No Good Very Bad Movies 9: The one that nobody saw

 

Title: Death Bed aka Death Bed The Bed That Eats

What Year?: 1977 (copyright)/ 2003 (DVD release)

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Guinnocent!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

As I write, I’m finishing up a Halloween lineup, and I decided it was time for one more entry in my “worst” series. In planning this out, my biggest concern has been how many I could do without destroying my morale and possibly my sanity. So far, I’ve surprised myself by doing a good chunk of what I had planned in a single run earlier in the month. I decided that if I was going to do another installment this month, it would be something very, very weird. That immediately brought me to one particular movie I not only had in mind at the start but considered in creating the ratings. Without further ceremony, I present Death Bed, a film so odd it doesn’t feel like a movie.

Our story begins with a couple frolicking in an old castle, where they discover a bed that looks old and sketchy enough to have evolved its own species of parasites. When the pair try out the bed, they don’t just get an embarrassing infection, but are eaten by the bed itself, which seemingly dissolves them with foaming juices then sucks them down. It’s all narrated by the ghost of a previous victim, trapped inside the painting. We learn that the bed is a malign entity that has been devouring people for decades if not centuries, created and inhabited by a demon that once tried to seduce a mortal woman. When a new group of waifs arrive, the bed promptly begins snarfing the lot of them, until only one wayward girl and her brother remain. In its moment of triumph, the powers of the bed weaken enough for the talkative ghost to make contact with the living. He finally reveals how the monstrous furniture can be destroyed- but carrying out the plan will cost the survivor her life!

Death Bed was produced, written and directed by George Barry in his only feature film credit. The film was reportedly shot as early as 1972, mainly at the Gar Wood mansion near Detroit. The film assembled a cast who had or went on to other roles, including William Russ of Boy Meets World and the late Demene Hall. The film’s narration was provided by Patrick Spencer-Thomas, otherwise known mainly as a sound technician, with most or all additional dialogue being dubbed. Per Barry’s accounts, the film was never released theatrically or as an authorized home video. However, the film received a series of “bootleg” releases on VHS without his knowledge, creating a limited cult following. Beginning in 2003, the film received authorized release on disc and later digital streaming. A similarly titled film Deathbed was released by Charles Band in 2002, credited as based on Barry’s film.

For my experiences, this is one I remember hearing about a few years back, but I suspect I would have run across it much earlier. I even had a few misbegotten ideas of my own along similar lines (which I long since found independently invented in Brian Lumley’s tale “No Way Home”). What has stood out to me is that the concept of the film seems to attract as much notoriety as the movie itself. On still further consideration, it’s an egregiously “Seventies” movie. As such, there are films that are at least superficially comparable, like Zardoz, Shanks and especially House (the Japanese one!). It’s all the more impressive that, even in their company, this film stands out as uniquely mindboggling, probably outdoing all but House for pure strangeness.

Moving forward, when I did get around to watching this movie, my strongest reaction, as recounted above, was that this is something that should not be counted as a “movie” at all. What it should be considered is, of course, a problem I have considered frequently. The vibe I get is that of a very old-school book of fairy tales brought to life. Almost all the story is told through narration; most of the shots are closeups and tableaus with a bare minimum of movement; and when the characters are supposed to be “speaking”, we usually see the actors’ lips clearly not moving. On analysis, this approach isn’t quite as unusual as it sounds, but the closest counterparts are very far afield, in animation and even silent films. That, in turn, reveals the extent of the problem of giving it a rating. By almost any objective standard, this is easily one of the most incompetent films on record, yet calling it a bad movie feels like calling Big Rigs a bad video game. It’s hard to judge a work when it’s unclear if the creators understood the “rules” of the medium and genre it’s supposed to represent, harder still when they repeatedly and willfully break them.

