Space 1979 Prototype Trilogy 1: The other one about a cyborg assassin from the future

 

Title: Cyborg 2087

What Year?: 1966

Classification: Prototype

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

 

In the course of doing this feature, one thing that caught me by surprise is that I never made that many exceptions for films before the intended 1970s-‘80s timeframe. This time around, I’m starting a mini-series to cover that gap, and the first entry of all hails from the most counterintuitively underrepresented period, the late 1960s. When I started this, I didn’t even see this period as a major exception, but the only ones I got to were The Green Slime and The PhantomTollbooth, with the latter in a gray area because of a delayed release. For this review, I finally have one more, and it happens to be one of the most bizarre arguable coincidences on record. Here is Cyborg 2087, a film with nearly the same premise as Terminator from almost 20 years earlier.

Our story begins, after a view of a 1964 World’s Fair-style futuristic cityscape that will have no part in the rest of the movie, with a view of a woman and a man in a control room and an older gentleman climbing into a sort of pod. As the countdown approaches, the future police burst into the control room, but the lady operator presses one more button and the pod disappears, headed for the very current and hip year of 1966. We then find our time traveler in what looks like an Old West town, until a couple sightseers show up in a jeep. He commandeers the vehicle using a ray gun that stuns people, and seeks out the lab of a scientist researching telepathy. He manages to make contact with one of the scientist’s assistants, a spunky woman in a will they/ won’t they relationship with her colleague, and reveals his mission: He is a cyborg, sent back in time to kill the scientist, whose research will become the basis of mind control by a future dictatorship that he served before being reprogrammed. However, two more cyborgs have already been sent to stop him, with weapons that don’t just stun, and meanwhile, the lady is getting the hots for the gentleman. Can he succeed, and if he does, will he ever exist?

Cyborg 2087 was a film by United Pictures Corporation, part of a nominal series from director Franklin Adreon and screenwriter Arthur C. Pierce. The film starred Michael Rennie as the title cyborg Garth (??), with Karen Steele as the romantic interest Sharon Mason. Other cast included Harry Carey, Jr, John Beck (see The Time Machine 1978), and Jo Ann Pflug of the movie MASH as a future resistance fighter. While it would later be known for its similarities to the Terminator franchise, the film received limited interest in near-contemporary reviews, with Philip Strick deeming it among the “more conventional” treatments of time travel. Adreon and Pierce went on to make Dimension Five, another film involving time travel that starred Jeffery Hunter. Rennie died at age 61 in 1971, only 5 years after the release of Cyborg 1987.

For my experiences, my interest in this film really starts with the controversies surrounding Terminator and particularly its association with Harlan Ellison’s story “The Soldier” and the adaptation of same for the original Outer Limits television series. My reaction has always been that this is a distraction from more interesting works, notably to Philip K. Dick’s story “Second Variety”, which didn’t get an official adaptation until Screamers (which I will review if I have to make a new feature to do it). Then there’s other Outer Limits storylines dealing with time travel, like “The Man Who Was Never Born” and Ellison’s own “Demon With A Glass Hand”,The most purely random parallel I ever ran across is a totally obscure 1942 story titled “Barrier” (by the sometimes-great Anthony Boucher) in which a time traveler goes to the future in the nude. It will be clear from even anecdotal evidence that there was already plenty of groundwork for this movie and Terminator to have developed independent of each other. What’s strangest and truly inexplicable is that this movie’s setup in many ways comes closer to that of Terminator 2 than the original, meaning that the charge of a direct “ripoff” still doesn’t explain why key elements were left out in the first run.

Of course, these considerations don’t address the quality of the movie. I went in with singularly low expectations, and the best thing I can say coming out is that it does indeed “feel” like an Outer Limits episode, which if you’ve seen any is high praise indeed. Between the loopy premise, good camerawork, low-tech effects, and slightly over-dramatic music, it could all be taken as an earnest tribute to the show, which crashed and burned about a year before this movie came out. Of course, that leaves plenty of awkward and dated elements. The first act is slow-paced and heavy on tech talk. The two hostile cyborgs, referred to as “Tracers”, look more silly than sinister, and the action sequences are correspondingly slow-paced and toned down. There’s also an extra what-the-Hell factor in the use of the Old West town, culminating in a final showdown that comes across like High Noon with ray guns. Still, the one thing that comes closest to derailing the movie is a group of hip, partying youths (including Beck’s minor character) packed in around the middle. Fortunately, the lot of them are left behind after a little character development as soon as the story gets back in gear.

That leaves the central premises, the time travel plot and the cyborgs. If anything, the latter are better developed. Rennie makes a dapper and eloquent superhuman, all the more striking in the kind of role that would normally by given to a much younger actor. He declares that he is partly human but beyond human emotion, which we can well believe based on his subdued account of the future. At the same time, he acknowledges becoming a “free thinker” after the resistance freed him from mind control, implying that he has some capacity for freewill and gratitude. His opposite numbers are impressive in their own way. As mentioned, they look surreal as they chase after their quarry, but this is in no small part because of their total focus on their mission, to the point that surprised bystanders and suspicious authorities are simply ignored. (Ironically, avoiding attention is the counterintuitive rationale of Boucher’s protagonist.) They become more sinister when the surviving Tracer takes Sharon hostage, revealing a ruthlessness that doesn’t quite reach the point of outright sadism. By comparison, the time travel plot doesn’t get much further than the premises laid out at the start. The one thoughtful touch is that the hero and his allies try to reason with the scientist. However, it’s a poor balance against a resolution that is virtually a copy of what Outer Limits did just as nonsensically but with far more visual flare.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and the problem I faced this time was that the story’s developments are spread out enough that what would be solid sequences are instead interspersed with each other. Nevertheless, the standout is definitely the main effects sequence. After Garth reveals his mission to Sharon, she appeals to her colleague and potential romantic interest Carl for help, including the removal of an implant that Garth warns can be used to track him. When Carl is skeptical, Garth reveals a set of motors in his forearm and a plate with blinking lights on his chest. Carl remarks, “I don’t know what I believe, but I know what somebody who saw it might think.” He still objects that he cannot administer anesthetic, to which Garth answers that his nerves are “sealed off”. After an interlude with the tracers and the youths, we find the implant removed, in the closest parallel to any scene from the Terminator movies- specifically one that was cut from theatrical release!

