Fiction: Daisy and Dhahka Kaan!

 I didn't have a lot else today, so I decided to trot out a bit more of the salvage job that is the adventure of Percy the Robot Cop. Here's a very early demo I had already rewritten to death, also with some extra detail for the city settings (see the retro future buildings posts). I wrote it up mostly as an introduction for Daisy and the fairly obvious villain. So, here goes...

We approach a city. From above, it does not appear large, about 36 kilometers in span, plus another dozen kilometers in any direction of cropland, airfields, reservoirs, and a couple larger clusters of outlying development. But it quickly becomes apparent that what it lacks in size, it more than makes up for in density and perfect planning. The gridwork is so perfectly laid that the main city forms a perfect circle, with several concentric rings inside. It is subdivided by two dozen surface roads radiating from the city center, and an array of elevated roads whose ellipses and parabola give the whole the appearance of a lidded eye.

Now look just to the north of the city's center, to a great building. It towers almost a kilometer in the air, still only eight times its total span. Its form is crystalline, laid out as a cruciform core filled out into something like a diamond with its corners shaved off. In place of each corner are four square secondary spires, adjoining the main structure like buttresses, and between each of them is a separate building. Footbridges span the space to the central building, and more extend to lesser structures in all directions.  And if you look through a window, you may see a man…

 

Westley worked in Data Analysis, and he would have been at a loss to explain more than that. Every day, he went to an office full of tiny cubicles in the same towering complex where he worked, and tried to decipher or at least organize whatever data they put in front of him. There was no assigned seating, but he usually ended up next to Janxi and two down and kitty corner to Daisy. Daisy was tall and brunette, Janxi was an oviraptorasaurid with a boxy head and a mouth like a boomerang. Usually, he talked to Janxi and watched Daisy. But today was different… He looked at Daisy, and looked away when she looked back. She smiled, and he covered by smiling back.

“…I said,” Janxi said in his nasal but perfectly inflected voice, “do you think he’s really coming?”

“Who… him?” Westley covered rapidly.  “I don’t know. What’s the big deal, anyway?”

Janxi made a honking noise. “No big deal, only the owner of one-tenth stake in the City Administration! And a fifth of the South Arc! And his own building! No big deal! Only Dhahka Kaan!” He began to whistle in anxiety.

“There’s lots of people worth more than the lot of us put together,” Westley said. “We’re bound to run into one of them sooner or later…” And already, he looked at Daisy. She was humming something…

He had been working with Daisy close to a year. If he had been pressed, he would have counted her as a close friend, at least on his own part. He knew her real name was Diellza Mladic, from a language called Siptarese. He was also sure she was rich, or from a rich family, because he knew she lived in a residential floor only 20 stories down from the 140^th-floor office where they worked. If it came to that, he knew there was another explanation, but he didn’t, couldn’t believe it…

It seemed the next moment when Janxi hissed. Zebrowski was approaching, a manager whose height and slender build were his only distinction, and another figure was with him, a meter and a half tall, stout and seemingly headless. There was a rhythmic thudding, and an odd clicking. Westley fixed his eyes on the spreadsheet. In the corner of his eye, he saw the pouch in Janxi’s throat flutter rapidly. The thudding and the clicking grew nearer, and it became apparent that the thudding was the sound of a heavy walking stick, while the clicking was very much like the sound Janxi was making as his clawed fingers tapped the desk. Finally, he turned his head.

His first impression was of a solid mass of black wrapped in an operatic scarlet cape, with two amber points of light deep within. Then the cape parted and a long neck extended, revealing the folded wings and nearly bald head of an enormous bird. “Westlake Powell,” it said crisply.  It shifted its weight, producing a clopping sound with the walking stick clasped in its left wing. “I read your analysis of the demographics of the stacks. You do good work. Mr. Zebrowski agrees. I look forward to seeing more of your reports.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

The bird clacked its beak in reciprocal gratitude. “Ms. Mladic, and Janxia Tulatan, your work is also excellent, of course. All three of you are among our best performers, and possibly even better as a team,” he said. He then addressed the office. “I was just explaining to your supervisors, we are expanding our offices in the South Arc. Anyone applying for a transfer can expect due consideration. Further accommodations will be made for those with domestic partners. If any of you are interested, we will consider your applications.”

With that, the creature moved on. Westley caught a vivid parting glimpse of a clawed foot that could surely have torn him open like an envelope, clad in a white spat with a ruby button. He turned to Janxi, whose mouth gaped as wide as his limited gape would allow. Beyond him he saw Daisy, whose eyes were wide. 

“See?” he said. “One of the big shots stops by, and all he bothers to do is say a meaningless pleasantry.”

“That wasn’t meaningless,” Janxi said. “He wants recruits for his office. He wants you!”

“No,” Wes said, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t…”

“He wants all of us,” Daisy said. “That includes you.

“No, they want you,” Janxi said. “They think you’ll say yes as long as they put her in the bargain!”

Daisy looked at him coldly. “What are you talking about?” she said.

Janxi shook his head. “Look, it’s no business of mine what happens between the two of you,” he said. “I just don’t understand why you haven’t sorted things out like civilized…” He punched a button for a break and waddled off.

Wes looked at Daisy, visibly flustered. “I’m really sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t…”

That was when Daisy smiled again, the way that always made him nervous. “Oh, don’t be,” she said. “We just don’t want loose talk, do we?”

A few awkward moments passed. Finally, Daisy looked up again. “You know,” she said, “I do have a housing credit from Domestic Services. It would go up, if I had a partner.”

“Yeah… I figured you had something,” Wes said, shifting uneasily. “I have a credit, too, except it’s more like… therapy.”

“Really,” Daisy said. “So anyway, I was thinking, maybe we could pool our… credits.”

“Yeah,” Wes said. “It’s something to think about. We could talk about it. After work.”

“Sure,” Daisy said. “Or we could take a break and go to the Therapy Room. You know, with your credit.” As she spoke, she laughed. And as she went back to work, he could hear her sing softly, “Today’s the Daisy…”

Featured Creature: The one with a giant bug vs a school teacher

 

Title: Mimic 2

What Year?: 2001

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

When I first thought of this feature, my immediate inspiration was simply the extent to which discussion of the “monster movie” genre has overlooked the 1990s, especially compared to the 1980s. I have put a good deal of thought into how this came to be. Many genre movies of the decade were effectively continuations of 1980s properties and trends, including Jurassic Park. Others were unsuccessful or overlooked at the time, like Deep Rising and The Island of Dr. Moreau. But then there were movies that were good and reasonably profitable at the time but simply didn’t have the staying power of others before and since. With this review, I’m coming to a prime example, a franchise that started with a successful movie based on a classic short story and went on to two sequels, and of course, I’m starting with the sequel. I present Mimic 2, a taut little offering that bridged the 1990s and the new millennium and actually improved on the original in the bargain.

