Super Movies! The first one with a black superhero

 

Title: The Meteor Man

What Year?: 1993

Classification: Parody

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (1/4)

 

For this review, I’m starting with a recap. When I reviewed Sky High for the last installment, I tried to give an explanation and further theory about why I’ve featured so many parodies (3 or 4 depending on how you count Creepshow), and further stated that if anything, I had done fewer than I expected. This time, I’m back with the case to prove my point, a movie that was not just in my mind from the beginning but a major reason I thought of doing this feature at all. It all started when I was reviewing (dear Logos) Mac And Me, and tried listing the most notorious, obscure or willfully unmovied entries I had ever encountered spontaneously in the pre-Netflix/ Youtube days. The one that topped my list was a movie I had seen in an actual theater. This time, I’m reviewing that movie, long after I expected to, and it should go without saying that I wasn’t saving the best for later. I thus introduce The Meteor Man, the first superhero movie with an African American star and cast, and very conceivably the reason it took 25 years to get another one.

Our story starts in space, with an asteroid drifting through the void, accompanied by a stirring score. Then, just when you might be feeling charitable, we jump straight to present-day Earth and music that sounds like a 40-year-old white guy’s idea of ‘90s rap. In short order, we meet Jeff, an inner-city teacher whose pupils are getting beat up despite his instructions to run away from bullies, and the Golden Lords, a gang that’s deliberately corrupting the youth of the community with inexplicably good fashion. The balance of power changes when Jeff is literally hit in the chest by a glowing green meteorite. Somehow, he not only survives but obtains a mixed bag of superpowers, including flight, x-ray vision, and most intriguingly the ability to learn the contents of any book he touches. He begins a campaign to clean up the neighborhood by beating up some bad guys and telling others to be nice once they figure out they can’t shoot him, all while his family and neighbors not only know his identity but provide feedback on his costume. But his new career has put him on a collision course with the leader of the Golden Lords, and the remnants of the meteor are still in the wind. When the gangster gets his own powers, can Meteor Man and the neighbors prevail?

The Meteor Man was written and directed by Robert Townsend who also starred as the titular hero. The Chicago-born filmmaker had previously directed the films The Hollywood Shuffle and The Five Heartbeats, cowritten with Keenan Ivory Wayans; tellingly, the Wayans brother had no known involvement in the superhero project. The film assembled a range of high-level black stars including Bill Cosby, James Earl Jones and Roy Fegan as the villain Simon Caine. The late Frank Gorshin, known for his role as the Riddler on the original Batman TV series, appeared as a senior gangster. The movie was released in August 1993, to mixed or unfavorable reviews. It was an unquestioned commercial failure, with a box office of $8 million against an estimated $20M budget. The movie had a limited-series Marvel comic in which he teamed up with Spider Man, but did not lead to a further role in the Marvel universe. After a contemporary VHS release, the movie appears to have fallen “out of print” prior to disc release in 2014.

For my experiences, my best reconstruction is that this movie came out just after my 13^th birthday. If I did see it at that time, it would have been a special occasion; more likely, I saw it when it hit the dollar theaters, which wouldn’t have taken long. What I clearly recall was that even at age 13, I found it odd, problematic, and definitely longer than necessary. (The actual running time is 100 minutes.)  I suppose I didn’t really think about it again until  Black Panther was suddenly a big deal in early 2018, and then mainly because I saw a joke about it. Once I started doing movie reviews (again), I discussed it a few times, and encountered one particular person with far more negative recollections than mine. I still decided to review it, particularly after starting this feature, but it was a little trouble to find it without paying for a hard-copy disk. After going through a lot of backlogged detritus for my other features, I decided it was time to cover this one, so I streamed a clearly bootlegged video with ads. As with many things, it was not as good as even I remembered, and a lot more awkward.

And this brings me further than usual without saying much about the actual movie. If the goal is balance, the best thing I can say are that the performances are good, especially and predictably from James Earl Jones. (I decline to comment on Cosby.) I can also concede that there is undoubtedly a lot of humor that would have gone over my head then or now. There’s also plenty of real creativity with the superhero concepts. It’s nice enough to see a superhuman with abilities more nuanced than breaking things or blowing them up. To the movie’s further credit, the more unusual powers genuinely contribute to the story, though there’s a big missed opportunity to tie Meteor Man’s mastery of books to a broader message about literacy and education. The most intriguing twist is a subplot where an ordinary mortal foolhardily impersonates Meteor Man. It presents a genuine conundrum within the “secret identity” premise, which might have been more interesting if the bad guys weren’t already clearly zeroing in on Jeff.

On the other side, the chronic problem is that the movie keeps either watering down or flatly undermining an already mixed message. The story never feels committed to setting up a conflict between good and evil. The neighbors are mostly set up as either fearful or passive, which comes uncomfortably close to blaming the victims, and would certainly be called out as far worse if people of color weren’t on both sides of the camera. This in many ways distracts from bigger problems with the villains. For the most part, the movie seems to treat the rank-and-file gangsters as “good” kids who took a bad turn, which is at least followed through with as certain ones change sides. But for this to really work, we should see one or a few who are far more brutal and flatly sadistic by comparison, and the story pulls far too many punches to develop that angle. Then there’s the completely surreal costumes they all share all but nullify them as a convincing threat. It makes Fegan’s otherwise credible character feel more like a “Queer Eye” guy gone native, an angle which might conceivably have worked if any of the Wayans had been involved. (I’m now tempted to review Blankman just for comparison.) All these issues just build up to the mindboggling finale, which finally manages some inspired and inspiring moments as the neighbors and some of the gangsters come to Meteor Man’s aid. But then it just keeps going, and going, until even 13-year-old me decided it was wrecking its own point.