In closing, I must say this is the one entry in this lineup I hadn’t already seen in whole or part. As such, it was a pleasant enough surprise, enough that I felt charitable enough to consider a higher rating. Yet, at the proverbial end of the day, this is a film where “good enough” is more disappointing than “bad”. I would have loved to celebrate this movie as an overlooked classic or roast it as a justly forgotten stinker, but the truth is that it is neither, and wasn’t trying to be. Comparison with Terminator in particular is simply a disastrous disservice. The later movie certainly had its problems, in some ways as bad as this one, yet nobody can dispute that it has stood the test of time. This movie, by comparison, is a self-dated artifact that never pretended to be anything else. It gets a passing grade, but it remains in its own time, and the people who made it can at least be credited for letting it remain there.

Super Movies! The one where capitalist aliens take over the world

 

Title: They Live

What Year?: 1988

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Parody

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

In planning out this so far modest feature, the entries I’ve had the most pure fun with have been the ones that people wouldn’t normally associate with superheroes or comic books, like Creepshow and Heavy Metal. (I’d add Lady Snowblood, but that would be stretching the definition of “fun”.) So far, however, these exceptions have remained transparent in origin. For this entry, I’m going much further afield with one I’ve had in mind for a very long time. It’s a veritable “classic”, at least of the cult/ camp variety, enough to be effectively above the radar for my other review features, but one whose full history is as yet not widely known or entirely resolved. I present They Live, a famous sci fi/ horror movie based on a minor classic of a short story that just happens to have also been the basis for a comic.

Our story begins with a drifter wandering into a big city, accompanied by the droning of TVs showing advertisements and the deeds of the rich and famous. He finds a piecework job as a construction worker, where he makes friends or at least acquaintances with Frank. He notices strange activities at a church near the construction site, which coincide with TV broadcasts that warn of a sinister and undefined conspiracy, and soon discovers that it is the home of a dissident group. Before it becomes clear who they are fighting against, the lot of them are wiped out by a police raid. In the aftermath, the drifter discovers a box of sunglasses left behind. When he puts them on, he begins seeing hidden messages on TV, billboards, magazines and even money. Then he discovers those behind them, a group of zombie-like creatures that have effective control of the media and the police. With only Frank and a reporter named Holly to turn to, he must find a way to expose the creatures’ plots. Will he win, or is it already too late for humanity?

They Live was a 1988 film by John Carpenter, based on the 1963 story “Eight O’Clock In the Morning” by Ray Nelson. The story had been previously adapted in 1986 for the comic book Alien Encounters, published sporadically from 1981-1987. The comic incarnation, simply titled “Nada” after the main character George Nada, was drawn by artist Bill Wray from a script credited to Nelson. The movie starred the late Roddy Piper as Nada, following the WWF star’s turn in Hell Comes to Frogtown (definitely in the lineup, just not sure where). Keith David of Carpenter’s The Thing costarred as Frank, with Meg Foster as Holly. Piper’s character is identified as Nada in the script and credits, but not named at any point in the movie. Other characters in the original story, including Nada’s girlfriend, are not included or given any close counterpart in the film. The movie was a modest success, earning $13 million against a $3M budget, and went on to much greater popularity through TV and home video. Carpenter openly identified the film as a satire of  “yuppies” and the Reagan administration. In 2018, he publicly denounced the use of images from the film in anti-Semitic memes and other right-wing media.

For my experiences, my first definite recollection of this movie is seeing ads for it when it appeared somewhat regularly on ‘90s TV. I’m pretty sure I still read the story first, in a freaky late 1960s anthology called The Others. (Oddly, it’s also in another anthology on my shelves that I know I purchased earlier.) When I did watch the movie in maybe 2000, it quickly became a favorite, and at some point I picked up a VHS tape I kept in use right until I picked up the 2017 Steelbook release (already jacked up to horrendous prices). I never would have picked between the story and the film, if only because they really are quite different; among other things, the story actually makes the aliens far more malign, complete with a detailed description of their diet. It was only very recently I learned of the comic, and it immediately fascinated me. It is a true bridge between Nelson’s simple prose and the visually rich world of the movie. I had wondered further about the relationship between the comic and the movie, something Carpenter himself seems to have neither confirmed nor downplayed. When I started doing movie reviews, I thought of this one occasionally, but didn’t see a real opening until I started this feature.

For the details of the movie, I find myself hard-pressed to think of anything that its many admirers won’t have already analyzed to death. There’s the shots of the subliminal messages, which don’t greatly improve on the story outside of the chilling inscription “This is your God” on a dollar bill. There’s the creatures themselves, cheerfully bland and even vaguely likable most of the time, but unnervingly focused against any challenge or threat. There’s the egregiously cool soundtrack, composed by Carpenter and Alan Howarth. Then there’s the fine performances, not least from Piper, and the completely surreal dialogue. On that front, I will give special mention to George “Buck” Flowers, possibly underrated as a character even more nameless than Nada who goes from construction worker to a refined collaborator. His baseline is a despicable sort of charm, complaining when his favorite shows are interrupted by a resistance broadcast and later extolling the benefits of selling out. His reactions become defensive and then pleading when confronted by Nada and Frank, with one last burst of cunning.

That brings us to the central question, is this a “comic book” movie? I think the best answer is that the movie owes its better elements to the comic book influence. Several significant moments come closer to the comic than the original story, including the infamous final shot. There are further hints of the comic style in the alternation between the literal black and white view through the sunglasses and the bright and colorful visuals (arguably out of character for Carpenter) that prevail through the rest of the movie. There is the action sequences and violence, surprisingly limited but accentuated by closeups and near-static tableaus that multiply the impact far beyond what is actually shown. Then there is the movie’s somewhat counterintuitive focus on facial expressions and mannerisms, especially in the main scene between Piper and Foster. We see Piper go from action-hero bravado to fear and exhaustion, while Foster looks on almost clinically, her trademark blue eyes as ethereal as the aliens. It may be debated if or how much this reflects the influence of the comic adaptation, but at the very least, it offers a new angle on Carpenter’s visual style (see also Dark Star from way back).