As often happens, these ground-rules arguments nearly overshadow the film itself, and I must say, this was always in the movie’s favor. The depictions of the bed provide a kind of dark humor, complete with chewing sounds and meal-themed title cards. There’s a certain amount of biological logic in the feeding process, though it would really make more sense if we didn’t see as much blood or gore. What I find most intriguing are the lesser meals that get eaten, like an a bucket of chicken, an apple and a fly whose demise is heard rather than seen. But then, as often happens, the weaknesses crop up around the edges. To begin with, I’m not satisfied with the timeline, which puts the origin of the demon-bed barely before the 20^th century (through a series of hilariously inept tombstones) while everything else screams Medieval/ Renaissance era. Further problems arise from wonky lighting (also an issue in Shanks), which usually makes the mansion and its surroundings as ominous as a duck pond on a sunny summer day. There’s also not much done to make the characters interesting, even on this film’s strange terms. Finally, there are way too many moments that are nonsensical without achieving the surreal quality of the film’s better moments, such as the brother staring at his skeletonized but intact hands after attempting to destroy the bed.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the one closest to a conventional sequence. As we go into the final act, Ms. Hall’s character, the only person of color in the cast, goes to bed while the others are looking for a vanished companion. As she sleeps, her friend appears to her in a dream, a jarring and poignant moment since we already know her fate. She suddenly awakes, to find herself already enveloped in the bed’s foam. Somehow, she pulls free, covered in blood. She has to crawl for the door, and it’s believable and grueling to watch. This goes on, and on, and the live-action-illustration style makes it feel even longer. She actually makes it to the door, which is when one of the sheets snares her and drags her back in like an indoor Sarlacc. It’s truly the moment that establishes the demon bed as a credible threat, and gets us invested in the fate of it’s prey, so of course we see nothing more about it.

In closing, I feel the need to explain not the rating, which I have explained already, but the classification. Between Space 1979 and the Revenant Review, I introduced the Irreproducible Oddity and the Unnatural/ Improbable Experiment as categories. At the time, I had a definite rationale for the distinction, but I will admit that over time, how I use one or the other has gotten a little random. For this one in particular, my decision was a matter of context. There is no question that this movie is unlike any made before, in its own time or since, yet that in itself is well within the “weird for the sake of weird” spirit of the 1970s. The truly ironic part is that for all its unconventionality, it's still not confusing and annoying on the level of far too many '70s films. The best thing I can say about it is that it forces the viewer to think about where out expectations of what constitutes a “movie” came from and how many other turnings there were along the way. That is praise enough from me, and reason enough to give it a look. With that, I’m done for today.

Image credit Movies And Mania.

Fiction: The Evil Possum and the Eurypterids, Finale!

 Rounding out the run of fiction with the finale of the Evil Possum adventure. A lot of this is old venting about disability self-advocacy, and the reason I used the possum as an avatar for my old site that someone apparently finally shut down. Here's links for the first and previous installments, and another chapter referenced here. While I'm at it, here's a link for the original Evil Possum adventure, which has a spoiler here that actually came first. Enjoy! Or don't.

Percy gazed up from a 75^th story footbridge between the twin spires of the Aster Plaza, at the spire of the Deck building far, far above. He adjusted his visor to zoom in on the figure leaning on the railing. Both hands gripped the railing, while his feet remained on the floor. He turned to his companions, a blue-haired woman, a bipedal rodent and a towering bird named Dhahka Kaan. “He’s not trying to jump, and he won’t,” he said. “He doesn’t even have an elevated heart rate. But he’s going to be in trouble as soon as the winds rise. The real glitch is, anything we do to get him down will cause more of a disturbance than he already has.”

“I would agree,” said the bird who owned the building. “We have our own measures for situations like this, especially containment of media coverage. But we already allowed broadcasts of the eurypterid infestation, so there were already cameras on the spire.” He looked down at the plaza on the Aster’s ground floor. Banks of screens showed Wes, at just the right distance and angle to leave his identity obscured.

“That can’t be helped, but it won’t hurt,” Percy said. “I’m taking an air cab. O’Keefe, if you know this guy, I want you with me. Tell me, what about those doors?”

“A protocol was triggered to lock them,” Kaan answered. “Mr. Powell clearly figured out an override, but won’t be easy to do a second time. In fact, it’s quite likely that he couldn’t get back in if he tried to.”

“So kaka, as usual,” Percy said. “We can deal with it. Now, what the Hell is going on in that restaurant?”

* * *

A patron of the Mile High was venturing back down the stairs when the 3 meter sea scorpion returned, its feet clattering and clomping on shattered dishes and broken furniture. He quickly retreated, but the creature quickly advanced, drawing shouts and shrieks from others who had ventured to look down. Their cries were still all but drowned out by the continuous wail from Daisy. The eurypterid’s first set of walking were on the steps when yet another shriek rang out. The creature known as No-Hands, El Diablo Sin Mano Derecho, scientific name Archididelphis invicta, was advancing, his mouth gaped almost 90 degrees.