Our story begins with a standard opening of a disreputable character getting lunched. We learn that the victim is a trader in exotic insects, and his associations lead an inquisitive cop to a very freaky school teacher named Remy who’s more into bugs than the men in her life. As events unfold, more people turn up dead, including a couple guys Remy has been involved with. The teacher realizes that her late colleague found a source of eggs for the Judas breed, a giant-sized, human-imitating species of insect that we first encountered in the last movie. Now, Remy has attracted an adult bug that’s learned to change its disguise to imitate individual humans rather than generic guys in coats. When she makes a trip to the run-down school where she works, the big bug traps her and a couple students in its new nest. It’s up to Remy to outwit the bug, but when the authorities finally arrive, she may be collateral damage!

Mimic 2 was a direct-to-video sequel to the 1997 film Mimic, which was loosely based on a 1942 short story by Donald Wollheim. The film was directed by Jean De Segonzac from a script by Joel Soisson, without any involvement by Guillermo Del Toro. The sequel portrayed a single creature rather than a colony of hostile creatures, which was effectively closer to the short story. Alix Korozmay starred as Remy, the only actor and character returning from the first film, with Will Campos as Detective Klaski and Edward Albert in an overbilled role as a government agent. The sequel was made for $10 million, compared to a $30M budget for the original, which possibly lost money. It was released theatrically in Hong Kong, but was otherwise available only on home video, making its overall profit uncertain. Many reviews were critical, though at least one contemporary review compared it favorably to the first movie. It has remained readily available on disc and in digital formats including free streaming. It was included in a Blu Ray set along with the original film and the subsequent sequel Mimic 3: Sentinel.

For my experiences, my main frame of reference is that I saw the original movie around the time it came out, and read the story not long after. My main recollection is that it seemed at the time that everybody knew of and liked the movie, so I was startled to discover that its box office was officially less than its budget. In the leadup to this review, I considered both movies (I have so far declined to view or acknowledge the third entry) and took a look at the story. My conclusion was that the first movie was a very solid but ultimately conventional entry, “old school” even in its own time (and a little heavy on the “expectant mother in peril” angle). On further consideration, its greatest weakness was that it didn’t really try to capture the startling social satire of the original story. In Wollheim’s brief fable (almost within the realm of “urban fantasy”), it is very explicitly the “monster” that must fear mankind, even if the average human seems too cynical and indifferent to look for it. Compared to this dark vision of urban society, the movie’s scenario of insects gathering to overthrow humans is practically reassuring.

In this light alone, the sequel at least covers new ground. The dilapidated school and cramped apartment are very much in the spirit of the story, as seedy as they should be without the forced theatricality of the tunnels in the first movie. The characters generally match the setting, from the racially mixed students to the creepy and/or pathetic suitors (the most entertaining being a one-time student) to the cops who are ready to treat a mutilated body hung two stories off the ground as business as usual. The only character who arguably doesn’t quite fit is Remy. She feels like the mirror-universe version of a sitcom character, living below rather than above her means and evident talents. Fortunately, her foibles and flaws in evidence are quite sufficient to envision her fall or deliberate retreat from grace without having a chain of events spelled out. At any rate, she remains fun to watch throughout the movie, and a believably capable opponent for the bug. In further hindsight, she remains a refreshing variation from the increasingly overdone “strong” heroine, with a real balance between self-reliance and emotional vulnerability.

As for the creature, it is in some ways the weak link here. It’s interesting enough to see only one insect (there could be more, but the one accounts for as much as we see), and there are demonstrations of further strategy and cunning, like an unnerving wall of furniture. The obvious problem is the effects, which lean toward competent rather than interesting. There’s also inconsistency in concept of the disguise, which involves a sort of two-part mask; sometimes, we can clearly see the seam where they meet, but at others, notably when the otherwise superb and distinctly sticky final form appears, it’s not visible. The more fundamental flaw is that there are only a few points where the ability to look human come into play. It does blend in when it needs to, leading to an especially amusing moment when Remy walks right past it. Most of the time, however, it doesn’t really go to the trouble of hiding, or have any need to. It’s already clearly able to kill a human in a brute-force confrontation, and crawl or climb places nobody could easily pursue it, so it usually doesn’t matter whether it can pass for human, never mind a specific individual. (By further comparison, the creature in the short story apparently manages to hold down a job!) The one thing that’s really interesting is the apparent and largely unexplained refinement of the disguise, which finally becomes convincing when it’s really needed, but this feels more like a bid for a final scare than a payoff the story has been working toward.

Now it’s time for the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that stood out on two different viewings for this review. After a meeting with Remy, Detective Klaski returns to the station, where he discusses matters with a colleague who insists on referring to the teacher as both a suspect and a presumed lesbian. After a little back and forth, the detective matter-of-factly says, “Hand me that desk.” He repeats the request several times before the colleague says, “It must weigh 200 pounds.” Klaski then patiently points out that a victim found suspended over an alley was also 200 pounds, while Remy weighs 112. It’s a reasonably amusing moment that I could recount in more detail, but I consider it better seen than described. It’s a testament to the quality of the movie that this is not a purely isolated moment.

In closing, I must come back to the question not just of the rating but whether this movie is better than the original. I myself have had no qualms saying as much before, and I have had no trouble finding others who agree with me. After more careful review, I will admit that this is overstating things at least a little. Obviously, the original has higher production values, a better cast and far more polished storytelling. The real reason the sequel works as well as it does is that it doesn’t try to compete with its predecessor. The resulting movie may not be “better”, but to me, it has remained more memorable and in many ways more entertaining. As with Starship Troopers 3, it’s all the more impressive as a sequel that went the direct-to-video route. Even if you count it second (there’s certainly nobody standing up for the sequel), second place still isn’t bad.