That leaves the “one scene”, and I came as close as I ever have to despair. In all the movie’s wealth of visuals and dialogue, the one that quickly crept up from behind is a scene that I keep almost forgetting about. At the close of the middle act, Nada is hiding out with Frank after showing him the glasses. After returning from an errand, Frank/ Keith looks back out the window, then turns and says with the actor’s usual flawless delivery, “How long have they been there?” The scene continues, with enough good lines that I figured out I lost track of which actor says several of the best ones. Finally, Nada gives the only account of his backstory, of his relationship with his religious father. He recounts that his parent “changed… turned mean,” and proceeds to a truly terrifying account of having a razor held to his throat. Piper comes close to falsetto as he repeats the words of his younger self, “`Daddy, please…’” Then he becomes composed again, and says, “There’s gonna be Hell to pay. ‘Cause I’m not Daddy’s little boy no more.” It’s a superb moment that goes against the usual reputation of the actor, the character and the movie, but still what we should have expected from a storyteller as accomplished as Carpenter.

In closing, the best I can offer is my on-and-off thoughts on the politics of the movie. What I find striking in hindsight is that even when I first saw this movie, I didn’t take it as an indictment of anyone I was for or against. If anything, what stood out to me was that it offered a reasonably positive view of religion, which I suspect is a major reason it has continued to resonate in conservative circles. The harder, darker lesson is that the powers that be of the ‘80s were, even more than other places and times, amoral and apolitical. The “yuppies” Carpenter openly satirized might have been Regan voters or self-styled liberals, but they were still united in their self-centeredness and active indifference. I can’t credit that this was lost on him, especially judging from Flowers’ longest monologue: “They own everything… There’s no good guys any more.” The real moral of this story remains that the aliens have already landed, and they are us.

I have another link list. I recommend first and foremost Lit Reactor for an impressive comparison of the movie, the short story and the comic. A close second is Dangerous Minds, with honorable mention for Page To Screen for a rundown of the original story.

Movie Mania! The orange monster movie books

 

In planning out this week, I decided that today was going to be the buffer between movie reviews. I also decided it was time to do a new installment of this feature that would go back to what I meant for it to be: Not just another toy-blogging feature, but also a survey of some of the more surprising and unclassifiable artifacts that crop up in my collections. In the further course of my latest review, I hit on something I had thought about a few times before and knew I had to cover while it was in my mind. It's a very little book I picked up a few years back that seems unremarkable at face value, but as we will see momentarily, it is a true tip of the iceberg, part of a series that was not just successful in its own right but instrumental in how a generation of kids learned about older movies. To get things rolling, here's another shot of the cover plus a pic of the opening pages.

As you may be able to make out above, this book is one of the more eclectic entries in what was simply called the Monsters series, otherwise known to those who read them as the orange monster books. The series was dedicated to science fiction and horror movies that were old even then, with a focus on the Universal Monsters quasi-franchise of the 1930s onward. A total of 15 of the things were published from about 1977 to 1987 by Crestwood House, marketed primarily to libraries and schools. The vast majority were written by Ian Thorne, now known to be a pseudonym of science fiction writer Julian May (d. 1917). Where most of the books covered an individual monster/ franchise, such as Dracula, King Kong and Godzilla, this book opened the field to a wider theme, covering movies about "mad" scientists and their various discoveries and creations. Several later entries were dedicated to individual movies that received no direct sequels, such as It Came From Outer Space and The Deadly Mantis. Photos exist of a "Monster Reading Center" that appears to have included tapes and copies of the books in a paperback or magazine format.

As already alluded, the bare facts only begin to cover the impact of these books. Judging from the volume of content about them, they were everywhere in the late 1970s and '80s, with many undoubtedly circulating much later. In another sense, however, they were nowhere, as the vast majority equally undoubtedly remained in school and public libraries rather than passing on to the kids who read and remembered them, very possibly right up to the point of outright self-destruction. Those that survive at all go for very high prices, with prices over $50 being quite routine and anything under $20 being an outright steal. This clearly high demand has persisted despite growing notoriety for factual errors, most notoriously a report that two different endings were filmed for King Kong Vs. Godzilla. (Wikizilla more charitably reports that the series entry on Godzilla was the first Godzilla book of any kind released in the United States.) Even in the era of the internet, their appeal persists, at least for those who grew up on them. For me in particular, the pull was strong enough to take a half-way decent price for one of the ones I had the strongest memory of. Here's a couple shots of what I got.

The format of the book covers two individual movies, the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde and The Invisible Man (the subject of his own somewhat later volume), before proceeding to an overview of the genre. It offers what is still a decent mix of "classic" and semi-obscure movies, including Island of Lost Souls (see Island of Dr. Moreau 1977 and 1996), Dr. Cyclops, Tarantula and The Man They Could Not Hang. The photos, many of them credited to the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman, remain impressive at full size, though they tend to look more faded than the age of the book alone can account for. After a few pages, however, it begins to sink in: This is (pardon my Serbo-Croatian) total kaka. To show my point, here's the part that triggered all this, a synopsis of the 1936 Boris Karloff movie The Walking Dead, which I reviewed in my previous post.

Here's what the book has to say about the movie, in big enough print that you might be able to follow along in the pic: "When John Ellerman, played by Boris Karloff, was framed for murder and executed, (actor Edmund) Gwenn brought him back to life. The experiment was not a complete success since Karloff was turned into a revenge seeking zombie. He destroyed each of the evil doers who had framed him, He then died, once again his savage work being done." That's barely a paragraph of information about the movie, and it gets almost everything wrong. If anything, this makes the Kong vs. Godzilla blooper look minor and forgivable. Karloff's character is in many ways an archetype of later movie "zombies", but he also differs in many ways, above all being of "normal" intelligence. And, as I pointed out at length reviewing the damn thing, he never deliberately kills any of the villains who got him executed. And the name is Ellman, not Ellerman! Fungghhh!!!

