Space 1979: The one that cost 25,000 dollars

 

Title: The Deadly Spawn aka Return of the Aliens

What Year?: 1983

Classification: Runnerup/ Irreproducible Oddity/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Pretty Good! (5/5)

 

As I write this, I’m closing in on yet another milestone I had considered for ending this feature. This also got me thinking again about my complaints through the last 20-some reviews about how many of the ratings have ended up at 2 or 3 out of 5, and the further fact that none since Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger has gotten 5/5. I finally started to think over the kind of movie that I have given the highest rating before, not necessarily for being better than other movies or even necessarily being that good, but simply for doing justice to their own premises. That brought me very quickly to one particular movie that had been dropping on and off my radar for a very long time without ever settling in my mind whether it belonged here. Once again, I’m finally bringing one more back from the “maybe” pile, in no small part for sheer notoriety. Here is The Deadly Spawn, a movie that somehow got made for $25,000.

Our story begins with an atmospheric shot of a falling star in the woods, witnessed by a group of campers who are quickly lunched by an unseen creature. We then meet a  kid who sleeps in a room full of monster movies and collectibles, his aunt and his older brother, who apparently don’t notice when several other members of the household don’t return from the basement. After a tangential psychologist’s appointment, the kid discovers that the basement has been infested by eyeless, toothy creatures that seem to reproduce by fission, ranging from the small fish-like specimens to a towering entity that seems to have sprouted two extra mouths. While the little guys are terrorizing the neighborhood, the big one breaks out of the basement for a domestic rampage, just as the big brother’s friends arrive for a study group. It’s up to the kid to defeat the creature, but how many more will be left?

The Deadly Spawn was an independent film produced by Ted A. Bohus, also responsible for the infamous Nightbeast the previous year, purportedly based on his own concept. Douglas McKeown, a high school teacher with a background in theater, was credited as writer and director, while the effects were handled by John Dods, who went on to work on Ghostbusters 2. The total budget for the production is estimated at $25,000. Artwork for the movie’s advertising was provided by fantasy artist Tim Hildebrandt, credited as co-producer. The film is the only acknowledged role for Charles Hildebrandt, the artist’s son. The finished film was distributed by the moderately notorious 21^st Century Film Corporation. It was sometimes shown under the title Return of the Aliens, implying a connection with Ridley Scott’s film (see also Alien 2), but there is no evidence that this was known or approved by the actual filmmakers. An intended sequel was delayed until 1990, when it was released under the title Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor, reflecting significant conceptual differences from the original film. The movie was available digitally until at least 2016, but as of this writing does not appear on any streaming platform.

For my experiences, I first saw this movie as a digital rental in mid-2016, which still feels like the most appropriate format for it, and picked up a DVD a little over a year later. My foremost impression has always been a sense of conceptual purity; this is so egregiously definitive of its time and genre that it could be the Jungian archetype of an ‘80s monster movie. I suspect this has contributed to occasional perceptions of the movie as a “ripoff”, when in reality, this is another case where the accusers can’t seem to get their timeline straight. It came out after Alien, of course, but the similarities don’t really go much further than having a monster with no eyes. (If it comes to that, the parallels are stronger in the sequel.) The look and overall feel come a lot closer to Gremlins, except that came out the following year. The one movie that does land close to this one in both timing and themes is The Thing from the preceding year, but that’s close enough for “coincidence” to be in play, and in any event, that one had enough troubles of its own that nobody was going to follow its lead just for a quick cash-in.

On closer evaluation, it’s almost impossible to start with anything but the spawn themselves. The creatures are very well-done for any budget, let alone for a movie made for literally less than half of what Plan 9 From Outer Space cost in 1950s dollars. The design is simple enough to seem generic, and often suffer from the common problem of being unable to move at more than a slow plod. On the other hand, they are quite distinctive in overall look, and the little guys prove downright zippy, especially in the water. There’s additional effective moments as the lesser creatures get picked off in various mishaps, culminating in a shot where a mid-sized specimen gets lunched by the big one. These incidents give a sense both of vulnerability and daunting numbers; for every one that is destroyed, there are always more. If there’s a nit to pick, it’s that there’s several “ship in a bottle” moments where the larger creatures turn up in places they shouldn’t have been able to enter except by eating their way to their current size, as seen egregiously in the surreal final shot. However, this is the kind of plot hole that adds to the intrigue.

In all of this, it’s easy to overlook the human cast and especially the kid. The limitations of the budget are especially apparent from the cast, and several characters can easily be discounted as monster food. I personally assumed that two people in the central household weren’t even related until I looked up other reviews. However, the quality of the acting remains consistently competent even in the most blatantly gratuitous kill sequences, which in my assessment is a major reason the over-the-top gore never seems entirely comical. The gruesome end of a would-be romantic interest is especially impressive in its ruthlessness, from the filmmakers as much as their creation. In the midst of it all, we have the kid, which any number of more typical movies would have tried to shape into a heartwarming rascal that actual audiences would cheer to see eaten. Instead, we have a character who is at times frightening in his own right for his sheer detachment. He talks cheerfully about his favorite movie monsters, but is eerily silent and calculating when he discovers the several of his family have been eaten by the real thing. In keeping with the unsentimental tone, he seems to abandon the surviving cast, right until his own plan is ready. It’s one more thing that could be easily criticized, yet surprisingly realistic and forward-thinking.