Now it’s time for the “one scene”, and I’m going with one I probably would have remembered from the theater if I’d tried harder to reconstruct the movie before viewing it. As we approach the final act, Jeff is out of costume at a triumphant assembly of the neighborhood. As he steps outside, several cars pull away, and then his mother calls out a warning. Of course, Simon and some of his goons are waiting. Jeff freezes as Simon calls out, just as the unsuspecting neighbors come pouring out behind him. The gangsters open fire, and it’s possibly the only time we see the villains do something truly and willfully evil for its own sake: By now, Simon is clearly satisfied that Jeff is Meteor Man and so beyond harm, but is willing to settle for taking out as many bystanders as possible. Naturally, Jeff goes full superhuman, blocking every stray bullet at superhuman speed. The effects aren’t great, if no worse than the big-budget effects of the Super Man movies a decade earlier, but they are executed with enough charm to be effective. Finally, when the bad guys have given up or ran out of ammunition, we see a closeup as Jeff opens his hand… and we see blood. It’s just the right combination of heroic, silly and genuinely poignant, begging the question once again what happened to the rest of the movie.

In closing, I can only give what has kept me baffled if not angry about this movie: How do we account for a movie this evidently well-intended and clearly and woefully out of step if the influence of racism or its less malign but more insidious cousin paternalism are off the table? To put it in perspective, the analogy I have framed for myself is a New England progressive spinning a story about a hero going into the old coal country to show the meth dealers and welfare moms how to better themselves. It doesn’t have to be about race, or exactly ethnicity, but it’s certainly in the ballpark for regionalist and classist, and it all puts the progressively-minded white viewer in the position of a cop being called on to pick a side in a domestic disturbance. That, in turn, goes right along with my own longstanding suspicion is that there are divisions in the nominal African-American community that go back possibly all the way to Africa, but that’s a rope I can hang myself with another time. For now, it will suffice to say that this is a movie we should probably be glad was made, but don’t have to be happy to watch. With that, I move on, more happily than usual.

Mid-Sized Marx: Return of the 3 inch space guys!

 

I was planning on one toy blog post for this week, in between movie reviews, and I reminded myself I had one particular acquisition backlogged. Quite a while ago, I introduced the 3 inch Marx space guys, including The Space Guy Who Doesn't Care. At the time, I knew I was well short of a complete set, but the ones still out there didn't interest me enough to shell out for the rest. About a month ago, however, I found a full set for a good enough price that I put in an order. Here's the lineup, starting with the figure that interested me most.

"You're saying the Prime Directive violates the principle of observer effect and basic ethics?"

It should be pretty obvious why I like this guy. One look at pics of this sculpt immediately made me think Captain Kirk. The pose, the facial expression, the wonky phone-thingy, all are perfect for Star Trek. I wouldn't seriously suggest that this somehow influenced the show, but it does make it clear that a lot of things about it were already very much part of the visual vocabulary of science fiction. In fact, the undoubted common source was the Tom Corbett TV series and comics, which Marx originally licensed in the early to mid-1950's and continued to recycle well after they stopped paying for the rights or otherwise acknowledging the source. Given this background, Trek was if anything more respectful to this and other earlier properties than the Marx staff who were directly involved. Meanwhile, here's the next pose in the lineup, and it's... odd.

"Why can't they make this suit unzip from the bottom?"

To be blunt, the pose and expression look like this guy is either in sheer terror or trying to find whatever functions as the space toilet. Still, it's reasonably intriguing, which is more than can be said for this guy, literall a major reason I did not want to pay for a full set. Beyond being clearly based on a TV aerial, I have no idea what this thing is supposed to be, and I don't care.

"With this, I bet we could pick up 20, even 30 channels!"

Things are looking up with the next pair. One is a space guy with a rifle that I already had in a silver color different from the rest. The other is a sort of wonky robot or alien; theories differ whether he's the enemy or on the space guys' side. What I was surprised to discover is that he's definitely sculpted as wearing trousers, with enough detail that I'm a little wary of showing the back. What would be underneath is anyone's guess.

Then there are the duplicates to the ones I already had, which are often the most intriguing. This time around,  there were no big surprises. For the most part, the plastic looks the same, except for the robot and the rifle guy, which have a sort of milky, almost but not quite translucent texture. For further distinctions, the copies I previously got had some kind of pink staining that I can pick out, while the new group have a bit more "flash" around the edges. The big difference is that I now have a full set of helmets. I remain unimpressed by these, though I'm sure the quality of this batch hasn't helped. They're easily smudged, several seem to have pitting or air pockets, and as an extra annoyance, there's some residue of what looks like very fine-grained glitter. (Of course, I hate glitter.) Fitting the helmets proved a bit random. With some figures, they barely fit even when I tried multiple copies, especially the Space Guy Who Doesn't Care. With others, they lock down well enough that I can pick on the whole figure just by gripping the helmet. The big surprise was that the best and most consistent fit by far is the silver rifle guy, which makes me think he's closest to the originals in the molding and plastic. Here's a line-up of the duplicates, and a close-up.

"Okay, I'll do you if you do me..."

"And we're walking, and we're walking..."

"Do you know what this is?"

And while I'm at it, a lineup with the Aliens APC!

"We got nukes, we got knives, we got... a thermometer?"

With that, I'm wrapping this up. I have been debating a few more pics, but I think I've covered this well enough, and I have enough other things backlogged that I can fit in the guys later. That's all for now, more to come!

Revenge of the Revenant Review 21: The one where the zombies try to unionize

 

Title: Shatter Dead

What Year?: 1994

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Unnatural Experiment

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

 

As I write this, the review count for this feature is finally over 20, which is pretty close to what I planned on from the start. This has been a further reminder that I had one review undone that I had planned on from the beginning, still literally in a pile of movies I had backlogged or never put back. I knew it was time to get this one out of the way, but I also knew I was in for a rough ride, which is really why I had put it off so long. What we have here is a movie as amateurishly cheap as Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, as willfully provocative as Cemetery Man or Dead Alive, and as awkwardly off-kilter as anything short of The Video Dead. Here is Shatter Dead, the true tail end of the “vintage” zombie movie wave, and the end of my rope.