Even as I write this, I'm trying to find a defense. These were barely into the days of VHS, never mind IMDB and Wikipedia. They were covering a wider range of movies than other books in the series, and nobody could afford to watch a whole movie to check a paragraph of text. Maybe, if it comes to that, this was just the one that wasn't as good as the others. I honestly find myself fervently drawn to the last possibility, especially as I remember the other books. I remember the eerie stills from The Deadly Mantis, very possibly the best of them all. which very possibly stirred up my interest in real insects and biology. I remember the overviews of the many adventures of Kong and Godzilla, the almost scholarly tone of the book on Dracula, which covered not only the Lugosi movies but other vampire movies like Blacula and The Night Stalker. And against all of these, I must count the all too obvious cons. We were kids. Even if we had a TV and a VCR, we weren't going to watch every movie mentioned. In the end, we didn't know better.

And with that dispiriting note, here's the last page of the book, which is dated 1977 for the material and 1980 for the printing (and apparently still 4 years before the 1984 date the library apparently acquired it). Note that this includes only 6 of the 15 titles in the series, which absolutely crowd the back covers of later books. And note the tape, in itself a good indication of just how determined the librarians and patrons were to keep these books available.

At this point, I'm ready to wrap this up just to avoid getting any more discouraged. The best upside I find in all this is that the whole idea of kids being drawn to whatever is new and "cool" is a preposterous myth. Children love to learn about the past at least as much as anyone else, or books like these would never have existed. There's also plenty to be happy about in the vast improvements of access to older movies. Just for example, The Empire Strikes Back is now as old as The Walking Dead was when this book was printed, and imagine the fallout if someone printed that the movie ended with Luke Starwalker killing Dark Vader. The most important lesson is that there are things that are meant to be outgrown, which is why I for one have long since moved on without delving any further into the series. That's all, more to come!

While I'm at it, here's my first link list in a while:

Branded in the 80s series overview

Titans Terrors And Toys tribute; alas, a link for the reading center kit is dead.

Sicko Psychotic comprehensive list of the books and referenced movies.

And finally a Cinemassacre video on the series.

Revenge of the Revenant Review 22: The one where the zombie doesn't do anything

 

 

Title: The Walking Dead

What Year?: 1936

Classification: Prototype

Rating: For Crying Out Loud (1/4)

 

If there’s one thing in the course of this feature that’s taken me by surprise, it’s how recent many of these films have been, with most no earlier than 1980, and a good number from the ‘90s or later. For the present review, I am going in the other direction and looking at a movie much earlier than I have reviewed or considered so far. We’re going back to the 1930s, the decade that defined what people thought of as horror movies all the way up to the time when the “classics” of the zombie genre were being made. It was the days of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and more, but of course, we won’t be looking at them. Instead, I offer for consideration a movie that was offbeat even for its time, yet by the standards of this feature almost bland on paper. But as we will see, strangeness can be a matter of execution as well as concept, and this one is truly baffling on careful consideration. I present The Walking Dead, black and white edition.

Our story begins with a group of racketeers, so refined and civilized that they literally play pool while they plan their mayhem. The group become upset when a judge sends one of their underlings to prison, so they decide to murder the judge and frame someone else for the deed. Enter John Ellman, an ex-con sentenced by the judge who the plotters recruit for a supposed plan to catch the judge in a moral scandal. Instead, they frame him so clumsily that their goons are seen moving the judge’s body, but the patsy still goes to the electric chair before the witnesses come forward. In the aftermath, the remorseful husband and wife who saw the real killers bring his body to their employer, a scientist who has been working on a machine to reanimate the dead. Of course, the experiment is a success, and John comes back to life. He’s vague about where he’s been, but he has a newfound knowledge of who framed him. He begins to seek out and confront the plotters, who keep ending up dead with little or no effort on his part. Finally, the remaining racketeers set out to redeanimate him, leaving him wounded. Will he find peace in a second death, or remain undead among the living?

The Walking Dead was a production by Warner Bros starring horror legend Boris Karloff and directed by John Curtiz, also known for movies such as The Adventures of Robin Hood.  It has been noted as among the first to portray a slow-moving zombie, as well as for portraying the undead reanimated through technology rather than supernatural means. It is also possibly the first of relatively few films to show a zombie/ undead of undiminished intelligence attempting to resume a normal life (see Life After Beth). The film was moderately profitable, earning $300,000 against a $217,000 budget, but received mixed reviews and fell far short of the commercial success and overall impact of Frankenstein and other Universal “Monsters” films. Karloff’s 1939 film The Man They Could Not Hang, produced by Columbia, featured a similar premise, with the actor in a more openly villainous role. The movie was re-released at least once, and was included in a syndicated TV package in the 1960s. It has been released on VHS and DVD, but may command high prices; the most accessible release is a 2009 DVD combo pack with the films Zombies On Broadway, You’ll Find Out and Frankenstein 1970.

For my personal experiences, this is one that remained under my radar for an unaccountably long time given the talent involved. I first got wind of it from Zombie Movies The Ultimate Guide by Glenn Kay, which gives it favorable mention, and again when re-reading one of the hagiographic Crestwood House Monsters books. I have found these typical of its reputation as an undisputed “classic”, albeit a minor one. At first, I assumed it would remain unattainable at my usual price range, but eventually got it in the combo pack at well under $20, either a little before or after watching The Man They Could Not Hang (frankly better by a wide margin, but not enough to factor in this review). When I gave it a look, it was while some family were visiting, and the foremost reaction both from me and others was that it is simply baffling. Of course, there are plenty of “good” and genuinely entertaining things about it, first and foremost the direction and camerawork of Cortiz and Karloff’s impressively nuanced performance. The “problem” more than 80 years on is that it is almost impossible to discern what they were trying to do. It has elements of horror, science fiction and drama with a gangster-movie element on the side, but the driving vibe is either a very heavy-handed morality play or a comedy too tone-deaf to tell you when you’re supposed to be laughing.