That brings us to the one scene, and this time, I actually changed my mind. I was considering several scenes with the kid or the creatures, but I finally settled on the sole appearance of a pair that are apparently supposed to be the kid’s parents. After a leisurely sequence of their morning ritual, the father inspects the basement, which proves to be flooded from a window left open during an overnight rainstorm. For some reason, the architecture is gothic brick complete with archways that look fit for a crypt. Of course, he gets eaten, by a shape seen only in shadow. Then the wife comes down, and there’s moody camerawork as she looks around by the light of a single bulb. She starts as something touches her shoulder, then starts to look relieved when she realizes it’s her husband’s hand. That’s when she turns, giving us the first shot of the big guy, with an arm still sticking out of its mouth. And after all the talk of ripoffs, I refuse to believe it’s a coincidence that this is virtually identical to a sequence from Jurassic Park!

In conclusion, as usual, we come back to the rating. Graded on a curve, this is the kind of movie that would pass just for showing up. There’s simply no logical explanation how a film as cheap as this could have existed in the 1980s, which certainly figured in my rating. Even without those obvious mitigating circumstances, however, this remains one of the more impressive and flat-out better 1980s monster movie. To really find further fault with it, especially in terms of its effects and visuals, would be the same as dismissing any movie made before “modern” technology was available. You can take it or leave it, but it will not let you forget it.

Rogues' Roundup: Aliens APC and miscellaneous army-man guys

 

I'm off to a later start than usual, and I'm still telling myself I can do a quick post. In the true spirit of this feature, I have an assortment of guys new and old. As the centerpiece, I have the Lanard Aliens APC, last seen in the Alien haul. This time around, I'm trying out my army men and space guys to figure out what the Hell kind of scale this is, because this thing is messed up even by the standards of the old days. To start things off, here's a shot of it with the figures it actually came with, the direct-to-Walmart space marines aka Total Soldier and Star Force reissues.

As seen above, the design is based on the APC from Aliens, but completely resized  for figures much larger in size in proportion to the vehicle. This could have worked if they had worked up  a new design to represent a smaller vehicle that might exist offscreen somewhere in the Alien universe. Instead, they copied the movie design accurately enough that the original viewport, door and other hatches and fixtures remain clearly visible and obviously incompatible with the figures. Something I further confirmed is that the figures are bigger than they might appear. When I lined them up with the reissued Corps figure, which I just think of as the Big Guy, they looked like they'd be a bit smaller than 3.75 inch scale, but I subsequently confirmed the reverse was true.(Apparently, it helps to have reference models that aren't bigger than everything else.) What's totally incongruous is that the designers still put in a relatively detailed interior. Here's some shots with and without the figures inside.

The Big Guy will fit in the front seat, too, but the hatch won't close.

Since the figure included obviously don't fit, I thought of comparing smaller figures with the vehicle. On a recent viewing of the movie (hey, I watch good ones!), I took an especially close look at the door. When the marines get in and out, they duck, but only a little, while they can still stand up inside. That fits with the semi-official 2.2 meter/ 7 ft figure given for the vehicle height. With that in mind, the first thing I thought of was the 70 mm/ 3 inch Marx space guys, led by The Space Guy Who Doesn't Care.  I also decided to try a few others, including the Galaxy Laser Team Commander, the Timmee Nuclear Guy and a Marx reissue astronaut I hadn't gotten to yet. Here's a couple shots to show how they match up.

"They're gonna come in here and they're gonna get us!"

"'I still don't care."

Judging from these results, the 70mm space guys look about the right scale, though to me they seem just a little on the big size. On the other hand, the GLT commander at nominal 2 in/ army man scale is definitely too small; he could go through that door fully upright. I took a further interest in the Marx astronaut and the Nuclear Guy, which I'm satisfied are 60 mm and 63 mm respectively. The astronaut still looked small, but the Nuclear Guy actually made sense. For further comparison, I broke out a few more from the group he actually came from, the Timmee firefighter set.

While I'm on an Alien streak, I decided to break out one more find I never got to, an Alien set under the MUSCLE name. I found this at a used bookstore a few months back, still in the garbage can-shaped container it came in, and managed to figure out what it was before I got it. Here's pics of the container and a good part of the group.

Impressively, the set actually included the entire human (and android) cast of Alien. Though they're surprisingly small, it was still a little difficult to get all of them in one shot. Here they are; note Ash with the magazine!

In one more surprise, the set has three sculpts of Kane, played by the late John Hurt (see The Plague Dogs review), explicitly acting out the Alien's life cycle. Here's the lineup.

Finally, here's a few more pics of the Lanard astronaut and a bike originally included with the Big Guy and facehugger. Of all the figures, he's the only one who can ride the thing, which makes sense considering it reportedly came with the Star Force line. One more thing, he really looks grim without the helmet.

"We're all gonna die."

"Yeah.... I wonder what's for dinner."

That's all for now, more to come!

Revenge of the Revenant Review 16: The other one by the guy who edited Terminator

 

Title: Dead Heat aka Are We Dead Or What?