Our story begins with a shot of an angel having relations with a mortal woman, an image that will be repeated without further explanation. We then get a dramatically intoned skip to 17 months later, where we find our heroine Susan, making her way through a city where the weirdos and panhandlers are now the undead. We quickly learn that the dead have been coming back to life, and nobody seems to have found a way to redeanimate them. But rather than attacking the living, they have simply become the new underclass of society, scraping along on panhandling, petty theft and in one gruesome case as a crash test dummy. Meanwhile, Susan herself plows through the landscape with an arsenal of weapons and a vicious contempt for the undead. Her prejudices are challenged when she is confined with Mary, a cheerful revenant who has willingly joined the undead. Things go downhill when a group of the zombie radicals massacre the refugees, once again leaving Susan to make her way home. But what will she do when her boyfriend turns out to be among the undead?

Shatter Dead was a direct-to-video film written and directed by actor and cinematographer Scooter McCrae. The role of Susan was given to an actress identified as Stark Raven, whose only other known film credit was in McCrae’s later film Sixteen Tongues. Other cast included the equally obscure Flora Fauna as Mary and the late and reasonably accomplished Robert Wells as a zombified preacher. The movie received some favorable notice from contemporary reviewers and later commentators. Dendle’s Zombie Movie Encyclopedia compared it favorably to other independent and direct-to-video zombie movies of the late 1980s and 1990s, while criticizing it for weak acting, limited production values and “direct(ing) too much energy away from its fascinating conceptual possibilities in favor of trite exploitation concerns”. The movie was at one point available for streaming from Netflix, but disappeared by around 2010. It also appears to be “out of print” on disc, though copies remain available in the $10-25 range.

As with many if not most of these entries, my personal history with this movie starts with finding out about it from Dendle’s reference work. I looked it up within a few years, with surprising ease for a film as far under the radar as this one clearly was. On initial viewing, it was interesting but not that impressive, with the strongest memory being its absolutely horrific ending. Jump forward once again to a few years back, and I thought of this one not long after I looked up or bought up a few other movies I eventually reviewed for this feature. I soon figured out there was no longer a good way to obtain the movie without buying it, so I ordered it for a fairly low price. I then watched the disc I had obtained exactly once before shelving it. I took it down again for the stack I assembled when I started this feature in October 2020, and there it stayed right up to when I viewed it for this review. As it turned out, all the reasons I had procrastinated were no better or worse than I could have recounted from seeing it in the 2000s.

What truly stands out about this movie is that it actually feels a lot less strange on viewing than it does recounted in cold blood, a pattern that already cropped up with Life After Beth and Dead Heat. Part of this is undoubtedly how good the dialogue, character development and world-building are, making a bizarre premise seem mundane in the best surrealist tradition just by showing it through the eyes of the people who have to live through it. Wells’ entertaining and genuinely funny performance gets special mention here, especially where he recounts the trials of the undead. But another major factor is a counterintuitive lack of energy, especially for a film as far off the charts as this one is for graphic content. The movie has the violence and gore of an exploitation movie plus as much skin as an arthouse flick, yet the prevailing atmosphere is existential depression. With the dead unable to leave the world of the living, the remaining humans have slipped into a kind of indifference, broken only by Susan’s hatred of the zombies. It is by all means an approach that “works”, but stretched out over even the modest 80-some running time, it quickly becomes as bleak and demoralizing for the viewer as for the characters.

The core weaknesses of the film, however, emerge from uneven development of its premise. Its attempts at a theological rationale through recurring images of the very carnal (and female!) angel simply never pan out. I must further stress that there is absolutely no explanation given in the film itself. More immediate problems arise at the edges of its premise. Just for example, Susan’s guns are so useless that she might as well leave them behind, though the movie certainly doesn’t downplay the irrationality of her behavior. The undead have their own illogic, particularly the repeated and laughable assertion that they will be eternally young. In fact, while they don’t show much visible rot, they are stipulated to be incapable of healing wounds or broken bones, an issue which would surely add up even without the living trying to re-kill them. Then there’s moments that just don’t feel developed, like a character who mentions a phone call from his dead and cremated mother and an undead fetus that is simply too poorly done to work.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and it is with more than a little reluctance that I choose an actual shower scene. It starts with Mary approaching Susan and asking to share her new bar of soap. They proceed to the shower, and what’s noteworthy for me is that the camera actually follows their natural movements, exactly the kind of detail where sequences like this usually just annoy me. In one of a modest number of effective surreal touches, Susan keeps her gun with her, incidentally is terrible for a firearm. Susan sees a large blemish on Mary’s leg from pooled blood, which she immediately recognizes as a sign she is undead (a detail first featured in Sole Survivor). She starts, but Mary manages to (literally) disarm her, remarking, “You have the gun… and the soap.” We then get an intriguing monologue about her life (???) as a zombie among the living. She mentions stealth tactics like standing on her head to put color in her face, as well as the above-mentioned conceit that she has escaped old age. It’s almost innocuous when she comments that she has no scars from her demise. It’s easily one of the most thoughtful bits of world-building in the history of the genre. For an already thoughtful movie, it’s far from an isolated moment, yet it still sets a high mark that the movie as a whole can’t quite reach.

In conclusion, this one is the most conflicted I’ve been about any movie I’ve reviewed outside of Zardoz. There’s enough good and bad here for both a higher or lower rating, and enough content issues to fall well within “unrated” territory. What balances things out is the thought clearly but into developing the premise. It doesn’t quite rise above its limitations the way movies like The Video Dead or Chopper Chicks In Zombietown do, but still finishes well above the bottom. As for whether I would recommend it, I must say it’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s one more movie that no survey of the genre will be complete without.

Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon Finale: The one with a happy ending

 

Title: The Island of Dr. Moreau

What Year?: 1977

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Irreproducible Oddity

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

 

It’s time to wrap up this mini-series, and the final entry will be the one you knew was coming all along. I opened this lineup with an infamous H.G. Wells adaptation that came out when I was in high school. Now, I’m closing it with an adaptation of the same source material that I personal saw years before that one came out. As such, it is quite possibly my first encounter with H.G. Wells, and at the time, I was very impressed by it. As we will see momentarily, times change, and even a fairly short time can make a big difference. Here is The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1970s version, from the people who thought Futureworld was a good idea.