On more careful scrutiny, what’s most telling is that almost all of the obvious flaws in the story lie with the plotters and their exceptionally overcomplicated scheme. On any amount of consideration, there’s simply no reason for them to have involved Ellman at all, while the underlings who do the dirty work come closer to getting caught carrying out the absurd plan to frame him than they would have if they were allowed to deal with the judge and run for it. What becomes increasingly problematic is that the story hinges on them being unable to handle seeing their victim alive again, to the point that most if not all get themselves killed by sheer panic. This is where the movie simply can’t settle on a point to make. If the idea is that they are plagued by remorse, it’s a very arbitrary line in the sand. From what we can know and infer, this bunch has probably already killed more people through indifference and neglect than the shenanigans on screen ever do. If the premise is that they are terrified by the mere presence of the undead, these are still not the types who would go overboard, especially since the experiments that bring him to life seem to be known to the public.

Fortunately, we are on much more solid ground with the revenant, but the movie remains mixed at best. The reanimation itself is short and simple, with none of the overwrought melodrama of Frankenstein; I find it intriguing for comparison with the original story “Reanimator” (see, dear Logos, Bride of Reanimator), published 15 years earlier. When Ellman/ Karloff comes back to life, he seems vaguely confused but generally himself. Physically, he has enough dexterity to play the piano, leading to a superb scene as he does a recital in the presence of several of the plotters, but he walks with a lurching gait that seems to grow worse as the movie goes on. Something that is never quite resolved is his vulnerability to injuries. He certainly takes a lot of damage in the surprisingly graphic finale, which also sees several gangsters possibly (and of course ironically) electrocuted, but he is by all indications still vulnerable to gunfire and other blunt trauma. (It has been said that a bullet to the head kills him, but I simply don’t see it.) What remains most unique is a metaphysical/ religious theme, mainly introduced through the doctor, who regularly presses his subject about the afterlife. This becomes one of the better developed arcs of the movie, in no small part because the movie never gives an unambiguous answer to its questions. In the end, however, what we do get becomes one more variation of the warning not to play in God’s domain.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the first death among the bad guys. The scene starts after the piano recital, as one of the more competent conspirators loads a revolver. When Ellman enters, he looks at him in the mirror without turning. He comments pointedly, “I was thinking of paying you a visit. You saved me the trouble by walking in.” Ellman asks bluntly why he killed the judge, which is enough for him to draw the gun. The revenant puts his hands up, but remains unphased. He says almost in monotone, “You can’t kill me again,” and begins to advance at his unforgettable lurch. It’s enough for the plotter to step back, and trip, and I’m still not satisfied it’s clear what happens next.

In closing, I can’t do better than reflect on the era it represents, as far back from the 1970s-80s pop culture gestalt I grew up in as the movies of that era are now. The question that comes up more and more as time goes by is if there is really any difference between Star Wars and Alien and the Universal Monsters. What I find striking is that the monster movies of the 1930s and ‘40s were part of my experience growing up, but almost always at several degrees removed. I saw them in books, cartoons, comics and toys, but outside of King Kong, I can’t recall seeing them or seeking them out. To me, movies like The Walking Dead go a long way toward answering why. It is well-made by any standard, fascinating in its concepts and its anticipation of later works, and by my own appraisal at least as good as the Universal Monster entries I have personally viewed. Still, it does not have the resonance or relevance that the ‘70s and ‘80s zombie movies do, either for me or for newer generations, nor does it handle its concepts nearly as well. It remains worth watching, at least at a halfway decent price, but a “classic” it is not.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Odds and Ends?

It's time for another weekend dino post, which I realized will be almost a year to the day since I started this feature, and this is one time I've really got nothing. So, I decided to do what I've already been doing for my other features and cover some backlogged material, which in this case includes some actual pics I hadn't used. To start things off, here's a couple that didn't get into the Retro Raptors post.

Still more feathers than the entire Jurassic Park franchise.

Can't we all just get along?

Of this pair, the first is a museum gift shop find from the mid-2000s. On casual inspection, I was unable to find a manufacturer mark. What's somewhat interesting is that it has feathers, but only in a few places. On consideration, I'm somewhat suspicious whether this was the original plan or if someone modified an existing mold, but we've already seen how persistently manufacturers stick to outdated science. I found the second at a self-described "antiques" store maybe 5 years ago. The underside of the stand says Geoworld, which was enough to identify it as part of a line called Jurassic Hunters. Even interested sources (see Dinosaur Toy Blog) are hazy on exactly when these came out, but the trail seems to go back to 2012. I consider it one of the better depictions of the dino, if only because it gives some idea how small and lean it really was. It's a feisty little guy that captures the spirit of the original.

Next up are a couple almost fit for Mystery Monday. I got them along with a batch of MPC astronauts I got in middling 2020, which I went through in the last Rogues' Roundup, and considered covering them in the Diener dino eraser post. My best guesstimate is that they come from the 1960s, perhaps a bit later but almost certainly not much earlier. Just while writing this post, I matched them to a cereal premium by Lido (responsible for the draft dodger), reportedly from the late 1950s, but the dates are still sketchy.  (The most complete account seems to be from The Dinosaur Collector.) Barring a conclusive date, I am inclined to take them as a knockoff of the Flintstones (first aired in 1960), which gives them a measure of sense. Still, these are just not good, and time is not on their side. There's an extra level of baffling in the stego's head, which is too small even for the cartoon gimmick to pay off.

Also, here's a few more MPC items, I think. The most interesting of these is the bird, intended to be a Diatryma (see also the Walmart megafauna). I came close to ordering it several times, then got this one loose with some Marx items I still haven't covered. The other two might be either MPC or Marx/ clones, also mixed in with the MPC astronauts. I haven't tried to sort out which is which, but I am satisfied they're all 1960s.

That brings us to the centerpiece of the lineup, a dino I've lost and found several times just in the time I've been doing this blog. Back when I was first researching "army man" figures (see the patchisaurs), I found out that this guy was from a line called Dino Mites. He's perhaps the silliest of the silly dinosaurs, but still cool or at least endearing. Here's a few closeups of him.

Can't a guy smile???

And to wrap this up, here's another of the metal dinos I covered last time!

It turns out it's not easy staying green, either.

And with that, I'm satisfied with this anniversary post, and through more of my backlog. That's all for now, plenty more to come!