Timmee Tuesday Returns! Colossal fighter jets

 

It's another day off on a week when I planned on a full lineup of posts, and this time I have something I've been waiting for. When I started this blog, one of my more frequent subjects was Timmee army-man toys, which were always at the edge of my peripheral vision in childhood. At first, I mixed Timmee with Marx among other things, then I decided to make a dedicated feature. Inevitably, I went through what I had and the modest pool of things I wanted to get, and I let it lapse gracefully after a final installment early this year. For me, it was simply mission accomplished, but I continued to think over whether there was anything more I wanted to get. Finally, about a month ago, I decided to put something I'd had my eye on for a long time with another order (in fact my copy of The Rocketeer). It was advertised as a pair of jet fighters, which I figured would be on the lines of the ones that came with the Galaxy Laser Team. What I got instead startled me enough that I held off writing about it for a while. Here's a few pics of the pair.

What caught me offguard was that these were much bigger than anything I had seen or played with in my own youth. The longstanding rule with "army man" toys is to be much smaller than they would be to hold even a diminutive toy soldier. These, on the other hand, are so big they look at least close to right size for a figure. Here's the inevitable comparison shot of one with the GLT commander and the original/ mini figure, plus the generic X-wing/ space jet.

And why not one with the Truckstop Queen (and Connie)? Holy kaka, how is this bigger than the Truckstop Queen???

Inevitably, I have been fascinated by the scale and proportions of these things. One is a bit shorter and definitely less robust, but then, the big differences are in style. The larger plane is a regular jet, while the other is an almost science-fictional design of a kind that really never got further than experimental aircraft. (Edit: Someone pointed out this is pretty much a Lockheed Starfighter, which did see production, but it's pretty much the exception to prove the rule.) Ironically, if you factor in the cockpits, the shorter plane looks like it would be bigger. Overall, the regular jet looks like it could hold the regular-sized Galaxy Laser Team astronauts, while the slender high-speed plane just might fit the "mini" figure. Here's a couple more closeups of each plane.

One last artifact, my order came with a sort of card and a sticker sheet. I definitely wasn't going to use the stickers, which are exactly the kind I usually peel off, but they're interesting enough that I haven't thrown them away.  By comparison, the card is rather plain, and the "Cold War" bit makes it suspect as a "vintage" design. The stickers, on the other hand, look exactly right for the 1960s, which is my best guess when these things were made. Here's a shot.

One last thing, I checked out these planes for further markings. There are sculpted missiles on both planes, mainly on the underside, which I didn't cover with my photos and didn't find interesting enough to go back for. What did intrigue me was that the bigger jet has the usual star pattern imprinted on the plastic, as well as the word "NAVY". I was struck by the sheer redundancy of these markings on a toy that came with stickers, which of course raises the question what the original release was like. Here's the best shot I could get.

With that, I'm wrapping this up. I admit that it's likely this will be as much as I will do with this feature for now. I've already explained why Timmee was an important part of my childhood. It's been an even bigger part of how I got into or back to collecting, toy blogging, and for that matter writing. I am still kicking around ideas for a full-fledged tribute to Timmee and GLT, but my plate's going to stay full for a while. That's all for now, more to come!

Animation Defenestration: The one with a genocidal machine that's a Disney movie

 

Title: The Brave Little Toaster

What Year?: 1982 (preproduction)/ 1987 (release)

Classification: Improbable Experiment

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m at the countdown to Halloween, and I’ve been trying to work ahead. In the middle of it all, I got ready for what amounted to a break for a theatrical re-release of a movie I reviewed around this time last year. That fell through in a chain of events that probably would sound funny if you haven’t actually spent an hour with a theater full of people waiting for the Transformers movie to start. After making my way home, I tried to decompress with something different, and once I watched it, I knew I had to make room for it in my lineup. So that gives an extra colorful introduction to a film I have previously referenced (see Rock And Rule) as an icon of weird 1980s animation, The Brave Little Toaster, a Disney movie that features endearing anthropomorphic appliances getting fed to a garbage masher.

Our story begins with a quick introduction to a group of machines left behind at a vacation cabin. The lot include a radio, a lamp, an electric blanket, a vacuum named Kirby, and the titular toaster all of recognizable 1950s or ‘60s vintage, who spend their time bickering or reminiscing about their master, a kid who once visited the cabin. When they realize that the latest passing car is not the returning Master but a realtor assigned to sell the cabin, they decide to make a break and search him out in the distant city. Their quest quickly becomes a misadventure as they struggle through storms, pesky animals, rivers and the storeroom of a junk collector, unaware that the Master is now a young man looking for them. But the true ordeal will come when they face the Master’s new possessions, a set of top-of-the-line media machines ready to feed the old guard straight into a garbage masher!

The Brave Little Toaster is a 1987 animated film based on a 1980 novel of the same name by science fiction writer Thomas Disch. While the film was funded and distributed by Disney, it was in fact made by Hyperion Animation, after John Lasseter unsuccessfully lobbied for it to be made as a CGI film. The movie’s voice cast included veterans Deanna Oliver as the Toaster, Jon Lovitz as the Radio, and Thul Ravenscroft as Kirby, with the late Phil Hartman in at least two supporting roles. Four original songs were composed by David Newman (see… Critters?), a cousin of Randy Newman. The film received limited theatrical release from 1987 to 1988, including an appearance at the Sundance Festival. The film was shown on the Disney Channel beginning in 1988, and released on VHS in 1991. After initial obscurity, it rose to become probably the best-known and most influential 1980s Disney movie after 1989’s The Little Mermaid. Two direct-to-video sequels were released in 1997 and 1998, the first based on Disch’s own sequel The Brave Little Toaster Goes To Mars. The movie remains on sale as new from a variety of retailers, but representative examples appear to be DVDs from a 2003 release in a “full screen” format carried over from VHS and Laserdisc.

For my experiences, this is yet another movie I didn’t see until college, then on TV while visiting family. As usual, I came out with a quite clear recollection of the majority of the film, especially the mindboggling final act. Maybe 10 years later, I found the DVD just after starting my current career and bought copies for myself and a friend I’ve since lost touch with. What’s stood out throughout that time is that this is a movie that is clearly well-known but still not talked about that much. (The most significant I have found is still Mr. Enter’s 1980s “worst”list, which uses “Worthless” as the introductory music.) It’s a fitting enough reflection of its status and influence in its own time and since. Like many supposedly “odd” films, the most striking thing about it is how little it departs from the “mainstream”, down to the more-Disney-than-Disney characters and animation. While “adult-oriented” animated films like Wizards and Heavy Metal were trying to crash the gates, this was the sneaky little movie that went around the back and walked right in. Needless to say, it’s not “bad”, but dear Logos, it gets dark, maybe more so than any other Disney movie apart from Pinocchio (which I did a long-lost review of a long time ago), with even more whiplash in themes and tone.