Our story begins with a man adrift at sea with a single companion. Things are looking up as they reach shore on an unfamiliar island, but one of them is attacking by a mysterious person or creature in the forest. The remaining survivor, named Braddock, finds himself in a compound that is the closest thing to civilization around, under the care of a physician named Montgomery and a more reclusive scientist named Dr. Moreau. In what will now sound familiar, he meets the other inhabitants of the island, including a lady friend, and soon realizes they are not ordinary people. In fact, they are animals transformed into intelligent humanoids by some haphazardly explained process, definitely with varying degrees of success. The newcomer meets their leader, a sort of wolfman who tries to teach the rest the way of humanity as Sayer of the Law. But some of the humanoids are already backsliding, and tensions rise when Braddock mercy-kills a crippled runaway. By retaliation or established plan, Moreau begins a new and sinister experiment, to turn a human subject into a literal beast. But when Moreau’s schemes start to go awry, can anyone escape the island, human or not?

The Island of Dr. Moreau was a 1977 film from AIP, also responsible for 1976’s The Food of the Gods and Empire Of The Ants the same year, with a reported budget of $6 million. The movie was widely regarded as a remake of the 1932 film Island of Lost Souls. As such, it notably retained a subplot where the Sayer of the Law witnesses Moreau murdering Montgomery. An additional story arc with a cat-woman character first featured in the 1932 adaptation makes her a specifically romantic interest, unlike the 1996 version, but left out a love triangle with the protagonist’s fiancée from the earlier film. The feature had a high-profile cast for a studio known for B-movies, led by screen legend Burt Lancaster as Moreau, with Michael York of Logan’s Run as Braddock and Nigel Davenport as Montgomery. Barbara Carrera appeared as the cat-woman Maria, while TV/ character actor Richard Basehart played the Sayer of the Law. Various scripts reportedly featured several darker alternate endings, including a scene where Maria reverts to a cat that remained in a Marvel comic based on the film. The movie has remained generally available for streaming and on disc, though it has dropped in and out of free streaming.

For my experiences, I have already recounted how I first encountered the movie on early ‘90s TV (see also Flash Gordon, Battle Beyond The Stars, etc). What stood out most was how dark it was, and I didn’t find it much less so after actually reading the book. Where the trail really picks up again was when I looked it up on free streaming somewhere around 2013. At that time, I was still impressed by it, though I recognized that the ending sidestepped the darkest parts of the book. Fast forward to when I started Space 1979, and this one popped up early and often. I held off on reviewing it mostly because of uncertain availability, but also because it didn’t exactly fit in with the knockoffs and runnerups I had set out to cover. It was technically a remake, but it’s still a solid film with a creative take on its sources plus a decent budget to boot. Once I had this feature in mind, I double-checked and found it available for free viewing, so I watched it, and quickly realized that this was a much weirder movie than I remembered.

Turning to the movie itself, the foremost thing to be said is that it is very much a product of the 1970s. As such, it is not only violent but sometimes surprisingly risqué, though nothing here is exceptional for “70s PG”. At its high points, the movie becomes flat-out surreal, egregiously a fight between a humanoid and a tiger, all the more disconcerting as they clearly had no way to do the scene without an actual animal. As a further upside, the effects are reasonably modern, provided by a crew that included Tom Burman, who went on to Howard the Duck among other films. This is an area where criticism tends to focus, and there are certainly problems, but I have never been satisfied that it is simply a matter of quality or budget. If anything, the underlying problem is that they try too hard and at times approach the material too literally. I see this especially in play with a pig/ boar creature, no worse technically than others but uncharacteristically awkward and grotesque. Incidentally, the roster specifically includes a hyena-man, whom I never picked out except by a very jarring laugh.

The most obvious flaws of the film, in my assessment, come from what is carried over from Island of Lost Souls. This is most blatant with the romantic arc between Braddock and Maria, which is certainly the chief reason the ending feels watered down compared to the plot. On consideration, the posited “happy” ending is more like solid “cringe”, especially since we don’t get very solid information on how Maria’s intelligence compares with humans. More fundamental problems rise from the central story point of Moreau breaking the Law by murdering his assistant, which simply doesn’t feel thought through. The obvious Biblical theme is really based on flawed scholarship that only cropped up in relatively recent times; “thou shalt not murder” was more a rule against vigilantism than anything else. (Yes, I really have a seminary degree.) In the context of the story, there’s no reason to doubt that Moreau could do anything short of carving up the Boar Man for spare ribs and lay down whatever interpretation of the “Law” would let him get away with it. It would make sense for him to lay down an absolute line at harming himself or other humans, which would work just fine for the purposes of the plot. Showing creatures of uncertain intelligence in turmoil because their literal god doesn’t follow a moral abstraction, however, is just muddled. It is worth further note that by comparison, the bestialisation of Braddock absolutely works, despite rather limited development.

With that, it’s time for the “one scene”, and this time, it’s a scene directly from the book. After Moreau’s demise, Braddock’s quite understandable decision is to run for it with Maria. To cover their tracks, he confronts the rebellious humanoids and declares that Moreau is not really dead, but watching them in spirit form. Meanwhile, Maria hoists the doctor’s carcass over their heads. The sight is enough to leave the humanoids genuinely intimidated, at least long enough for the pair to run for it. Then, in perhaps the most masterful shot of the movie, one of the beast-men literally pokes Moreau with a stick. Needless to say, the metaphysical conundrum of the book doesn’t last much longer, and the rebels are soon back in pursuit.

In conclusion, all that needs to be said is that this is undoubtedly the best Wells adaptation of the 1970s, even if it is almost by default, but also the one that does the most to date itself. What works, works as a ‘70s movie. Where the movie struggles, it is either from channeling its own time to a fault or trying and failing to update older material. In the end, what we have is a middle-of-the-road movie, and a fitting one to end the lineup with. It may not live up to the high mark of George Pal’s films, but it’s certainly far ahead of the likes of Empire of the Ants. In short, it’s a movie worth watching, and worth coming back to. For me, that’s tribute enough for a movie that helped introduce me to Wells.