What Year?: 1988

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Parody/ Mashup

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

 

In the course of this feature, something I’ve thought about on and off about is what makes a “weird” zombie movie suitable for this feature. What’s counterintuitive is that I never had to worry about the movies being “too bad” for review. Conceptually creative zombie movies can usually rise to a minimum standard of mediocrity (see City of the Walking Dead and The Video Dead). On the other side of the equation, there are any number of the very worst movies I’ve encountered in this or any other genre that were never under consideration simply because their ideas are as dull as bowling balls. The one category of film that has given me trouble are zombie movies with enough “mainstream” polish that they don’t quite stand out. They may be very unusual in concept and execution, but they don’t “feel” weird (see Life After Beth). This time, I’m back with one of these, which I never really planned to be here but never would have doubted would turn up sooner or later. Here is Dead Heat, an unappreciated mid-rank filmmaker’s attempt at a zombie movie, a police procedural and a comedy.

Our story begins with a jewelry store robbery, seen from the perspectives both of the robbers and two cops, Roger Mortis and his partner/ buddy Doug. The crooks prove to be lucid enough to give commands to their victims, but a little slow at tasks like breaking open the store’s display cases. What they do have is an inexplicable ability to survive injuries, right up to when Roger and Doug destroy them with a grenade and a car. In the aftermath, a lady coroner reveals the bad guys’ secret: They were previously killed and autopsied, then somehow brought back to life. The one lead is a company called Dante Pharmaceuticals, whose late founder happens to have been researching bringing the dead back to life. When a visit to the lab leaves Roger dead, Doug and the coroner use the company’s own machine to bring him back to life, only to find that he has only a limited time before he decays away forever. With the clock ticking, the pair seek the root of the conspiracy, with a little help from the executive’s daughter. Soon, they realize the old boss may not be as dead as others believe, and his second in command is already in their own ranks. But when Doug is the next one to end up dead, it’s really personal!

Dead Heat was the first of two films directed by Mark Goldblatt, a film editor and assistant of many 1980s sci fi/ action films including the Terminator, followed by The Punisher the following year. Both films were produced by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. The production was one of several zombie comedies following 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead, with a police procedural element similar to 1986’s Night of the Creeps. The film starred Treat Williams of Deep Rising as Roger and SNL veteran Joe Pisocpo as Doug, with a limited appearance by Vincent Price as businessman Arthur Loudermilk in one of his final roles in a theatrical film. Other cast included Lindsey Frost of The Ring as Loudermilk’s daughter Randi, Robert Picardo of Star Trek Voyager as a Lieutenant, and the original Charlie Chan Keye Luke as mid-level bad guy Mr. Thule. By all accounts, the film was a critical and commercial failure, with an estimated box office under $4 million. It apparently went on to relative success on VHS and later DVD, with many releases featuring box art that omitted the zombie and horror elements. A disc release used for this review is identified as from Top Ten New Media Productions Ltd,, and presents the film in “full screen” format.

For my experiences, I genuinely can’t tell you when I first saw this one, though I’m sure I picked up my copy in 2016. Even by the standards of this feature, it’s easily one of the most random movies I have encountered, which in itself is strange to say given that its influences are straightforward. From all indications, this one was conceived as a parody of cop/ buddy action films like Lethal Weapon as much as a zombie movie. What’s entirely curious is that on paper, it doesn’t do much to push the limits of either genre. The banter and gags between the main characters are standard for the buddy genre, albeit with more than usual self-awareness plus Williams’ superb dead-pan delivery. On the zombie front, its most interesting contribution is featuring a hero as one of the undead, albeit with full human intelligence and general faculties. It is also unique in referencing the genre at several points, notably when the coroner warns Doug to “shoot him in the head” if Roger’s resurrection goes wrong.

What pushes this film off the chart if not the rails is the sheer variety in how the undead are portrayed. Undead Roger, as already noted, is pretty much himself, with perhaps a little more focus on his final case. At least one other “character” zombie appears normal and is indicated to have survived for several years at least. The rank-and-file goons are more varied; some are clearly intelligent, while others act more like animals. As with a number of other unusual zombie films, there is no hint of zombie contagion, though the villains clearly have the means to build up their forces with earlier victims. It is also thoroughly established that these undead are exceptionally durable, to the point that only pulverization or total dismemberment seems to kill them. By comparison, we specifically see several decapitated or brain-damaged humans and animals brought back to life, including a villain who shot himself in the head. Their one real limitation is the temporary nature of the process, which unfortunately is dictated more by “plot armor” than any consistent concept. The most truly out-of-nowhere moment in the film is the literal disintegration of the above-mentioned character zombie as time catches up all at once, for no better reason than that there is nothing else worth revealing.

The big problems with the film rise from the story and especially the efforts at comedy. To begin, this is yet another comedy where I find the “jokes” less amusing than the story and dialogue in general. In that respect, the most truly laugh-out-loud moment is a surreal pitch by Loudermilk to a group of would-be investors, culminating in the remark, “God doesn’t want us dead- and if he did, we can buy him off!” It doesn’t help that we never really get a reason for most of the crimes; it can be intriguing when a villain’s schemes don’t check out with conventional logic (see The Hidden), but these are clearly characters who are at least ambitious enough to set their sights on a higher goal than the loot from a few high-end heists. Finally, there’s something close to a bait-and-switch in the outwardly light-hearted tone. The level of the humor here is literally whistling past the graveyard, and anyone expecting the comedy to translate into an upbeat story with a happy ending will be very unpleasantly surprised. If anything, even those conversant with the zombie genre will be surprised by how flat-out lethal the prognosis is for the characters in the story.