As the scorpion pivoted, the marsupial  snatched up a large serving fork.  He weaved back and forth, jabbing at the creature like a footman with a pike. The tail shifted with each feint until it finally struck, close enough to tear the marsupial’s alligator skin jacket apart. He came rushing in at full speed with the fork upraised. The creature hesitated and even retreated for a moment, before neatly shearing through the fork with its pincer. No-Hands ducked under the claws and came up with his double-barrel shotgun unsheathed. He fired his last two shells in a double blast, half-severing the venomous tail spine.

As he beat his retreat, two gentlemen stepped in, weapons drawn. Their guns did not even look like toys, but something an impoverished child might improvise from discarded packaging. In fact, they were highly advanced gyro pistols with computerized crystalline displays for sights. They fired only a single shot, but that shot was a self-guided rocket that went straight for any target.  The displays quickly highlighted the creature’s carapace, the only part not covered in eggs, and continued to track as the creature darted for the cover of a table. One shot lodged a needle-like flechette in the shell. The other ricocheted after going through the table. There was a single “HA!” as the marsupial popped up again, holding a 1/3^rd scale Panzerfaust. He peered down the sight, calculating the considerable odds that a shot which killed the creature would scatter the eggs and kill him.

At that very moment, a small service elevator opened with a chime. The creature could not turn its head, but it pivoted to face two terrified prep cooks as they wheeled out a cart with a giant pot of boiling water. The creature drew back, ever so slightly. Then, with a hurried and contradictory count, the cooks lifted the pot and heaved it at the creature. At least halt the water missed the eurypterid, to splash along the carpet instead. What hit the eurypterid seemed to do little harm to the creature, which merely thrashed angrily as its color grew mottled. But to the unhatched eggs on its back, the devastation was apocalyptic. Eggs burst dozens at a time, with a sound like twisting bubble wrap. Here and there, more developed young tried to dart for safety, only to succumb in the sloshing puddles of searing water. Some ruptured where they lay with a more substantial crack, repeated dozens and scores of times.

Finally, the eurypterid wheeled about again, to rush straight at the marsupial, too fast and too close for his Panzerfaust to be used as anything but a bludgeon. No-Hands hissed and darted away, clambering up a tablecloth. The gentlemen both fired, riddling its segmented body with an explosive slug and a canister of smaller flechettes. “Withdraw!” he called out. “You are inside minimum survivable range!” The gentlemen withdrew somewhat reluctantly, the cooks far less so. The creature knocked a chair aside and reared up by sheer momentum in pursuit of the marsupial. A table leg gave way as it crested the top, sending the marsupial sliding toward the creature’s gnashing chelicerae. No-Hands caught hold of the table’s edge with his claw prosthesis, and fired both barrels of a derringer with his dexterous toes. Already, his claw was losing its grip, not because of its mechanics but because the wood was giving way. With his single hand, he tried to aim his weapon, only to have its rear exhaust jet seized by the creature’s pincer.

The creature could have flung the weapon away, or crushed the mechanisms that armed and fired the warhead. But its instincts dictated that a threat could not be merely neutralized, but consumed. So, it pulled the far end of the recoilless firing tube into the midst of its mouthparts, trying with some signs of success to tear and crush the metal. And that was when No-Hands snared the paddle-like trigger with his foot. The patrons overhead cried out again at the sound and flash, except Daisy, who belatedly stopped. The gentlemen and a few of the patrons cautiously approached.

The marsupial and the eurypterid were still in position, amid the wrecked table, as if frozen in battle. The Panzerfaust tube was smoking at both ends, as were several patches of No-Hands’ mane. There was no sign of the warhead, though its trajectory was easy enough to deduce from the virtually empty window frame behind them. Slowly, the eurypterid shifted, until it flopped down all at once on its back. Only then was it clear that there was smoke coming from its mouth.

No-Hands leaped down. Here and there, clusters of eggs remained intact, mainly on the eurypterid, with a few rolling loose. He snarled. Then the cooks ran up, carrying a bottle of wine and another of cooking oil. They hastily emptied both bottles onto the creature, and the slightly senior cook turned out a long lighter sometimes used to ignite specialty dishes, lighting a merry blaze of mainly blue flame. No-Hands continued crushing the loose eggs, swinging and  pounding with the spent firing tube. He crushed two of the last three with his booted artificial foot and caught the third with his mechanical claw. He thrust it into his mouth, crunched three times, and spat with a hiss through the broken window.