That brings us to the movie itself. I have to say I’m still not greatly enamored with it. From the start, its characters are engaging and poignant, yet there isn’t that much that would be memorable if not from what’s to come. What’s most intriguing is that none of them apart from the vacuum has a name independent of his function. It also must be noted that the most energetic and immediately engaging character is the Radio, also easily the least anthropomorphic of the lot. It takes a little time for the Toaster and the other characters come into their own, with Blankie/ Blanket being the most sympathetic. What keeps things odd and awkward is that the machines still don’t envision lives and identities separate from the Master (yes, he’s called that, a whole pile of awkward in itself), instead embarking on the truly horrific ordeal of the quest effectively to forestall a new reality. This jarring selflessness remains a driving force for the crew, and it’s debatable whether any of them outgrow it. The further question of whether the human audience can identify with them only makes the parable more unsettling, which all in all is entirely on-point for Disch, whom I mainly know from “Descending” (see Trapped) and The Genocides.

Then, of course, there’s the finale, which if anything still gets underestimated. Things start going downhill as the crew get bullied by the newer machines, led by a computer. That leads to the “More” musical number, a terrifyingly representative parody that feels like it could be an ad for the mall in Dawn of the Dead. Then we go straight to the junkyard. I've already voiced my suspicions how much this looks like Toy Story 3, though having now looked into the backstory, I can accept that as reparation rather than theft. What seems to get overlooked at this point is that the garbage masher, the symbol of entropy and obsolescence, is really almost devoid of even malevolent personality. It’s the predatory electromagnet shows enough drive and intellect to be a villain, homing in on our protagonist like one of Harryhausen’s flying saucers (clearly the best ever). What’s most subtly horrific is that the equally anthropomorphic cars going into the masher appear resigned to their fate, if not quite willing. And yes, if you’re a bystander who wandered in here instead of what passes for my regular readers whom I would expect to know exactly what I’m talking about, this all happens in an uninterrupted musical number.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and there actually is a scene that stood out to me more than the ending. Just a little way into the movie, we get an especially heartbreaking moment when the machines are briefly ecstatic at the sound of an approaching car that might be the Master. In the aftermath, Blankie begins to cry while the rest begin to bigger. That’s when we hear from the Air Conditioner, voiced by Hartman, otherwise known to me almost exclusively for his guest spot as Paddywhack on Darkwing Duck. The other machines are literally staggered by the blasts of cold air as he lambasts them for their fixation on the Master, which is mostly what a thoughtful critic will be thinking even more loudly. The animation of the character himself is among the very best in a movie full of good animation and characters, fully capturing his not-quite-comical rage as literal sparks begin to fly. Finally, in an extra vulnerable touch, he bellows, “It’s not my fault he couldn’t reach my controls!” It’s a brilliant sequence, and I can happily say it’s representative of what’s to come.

In closing, the main thing I have left to say is that I usually don’t have that much to say about movies that are actually good. This is a movie that unquestionably has significant issues, enough that I could have taken it down a rating. On the balance, however, there are very few things I can truly hold against it. It has plenty of wonky moments, because it’s creative and bold enough to take real chances. It’s all the more startling for a time when even Disney was well-entrenched in the swamps of the Dark Ages. (On the other hand, that reminds me I’m going to have to do a representative in-house 1980s Disney movie sooner or later.) This was a movie that did things that hadn’t been done in a very long time if at all, the same year DuckTales revolutionized TV animation and two years before The Little Mermaid kicked off the purported Disney Renaissance. This was the right movie at exactly the right time, and it actually still holds up long after. If fortune favors the bold, this one is as brassy as the Bronze Age, and for that, it has my respect.

Image credit vhscollector.com.

No Good Very Bad Movies 3: The one that's worse than the Transformers movie

 

Title: Gobots: Battle of the Rock Lords

What Year?: 1986

Classification: Runnerup

Rating: Disqualified!

 

It’s another off week, and I decided it was time to return to this feature. In fact, I have had to retreat and regroup on my whole idea here. What I really planned on was to make this a pretty short lineup that I could go through quickly. What I didn’t count on is how simply brutal the first two entries would be, especially Ingagi. People think I’m the kind of person who will watch movies just to laugh at how bad they are, but that’s never been what I’m about. More importantly, people who do that sort of thing are still usually nowhere near the worst of the worst. For me, at least, the movies that really do approach that level need to be handled in small doses. To continue this feature and preserve my sanity, I decided to go with a soft ball, a movie I had heard of but never seen that looked like a quick and easy watch. Except, alas, for the problem of finding it. Here is Gobots: Battle of the Rock Lords, a movie that makes Transformers The Movie look… remotely sane???

Our story begins with our second-favorite crew of transforming robots moving furniture (or something) in their outer space sanctum honestly called Gobotron. In the process, we meet Leader One, looking exactly like a robot fascist, Turbo, who wants to blast everything, and Scooter, who sounds exactly like Jar Jar Binks, as well as a few humans who get absolutely no introduction. After a few minutes of exposition, a ship that we briefly glimpsed in the credits arrives, carrying Solitaire and Nuggitt, the emissaries of a planet where the dominant cybernetic lifeforms transform into rocks. They warn that a warlord named Magmar is trying to conquer their world and gather the scepter-thingies of the local rulers. All this is overheard by the spies of Cy-Kill, the leader of the Gobots’ adversaries, the Renegades, who have the only Gobot girl Crasher, because this franchise can’t pretend to be for anything but the status quo. Inevitably, the two factions arrive on the Rock Lords’ world and quickly align themselves with Magmar and Boulder, who for some reason looks less like the toy than a cyborg Ricardo Montalban. Will good prevail, if only because the bad guys try to do each other in? Will someone please kill Scooter??? Find out- or don’t!