That leaves me further in than usual without the one scene. By any standard, the one sequence that will be known to everyone who has heard of the movie is the infamous scene in Thule’s butcher shop. When the police close in and try to question the villain, he gleefully turns on a reanimation machine, apparently disguised as a large lamp overhead. Bolts of energy fill the shop, bringing slaughtered and partly dismembered animals to life. At this point, I feel I must be brief or else go much longer. We see what looks like dozens of birds, a squealing pig, and an unidentifiable chunk of meat that pounces like a face hugger. The highlight to me is a case full of eggs that burst for no obvious reason. Then we hear a pounding from the meat locker , complete with several visible dents. The door bursts open, and it’s almost beside the point to describe what comes forth.

Finally, I am left with explaining my rating, especially after giving the likes of Video Dead and Chopper Chicks In Zombietown a pass. I must above all qualify that I do not by any means consider this movie inferior to those or other films. But my reviews have always been about grading on a curve. Where some deserve latitude, others demand closer scrutiny, especially when the budget and overall talent is at the level of this one. On a more fundamental level, however, this film is flawed in a unique and easily foreseeable way, simply in that those involved thought they could be everything to everyone. Instead, they arrived at a final product that fell short for every potential audience: Too grim and gory for action movie fans, not smart or consistent enough for zombie movie fans, and simply not funny enough to stand on its own as a comedy. In hindsight, we can appreciate it better, but the people who made it remain entirely at fault for its failure in its own time.

Image credit Video Collector (UK).

Movie Mania! Lanard Aliens Part 2

 

It's my day off, and I decided to make a short post. This time around, I'm unboxing  an acquisition I made in the last week, a 7-inch version of the Lanard Aliens line. It took longer and cost a bit more money because the Walmart sold out of everything in the time I took to decide what I wanted. While I have no doubt there will be more cluttering the shelves in the next few months, for the moment things look bleak enough that I turned to an online scalper who only marked up the price about 20%. I actually kept it in the box for a little while, if only because I had enough other things on my plate that I needed to clear a little time to five this a proper treatment. To get things going, here's the item in the box.

You can see from these pics that the manufacturer does the legwork with the package artwork, something I covered in more detail with the giant Predator. This didn't raise quite as much interest for me simply because the art is mostly reused from the first Alien/ Aliens wave, which I already covered. I was intrigued by the fact that they clearly reused the egg and facehugger from the first wave (see the 35mm alien post), despite the change in scale. If anything, it's a better fit with the larger figure, though almost everything about scale in the Alien "canon" gets wonky if you're really paying attention. There's also been a change in the colors, with the egg lighter in color and the facehugger painter in a darker color that makes the detail more visible. Here's a few pics.

Family picture time!

As for the figure itself, the most interesting thing about it is that the head sculpt is clearly based on the Alien as seen in the original movie, which was famously modified for Aliens after condition issues with the original suit revealed details not fully visible during filming. The details on the upper surface are painted on, but done well enough that it's easy to visualize the more ornate details underneath; this went a long way to convincing me that this was the one to get if it I only had a chance to pick one. There's extra marbling in the plastic, which gives a nice touch, though a side effect is an odd, off-center line that may or may not show in the pics. It also has points of articulation at all the major joints. As I commented in my previous post on the line, the articulation is visibly unappealing, but the joints feel very solid on handling. Several even come with an audible ratchet popping when moved. I still find most of the poses decidedly non-threatening; however, that was already one of the more entertaining points about the line. Here's a few pics.

"Yeah, hands up, I know the drill..."

"Great, Predator left a mess in the kitchen again, and the Thing is going to pretend he's a dog."

"As you can see, the possibilities of the Weyland Yutani blender go far beyond urban pacification..."

One other thing about the figure is that he's big enough to tower over my usual reference models, as already shown above with the Gas Station Duchess (and Cassie),  something that hardly ever happens outside of my dino and giant robot posts. Incidentally, I've done some remeasuring recently and concluded that the sisters are pretty much exactly 6 inches, though I remain convinced the Truckstop Queen herself (on her own day off right now) is a little bit taller. Here's one more reference shot with the Dumpster Drag Queen.

"Well, yes, I suppose you are gender non-binary..."

Finally, here's a shot with the other Queen of this feature.

That's all for now, more to come!

Space 1979: The one with an alien and lesbians

 

Title: Prey aka Alien Prey

What Year?: 1977 (UK release)/ 1978 (US release)

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Prototype/ Mashup

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

 

In the last few installments, I’ve already spent a fair amount of time (especially in the Troll 2 review) commenting/ ranting about why “worst” movie lists aren’t that much help in finding material for this feature. The strongest evidence I can offer is that several of the most notorious and flat-out awful films I have viewed for this feature were ones I set aside, at least for a while, as either not meeting certain criteria (mainly a US theatrical release) or simply of no further interest. This time around, I’m back with a movie that shows more than most just how a movie ends up getting a bad review from me. The first and foremost fact to bear in mind is that this one actually intrigued me when I first heard of it. I then took a closer look and noticed a familiar name… and realized it was the same director responsible for Inseminoid. So you can’t say I didn’t warn you, I now present Prey, a British film about an alien who meets an LGBT couple. To quote a certain familiar franchise, whoever wins, I lose, because I had to watch this damn thing.