“It is over, as much as it will ever be,” he said. Even as he spoke, Daisy started screaming again.

* * *

Percy met Daisy on a maintenance stairway that descended from the restaurant. She was being firmly guided by one of the gentlemen. She was still screaming, loud enough that witnesses would swear they had heard her from the ground. They led her into a lower level of the restaurant that held the storerooms and the main kitchen. The robot put an arm around her. She quieted for a moment, then screamed louder. “Come on, you know Wes won’t leave you,” he coaxed. “Stop, you’re upsetting people.” She finally quieted.

“Say,” Nick interjected, “where’d Chelsea go?”

* * *

 

By the time the police started arriving, Wes had sat down in a chair on the balcony. He looked up with no particular surprise as No-Hands climbed up the balcony railing. “So, you killed the creature,” he said.

“With help,” the marsupial said, clearly displeased. “I see you are good with locks.”

Wes shrugged. “I pick up things. Where will you go now?”

“I am provided with housing by your state,” he said. “They have offered better than I have, but I accepted only what I need. Now, I must ask, why did you come here?”

“I needed a place to think,” Wes said with another shrug. “It’s quiet here. At least, it was after Daisy stopped screaming. She’s okay, right?”

“She was escorted from the restaurant. They were firm but discrete. She seems to suit you as a partner.”

“I know. She just… Well, she’s Daisy. Sometimes that’s a bit much. I guess you don’t have that problem, if it’s true you’re the only one.”

No-Hands gave an unsettling chuckle. “Oh, not entirely,” he said. “My species is highly solitary and dangerous to approach. Determining our numbers, even our existence, is very difficult. Those who try to find us rarely repeat the mistake.”

“You don’t seem that solitary,” Wes said. “At least you talk to us.”

“I am unusual,” No-Hands said. “You could even say I am gregarious, by the standards of my species. Others would attack any other being on sight, including each other. Especially each other.”

 Wes nodded. “So I suppose getting married wouldn’t work…”

“Oh, I have a mate,” No-Hands said. He held up his mechanical claw. “She built me this hand.”

Wes’s eyes widened in surprise, but then he nodded. “Her name’s Anja, isn’t it?” he said. The marsupial nodded. “You called it out when you were in our apartment. So, how did you meet?”

“She was raised in a monastery that needed my help against raiders. She was intrigued, as was I. The monks gave her to me as my fee.”

“Figures. Have any kids?”

“No, nor did we try.” He gave a hiss that was very much like a sigh. “We disagreed whether it is prudent to sire offspring. It contributed to our parting. She did not understand the consequences, the dangers. She had never encountered another of our species before we met. I had; it cost me my leg.”

“Do you think you’ll ever see her again?”

“Oh, I am quite sure of that,” No-Hands said. “When she chooses, she will look for me, and when she looks, she will find me.”

“You think she loves you that much?”

The marsupial gave a single “HA!” and continued, “What I know is that nothing in our world or yours or any other will stop her. Now, I really must be going. Will you come inside with me?”

“I suppose…” Even as he spoke, the door behind them opened.

“Get in here, you idiot!” Chelsea shouted, and she yanked Wes and the chair inside.

Animation Defenestration: The one that's a zombie claymation musical

 

Title: Corpse Bride

What Year?: 2005

Classification: Mashup/ Improbable Experiment

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m closing in on Halloween, and have been trying to set up a lineup accordingly. Something that crossed my mind in the process is that most of my earlier pop culture memories involve animation. I can remember watching the Garfield Halloween special, the first few Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes, and perhaps Fantasia, all in the interval from early 1980s childhood through mid-‘90s adolescence. That convinced me that I needed an animation review somewhere in here, but I also quickly concluded that the most fitting tribute would not be among the cartoons I watched back then but something in a similar spirit. From the very short list that emerged, one quickly stood out above all others, in no small part because I had already semi-seriously considered it for other features. I present Corpse Bride, a mid-2000s stop-motion film that somehow never became the classic it deserves to be.