Gobots: Battle of the Rock Lords was a theatrically-released animated film by Hanna-Barbera, based on both the toy line and the animated television series. The film was apparently produced in parallel with the Transformers feature film by Hasbro/ Sunbow production, and ultimately released somewhat earlier. Contrary to speculation, there is little evidence that the two movies had any further influence on each other, or that many contemporary observers believed otherwise. The film had a high-profile voice cast including Margot Kidder as Solitaire, Roddy McDowall (see The Black Hole) as Nuggitt, Telly Savalas (see… The Horror Express?) as Magmar, and Michael Nouri of The Hidden as Boulder. Lou Richards and Bernard Erhard continued their roles as Leader-One and Cy-Kill respectively, with supporting voicework by Peter Cullen and Frank Welker. The film was released by Clubhouse Pictures, a branch of the Atlantic Entertainment Group (see… Night of the Comet?!). It received an estimated box office of only $1.3 million. The Rock Lords spinoff toys also proved unsuccessful, and was discontinued by 1987 The movie was released on VHS by KVC Home Video, the only known authorized home video release of the film. Surviving copies show a running time of 74 minutes.

For my personal experiences, I caught wind of this one while researching my toy-blog posts on Gobots. I was immediately intrigued. Unfortunately, what I quickly figured out is that this one is simply gone. Sure, you can get old tapes for prices in the middling double digits, and there’s evidence of an undoubtedly bootleg Blu Ray out there. But for availability in anything like a modern format, I had better leads on Shanks than this one. The best source by far was a two-part review video (see here and here), which included extensive video in authentic “full screen” format. The only one that claimed to offer the full movie was in horrible, gimmicky formatting, and somehow had a total running time of 90 minutes, more than 15 minutes longer than the running time shown for the tape. For the purposes of investigation, I watched the review video and the majority of the “full length” video. I finally called it quits not so much because I couldn’t stand any more, but because I had more than enough to evaluate the material.

With all that out of the way, I have to say I kind of liked this one. Yes, it’s terrible by any objective standard. Yes, the animation is simplistic at best. Yes, most of the characters are one-dimensional cliches. Yes, the theme song is a literal commercial jingle; yes, the running time barely fills out a TV episode; yes, Scooter (voiced by Welker!) makes you want him to die every moment he’s onscreen. With due adjustments for the state of animation before the Disney renaissance, however, it still reaches a high standard of mediocrity, or would have if the creators hadn’t stuck their necks out by putting this in theaters. Then there are at least relatively good points. The voice acting is generally good, the robots are moderately interesting in design, and the environments, especially on the Rock Lord planet, are downright impressive.  I can even put in a good word for Nuggit, as entertaining and competent as VINCENT apart from an overdone bit with his face plate, and especially Cy-Kill and Crasher (voiced by Marilyn Lightstone), whom I will get back to. Then there are surprising “dark” moments that work perhaps better than in Transformers, notably a shot of a burning city and a nameless rock warrior literally smashed to pieces.

Meanwhile, what puts this movie in overdrive is the underlying absurdity of the transforming-bot concept. The scale is even more shot to Hell than Transformers was, and that included a robot who could somehow transform from a handgun into a full-sized mech. (At least he wasn't, ah, anatomically correct.) Leader-One and Scooter are particularly wonky, all the more so since was see them together often enough to compare; the jet bot should be easily 40 feet tall, but Scooter never looks less than half his size. Cy-Kill requires even more improbabilities, rendering him not only out of scale but with a hopelessly bulky upper body. Then the core problem is that we actually see the bots living independent of people, which would be commendable as a depiction of non-anthropomorphic robots. However, this takes away what rationality there was in the transformation premise. The penultimate hilarity is that the Rock Lords actually make far more sense. If you can look like a rock, you can blend in almost anywhere on an Earth-like planet, and even if a few passing geologists gets suspicious, all they’re going to report is that they saw a big, weird rock. Try to pose as a fighter jet or even a red sportscar, on the other hand, and you’re going to attract more attention than you want under the best of circumstances.

That leaves the one scene, and this is where I had to say a little more about the villains. Around the midpoint, Cy-Kill and Crasher meet up with Magmar, and the villain gives his big pitch. What deserves to be said is that these two are literal cartoon villainy on the level of Snidely Whiplash, and as seen here, there’s just the right tongue-in-cheek tone to work. Cy-Kill strokes his potential ally’s ego, while Crasher follows his lead with sardonic insults and demented laughter that has long since gone from comically overdone to genuinely unsettling. This in itself satisfies certain problems I neglected to rant about with Transformers; tell any given supervillain to join you or die, and you’d probably just have to kill him, but tell him he’s a genius with a common interest, and he’ll go along with it even if he knows you’re already planning to betray him. The jaw-dropping climax comes when Cy-Kill declares himself “a friend of the oppressor, a champion of the evil cause”. And this is what I mean about cartoonish villainy. Even kids could see that a “real” bad guy would be talking about being a superior AI, or having a command from the robot gods, or just being a “law and order” candidate. But no, here the villain boasts about being evil for the sake of being evil, and nobody questions it.

In closing, I will as usual offer a little further explanation for the rating. My intention when I set up the rating system was to put any film I couldn’t find or view in full in the “unrated” category. But this film is not quite in that category. For the moment, it remains available as it was meant to be seen, if you’re willing to pay more than I or anyone in his right mind would for an old tape. But what really sets it apart is the total absence of material through the usual online/ bootleg channels, more complete than I have ever encountered with any film not considered lost (and for that matter some that are!). This is the kind of vacuum that can only happen from a total lack of interest or, as I think far more likely, an active campaign of suppression. This is all the more impressive since the kind of legal action needed for this outcome presumably requires an admission who was responsible for making it. By all indications, the powers that have always been do not want this to be seen, and there is no denying that they have a point. This is a long way from the worst cartoon out there (have I mentioned I saw the Battletoads pilot?), but for ignominious failure, it’s a benchmark that will not soon be matched. As for me, I just might watch it or even pay for it if it ever comes out in a modern format at a decent price. You heard me, Hasbro. I dare you.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Plesiosaurs, pliosaurs and whatever this is!

 

It's time for the weekend post, and I decided what I wanted was an extra dino blog post. This time around, it's another post on dinos that aren't actually dinosaurs, specifically the marine reptiles. They are along with the pterosaurs and perhaps Dimetrodon (see the Diener post) among the most frequently mislabeled prehistoric creatures, though at least they are related to dinosaurs and from the same time instead of a creature that lived 70 million years earlier and is literally more closely related to humans. To kick off the lineup, here's the one that very possibly started this, a copy of a Marx Kronosaurus previously sighted in the Marx clone post.