Image credit Cyber Comics And Toys.

Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 5

 For today, I'm trying to get ahead with the week's movie stuff, so here's another installment of Sidekick Carl. I decided to go with a little bit of a satirical angle; whether I really needed to say that is going to be a good indicator if it's working. No other cross links this time, but the other chapters should come up with labels/ tags.

The truck literally roared down the road. The sound of the engine did not quite drown out the staccato rhythm of helicopter blades, still out of sight but growing nearer. “We need to go faster,” the passenger said to the driver.

“No,” the driver said. “That will attract more attention. We need to get out of sight, like we planned.” He made a sharp turn that put them on course toward a tunnel ahead.

“They’re going to expect this,” the passenger said as they entered the tunnel. “If the copters don’t see us, then they’ll send ground units to seal the tunnel.”

“They probably already have,” the driver said. He braked sharply enough to turn the truck sideways. “But they’re only going to seal one end…”

A minute later, an explosion resounded through the hills. A few minutes after that, a pickup truck with the markings of a maintenance vehicle came out of the tunnel. Two cylindrical objects were tied down in the bed, covered in a tarp. “See, I keep telling you,” the driver said. “People only prepare for what they expect. All you have to do to get away is do what they don’t expect.”

And the Toxo Warriors drove away into the night.

***

 

From a distance, the Nine Foot Woman’s motorhome looked like a toy. Everything about it looked out of proportion to the rest; the wheels too big, the cab too tall, the body almost square except for a roof extension. It was only on approach that it became clear that the body was not a truck but a midsized bus on 4 ½ foot wheels, and the vaguely nautical superstructure was the upper third of a camper van. And it all still looked too small next to the woman waiting on a covered deck that unfolded from the right side.

“I’m glad you made it,” she said to Carl as he approached. Her voice sounded deeper, with a subtle warble. Only then did he see that there were two other women with her, one of normal height and the other just under 7 feet. He tensed when Audrey stepped into view. “Did you bring dinner, or do you want me to cook?” He mutely held up a container of coleslaw and a bag with two veggie burgers.

They entered the RV through a hollowed out secondary deck at the rear, between what proved to be the bathroom and a tiny laundry room. Beyond that was the main living area, consisting of a kitchen on one side and an L-shaped dinette on the other, with a skylight overhead where the original roof of the salvaged camper van raised like the cover of a half-open book. At the end, there was a door to the cab, and over that, an attic-like extension that looked designed for a bed, instead given over to storage cabinets, drawers and a book shelf. Dana promptly stretched out on the long leg of the dinette, her back cushioned against the seat back. The remaining space easily held Carl and the other two women, whom Dana introduced as her assistant and physical therapist, while Audrey perched at Dana’s feet.

“I read one of your books,” Carl said in answer to the unasked question. “I remembered you wrote you were a vegetarian. I am too, more or less.”

He then reached up and fingered a sort of gasket where the neck piece of his suit met his helmet. There was a rubbery snap, followed by a hiss. Dana and her companions watched intently as he removed the bullet-like helmet. The neck piece slid down, revealing a translucent material beneath. More of the same stuff was beneath his helmet; he pushed it back like a hood, revealing pale pink flesh beneath. “Oh, my,” Dana said, reaching out to touch his cheek. “You look… good.”

His face was indeed pleasant enough. His chin and cheeks were well-defined but not prominent, his nose tall and thin. The skin was uniformly smooth, without any hint of blemishes. There was even short, slightly curly hair on his scalp. Dana ran her fingers through it, then stroked his cheek again. She promptly withdrew her hand. “What is it?” she asked succinctly.

“It’s real, more or less,” Carl said. “The cells are cloned from my original skin. They really don’t know exactly how. You didn’t ask, before.”

“I didn’t need to,” Dana said. “I read your book, too.” There was another snap as he removed his glove, then the other. His left hand had flesh as smooth and pink as his face. The right was partly shrouded in the transparent plastic, with crystalline digits extending as if from a fingerless glove. Their hands brushed as if by chance, and Dana pressed their palms together. Hers was just a little smaller than his whole hand. She smiled, with a sidelong glance at her assistant. Then she reached for the bag with the burgers. “Why don’t we eat?”

They settled down to their meal; the other two insisted they had already eaten. Audrey freely ate from a bucket of chicken. “I sent my mates with the kits to the fair,” she said. She pointed out the window to a lighted fairground in the adjacent parking lot, dominated by a Ferris wheel. “I ran into Dana, and she invited me over.”

As they ate, Dana freely conversed about her work and her two companions. “I’m a board member of the National Tall People Association,” she said. “Anna is another member, and Jenny is paid staff. She does wonders for my back.”

Carl nodded to her shortest companion. “I’m a licensed therapist myself,” he said. He raised his right hand. “I have a few enhancements that give me an edge. Still just a sideline, really.”

Dana smiled. “We have a fund set up to pay for medical care for our members, plus home renovations, scholarships, living expenses. For members who choose a public life, in movies, sports, and so forth, we provide agent services, in exchange for a percentage of the proceeds and a final say in any media appearances. All we really require in return is that our members pay a base fee, and adhere to a code of conduct.”

“I see,” Carl said. “Sounds about the same as what Audrey and I get from the Superhumans Fund. Say, does anyone, you know, date people they meet through the Association?”

“We discourage it,” Dana said, with a casualness that Carl immediately decided was evasion. “Our motto is for tall people to live their lives in the rest of society, not to withdraw into each other’s company.” Carl nodded, and didn’t press any further.

Right about then, Audrey came back into the conversation. Soon, she was retelling the tale of their first encounter, yawning and panting when she reached a part she found exciting or amusing. Carl became visibly uncomfortable as she built up to the ending. “So Constructor is smashing the tissue generation tanks, all six of them, and meanwhile, my two biggest drones are still trying to keep Carl down,” she said. “I know the game is up, so the only thing left to do is make my way out. The trouble is, Carl manages to shake of an axe in his back and step right between me and the nearest bolt hole. So you know what I did?” The women, who had been laughing, fell silent. Audrey finished, “I jumped right at him and bit him in the crotch.”