Our story begins in very Victorian England with a haphazardly arranged marriage between Victor and Victoria. While the pair bond in an awkward way, Victor flubs their wedding rehearsal and wanders into the woods. As he practices his wedding vows, a foully murdered woman named Emily suddenly emerges from her grave and accepts his lines as a marriage. The groom is dragged off to the strangely colorful underworld, where nobody has a problem accepting him as Emily’s husband. Meanwhile, Victoria’s scheming, near-bankrupt parents quickly make plans to marry her to a mysterious newcomer named Barkis with his own plans. Young Victor must soon make his choice- fight Barkis for Victoria’s hand, or join Emily among the dead!

Corpse Bride was a 2005 stop-motion animated film directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, reportedly based on Russian/ Slavic folklore. The animation was produced by Laika, a successor to the Will Vinton animation studio. The production employed a number of animators and crew from 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, including cinematographer Pete Kozachik; director Harry Selick worked for Laika at the time but received no formal credit. A high-profile voice cast was led by Johnny Depp as Victor, Helena Bonham Carter as the Corpse Bride/ Emily, and Emily Watson as Victoria, with Albert Finney as Victoria’s father, Richard E. Grant as the villainous Barkis, and Christopher Lee (see… The Horror Express?) as the minister. The film was an unquestioned success, earning $118 million against a $40M budget, but did not receive merchandising and long-term “footprint” of Nightmare Before Christmas. Laika went on to release its first animated feature Coraline in 2009, directed by Selick. Corpse Bride remains available on disc and in digital formats.

For my personal experiences, my frame of reference was the supernova that Coraline was on the animation scene, and the subsequent stellar work and increasingly insulting snubs at the Oscars (and in recent years the box office). I could have taken any of Laika’s work for this entry, but it was Corpse Bride that stood out as different enough for further attention. As it happens, I still came across it by chance, after discovering it at a library sale, and watched it soon after. To my further recollection, it was a little later when I finally watched Nightmare Before Christmas, perhaps coloring my opinion. Even so, I absolutely do not hesitate to call this simply the best fully stop-motion/ Claymation feature ever made or remotely likely to be made. (I will not argue about the difference.) It’s an actual big-budget, big-name animated feature even before Disney made such things a relative norm, with extra support from a score by Danny Elfman that I forgot to point out before. There are still Claymation films I can say I “like” better, but this is the high-water mark against which everything else must be measured.

 Moving forward, the counterintuitive thing about this film is that it doesn’t try to do much that’s new. There’s a lot in common with Nightmare in particular, to the point that at least two specific characters can easily be matched with counterparts from the earlier film, yet this is an inarguable case of improving on the source material. The other side of the equation is a comedy of manners that would have been vaguely old-school in the 1940s, with all the slapstick, non sequitirs and social satire that that implies. It is these “mainstream” influences that keep the movie solidly character-driven, with results that start at amusing and ramp up to poignant and wholly tragic. Two sequences worth particular note in this regard are Victor’s reunion with his childhood pet and the revelation when Barkis and Emily encounter each other. Also impossible to ignore is the ludicrous final battle between Victor and the villain, which would be “one scene” material if I had any confidence I could describe it with justice.

Meanwhile, the true heart of the movie remains its depiction of the afterlife and the undead, which put it under serious consideration for the Revenant Review. Their world is pointedly more vibrant than the literal monochrome of the living, with the surely intended irony that it is the humans who look like they are in a Universal Monsters-era horror film. The dead are correspondingly uninhibited, leading to superbly realized comic possibilities when they intrude into the Victorian society above.  The centerpiece is Emily (whose name is given prominently and repeatedly), yet she also serves as the clearest indicator that something is not quite right here. Behind her genuine charm, she shows the overly literal thinking and obsessive behavior commonly attributed to the undead in authentic folklore. On a deeper, darker level, she is self-centered verging into completely oblivious, repeatedly overlooking if not ignoring obvious context and circumstances, though it’s hard to avoid placing some fault on Victor for not challenging her. When Emily finally and literally dissolves (a further and powerful nod to folklore), one can be happy for her but also relieved at her departure.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with perhaps the biggest musical number. As Emily introduces Victor to her fellow undead, we meet a skeleton who leads the band of the underworld, voiced by none other than Danny Elfman himself. He tells the tale of Emily’s tragic fate with the spice and grue of an Old World ballad, in a surprisingly raspy voice (per the lore, Elfman had to quit from voice strain), accompanied by a skeletal band who use themselves and each other in place of their instruments. It’s a surreal sequence (perhaps as much so as the duel), somewhat mitigated by its obvious debt to the old-time Disney short “Skeleton Dance” among others. It is quite possibly the most definitive scene of the movie, fusing jazz with the Medieval danse macabre, setting the tone without trying to overshadow what will follow.