Space 1999! The one that cost more than Star Wars

 

Title: Express To Terror aka Supertrain

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Unnatural Experiment/ Anachronistic Outlier

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

 

With this review, I’ve reached the 5 reviews that I consider the minimum for a full-fledged feature. Deciding what movie I would review was very closely tied to just how much further I might go, a decision that is so far up in the air. For the moment, I decided the one to cover was one I hadn’t really known about until I started this feature. It might not have been my first choice even if I had known about it in advance, but as I learned more, I knew it was one I had to cover. Here is Express Train To Terror, the pilot of one of the most expensive and infamous science fiction shows in history.

Our story begins with a gathering of rich old men who looked dressed for Victorian England, discussing an old man’s proposal for a transcontinental railroad. It turns out that what he has in mind isn’t a rail line for the 1800s, but a fast, high-tech, two-story train capable of crossing the United States in a day and a half at 200 miles per hour (more like 70-80 for the specified destinations, but good enough if that’s including stops and detours). Moreover, the old man insists that it must be a luxury train, so when we skip forward to the opening of the train, most of the passengers prove to be rich, entitled and annoying to varying degrees. Our story soon focuses on a nervous guy convinced someone is out to kill him, as well as a possible wifebeater and his cheerful and talkative spouse who seems to be trying to make the viewer want to smack her yourself. Everyone thinks the nervous guy is just paranoid, until the wife finds an actual bomb. It’s up to the crew of the train (one of whom is tangled up in a romance with the old man’s daughter) to find the would-be assassin, and up to the audience to decide if you’d rather see them all die first! Oh, and if you’re undecided, did I mention the train has a built-in disco?

Express to Terror was the 2-hour pilot of the series Supertrain, developed for NBC by executive producer Dan Curtis following successes such as Dark Shadows and the TV movie Trilogy of Terror. The series was reportedly conceived both as a science-fictional drama and a romance/ comedy on the lines of The Love Boat, with the pilot focusing on the former. The pilot and subsequent series quickly became among the most expensive on record, with a budget of up to  $10 million for models and sets alone. The pilot was directed by Curtis, with a cast that included Patrick Collins, Keenan Wynn and Steven Lawrence as the paranoid passenger. Anyone reading this blog is most likely to recognize Fred Williamson, an athlete-turned-actor who went on to play the Vietnam vet Frost in From Dusk Till Dawn. The pilot had poor ratings, reportedly lower than a simultaneous 2-hour special of Charlie’s Angels, which quickly declined with the following episodes of the series. The series was cancelled after 9 episodes, reportedly bringing NBC close to bankruptcy. The pilot was released on VHS at least twice, by Prism in 1985 and Star Classics in 1988. No authorized disc or streaming release is confirmed or likely.

For my experiences, I heard of this one on a humor site while I was preparing to view or review other entries for this feature. I debated right up to a few days before writing this review, when I took the leap and watched it from a quite good online video apparently ripped from the 1988 video release. (After the video I had to use to review the Time Machine TV movie, a hand-cranked Fisher Price movie viewer would be a marginal improvement.) What it might me think of right off the top of my head is the various scientific and science-fictional proposals for trans-Atlantic air travel from the 1930s, up to and including floating airports in the middle of the ocean. The tech is so self-dated, even for what could presumably be known or foreseen at the time, that it becomes fascinating. It’s all the more baffling to consider it in the context of Star Wars. The network suits could have put their money into a quick, conceivably decent space opera like Battlestar Galactica or the Buck Rogers revival (aired by NBC!). Instead, they put at least as much as the $11M budget of Star Wars itself into a premise that looks as futuristic as a ride from the 1964 World’s Fair. It feels more like a “steampunk”-style alternate history than what anyone could have believed the future would be like, and what becomes disconcertingly impressive is that it manages to be entertaining, at least in stretches.

For the good points of the movie, the first act has things covered. The models, sets and effects are genuinely interesting as well as good, and there’s a seemingly intentional retro-future vibe as we see the train in operation. By comparison, most of the human characters range between dislikeable and actively annoying, but again, there is enough self-awareness for a campy sort of entertainment value. At its best moments, it feels like a disaster movie, and that brings us to a central problem: Despite all the melodrama and build-up, the train’s maiden voyage goes off almost entirely as planned, with no worse than the loss of a few windows (making for an amusing moment when the owner complains that they were billed as “indestructible”). This undoubtedly had a good deal to do with the actual cost of the models and sets, and up to a point the expectation that there would be time to do more with them in later adventures. Even with due allowances, however, the overall impression is like watching a version of The Poseidon Adventure where the ship steams into harbor ahead of schedule. It should easily have been recognized that a story centered on a train should feature a threat to the train itself, which could have been done well enough if the eventual hijinks came closer to the engine and control room.

For the bad, it is really a bit difficult to point to any one thing. There are obviously  self-dating elements, egregiously the outright references to disco. There are less explicable anachronisms, like the completely incongruous Victorian costumes of the old man (played by Wynn) and his peers. There are the multiple holes and unnecessary convolutions in the plot, plus the jarring jumps in tone as the story bounces between the central drama and fluffy romantic subplots. But the common denominator across the board is a deeper and unaccountable blindness to the political and social implications of its premise. What the story proposes is a transportation system that combines the regulatory, safety and security issues of an airplane, a subway and a nuclear power plant. It would be fascinating to consider just the psychological tension of operating such a vehicle, but this particular crew drives their atomic train through major cities like a run-down bus on a dirt road.

That brings me to the “one scene”, already referenced above. Around the 20-minute mark, the nervous guy (played by Lawrence) finds a briefcase unattended in his room, and mentions it to a steward with no particular concern. A scene or so later, the steward brings it back, and he shows it to his friend and the chatty wife, played by the late Char Fontane, whose credits include the direct-to-video Punisher. They continue to examine the unattended luggage, still unconcerned at something that would by now have a bomb squad carefully approaching if it had been found in an ordinary train station. Then the clutzy lady bumps the briefcase, and it falls right off the train. The steward merely muses, “We don’t have to worry about that anymore,” and everyone laughs as expected. Then, almost as an afterthought, the camera focuses on the briefcase, which explodes on the track. As the others move on, the wife pauses… and frowns.

