forteans might still consider- then of course it follows that they would freely and happily assume any guise that would stir up confusion and panic among ordinary mortals. Unfortunately, that very point was debated frequently and at great length during the witch trials, and of course, the usual verdict was that a malign supernatural entity could never assume the form of the truly innocent.

Meanwhile, it remains tempting to look for any hint of something out of the ordinary, if only to defend the rationality of the common man. What must be admitted at this point is that the incident could not have been that unusual. It was naïve as well as chauvinistic for the learned westerner to think that superstition among the uneducated was any less rampant in the era of the “great Greeks”, but it would be just as misguided to think the behavior of the islanders was exceptional. By definition, an event witnessed by a foreign visitor cannot be entirely anomalous (a common plot hole in fiction that uses the “travel narrative” conceit). Even without independent accounts of vampire beliefs in Greece and neighboring regions, we could still deduce that what happened on Mykonos probably happened any number of times elsewhere. 

We would do better to consider the possible ecological conditions. The Balkan peninsula as a whole is characterized by rocky terrain, shallow soil and a relatively dry climate, all factors favorable to the preservation of remains. On the Greek isles, one can add salty air and especially the eradication of native carnivores. Still, these are thing that both the educated and the commoners had ample time to become familiar with. It must be further factored in that De Tournefort made it graphically clear that the suspect corpse was anything but well-preserved. At one point, he vividly declares, “As for us, who had placed ourselves close to the cadaver so as to make our observations as precisely as possible, we almost perished from the great stench that emerged from it.” Still, he also voice the suspicion that without independent witnesses, the islanders “would have maintained that the body did not stink.”

We get into somewhat more interesting territory with the accounts of the revenant’s mischief. De Tournefort strongly maintained that these incidents were prosaic burglaries and vandalism, further reporting that the authorities did in fact detain “a few vagabonds who certainly had a hand in these disorders”. However, he further admitted that those who were caught “were either not the principal agents, or else they were released too soon,” as break-ins and disturbances continued. Viewed with a neutral eye, these come within striking distance of a poltergeist (see also the tale of Gef the mongoose), particularly the comment that the entity “came into houses and turned over furniture”, evidently without taking anything of value. Most intriguing is the prominent report that the entity was accused of “emptying pitchers and bottles”, at least some containing wine, in many if not most of the houses in the area. This is on consideration a singularly irrational sort of crime spree. An ordinary burglar or substance abuser would carry off the vessel rather than risk capture while drinking it. It is further apparent that if alcohol was the motivation, sooner or later the offender would have either glutted himself or simply become too inebriated to risk further depredations. On this point, even De Tournefort is slow to suggest an answer, merely remarking, “He was a very thirsty dead man.”

What finally emerges from the muddle is something quite familiar to Forteans, the “phantom attacker”. These are entities of usually human appearance that are often taken as “real” criminals and prowlers by lay witnesses, but have an unaccountable ability to avoid capture or for that matter unequivocal confirmation of their existence. Examples include Spring-Heeled Jack, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, “phantom clowns” (covered at length at my Exotroopers blog) and at least a good number of the “Men In Black”. Of these, many are clearly hallucinations on the lines of the Old Hag, already prominently discussed in connection with vampire lore. Of the remainder, many can be put down to criminals, pranksters and the mentally ill. Yet, there remains a residuum that cannot be quite as easily accounted for, notably the venerable Mad Gasser (whom I will probably cover sooner or later). These are situations with just enough evidence that a corporeal entity cannot be discounted, but even the hypothesis of a paranormal shapeshifter cannot supply a motive or rationale to justify the fuss.

This brings us full circle. We have no reason to doubt that whatever happened on Mykonos had nothing to do with the departed wretch who was incinerated for it. There is no reason to question the further conclusion that the same kind of near-subjective phenomena fueled belief in witches, werewolves and any number of other things. The enduring problem is that an “explanation” is not the same as a solution. If the events on Mykonos were merely a matter of pattern hallucinations and petty crime, we still cannot say “why” it happened. We are at even more of a loss to explain why an entire population was thrown into a panic by an entity whose posited activities were admitted not to have killed or seriously harmed anyone. Once again, what remains is a mystery of the mind, and even those willing to credit the existence of aliens, phantom clowns and Mad Gassers will be no less daunted by it.