In closing, this is another good movie I don’t have much more to say about.  What continues to stick in my mind is that even though I only encountered this movie quite recently in the scheme of scenes, it “feels” like something that could and would have influenced me if I had run across it earlier. In my own misbegotten fiction about the undead, I tried very hard to capture some sense of authentic Slavic lore. I like to think that in the process, I became knowledgeable enough to recognize effective use of the source material. More than that, I find this movie accomplishes as much as I ever set out to do, ultimately not much more or less than teaching he moral that the living and the dead are meant to remain apart. If you want “one” movie for Halloween, this one gets my vote, though it’s certainly not the last I’ll be getting to. If nothing else, it’s not like anything you’ve seen or will see again, and from me, that’s the highest compliment. And with that, I’m moving on.

Fiction: The Evil Possum and the Eurypterids part 7!

 For Halloween week, I'm posting the finale of the Evil Possum adventure as a two-parter. I'm putting this up after finishing most of what will be the next installment. By the way, I had a whole vignette for the "state assignments" that didn't get in, also the introduction for Chelsea. As usual, here's links for first and previous installments.

As sunset approached and passe, the great bird walked with Percy down a throughway to the courtyard of the precinct building. “I reviewed your file,” Dhahka Kaan  said. “What’s on record, of course. I will admit, you have come to my attention before. Even for an AI officer, your service is exceptional, for duration alone.”

Percy shrugged. “It’s what I was built for,” he said.

“Even so, there are opportunities,” Kaan said. “It would appear that you were actively turning down promotions.”

“Maybe a few,” Percy said. He looked back at his new partner and the rookie named O’Keefe. The rodent was looking at a small autofabricator, shaped like a globe on a tapered pedestal. He put in a triangular coin, and it discharged the likeness of a finbacked protoreptile. “I stay where I can do the most good.”

“I can appreciate that,” Kaan said. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I have turned down certain opportunities myself. Of course, I hold a place on the City Council. There are people who would have liked to see me in a Directorship. I might still take it, but for now, I have preferred to focus on my ventures. New projects, improvements to my properties, better quality of life for my tenants. Care, that’s the thing. In that, I should like to think, we are the same. Ah, excuse me…”

The bird fished a personal organizer out of his cloak with a tiny mechanical claw. He spoke into it. “Yes, this is Kaan… Of course, I have been briefed… I see, that is unfortunate…”

Percy looked over his shoulder, and found Chelsea also on the phone. “Yes, I handled the account, but I left the administration some time ago… Wait, what?”

Just then, Percy’s wrist organizer buzzed. He swiped to accept. “Hi, Daisy, what’s… I’m sorry, this really isn’t… Hold on, I can’t understand you… Daisy, you gotta calm down, breath like we talk about… Listen, I really don’t have… Waitaminute, you’re where?” He looked over his shoulder. Even from ground level in the courtyard of the precinct building, he could see the Deck looming in the near distance. “Aw, frink…”

* * *

 

Daisy was close to finishing a plate of spaghetti and chili, and Wes was halfway through a salami sandwich, when they first heard sounds like gunfire. She followed his gaze to a bank of screens that were unexpectedly on the same stream. One of the staff brought up the sound.

“…Citizens Net breaking news, we have a live feed from the spire of the Deck where an outbreak of exotic eurypterids was reported earlier, showing what authorities have identified as a decorated Quarantine special agent heroically engaging one of the creatures.” The screen showed what could only be the marsupial fighting an especially large eurypterid covered in strange encrustations in what appeared to be a kitchen. “Any and all citizens in areas affected by the disturbance are advised to remain at a safe distance. Render aid to those who may be injured or in need, but avoid any direct contact with the creature…”

The noises they heard were no longer from the video stream alone. There were crashes, then screams, and then patrons and staff came running, by ones and twos at first, then in a solid wave. The couple at the nearest table retreated, with the young man carefully shielding his partner, moments before their table was completely overturned. Wes leaned out and pulled the woman to marginal safety. She crouched by Daisy’s side as the crowd passed.