Our story begins, after a computerized credit sequence, with a woman awaked by a strange light. Another woman comes in to reassure her when she calls out, and she remarks that the light came from the sky. Meanwhile, we see a young couple ambushed by a creature that takes the form of the male victim. Soon, the visitor shows up at the home of the ladies we have already met, Jo and Jessica, who turn out to be lovers at least in the physical sense. The being sends regular reports to an unseen commander as he works his way in as a housemate under the dubious name of Anders. In the process, we see him revert to his natural form, a humanoid with sharklike teeth and a large, dark nose, when hunting human and animal prey. Despite the incidental body count, it looks like the creature is adjusting to life among humans, well enough that Jessica starts to treat him like more than a friend. As Jo’s jealousy rises, the problems in their relationship rise to the surface, and it turns out having a sentient predator on Earth could be the least of anyone’s problems!

Prey was a 1977 film by Norman J. Warren, a British filmmaker best known for horror/ exploitation films like the previous year’s Satan’s Slaves. The movie was reportedly produced and filmed in 10 weeks for under 60,000 pounds, with a number of scenes shot outdoors in a wooded area near Shepperton Studios. The movie starred Sally Faulkner and the late Glory Annen as the couple and Barry Stokes as the alien. The synthesizer-heavy score was provided by Ivor Slaney, who also composed music for Death Ship and the Warren film Terror. The film received a limited release in UK in late 1977 and in the US the following year. Warren went on to make 2 additional science fiction films, the sex comedy Spaced Out (also with Annen) and the horror film Inseminoid, as well as a number of “straight” horror and exploitation titles. Annen attracted publicity and scandal in the 1990s and early 2000s during to a high-profile separation from Ivan Allan, a businessman and horse trainer.

As outlined at the start of this review, this movie first got on my radar quite a while ago, when I ran across the title in a cheapie box set that included some other titles I considered for review. I didn’t get the set, but I continued to think on and off of reviewing it. I soon further determined that the only way to view it digitally was through a channel on Amazon, but held off on the necessary subscription. I came close during the “repeat offender” week, but bailed and reviewed Dungeonmaster instead. I finally went in when I was about to go over 70 reviews for this feature (one more milestone where I thought of ending it), with a little optimism that lasted about as far as the credits. By the end, I was very seriously debating whether this was in the category of too bad to review (see War of the Planets). Still, I had enough time and effort invested for the “sunk cost” fallacy to kick in, and this is simply not the kind one can watch and then walk away from in silence. It’s just the combination of incompetent and willfully offensive that deserves to be called out rather than ignored, and on a deeper level, it remains interesting just for what it brings to the subject matter. 

Moving forward, we can start with the science fiction part. Here, the movie is on solid enough ground to be forward-thinking, however intentionally. While the idea of a malevolent alien living in outwardly human form was hardly unique, this treatment is still ahead of several of the most noteworthy examples in cinema, particularly The Thing and The Hidden. It can be allowed some further credit for actually showing the creature at a potential disadvantage. Blending in with the natives clearly doesn’t come naturally for this alien; when he first makes prolonged contact, the ladies both assume he is literally an escaped mental patient. As the story continues, he ends up in clear danger several times, including a scene where he is apparently saved from drowning, and it’s never quite clear if this and other incidents are calculated bids for sympathy or a byproduct of ignorance, arrogance, or outright obliviousness. On this front, two things stop the idea from working. First, the reports to his unseen superiors are an unconvincing and unnecessary conceit; this definitely doesn’t seem like the kind of being that would invite others to its hunting ground, let alone submit to a paramilitary hierarchy. Second, the creature design is simply ludicrous. The effects are decent enough, especially given the budget, but there’s no getting past the nose, which makes it all look like a toddler dressed up as a puppy for Halloween.

On the other side is the real elephant in the room, the lady lovers. If there is anything on this or any other front where the movie deserves recognition, it’s that there isn’t a hint of bondage/ sadomasochist stereotypes, an especially tiresome fixation of pseudoprogressive media that traces easily back to the pulps of the 1930s. The film takes an extra baby step in the right direction just by offering two LGBT characters with clearly divergent personalities, even if it is ultimately on the same submissive/ dominant lines worn into the ground by pornography. However, it’s all entirely nullified by how dysfunctional these two are. It’s all well and good to show that the persecuted don’t have to be saints, but this couple is literally dangerous to each other and anyone around them including the evil monster. There’s only so long one can watch or hear them (and dear Logos, the voices) before any sympathy for either of them evaporates. Opinions about alternative sexualities then or now shouldn’t matter, they should not be together and never should have been.