The silence just dragged on. It was Jenny who ventured to ask, “So what… what happened?”

Audrey just purred. “Now that,” she said, “is something a lady and a gentleman keep between themselves.” As she spoke, her curled lip revealed a fang whose tip had been replaced with a metal cap.

“So,” Dana said, “here’s the thing. I like you, and I’m sure you’re into me, but what really  matters to me is what other people think. So, I brought you here to meet my friends, and I found Audrey, since she knows you. Now that we’ve all spent time together, what do the rest of you think?”

Anna folded her hands. “You know how I feel about relationships,” she said. “Still… I think he’s right for you.”

Jenny frowned. “I’d rather not give relationship advice,” she said. “But… I’ve never seen you take to a guy like this. I won’t be the one to say it can’t work.” Her gaze stayed on Carl’s hands.

Audrey’s lip curled in a subtle smile. “Carl and I haven’t exactly been friends, but I’ve known him as long as anyone who’s still around,” she said. “I’d say you have… potential.”

Carl shifted in discomfort. ”Hold on,” he said. I’m flattered, and I definitely want to see where things go, but… did you really need all these people to say we could date?”

Dana took his hand. His whole hand was a little longer than his palm. “Actually,” she said, “I was thinking more like… engaged.”

Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon 4: The one with Ray Harryhausen

 

 Title: First Men In The Moon

What Year?: 1964

Classification: Runnerup/ Prototype/ Parody

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

In planning out this feature, the most difficult decision was choosing a fourth out of the five I definitely wanted. In a sense, the penultimate entry was The Shape of Things to Come, but I already had that where I wanted it. I also wasn’t interested in covering the George Pal movies, which were too old and high-profile for my usual standards, or Food of the Gods, which I deemed redundant after Empire of the Ants. I finally did a deep dive for more material, including films indirectly influenced by Wells (Memoirs of An Invisible Man gets honorable mention), but there was nothing I was satisfied I could do justice on short notice. That brought me back to one I had had in mind all along, also outside of the time frame this feature was meant to cover but no more so than the 1990s version of Dr. Moreau. So here is First Men In The Moon, the only Wells adaptation from the legendary team of Charles Schneer and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, last sighted in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

Our story begins with a peaceful, multinational expedition landing on the Moon, which is our first hint how well this one aged. As the astronauts explore the surface, they make a perplexing discovery: A British flag is already planted, apparently from decades earlier. Soon, authorities on Earth find an old man named Bedford who may have the answer. He recounts that at the start of the 20^th century, he was the partner of an eccentric inventor named Henry Cavor, who claimed to have discovered a way to cancel the effects of gravity. We then follow their misadventures as the pair go on a very Victorian trip to the Moon with a reluctant lady in tow. There, they discover an insectoid race called the Selenites, who live beneath the surface of the Moon. Cavor and the lady are soon captured for study by the rulers of the Selenites. While the naïve inventor learns to communicate with the aliens and quickly tells them  rather too much about humanity, Bedford plans a bold and not very welcome rescue. But what will the expedition discover in the present?

The First Men In The Moon was a 1964 British/ American film released by Columbia Pictures, based on the 1901 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Nathan Juran, previously responsible for The Deadly Mantis and the Schneer/ Harryhausen film 20 Million Miles To Earth, from a script by Nigel Kneale, best known as the creator of the Quatermass series. Lionel Jeffries was cast in the role of Cavor, with Edward Judd as Bedford and Martha Hyer as the introduced romantic interest. The spacesuits used in the film were actual high-altitude suits developed by the RAF, reportedly also used in Dr. Who and the Star Wars franchise. The movie was deemed a commercial disappointment, with a North American box office of $1.6 million. Harryhausen and Kneale were both critical of the comedic tone of the film, which the latter reported was significantly expanded in rewrites of his script.  

For my experiences, I can’t help but tie this one to an observation I first made with Star Trek and The Twilight Zone: 1960s science fiction TV and films had a particularly hard time when they were trying to be funny. I admit this is still very much an anecdotal assessment, and I certainly don’t claim to be able to explain it; if anything, I’m quite baffled. There are plenty of ‘60s comedies I like very much, including Dr. Strangelove, which many accept as science fiction. I’ve also read a lot of very funny science fiction from the time, when sci fi  comedy/ satire was advancing in leaps and bounds in the hands of writers like Fredric Brown, Harry Harrison and Ron Goulart. But whenever people tried to bring that to the screen, it always seems to end up strained at best, at least to me. What’s most curious of all with this one is that H.G. Wells had an underappreciated gift for humor that was more evident than usual in the original novel. Yet, even with plenty to work with in the source material, this movie in particular doesn’t hold up as well as actual Wells comedies like “The Purple Pileus” and “Jim Goggles the God”.

With all that said, it’s still difficult to judge where to start assessing the film on its own merits. On any amount of consideration, the greatest strengths of the movie are Harryhausen’s effects and Jeffries’ performance as Cavor, and it’s really the latter that does the most to sustain the movie, especially in the lengthy buildup to the trip to the Moon The inventor comes across pretty much as he does in the book, which I am once again going with from one or a few readings from a long time ago. His head is too far in the clouds for him to be openly greedy, but he also shows an unsettling indifference to the consequences of his work and the safety of others. Above all, he is genuinely funny, at least when he has enough room to run with the material. Meanwhile, Harryhausen’s effects fist come into play with a mishap that destroys a good part of the house, followed by the voyage itself, which I timed at just short of 50 minutes in. Here, we see the good matte work that distinguishes Harryhausen’s work as much as the actual stop-motion, with a further old-school charm that endures up to the present.