This might be the earliest "dino" that has a personal history for me. When I was very young, I spent time at a grandparent's house where there were a few of what I now know to be Marx dinosaurs lying around. This one in articular ended up as a bath toy, which in hindsight was a hair-raising risk. I saw it a few more times in later family visits, but I don't recall if I ever got a chance to hold it again. At some point, I figured out that it was not just a Marx dino, but one of a group of three that Marx retired because of production difficulties. (Another is the glorious Brontosaurus, which I featured way back in the patchisaurs post.) I kept an eye on online sales, but every one I ever found like the one I remembered was far beyond my normal price range. Even the wonky MPC copy can command a high price. Eventually, I found this one, apparently from an early 1990s reissue set. I was very pleased with it. The only issue I could find was that it looked a little roughed up, something that might or might not show in the pics. (I know the lighting is worse than usual.) I concluded that this was at least in part because the new manufacturer tried to replicate Marx's "marbling" process, which clearly didn't age nearly as well as the originals. Here's a couple more pics.

The big mystery that has cropped up around this creature is how on Earth Marx arrived at the design. It is labeled as a Kronosaurus, a "real" marine reptile that lived in the early Cretaceous. What it really represents, however, is a strange hybrid of two separate lineages, the plesiosaurs and pliosaurs, of which the former had the iconic long necks and the latter sacrificed t for a larger head. The best theory (unfortunately laid out in sources that seem to have dropped off the net) is that this was influenced by the art of Rudolph Zallinger, particularly a 1955 publication The World We Live In, itself compiled from a series of articles previously published in Life magazine. There is indeed something like the Marx Kronosaurus in the artwork (see Kumtuks Tahlkie), except that it's really a background creature only visible in part. That leaves us particularly at a loss to explain the very odd flippers. The counter-hypothesis that rises in my mind is that the Marx designers figured out that a realistic plesiosaur would require an even larger mold and be quite likely to break. That also would explain the very stout "buds" supporting the flippers. And that brings us to the next item, a vintage plesiosaur.

As far as I recall, I saw and bought this item last year after it came up in an automated feed, after doing enough research to confirm what it was. It's a product of Invicta, a pioneer of semi-scientific dino collectibles, dated 1978. (See the Dinosaur Toy Blog for a more detailed review.) It appears to have been made in two or three different colors, all shades of blue. Typically for the manufacturer, it had limited detail and no paint. The specimen clearly had condition issues, but on the other hand, it was cheap, and big. Here's a couple more pics.

This is one that's good enough that there's not a lot more to say. This is what we imagined the plesiosaur looked like, portrayed with more elegance than usual. It also incidentally captures the further "myth" of the Loch Ness monster as a plesiosaur, which in hindsight was a rationalistic gloss over the actual sightings. And that's a good introduction to the last entry in the lineup, which I really couldn't capture except in closeup.

The provenance on this one is that I picked it up free at a street fair event in ca. 2007. To my best recollection, it was being handed out at a booth for a museum or some kind of geologists' club. There would probably have been other dinos from the same source, but this must have been the only one that stood out then or since. The most noteworthy thing about it is that it has articulated fins, unusual for a toy that is both this small and cheap. Otherwise, it preserves the same classic lines as the 1970s example, with a gnarlier (and actually relatively accurate) head. Once again, science can move on, but it is the cheap toys that continue to capture the imagination.

And to wrap this up, here's one more lineup to show just how these would have looked in the vintage toybox. Included are the Galaxy Laser Team commander, an MPC astronaut/ space guy, the Timmee nuclear guy, and for the heck of it, Audrey. They may not look big against the action figures of the 1980s onward, but in the days of toy soldiers, they truly towered. Go big, or go home.

That's all for now, more to come!

Revenant Review Extras 2: The one with actual voodoo

 

Title: I Walked With A Zombie

What Year?: 1943

Classification: Prototype

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

 

With the lineup for this feature well into overtime, I’ve found myself second-guessing decisions I made early on. The rule of thumb I have tried to implement is to cover gaps in my previous choices, the periods, trends and subgenres that didn’t quite make it in. What I had to admit is that there were two heavily overlapping areas I had actively avoided. The first is films from the 1940s, the second is movies based ostensibly “real” Afro-Caribbean voodoo. These works always serve as the starting point for any “serious” history of the zombie movie genre, but in my own meandering survey, I had no trouble working around them. Over time, I developed certain plans to cover early or otherwise significant movies I hadn’t deemed suitable for the feature. Even then, however, one movie stood out mockingly, which I finally acknowledged needed a full-length review. With that, I present I Walked With The Zombie, probably the best of the vintage “voodoo” zombie movies, and one that still goes over my head.

Our story begins with a woman named Betsy arriving in the Caribbean as a servant and nurse to a colonial landowner named Paul and his bedridden wife. She soon discovers that the wife is in fact the victim of a sort of waking coma, in which she wanders for long periods of time without any sign of intellect or her former personality. Meanwhile, a potential love triangle brews between the lady, her boss and his disreputable half-brother Rand. But things really heat up as our heroine discovers learns that the natives practice voodoo, and that many of them view her mistress as a zombie under a curse. Could native magic provide a cure where modern science has failed, or has she only found the dark secret that will destroy them all?

I Walked With A Zombie was a 1943 film by the legendary Val Lewton, directed by Jacques Tourneur from a script by Curt Siodmak. The film was made as part of a wave of “voodoo” films following 1932’s White Zombie, reportedly developed around the title of a largely unrelated non-fiction article on Haiti. The film starred Frances Dee as Betsy, Tom Conway as Paul and James Ellison as Wesley Rand, with jungle-movie stalwart Darby Jones as the titular zombie. While similar movies had been filmed on location in the Caribbean, I Walked With A Zombie was shot entirely in California. It has been released on home video, including a two-pack DVD release with The Body Snatcher and at least one Blu Ray release.