After all that, I still don’t have the “one scene”, and I came close to drawing a blank. Fortunately, my train of thought brought me back to one particular scene, right about at the transition from the first act to the second. While venturing out of the house, Anders discovers that the police are looking for his earlier victims. Whether he could use his powers to camouflage is one more thing that isn’t clear, but wearing very British leisure wear certainly doesn’t help. Before he can retreat, he gets cornered by one of the officers, forcing the only straight-up fight between the alien and a human. The cop actually gets in the first blow, which clearly does some real damage. The creature rallies, however, quickly turning the tables with evidently superior strength. As his victory is sealed, the monster finally transforms and prepares to feed, leaving a grisly find for the next officer to arrive.

This is where I come back to the problem I raised above. The conceit that a carnivorous species could reach the level of interstellar civilization without solving their food problems was a non-starter, but the story doesn’t need it. The Predator could have been the equivalent of an accountant who took up bow hunting, and it still would have worked because the backstory didn’t really matter. What we clearly see here, however, is a being who can’t cover up even minor misdeeds and isn’t nearly tough enough to stand up to the kind of resistance that would assemble sooner or later. As with The Hidden, this gets me running my own thought experiment. Instead of killing random humans, eat the vermin, the stray pets and maybe the occasional homeless guy. Or, if you can adjust well enough to live among the natives, get a job at a morgue or a pound, where a steady food supply would just be a matter of eating what was going in the crematorium anyway. Better still, if you have technology centuries ahead of the locals, take out a few patents, then buy all the food you need. And that’s the problem with movies like this. It’s not they don’t have ideas, it’s that they’re made by people who never cared enough to develop them. For me, nothing is more offensive than wasting a good idea, which is why this gets the lowest rating.

Image credit VHSCollector.com.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Retro Raptors!

 

It's getting toward the end of the month, and that means it's time for another dino post. This time, I have a few new acquisitions, some old finds, and one that's turned up before but never been front and center, and I'll be nostalgizing up a storm along the way. Here are the "raptors", a group of dinosaurs that revolutionized our understanding of dinosaurs both in science and pop culture, yet are still best known from depictions that were outdated even at the time. First up, we have the egregious offender, the Jurassic Park Velociraptor.

This is the dinosaur Velociraptor mongoliensis as portrayed in Jurassic Park, translated faithfully into a toy. Even back then, it was widely criticized as inaccurate, especially on the grounds that the "real" dino would have had feathers. The important context to consider is that this was how the group, broadly known as maniraptors, was portrayed through at least the middling 1980s. The creatures as further translated into the novel were a composite of Velociraptor with certain relatives, especially Deinonychus, the most famous raptor prior to the movie. The book further specified a figure of "six feet" for the raptors, but in all my many re-readings, I always understood their mass to be about the same as the human characters, a significant exaggeration for Velociraptor but in line with Deinonychus. The movie, with necessarily less flexibility, further scaled up the dinos to 300-350 pounds. From what can now be known, their depiction with scaly skin instead of feathers may have been partly dictated by the limitations of the CGI effects. As finally realized in the Kenner line, it was a no-frills dino with an action feature that snapped the jaws when the leg was pulled. With the present condition of my specimen, it's more like a head bob, which actually makes better scientific sense. When I first got him in the later '90s, I paired him with a little toy computer, an image I thought about reusing as the avatar for this blog, but as usual, I never got around to it. Here's a couple more pics, including a closeup.

The next up in the lineup is from a lot later, yet easily the most archaic in this group. I picked him up from a big box store's dollar bins around 2014. Like several other items I recall, it had the infamous Toysmith brand name, previously sighted in connection with generic Godzilla. It looks almost exactly the way Deinonychus was portrayed in the dinosaur books I read in the 1980s, complete with vestiges of the "tail dragger" pose. From what can be independently known of the brand, I have no doubt Toysmith snagged the mold from some much older line. Given the further longevity of generic/ knockoff dinos, it's conceivable the thing is as old as or even older than the first Jurassic Park movie. At any rate, its a nice, moderately detailed sculpt that captures why the dinosaur first attracted interest. Here's a few pics.

Cool never goes out of style.

That brings us to the biggest and latest in the lineup, an absolutely colossal specimen from the same Walmart Adventure Force "line" that provided the especially accurate Spinosaurus featured last time. It's an obvious contrast with the spinosaur, clearly modeled after the Jurassic Park/ World movies rather than published "science" then or now. Nevertheless, it's a very well-done sculpt with some very nice touches on the paintwork, and again it's absolutely huge. Here's a lineup of pics, including a reference shot with the spinosaur and the Truckstop Queen.

"So, where are you boys headed?"

Meanwhile, I took some pics of a few more raptors in my collection that I was ready to add, but as usual, I ended up with more material than I planned on already. The one I decided was worth including is another very recent find, picked up of all places at a gift shop for a charity. It was advertised as hand-made artwork from the developing world (and priced accordingly), which made it a lot more interesting to me. It's clearly another design from the JP mold, and as such a striking indicator of how far the franchise's influence has filtered down. In most other respects, it's as "silly" as this feature can get, in exactly the kind of way I find interesting. Here's the one pic I took.