After sitting through all this, plus the awkward prologue, the encounter with the Selenites inevitably feels rushed, though its share of the running time is comparable to the page count in the book. What’s really striking is that Wells’ Selenites seem almost generic in hindsight, when in fact his vision of a hive-based civilization was decades ahead of similar written fiction and still ahead of science fiction movies even in the 1960s. It’s of further note that Harryhausen’s role in bringing them to life is quite limited. We see a giant caterpillar-creature that supplies the main monster action, suspiciously close to the 1961 debut of Mothra. The main event where stop-motion is concerned is a ruling Selenite who studies the human captives, easily among Harryhausen’s finest creatures, all the more noteworthy for being neither threatening nor specifically “good”. More representative and problematic are gangs of Selenites clearly played by men in suits. They quickly bring the film down to the level of more typical ‘50s-‘60s fare, conspicuously the rubbery creatures of Quatermass And The Pit. However, there are impressive moments, particularly when the camerawork gives a sense of their numbers without focusing on the all too visible flaws in the suits. It’s genuinely unnerving to see them literally swarm into action, particularly in a sequence where they easily strip the space capsule.

Now, it’s more than past time for the “one scene”. My choice is the main encounter between Cavor and the Selenite scientist who questions him. The scene starts with the lady walking in and out of a sort of scanner used by the Selenite. In a brief tribute to Harryhausen’s earlier work, she is turned into a stop motion skeleton; in a further demonstration of the master’s talent, even the short time taken to cross the scanner’s field is enough to give a sense of her motion and mannerisms that completely lines up with the actress’s performance. While the lady is indignant, Cavor remains too intrigued to acknowledge he is a prisoner rather than a colleague. As the scene goes on, he becomes excited as the Selenite repeats and then responds to his speech. In the process, we get several views of the scientist through his own scope, evidently magnified but not transformed. I find the appearance quite striking, in some ways similar to the Space Jockey in Alien. (There’s also an even stranger resemblance to Watto in Star Wars Episode I.) While Cavor is at the peak of his enthusiasm, the Selenite gives the movie’s most iconic quote: “Absolutely imperial!”

In closing, I must acknowledge what was already obvious: Of all the Wells adaptations, this is the one that was outdated by the time it was made. There can be no further doubt that the main reason it was made at all was that George Pal’s films effectively snapped up the most famed and marketable Wells works, while also demonstrating their commercial potential. Even so, the core problem was not with the book, but with the undue effort and screen time put into making it “current”. Add in the unaccountably awkward comedy and a “hero” so undistinguished I have literally gone through the whole review without talking about him, and you have a movie that was bound to go straight to the second tier. What’s really of note is that the film did as well as it has then and since. That is certainly owed to Harryhausen’s talent and fame, but also to the efforts of Jeffries, Kneale and Wells himself. It may be an also-ran, but it’s a runner-up to the very best, and still at least as worthy of attention as many more successful films. Give it a try, and the one thing you won’t be is unimpressed.

Movie Mania! Lanard Alien saga concluded?

 

I decided it was time for another toy blog, in part because I'm a little worried if I don't this blog will turn into all fiction and movie reviews. As it happens, I have one more Lanard direct-to-Walmart Alien for what I can once again kid myself into considering a quick post. Meanwhile, I still haven't fixed a lighting problem that is a major reason I haven't been doing these things, so I once again broke out the backup light. To start things off, here's some unboxing pics that have already been backlogged for a little while, once again taken with my phone.

As you can see if you're an obsessively detail-oriented collector, this entry is based on the Aliens incarnation of the xenomorph, with the "ornate" version of the head, plus a facehugger in the laboratory canister (entirely screen accurate!). From my first sighting of this item, I found the accessory as intriguing as the figure, but I wasn't keen on paying the prices the scalpers jacked things up to just for that. Fortunately, the bottleneck they created has finally lifted (unfortunately after I paid scalper rates for the City Predator), so I managed to get this one for regular price. In the process, I've come to appreciate the figure a lot more, especially the color. Here's a few more unboxing pics.

"Look at this poor abandoned spider-crab creature, just waiting for a good host... er, home."

Beyond the unboxing pics, I only took a few more of the figure for this post. Here's a pic with the pearl "original" xenomorph. You can actually get a pretty good idea of how the sequel version was "found" within the first movie's suit. I've also tried to capture how good and subtle the paint on the dark blue figure is; they even managed a kind of iridescent green touch on the head and arms that looks like a beetle.

"Just think about it, as long as we depend on humans, it's a choice between breeding and eating. Shouldn't we have come up with a better option by now?"

As a bonus, the surprise hit in all this has been the dog that came with the runner figure. He's about the right size and style to go with the Truckstop Queen and sisters, who have been going through a reorganization. My big change was to put the Queen/ Kate back with Ken (the Wampa) in my room, and keep the Gas Station Duchess with Cassie in my work space. It turns out the pair look better with the dog for company. Here's a couple extra pics of them all together, including one on my actual desk, which I've previously only shown on my Twitter feed and Zoom calls with strangers.

"Here, boy!"

Hey, good lighting! Kind of...

That's all for now, more to come!

Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon 3: The one that was made for TV as a comic book tie-in

 

Title: The Time Machine

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Knockoff/ Prototype

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

 

When I first thought of this feature, one of my first and hardest decisions for ground rules was setting aside made-for-TV movies. It’s a field that includes genuine classics like Duel (which I reviewed on a technicality) and Trilogy Of Terror , plus plenty more cult favorites like the Ewok movies, Gargoyles, 12:01, and a slew of Marvel titles I somehow haven’t gotten to. With this review, I’m finally bringing in a TV movie that stayed on the small screen, one that I have long known about and found intriguing but never looked up until now. It’s in play here because it adapted an H.G. Wells story that had already been the basis of an accepted classic of science fiction, with enough liberties to anticipate a number of future films. Here is the ‘70s TV version of The Time Machine, an adaptation that updated the novel for the era of Star Wars, and as we shall see momentarily, being forward-thinking was far from being good.