Revenge of the Revenant Review 9: The one that's a werewolf movie

 

Title: An American Werewolf In London

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Mashup/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

In the last few reviews, I’ve mentioned having to make some hard choices for this feature. For this one, I ended up in an even bigger conundrum. I had already deferred reviewing one egregious movie, in large part because I haven’t felt in the right frame of mind to watch it. Then I put another movie I had slotted well in advance, only to decide it simply wasn’t weird enough to fit with this feature, at least for the moment. At that point, I was really in a bind, because there weren’t any others in the remaining line-up (the part I had settled from the beginning) that I could really handle on short notice. Then I thought of one that had already crossed my mind very early on, and it all came together. What could be more unusual for a zombie movie review feature than one that’s never been considered a zombie movie? But, as we shall see, it’s not all as it seems. With that, I introduce An American Werewolf In London, and quite possibly the most unusual and unclassifiable undead in movie history.

Our story begins with two Americans, David and Jack, hitchhiking in northern England. After being turned out by the strange and unfriendly patrons of a village tavern, they wander onto a moor where they are ambushed by a mysterious attacker. The encounter leaves Jack dead, and David scarred and mauled. Our surviving hero goes through recovery with the help of his very attractive nurse Alex, with romance on the horizon. But things take a turn for the worse when Jack appears in his room, still mangled and increasingly moldering. He warns David that they were attacked by a werewolf, leaving them both under an ancient curse. Where Jack must wander the earth as an unquiet spirit, David’s fate is to become a werewolf at the next full moon.

An American Werewolf In London was the creation of director John Landis, best known before and since for comedy. The cast was led by David Naughton and Jenny Agutter as the nurse, with Griffin Dunne as Jack. The score was provided by Elmer Bernstein, and featured in a further tie-in album from the group Meco. Despite the high-profile talent, the total budget was under $6 million. Along with The Howling released the same year, the movie portrayed werewolves with modern practical effects, in this case provided by Rick Baker. The simultaneous releases marked the start of a minor wave of werewolf movies, including several sequels for The Howling. However, American Werewolf did not receive a sequel until the release of An American Werewolf In Paris in 1997.

I first saw American Werewolf on TV in college, back to back with the (alleged) sequel. It immediately stood out in comparison with the second movie or any other that came to mind. It combined horror, comedy and romance, without in any way taking itself less than seriously. It was the kind of thing that could only have been done in the 1980s, as proven well enough by the sequel, and the enduring question is whether this is a good or bad thing. Ever since, I have been back and forth on just how I feel about it. At one point, I bought it on either tape or DVD but traded it back, in part because I was simply unsatisfied with the image quality. More recently, I sprang for Blu Ray, which is definitely much kinder to it. I gave it a viewing a few weeks prior to this review, just to kick off my usual Halloween monster-movie binge, so I came in with it fresh in mind without having to watch the whole thing again.

On further consideration, most of the movie’s problems simply come from its time. The effects were mixed even then; the one transformation sequence is amazing, but the final product looks like a marsupial Muppet (albeit just a little like Archididelphis invicta!). The twists on the werewolf lore are effective, particularly undead Jack’s casual dismissal “Be serious!” when silver bullets are mentioned. However, with this movie literally as old as the Universal monster movies were then (horrifying in itself for people like me born when it came out), the references are doubly self-dating. What really deserved to be dissected to death is the casual acceptance of the patient/ caregiver relationship, which should set off alarm bells for anyone who’s been through the mental health “system” from either side. Here, at least, the movie does show some sensitivity, as Alex in particular can be seen evaluating both her feelings and David’s mental state, which from an ‘80s movie is practically a public service announcement.

What keeps the movie watchable, funny and often unsettling is Jack; this, needless to say, is what gets the movie a place here. (The Nazi werewolves/ mutants/ zombies in one of the nightmare sequences get honorable mention.) At face value, he is no more or less than a ghost who looks more or less like a zombie, particularly after he has been out for a while. (The decay actually happens much faster than on a real corpse, if properly embalmed, and you do not want to know the things I had to do to know that.) In that respect, he can be compared to the uncertainly classified entities of Carnival of Souls. What stands out is that he never seems that unhappy with being (un?)dead, notwithstanding his protests to David. He remains a wisecracker to the very end, with nearly deadpan comments like, “Have you ever talked to a corpse? It’s boring!”