In closing, I feel like the one thing left to address is why I haven’t given this the lowest rating, particularly after doing just that to the TV Spider Man movie. I will admit that after viewing this, I seriously debated whether I was too hard on that one, and for that matter the Ewoks movies. I can allow that Spider Man isn’t much worse than this one, but for me personally, its flaws are far more irritating, above all because of how badly it fell short of its potential. By comparison, this one probably does about as well as could be expected with an already clearly outdated premise, with just enough sincerity to capture a little of the nostalgia that still clings to the days of the Transcontinental Railroad and the Orient Express. Most importantly, it does what a pilot is supposed to do, testing the idea and execution before the commitment to a series, and beyond the sheer sunk cost that went into it, it can’t be blamed for the fact that those involved made what now seems obviously the wrong decision. At the end of the day, if you’re looking for “so bad it’s good”, this is one vehicle that really delivers the goods.

Retrobots Revisited: Hot Wheels bots???

 

I realized I've once again gone a while without a robots post (the last one featuring the giant robot I once kept at work), and I hadn't picked up anything recently. However, I did have something I had thought about on and off for a very long time that was going to fit here better than anywhere else. I have already commented that as a kid I was very flexible about what could be a robot, with stormtroopers and COBRA Vipers being a staples of any horde that was needed (see the Sidekick Carl Rogues' Roundup). This time around, I have quite possibly the strangest things I ever used as robots, and certainly among the oddest and most unclassifiable toys I owned back in the day. Here are the the Hot Wheels robot/ monster cars, starting with a lineup of the ones I can still find that I know I had when I was a kid.

The real backstory here, which I can mostly piece together from memory, is that Hot Wheels released a little line in 1986-1987 called Speed Demons. The cars were all designed to look like monsters or other unpleasant creatures on wheels, with most looking at least vaguely robot-like. In further hindsight, they were never as strange in concept as they actually looked. Whatever their shape, they always had a visible seat and steering wheel that were on the same somewhat wobbly 1:64 scale as other Hot Wheels cars, clearly indicating that they were "supposed" to be actual vehicles with human operators. My lot here left to right consists of Turboa, Rodzilla, Sharkruiser, Vampyra, and Ratmobile, the last being introduced in 1988. Not present is a car I couldn't find called Zombot, which actually looks like a gold-colored robot, a reissue I'll get to shortly, and about 4 more with names like Evil Weevil, Cargoyle, Phantomobile and Fangster. Like many Hot Wheels, they have been reissued somewhat regularly, notably as Frightmobiles in the 2000s.

Of course, all the rationales given by the designers immediately went by the wayside when I started getting hold of these. I'm sure the first I acquired was Rodzilla, I think after picking him off the shelf.  He is easily the most complex and impressive of the lot, complete with a turning head. I was entranced enough with him that I quickly elevated him to a literal supervillain, complete with a much more dramatic name I'm not quite sure I remember, fighting Han Solo and Iron Man before Husky and Sidekick Carl emerged as my main heroes. The odd nature of the toy wasn't much of a problem, particularly since my idea of what a lead villain should do was sit at a desk or control panel directing others. (Now I wonder when and how I first saw any of the Bond films with Blofeld, whom I definitely remember simply as "the guy with the white cat".)  As far as I remember, I treated him as on the same scale as my action figures when they were supposed to be face to face, which at two inches in height made him unimposing but still a credible threat. Inevitably, the other monster-cars became his lieutenants, though I can only remember using the bat-creature and maybe the shark.Here's some pics of the group, including a scale shot with the Galaxy Laser Team commander. 

And here's some closeups, to show the detail on Rodzilla. Unfortunately, you can also see how much dust is on them. Usually, if anything, it's not nearly as visible in pics as it is to me, so you know this is bad.

Alas, the monster cars were never a stable choice as villains. In hindsight, I suppose I used Rodzilla as an archvillain because he had an actual point of articulation, plus visible arms you could kind of picture working. He's also the largest by a large margin at almost exactly 2 inches tall, something like 10 to 12 feet at the nominal 1/64 scale. By comparison, Vampyra had what could pass for functional limbs, and the shark at least had a face in a natural position. However, my conceit didn't really work for the others. Turboa just looked like a made-up car, and the Ratmobile looked too much like an actual rat to be truly machine-like. It didn't help that they are fairly easy to lose track of.  I remember replacing the dragon with my Emperor Star Wars figure when I lost him for a while, which is really an indication how much personality I had assigned to him. Once I started getting more of my own action figures, the monster cars were phased out and set aside.

Fast forward, and I continued to see these things in the wild. I repeatedly passed up chances to buy new copies, and ultimately regretted letting a version of the dragon in bright red get away in 2012 or so. I think it was a few years after that when I finally picked up one more. It's called the Double Demon, reportedly from the first wave with  date of 1986. (On the other hand, Rodzilla has been dated 1988, where mine is marked 1987.) By the time I got hold of him, the body was all plastic, and fairly light in feel compared to Vampyra's similar body. Still, the sculpting remains very much in evidence and beautiful, aided by a gold body. Here's a couple close-ups.

With that, I'm wrapping this up. It's been another slightly fractured trip down memory lane, and now that I've dredged it up, there's a good chance I'll be picking up more. What impresses me most is that the manufacturer has actually kept these in production, and I will not be surprised if I see them on the racks again. That's all for now, more to come!

Space 1999! The One that was the first Marvel movie

 

Title: The Amazing Spider Man

What Year?: 1977

Classification: Prototype

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

 

In doing movie reviews for multiple features, one of the more complicated decisions is which films should go under which feature. The counterintuitive part is that the actual difficulty for me has never been in making the call, but assessing why I did it. It’s pretty much a matter of instinct; I can tell when something doesn’t “fit” long before I can say why. With this review, I’m making the most counterintuitive decision of all, by placing a superhero movie outside Super Movies, my superhero/ comic book movie feature. For once, it was something I seriously debated, but my assignment very much reflects its significance in the history of TV movies, as well as existing reservations whether it belonged with the ones I have done and want to do for the earlier feature. So here is The Amazing Spider Man, a feature-length Marvel movie made for television… and it’s terrible in more ways than you can easily imagine.