As a postscript, I have my further thoughts on Jurassic Park. I may well be among the youngest to have read the book before the movie came out, and while the movie did a reasonable job condensing the material, it never made quite the same impression the novel did. In further hindsight, I think the biggest "problem" with the movie is simply that it was too influential for a full remake to get off the ground. That would have been the best way to introduce fully modern depictions of the dinos. It would also have been a chance to put a new emphasis on the darker elements of the source material, the way the 1982 version of The Thing did. (I still don't understand how the movie left out a scene where Dr. Grant actually takes down three of the raptors.) To me, the most tempting approach of all would be a TV mini-series treatment, able to go longer than a feature film yet on a low enough budget to capture some of the grit of an '80s movie. With Jurassic World now 5 years past and still going strong, that kind of re-envisioning seems like one more lost opportunity. For me, the definitive raptors will remain the wiry, cunning and ugly wraiths I first pictured reading the book, and that is good enough for me.

That's all for now, more to come!

Space 1979: The other one I quit watching

 

Title: The Plague Dogs

What Year?: 1982 (UK release)/ 1985 (US release)

Classification: Irreproducible oddity

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

 

Something I’ve already regularly commented on is that there’s a lot of genuine randomness in this feature. I’m obsessive enough about doing this and other things that quite a few of my reviews get written whether or not I really have something in mind to review. This has been especially true of my animation reviews, which have already been all over the map in chronology alone. This time around, I’m back with another animated feature, in no small part because the only other material I was investigating in the same time frame wasn’t suitable for this feature. A minor upside is that it finally fills in one of the bigger gaps in the wonky timeline of this feature, an entry for a year that was very good for genre films but not for the kind of notorious or obscure entries that this feature is meant to cover. Here is The Plague Dogs, a cartoon from the same people who thought it was a good idea to make an animated movie about talking rabbits being hunted, bulldozed and enslaved by a collectivist dictator.

Our story begins with a lavishly detailed animation of a large black dog paddling around a swimming pool, but the surroundings don’t look like a friendly recreation center. With no further explanation, a human pushes the dog under water until the animal stops moving, only to pull him out and revive him. We momentarily learn that this is a lab, and this is still the kind of cartoon where the animals talk. The dog we have seen is Rowf, while the one the story focuses on is Snitter, a terrier with a mysterious wound who repeatedly complains about “the flies in my head”. Soon enough, the pair make their escape into the countryside, where they continue a debate over whether human “masters” are more trustworthy than the lab staff they call “whitecoats”. When attempts to find a new master fail, they must hunt sheep and vermin to survive, with help from a fox who continually reminds them of his cunning. However, the whitecoats have discovered the escape, and are now concerned with avoiding further scandal. The order goes out for the dogs to be destroyed as possible carriers of a germ the lab was experimenting with, complete with a deployment of the military. As the hunting parties close in, the dogs must take desperate measures to survive, and it still may not be enough.

The Plague Dogs was an animated film by Nepenthe Productions from a novel by Richard Adams; the same company and crew had previously produced the film Watership Down also from a novel by Adams. The film has been identified as an MGM release, which would have made it possibly the first MGM animated film since The Phantom Tollbooth; in fact, MGM/ United Artists was only responsible for its distribution in the UK. The voice cast was led by John Hurt of Alien as Snitter and Charles Benjamin as Rowf. The supporting cast included Patrick Stewart as a military man and Judy Gleason of Inseminoid (!) as a well-bred pet dog. The film had two versions, one at 1 hour and 43 minutes, the other edited down to 86 minutes. Like Watership Down, the movie was controversial for violence, this time including several on-screen or implied human deaths. It remains unclear how long or widely the original/ long version was distributed, though it is reliably reported that it was only available on home video in Australia until recently. The shorter cut still received a PG-13 rating on US release in early 1985, almost certainly the first animated feature to do so (see also Night of the Comet), indicating significant delays and possible re-edits following earlier test screenings in late 1983.

For my personal experiences, I got my introduction to this movie watching exactly the first three minutes on streaming, after going in with nothing but a vague familiarity with the title. That was enough to convince me that it belonged in or at least adjacent to the science fiction genre, a point I have yet to see argued either way by anyone else. At that point, I quit, partly because I didn’t really have time but also because I knew I needed to retreat and regroup on this one (see also Howard the Duck). I finally came back to it after going through several much higher-profile genre films without encountering any material I could work with. (Reviewing movies that are actually popular just doesn’t work for me…)  It was necessary to work with the 86-minute cut, which was about as long as I could have worked with. The best I can say in summary is that it’s an utterly mindboggling experience. This is a cartoon that explicitly shows a dead dog being thrown in an incinerator with a snow shovel, a rat being injected with bubonic plague, and a fox devouring all the eggs in a nest, and these are just prominent background details in a story that really only seems as bizarre as it does for how straightforward and linear it is in presenting its brutality.

For deeper analysis, the best frame of reference is Watership Down. The earlier film was already so excellent and evocative that I have personally pondered what might have been if this crew rather than Ralph Bakshi had handled the animated version of Lord of the Rings. (Dear Logos, Bakshi…) Here, the animation is if anything improved, but changed fundamentally enough that it is debatable if it is “better”. Watership Down mixed realistic animation with highly stylized sequences to portray the animals’ mythologically-tinted perspective. Here, the images from beginning to end are almost ruthlessly “real”, especially in the clinical environment that opens the film. Clearly, if the dogs ever had a worldview as rich as that of the bunnies, the casual abuses of the “whitecoats” have long since erased it. Something else established at the outset is that the movie’s horrors lie in understatement. In this respect, it is somewhat difficult to assess how much is a matter of the creators’ choice or imposed by censorship. Certainly, what we don’t see rarely makes what we do any less unsettling, especially compared to the over-the-top approach of near-contemporary fare like Heavy Metal. 