For my personal experiences, what the voodoo wave of the zombie genre inevitably brings to mind are the books The Magic Island by William Seabrook and Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston. For all their problems (most obvious in Seabrook’s volume), they still come as close as any outside observer could to conveying both the realities and the internal and external “myths” that shroud Haiti, vodun and Afro-Caribbean culture in general. What I have intermittently pondered is whether Hollywood then or since has or ever could come close to portraying the subject with comparable insight. In those terms, the present film is just about Number One in a field of one, with only White Zombie and The Serpent And The Rainbow offering any ground for further comparison. Its authenticity may be as suspect as a Karl May Wild West novel, but it at least tried to dig for something deeper in its sensationalized subject matter. It’s telling enough that what it unearths is mostly a heaping helping of late-colonial “white” angst.

Now, I’m going straight to what we’re all here for, the undead. In an ironic bit of truth in advertising, we really only see one zombie, played unforgettably by Jones. He doesn’t really do much, but always looks freaky as all Hell even if he’s just standing and staring as in his first and most iconic appearance. The most unusual thing about him is that he actually has a name, Carrefour, though no further account is given of his character and backstory. When he moves, it is with the same slow gait of a Romero zombie (already present in The Walking Dead), without the uncoordinated shambling played up by later imitators. Per the “rules” of semi-authentic voodoo lore, he is rarely if ever threatening of his own accord, and will respond to commands from those who call his name. On the other hand, we never see a zombie master on the level of Lugosi in White Zombie (see… Tourist Trap?), suggesting either that he escaped or outlived his original creator or that his zombification is somehow by the collective will of the people of the island. Left to his own devices, he appears to wander aimlessly or guard the shrine where the local cult worships. The only things that seem to give him a clear and malign purpose are violence and the misuse of voodoo rites. By the finale, the proceedings start to fall into the moralizing rut of more routine fair, but the zombie remains an unusually effective agent of vengeance, still merely advancing on the sinner as he retreats toward his doom.

If it seems like I’m holding out for a “but”, that would be just about everything else in this movie. The whole love triangle(s?) is just a predictable if well-acted melodrama, with the one major twist being that we don’t actually see the heroine get together with any of her potential love interests. (And to think of the possibilities of a Betsy/ Carrefour fan fic…) In fact, on any amount of analysis, the outsider heroine is far too naïve to be a part of this world, while still remaining too bland for the viewer to be invested in. What keeps the film interesting is the contrast between the troubled family and the natives. There is tension here, comparable to if not an improvement on the sexualized allegory of Lewton’s Cat People, and for once, there’s no pretense that the pagans are necessarily in the wrong. If anything, there’s an implicit reversal of the whole setup of the voodoo horror narrative. The zombie master, after all, is merely amoral, using his powers for rational ends. It takes western/ Christian "civilization" to bring the concepts of guilt, betrayal and willful evil to full flower.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I’ve already been flying blind here. As often happens, though, one sequence did indeed stand out. Partway in, Rand makes his big play by taking Betsy out to lunch in the middle of the town. He proceeds to give the newcomer an unflattering account of his brother, soon hinting that the mistress’s illness is the product of abuse. In the middle of it, they hear a singer performing a ballade about a man running off with his brother’s beautiful wife, which we will learn is the story of Rand and the mistress. It’s a genuinely beautiful song, if you aren’t paying attention to the words, and impressively dark if you are. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Rand becomes upset and confronts the singer. The balladeer insists that he didn’t know the other man was there, which we definitely have cause to doubt. But then, of course, there would have been no problem at all if the rich guy hadn’t reacted in front of his date. It’s a clever snapshot of the taut relationship between native peoples and their colonial rulers that’s still reasonably relevant, and a fair demonstration of why the film remains worth watching at all.

In conclusion, I must once again come to the rating. I started this review as a much shorter summary, and at that point, I was quite ready to give this movie the lowest rating. After writing out my thoughts at greater length, I knew that that was a little too harsh, especially for a film this far in the past. However, I still couldn’t talk myself into giving it a rating much higher than that, which in hindsight is a non-trivial reason I hadn’t planned on covering this one at all. In the final analysis, this is a movie where being a product of its time is more a con than a pro. Its thoughtfulness and overall quality remain impressive, considering the state of the culture then and long after. But it still falls well behind many other works from the same time frame, though most are in other mediums and genres. To me, the biggest mark against it and indeed the whole voodoo subgenre is that The Walking Dead had already proved that you could have an at least conceptually interesting “zombie” without any of the voodoo trappings in the first place. What was needed was either to offer a realized and dignified portrayal of Caribbean culture, or move on to a more modern concept of the undead, yet the studio system spent the next 20 years doing neither. This movie may have been the best of its kind, but it was also the surest sign that it was time for something else.

The Adventures of Sidekick Carl Part 12!

 Here's yet another installment of Sidekick Carl, a little late, and introducing my best gag character. By the way, there's a terrible pun that might not stand out if you don't know Spanish.  I'm so used to it (and to a lesser extent Serbo-Croatian) that if I saw a foreign language that pronounced "h" and "j" the way we do, I'd probably get it wrong. As usual, here's the first and latest installments.

The screen showed a stylized image of a man or manlike figure, clad in bulky gray armor that seemed made of cylinders and other primary shapes. At the moment, he was winning an equally stylized duel with a sort of mechanical dragon on wheels. With the final blow, the machine staggered and collapsed, already missing its head. The man turned to a woman who had watched the fight. Subtitles rolled as he spoke in Spanish, “No, it is not possible! It was too easy!”

On cue, a screen that filled one side of the room came on, revealing an identical dragon. “You fool, you have destroyed a mere drone!” it said. “While you were fighting my duplicate, I raised my airborne command center and summoned my army to the assembly point. They will gather in 15 minutes- 500 miles from here!”

“Oh, Hombre Acero!” the woman cried. “What shall we do? It is too much- even for you!”

This time, the subtitles remained in Spanish as the hero raised his fist and cried out: “Mi nombre is Hombre Acero, y yo puedo hacer lo!”

The Toxo Warrior who had been a passenger changed the channel. “Of course, `he’ could do it,” he said. “There were still three of them.”  Then he turned, back to the inscrutable dragon-like head on the work table.

* * *

 

Carl and Dana sat with the agent named John Carter on the rear deck. He peered through the door that Ivan Trepan had smashed in as a dirk-toothed cat. “You dealt with him, that’s fair enough,” he said. “We were still looking for him. You didn’t here it from me, but we were pretty sure it was him in the zoo. There was a genetic test; someone at the lab called us when they saw the results. By the time we got there, he was in the wind again. At least it wasn’t hard to get the zoo to keep it quiet. I suppose you tried to question him…”

“You had him custody before,” Carl said. “You know what he’s like. He loves to talk, the one thing he won’t do is answer questions. The only other thing we could have done was kill him.”