Our story begins with a credits sequence of a familiar costumed character climbing along the buildings of a city, all with transparently forced perspective shots. We then meet Peter Parker, an aspiring reporter who gets bitten by a spider while doing a story at a science lab that will have no further role in the story. He discovers he has gained the power to climb up walls among other superhuman feats, and soon begins fighting crime, in one case seemingly just by distracting the bad guy. Meanwhile, we also encounter a crew of bad guys who are perfecting mind control behind the cover of a sort of self-help cult. But rather than taking over the world, they are sending ordinary people on a wave of robberies. As the hero and the authorities try to unravel their plot, the bad guys come up with a new plan: They demand to be paid a ransom from the city, or 10 of their subjects will be ordered to commit suicide. Can our hero save the day, or has he already been brainwashed? I ask because I honestly can’t tell!

The Amazing Spider Man was a TV movie coproduced by Marvel and Danchuck Productions as a pilot for a TV series based on the character. Aside from Captain America serials made during World War 2, it was the first feature-length, live-action movie based on a Marvel character. The film was directed by the prolific E.W. Swackhamer, also credited for the pilot of Law and Order, starring grown-up Sound of Music actor Nicholas Hammond in the title role. Veteran character actor David White appeared as J. Jonah Jameson. The movie led to approval of a Spider Man TV series, which was cancelled after 13 episodes. It received theatrical release outside the US, with sufficient success that two “sequels” were put together with episodes and footage from the TV series. The next major treatment of the character came when (oh dear Logos) the Cannon Group optioned the property in 1985, but the project never left preproduction.

For my experiences, I probably first heard of this movie in Peter Nicholls’ Fantastic Films. What really stands out is that I knew enough about it to make the judgments outlined in the opening of this review well before actually seeing it. In the course of that time, I had seen commentators (notably Nicholls) who criticized it harshly and others who vocally identify as fans and defenders. Most of my further research went into figuring out the options for viewing it; I finally went with an online video I watched over the weekend before writing this review, probably not much better or worse in quality than actual 1970s video equipment. (When people ask if VHS is “that bad”, my answer has been that CRTs were worse.) I went through it with my usual intermittent attention span, and even with that factored in, I quickly reached two conclusions: This movie is convoluted and nearly incomprehensible in its story and editing; yet, it is also quite inexplicably boring.

Moving forward, it’s just as well to get the “good” out of the way. The movie’s effects and action sequences are decent, especially for TV, and there are good stretches that justify its relatively favorable “campy” reputation. The best of these is a scene where Spider Man clambers through a neighborhood, clearly portrayed with a combination of optical effects and forced-perspective camera work. A close second is a brawl with three armed martial artists, in which Spider Man disorients the goons by jumping from the floor to the ceiling. There’s further help from the very ‘70s music, which sounds eerily like the theme from SWAT (whose pilot was also directed by Swackhamer!). However, we already have problems on multiple fronts. The pacing is usually too uneven for real tension. At several points, Spider Man climbs in painfully unnatural postures that would do nothing but make him a bigger target. Then the real problem is, the hero has no true opposite number, despite a vast rogues’ gallery to choose from. There’s no Dr. Octopus, no Green Goblin, no Electro, any of whom could have been tailor-made for the cheesy low-budget treatment (though Doc Ock would be tricky). We don’t even get the Purple Man, who would have provided the mind control theme without the technobabble.

On the other side of the equation, the simple fact is that most of the movie is simply nothing happening. It’s further fragmented by bizarre editing, to the point that I literally couldn’t figure out what happens in a scene where Peter Parker prepares to jump off the Empire State Building. What’s worse is that there’s little if any corresponding dialogue, character development or world-building to fill the dead air. Far too many of the characters, including Peter Parker, are bland, undeveloped or just “there”.  The far too conspicuous exception is White as Jameson, who for once comes across as a nuanced character who cares about his job. The tipping point for me is the completely illogical plans of the villains. With the posited tech, they could rig any election, sell any product, convert people to any religion, or at least tell people to give them money. What they settle for instead is a few suicides that critical authority figure could easily write off as a coincidental cluster, which would have been an unnerving social commentary if someone actually said as much. The only thing that could really make this work is a literally psychotic villain like the Joker, Megavolt or for that matter the Purple Man, but again, the characterization is too bland for a leader to stand out, let alone seem interesting.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and I actually considered several. The one that was ahead all along is a brief scene about 15 minutes from the end, where we find Spider Man injured and trying to hide from the bad guys. (Watching him try in his bright primary-colors suit makes for several amusing moments in itself.) He makes his way out of a back alley to a cab, which happens to be driven by a black guy. The cabby (played by the late and evidently accomplished Harry Caesar) remarks without looking that he is about to return to the company warehouse. He is surprised but not unduly alarmed when he sees the costumed hero. Spider Man promptly insists that he is coming from a costume party (in a bad part of town, in broad daylight…), which the cabby obviously disbelieves but doesn’t comment on. The driver becomes vocally skeptical when the hero tries to offer him payment for a ride, remarking, “You don’t even have pockets in that suit.” Finally, he says, “I ain’t driving no Spider Man to that part of town,” which from what we have seen would in fact be a reasonably well-off suburb. The cab drives away, and the next shot finds Spider Man riding inside a garbage truck. It’s a clever satire of the superhero premise (where do Clark Kent and Peter Parker leave their wallets???), complete with a more relevant take on race and society than plenty of later “message” movies. More than usual, the frustration is that the whole movie isn’t like this.

In closing, I will give one more reason why I have covered this movie here rather than elsewhere: Even compared to the unreleased/ direct-to-video Marvel movies of the 1980s and early ‘90s, the production values of this movie fall far below the minimum standards I would normally apply anywhere but here. At this point, it would be easy to say that it shouldn’t be held to the same standards as theatrical movies. But this was intended to be a high-profile TV movie, at the height of the artform, and on top of that, the people involved had enough confidence in their product to make the jump to a theatrical run. Still, the core problem is not that it is “bad”, nor that it should have been better. It is that this could have been more entertaining, more memorable and flat-out better-looking if it was “worse”. What was really needed here was either a serious approach that brought out the darker elements of the material, or else the kind of high-energy camp that the ‘60s Batman series brought to the table. With neither in evidence, all that remains is a bland and forgettable TV movie from an era when the artform was at its peak.