What begins to be apparent, especially on repeat viewing, is that he is never quite bound to the same “rules” as a purely immaterial being. Once he appears, he does not dematerialize, pass through solid objects and so forth (which would of course have cost more money to film). By extension, he only goes into another room through doors that are open, and if he sits down, he does so on furniture and other surfaces that would support the weight of an actual human. Most strangely, there are moments when he actively and deliberately interacts with objects around him. If one really pays attention, it feels as if the actor (who may well have ad libed much of this) and the script are actively mocking the idea of a ghost.

This brings us to the “one scene”, the tour de force of Dunne’s performance. During his first night with Alex, David rises to go to the bathroom, which the camera gives a good look at. As he closes a half-open medicine cabinet, the mirror reveals Jack, now visibly discolored, in a spot the camera might have missed. When David denies he is real, he merely remarks, “Don’t be a putz.” As they continue to talk and argue, they both was to another room, with Jack pausing to sniff a flower. Then they both sit down, and in the single most surreal moment of the film, Jack picks up a Mickey Mouse doll and plays with it, saying in a perfectly good imitation, “Hi, David!” After a few minutes of fateful dialogue, Alex comes in… and sits down on the exact same chair Jack was just in. In trying to explain himself, David neglects to mention if he noticed what exactly happened to him.

In the final analysis, even I can’t bring myself to argue that this one is a zombie movie. What I will argue is that it is very much in the same cloth as the “classic” films of the genre. Above all, it demonstrates the extent to which the creativity of 1970s-80s horror was born of necessity. In the age of CGI, they would have thought nothing of showing Jack walk through the bathroom wall. If it had been a higher budget, they might still have done that, and perhaps made him an animatronic puppet or a stop-motion skeleton in the process. But what they had was two guys in a room, and they found a way to make that unforgettable long after any number of high-tech monsters had dropped from memory. That is what movie magic is all about.

Image credit Discogs. They have everything.

Movie Mania! Movie theme anthologies

 

Because I'm a bit short on time, I'm continuing this feature with another soundtrack installment. This time, I'm covering something a bit different, the compilation/ anthology album. I'm featuring two from a fair number in my collection. It just happens one of them is among the most notorious of its kind. Here's closeups of the album inserts and backs.

Of the pair, the one on the right is the more routine of the pair. I bought it because it included the Krull theme as the opening track. Others include Bride of Re-Animator, Dark Star, They Live , and the title track Psycho (famously almost indistinguishable from Re-Animator). All of the tracks are from the original soundtracks. A good part of the CD is either easily obtained "standards" like the Star Wars Imperial March or semi-obscure movies. The best of the latter is from Near Dark, a 1987 vampire movie featuring the late Bill Paxton which I actually haven't seen. (I don't do vampires.) The whole thing is copyrighted 1992 by Silva Screen Records Ltd. Per Discogs, the preceding albums in the series featured Dirty Harry and Star Wars. The same label has also released albums the City of Prague Philharmonic Science Fiction Album, which is so enormous I have spent a decade buying up tracks from it.

It's the second one that's the stuff of legend. It was recording by a group calling itself GSO, or Galactic Sound Orchestra. In fact, all the tracks are played on a synthesizer, with some accompaniment. From it's reputation, you might think this was a psychedelic thing from the '70s or early 1980s, but the copyright date  on the earliest version is 1989. It covers a wide range of music, including a number of European TV and movie themes that American listeners will probably have never heard of. The most famous/ infamous (and my original introduction) are tracks of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek The Motion Picture, the last of which is omitted from my copy. The actual best are Twilight Zone, Raiders of the Last Ark and Time Tunnel, a zippy number scored by John Williams in his early career. The album was released by Laserlight Digital, better known for releasing classical music and public-domain videos. I was independently familiar with them for making the first recording of Beethoven's 7th Symphony I ever heard, which gets them my love forever.

So, are these good or bad? The first one is no better or worse than the original music, though listening to the whole thing starts to drag well before the end. The second is a different animal entirely, part of a genre of music that cropped up in the 1980s. It's somewhat hard to comprehend in hindsight, given that studio-produced soundtracks were readily available for a few bucks. But they certainly remain endearing, and this one has earned its following. Some of the tracks are barely distinguishable from other covers that can be unearthed if one goes looking. Many more hit their own very odd vibe and stay with it to the end, especially  the Raiders cover that ends the version I own. One of the tracks missing is the Godzilla theme, which I must investigate further.

So, there's another of my random pop culture experiences, and I'm wrapping up while I'm feeling ahead. More to come!