“There was a time when you might have,” Agent Carter answered. “But I suppose she thought differently.” He looked Dana over. “No offense, mind you. Ivan’s a tough target by any standard. I would have said it would take a Grade 4 superhuman or higher to have an even chance against him hand to hand. Even then, the only one who ever really tried was Constructor, and that was after he broke a shovel over his head.

Dana shrugged, a dramatic gesture in itself with an ordinary human for reference. “I went through the tests once, and they gave me a Three,” she said. “The guy who did the measurements told me after, my kicks had the same force as one of Constructor’s punches.”

Carter looked back to Carl and sighed. “Dammit all, Carl,” he said. “I used to tell you and Constructor, you never understood what we do, or what we were really been up against. Basiliskus, Dr. Hydro, The Raven… They were small potatoes. Okay, maybe that’s not fair to you; but still, they were symptoms, not the disease. They were the products of things that happened decades earlier, set in motion by beings most people couldn’t imagine. The only reason you could keep things mostly under control was that they were out of the picture.”

“They weren’t out of our picture,” Carl said. “We fought Abl C’doen, twice.”

“You met Abl C’doen,” the agent countered. “Even we never figured out what he was doing, but if he had really meant to put up a fight…” He shook his head.

After a pause, he turned to Dana. “Here’s something you deserve to know,” he said. “The Agency has files on 223 `superheroes’, the superhumans we counted friendly. Know how many are left?” After a moment, he answered himself, “Seven. Including two of the Hombres Aceros, and everybody knows what happens to the first one.”

“There aren’t many `villains’ left, either,” Carl said. “I could cover most of first and second tiers just with the ones I saw buy it myself. Basiliskus, torched and probably phaged. The Raven, dropped 150 stories without his wings. Dr. Hydro, sucked wherever his artificial wormhole went. Stryker, crippled. Haj Tarm, trampled by a mob of his subjects. Gravitar, blown into the sun. The Deadly Clowns, killed each other with their lethal pies… The only ones who are left are the ones who were smart enough to stay low, Audrey and Destructo and Big Red, and they already figured out they can do better on the convention circuit than they ever did in the supercriminal ecosystem.”

Dana frowned. “But they can’t all be accounted for,” she said. “Don’t you have security for the superhumans who are left?”

“To be honest, that’s why we let the convention circuit exist,” Carter said. “It was easier to keep the bad guys out in the open than keep watching the last of the heroes full time. Most of them would kill their agents before they looked up any of their old scores.”

“I’ll say,” Carl said. “Audrey told me that herself.”

“Okay,” Dana said. “Then tell me this… What would it really take to kill him?”

Carter actually chuckled. “We did that for every one of the superheroes,” he said. “You could call it insurance. Carl was tough, but we still identified several feasible lines of attack. Plasma weapons, incendiaries, an electromagnetic pulse, or an extremely powerful acid.”

“None of which Ivan had,” Carl said.

There was another long pause before Carter broke the silence. “That… brings us to the current situation,” he said. “36 hours before the two of you blew out of the convention, two intruders breached a secure facility a few hundred miles away, and then escaped a full security perimeter. They wore yellow suits and gas masks, plus hats. The only thing they took was 600 gallons of a chemical called Solvent G.”

Carl showed no reaction, but Dana knew immediately that he knew what it was. After a moment, he explained for her benefit, “It’s one of the most powerful acids in the world. Powerful enough to harm me. It’s really a concentrate, meant to be mixed in a solution with other chemicals. The amount he's talking about would make enough for a vessel the size of a swimming pool, still twice as powerful as sulphuric acid.” He looked at Carter. “Do you think it was the Toxo Warriors?”

Carter sighed again. “You tell me,” he said. “Do you think they could have lived?”

Carl shook his head. “The explosion that took out their lab was the closest I ever came to checking out,” he said. He turned to Dana. “Constructor and I got caught by the blast while we were running through the door we used to get in. I threw myself around him, or we both probably would have died. The fire burned up more than half my suit and 20% of the inner polymer sheath. The heat and the chemicals destroyed about a quarter of the nanites. It took me four weeks to recover.”

He looked back to Carter. “If anyone’s appearing in their gear, my guess it’s copycats,” he said. “Constructor’s daughter traced their gear to commercial suppliers. Others could have done the same thing. It would be a surprise if it didn’t happen, really.”

“Oh, it has,” Carter said. “We caught every one of them, and made sure they all got put away for a long time without giving them attention. Fortunately, none of them had the knowhow to kill anyone.”

 

“What about the ones you’re after?” Carl said.

“One of our guards was killed, by a chemical spill he probably caused,” Carter said. “Another was hospitalized, for an allergic reaction to a nonlethal gas. By all indications, the intruders were trying to avoid fatalities.”

Carl visibly sagged in relief. “It’s not them, then,” he said without hesitation. “At least, something changed…”

Carter nodded. “Your reports never said much about their dynamics,” he said. “Did it ever seem like one was dominant, or the other reluctant?”

Carl shook his head. “I could never tell them apart,” he said. “Constructor was sure there was one who did most of the talking. Beyond that, there was no difference that. Certainly, either one of them would have killed anyone in their way.”

“I see,” Carter said. He gave another sigh. “There’s one more thing, Carl. Something we held back, so the copycats wouldn’t get more ideas than they already had.” He laid out a series of photos. Three of them were grainy black-and-white photos, clearly from security cameras. Two were color photos, one of which included Carl and Constructor.

“After the blast, Lauren did a new analysis of the available images,” he said. He tapped the two color photos, and one of the monochrome images. “Based on height and other biometric data, these show the same two individuals. I’ll admit, even we only have 85% confidence which of the two is which in any given photo. The similarities strongly suggest that they are fraternal relatives- brothers, in other words, as Constructor thought.”

Then he pointed the other two images, including the first. “These two, on the other hand, differ significantly. One of them is almost certainly in the other photos. But we arrived at 97.5% probability that the other is an individual not in the other pictures.”

He matter-of-factly stacked the photos and took a match to them. “You and Constructor may have fought the same pair. But there weren’t just two, there were three.”