Our story begins with a tense scene as a space-defense outfit try to use an experimental laser to stop a nuclear satellite headed for Los Angeles. I won’t say what happens because I honestly wasn’t paying attention and I honestly don’t care enough to go back and figure it out. After the weapon’s less than satisfactory performance, the scientist who designed it is called on the carpet by his employer Mega Corporation. This is our “hero” named Neil, who for some reason reveals that he put his time and millions of dollars allocated for the space defense laser to build a time machine. He then proceeds to tell a familiar tale of a future where humanity is divided into two races or species, the good-natured Eloi and the mysterious and temperamental Morlocks who exploit them as food. Our hero helps the Eloi in a revolt against the Morlocks, before returning to our time to warn his employer of the coming disaster. Will he stay to change our history, or go back to his beloved Weena? Did you really need to ask?

The Time Machine was a TV movie originally aired by NBC in November 1978. The movie was made by Sunn Classic Pictures, otherwise known for paranormal-themed documentaries, as part of a series of TV movies nominally based on the Classics Illustrated comic, then in reprints after an initial run that ended in 1969. A comic based on The Time Machine was indeed published in 1956, four years before George Pal’s feature-length adaptation of the novel. The comic and both movies differed from the book in their portrayal of Weena and the rest of the Eloi as of normal human size and able to speak English dialogue. The TV adaptation added a subplot to tie in the movie with nuclear war and strategic missile defense, as well as several episodes where the time traveler goes to earlier historical periods. The film starred TV actors John Beck as Neil Perry and Priscilla Barnes as Weena, several years before their most prominent roles on Dallas and Three’s Company respectively. Beck had previously appeared in Cyborg 2087, a time-travel paradox film from 1966. Sunn went on to make the 1983 movie Cujo, their only readily verifiable theatrical release. The 1978 movie has reportedly never received an authorized video release, though copies on DVD are available. The novel was not adapted again until 2002, when a new version was directed by Simon Wells, a direct descendant of the author.

For my experiences, I believe The Time Machine was the first H.G. Wells novel I ever read, I’m certain no later than 6^th grade. What’s disconcerting is that I don’t really recall reading it since then, which leaves me in hazy territory even for my world’s-worst-superpower memory. (I did somehow figure out I read the most notorious of the lost/ censored chapters.) I suppose what true me to this time-forsaken oddity was the simple question of whether the original story could be filmed. If the question were put to me at any age, I would have said animation all the way, though the comic attests that even the liberties of that medium could be squandered. Given the limits of live-action film, certain compromises were inevitable. What intrigued me about the TV version was that its creators clearly decided to go their own way from the starting line, fashioning a story that sounds almost as much like Terminator as Wells’ actual novel. (Cyborg 2087 already promises to be an even stranger coincidence to run down.) I finally watched it as an online video that made my copy of The Horror Express look like the Blu Ray of Alien for the extra junk factor. What I had no way to anticipate was just how completely they squandered every opportunity handed to them.

Of all the problems of the movie, the obvious one is that the original story only occupies a fraction of the film, with the time traveler arriving in the future more than 50 minutes in. That in itself could have been an interesting choice, especially if this had been filled out into a miniseries format, but the preceding misadventures do little more than fill air time with sets and costumes that look like they were recycled from unrelated projects. When we do start learning about the future, we get off to a decent start. This time around, it is specified that this is the result of a combination of ecological decay and nuclear warfare, making the story topical. Most intriguingly, we learn that the Eloi are clearly intelligent yet significantly dependent on the Morlocks, to the point of relying on an irrigation system apparently set up for their benefit.

This brings us to a far more fundamental problem with how the source material is handled. The Morlocks are a very complex set of villains. On one hand, they are the quintessential image of the savage brute; on the other, they are a potent symbol of the downtrodden, feeding on what may well be the descendants of their former oppressors. As further portrayed here, they are intriguing even when unseen, and unnerving once they appear, tall and lean with luminous eyes possibly even more effective than their Pal counterparts, even at no-bit video quality. All of this revision begs for a finale where they get to speak for themselves. They might be reasoned into a truce, they might reveal their knowledge of the machines in their domain, they might give an account of the lot of their ancestors. But the moment never comes, because neither the writers nor their hero bother to try to talk to them even though all the evidence indicates they could.

That leaves us with the biggest problem of all. The time traveler per the book already had plenty of issues; like many Wells protagonists, he is a cipher always on the edge of fading into the background of his own story. His counterpart here, on the other hand, is a short-sighted, self-justifying weasel. From the get-go, he endangers millions in his own time by neglecting the job he is being paid for. Then he still tries to put himself in the right by admitting several excursions that could have profoundly altered history. Finally, in the main event, he freely plans the defeat and possible extermination of the Morlocks without even considering if the Eloi can survive without them, all on the preposterous rationale that he is saving “civilization”. His character might still work if he had the idealism of a Don Quixote or the hot temper of an Othello but he never comes across as out for anyone but himself. In the end, even his return to Weena simply seems like one last retreat from responsibility.

With all that, I still don’t have the “one scene”. This time, there was never much doubt of my choice. In the time traveler’s very first excursion, he runs into a woman in Puritan dress fleeing from a band of witch hunters. Needless to say, the mob doesn’t take kindly to someone in strange dress at the controls of an incomprehensible machine that has appeared from nowhere. Their leader solemnly pronounces him a witch (warlock?), and they set a fire to destroy him and the machine (notwithstanding the fact that even witches were kept alive long enough to appear in court). It’s an absurd scene that should have been either developed into a longer episode or set aside. Still, there’s enough solemnity to feel a kind of understanding with the mob more than the perplexed time traveler, who of course disappears without any further effort to aid the accused witch.

In closing, all I can say is that this is bad, certainly worse than Empire of the Ants, indeed worse than more than one movie that I have disqualified as “too bad” to review (see War of the Planets, again). But once again, it is not objective quality that settles whether this one gets the lowest rating. If anything, what leaves me personally annoyed is the parts that work just well enough to show that this could have been good. Even so, I can’t quite say that I hate this one, mostly because what I feel instead is an indifference that is almost worse. My final verdict is to let this one lie in the rubbish pile where I probably should have left it, forgotten and even more deservedly ignored.

Image credit goes to Space 1970. I further recommend The Chiseler for an account of the strange saga of Sunn Classic Pictures.