The “problem” that gradually wears the viewer down is a strange sense of detachment. The story arc starts on par with One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and ramps up to Rambo (I know, First Blood), with a bit of The Crazies on the side, but one may be hard-pressed to find reason for greater emotional involvement in the midst of the thematic jumps. It’s easy to feel sympathy with the animals, but this does not make it easy to “like” them. Snitter, well-played by Hurt (a very accomplished voice actor if one looks at his whole filmography), is at least troubled by the events that unfold, but he is usually too distracted by the problems in his own head. There’s more of interest in Rowf’s distrustful personality, while the one character with a well-developed redemption arc is the fox, who gets a grim but genuine “last stand”. By comparison, the dogs don’t really show the courage of their kind until the very end, which would be as heartbreaking and nerve-wracking as Brazil or Dawn of the Dead if we could just get invested in the characters beforehand.

After all that, I still have the “one scene”, and what I choose is more like a moment. In the midst of the dogs’ first hunt with the fox, Snitter turns his attention to a bandage that has covered his head from the beginning. At first, it seems futile, but then he gets a hold with his hind leg, and suddenly it comes loose all at once. He immediately snarls at the last reminder of their time in the lab, then begins to tear at it for far longer than he took to remove it. Finally, he buries it like an especially odious stool, just in time to charge the quarry as the others drive it uphill. It’s a sequence that humanizes the character while still showing him acting like a dog, all animated with superb attention to realism and attention to detail. To the movie’s credit, it’s far from an isolated moment, but I still wish the movie had more like it.

This movie left me very conflicted about the rating. This is a film I genuinely wanted to give the highest rating, and I could easily talk myself into giving it at least 4 out of 5. Failing that, I seriously considered giving it “unrated” status, but for as much territory as it covers, it doesn’t have the underlying unevenness that has led me to use the rating (see House, again). Given its flaws, as well as the work the same crew were capable of, I give it the rating I accept as most appropriate. Considering how much of the DNA of this feature lies in my past misadventures reviewing animation, I consider it as much of a compliment as an actual higher rating. This is the kind of movie that gets made when those involved either have no idea how to connect with an audience, or just don’t care what the theoretical masses think. Whether or not you like it, it should by all means be respected.

Bigger Than Godzilla! Lanard/ W@lmart 12 inch Predator unboxing

 

Last week, I finally introduced the Lanard direct-to-Walmart Alien line. At that time, I was already angling on getting some additional material; unfortunately, it turned out the local super store had just sold out, so I had to make other arrangements. As it turned out, the one thing I was able to get in time for a post this week was something I really didn't particularly want to get without further inspection. In addition to the new and bigger Alien figures, Lanard has been turning out Predator figures, and the only one currently listed on the website is a giant Predator on the same nominal 12-inch scale as the Alien Queen. I had seen what I figured out was the price tag for it, but it had been long gone (which confused me into not buying any of several figures that were closer to my usual size and price range). I initially tried to set up a pickup at one of the stores on the bus lines (still not as hard as getting the Alien haul home), but when that fell through, I paid a good chunk of the thing's official worth to deliver it to my door. Here for posterity are pics of the epic unboxing.

Needless to say, this thing is huge, though I needed to do some further examination to decide just how big.  Something I quickly realized is that it was too big for the regular camera on my Surface tablet, so I ended up doing a lot of pics on my phone. Here's an assortment of pics, including a few with the Kenner Predator (see Last Stand) thrown in.

He's still bigger than a Star Wars figure.

It didn't take long to find the kind of issues typical of the manufacturer. A number of paint choices are strange, particularly on the forearms and back. The points of articulation on the arms don't provide a full range of motion. The shoulder cannon, which I'll be going into in a lot more detail, is clunky. As an extra bit of random, the waist is downright wobbly, which tends to make the big guy look like he's either doing a hula dance or overacting in a Shakespeare production. Here's a few more pics to show what I mean.

"To behead or not to behead, that is the question..."

The real extra is the cannon, which actually lights up. You might think this would be a dinky little bulb like an old TIE fighter. But no, this thing is so bright I seriously considered whether it might be dangerous. It certainly wasn't any fun when I zapped myself on the first use. After very cautious experimentation, I concluded it's safe to look into the light if you turn it on first for a moment of adjustment. Still, this is completely outlandish for anything that might get anywhere near a kid. Here's some pics I took trying to show just how bright this is. The last one was taken with my finger directly over the bulb.

Do NOT go into the light.

Still, we haven't answered the question, is this guy bigger than (generic) Godzilla? This time, alas, the answer is unequivocally no. Still, it's not a big difference, and the pair are still big enough to be adversaries. Here's the faceoff.

"No, no, left foot first... This is the Alien Queen all over again!"

That's all for now, more to come!