No-Hands emptied his revolver point-blank into the carapace of the eurypterid, trying to aim for a suture in the middle. Just one shot brought a spurt of fluid to show that it had penetrated the calcified shell. He swung the cylinder open as he shifted, hoping to find an angle to fire between the segments of the body. He looked up just in time to see the incoming tail spine. It was too late to dodge, but he ducked fast enough that the stinger only tore his vest. However, it snared the strap of one of the Panzerfaust antitank weapons slung over his back. The tail snapped back, dragging him aloft. He swung in tight circles as the tail lashed about, until he was finally flung clear when the strap broke. He went tumbling across the floor, barely ahead of the advancing creature, while the Panzerfaust clattered to one side. When he came to rest, he raised his head long enough to see Wes and Daisy. “Call Percy!” he called out. He discharged his shotgun, but aimed only at the legs and claws. “Tell him I need a decontamination crew and an assault unit with plasma weapons!” That was when the eurypterid came into view, bearing hundreds if not thousands of eggs on its back.

The creature smashed through a chair in its path. It seized another with its claws and lifted it high enough to strike it with its tail. The marsupial barely dodged the chair as it came tumbling straight at him, with enough force to fracture a window behind him. The exertion was enough to scatter several of the globes on its back. The possum snarled and used the shotgun to blast two of them. Wes bent down and picked up another. It was milky but translucent on close examination. Within, he saw a tiny creature no bigger than an ant. It stirred, waving two palps. He crushed it instinctively, all the way down to the squirming kernel of life within. There was a moment of resistance before the unhatched creature was crushed.

“Hurry!” he called to Daisy.

“Just a sec…” She finished the last of her spaghetti, then hurried after him. “Hey, I finally got through to you about not wasting food!” Only then did he realize that he was still carrying his sandwich.

* * *

“That’s it!” Lorne the prep cook said to his partner Jaeckel. “You saw that thing, and that stuff all over it! It’s laid eggs, and if they aren’t all destroyed, they’ll turn into more of those things! We gotta do something!”

“Do what? For who?” Jaeckel said. “The network said not to get involved! And what would we do, anyway? Maybe we could kill it, but how would we deal with the eggs?” Even as he spoke, they both looked toward a boiling pot, and a serving cart beside it.

* * *

The first the select patrons on the upper level heard or saw of the battle was a rush of less distinguished patrons scrambling up the stairs. Most withdrew themselves, sensibly and in good enough order to calm the newcomers. An elderly woman with two younger and well-muscled male companions gave a nod, and the pair headed toward another stair on the far side of the restaurant. Their final retreat ended as they reached a crowd of patrons pressed against a locked door that opened onto an actual, unenclosed balcony.

The expectant fellow patron spoke to Daisy as they came up. “I’m Mariyah,” she said. “This is my husband, Jonny. Say… were you and that nice man paired by state assignment? No offense, that’s how we met…”

“No, we hooked up after work,” Daisy said. “You know, the old-fashioned way… Best thing that ever happened, isn’t it… Wes?” She looked around, but he was nowhere to be seen.

The marsupial continued his retreat across the restaurant, while the patrons made their way to the stairs. The advancing eurypterid made a whirring sound with its mouthparts, the first sound he had heard beside the clicking of their claws. It was the challenge of one rival to another, the best it could offer against the small creature that somehow bore the odor of four slain brothers and even two of its sisters. He roared in answer, just as the three-fingered claw that served as his right hand snared a ring on the side of his artificial leg. It was enough to make the creature veer to one side, already recognizing that the little not-quite-prey was reaching for something it had confidence in. A chamber swung out from the side of his leg, ejecting a spent case. He started to reach for his bandoleer, but he already knew it would be empty. He roared again, louder, irritated at his miscalculation rather than his failure. From the other direction, he saw two well-dressed gentlemen approaching.

With the few seconds and short space the diversion had bought, No-Hands unlimbered his remaining Panzerfaust. It was more than two-thirds of his half-meter height, with a nearly cylindrical incendiary warhead the size of a soda can. He took aim, but shook his head.  “Disable fire suppression systems for Mile High!” he called out. In place of the shaped-charge weapon, he drew another that had an incendiary warhead. He fired to one side, straight at an abandoned cart with a half-dozen bottles of wine. The warhead went straight for its target; a belching jet of flame went the other way, scorching the carpet. In another fraction of a second, he might have caught the foe in the flames. But what he did was good enough: An eruption of blue flame and shattered glass that quickly ran from one side of the restaurant to the other.

The eurypterid stopped in its tracks, its mouthparts whirring. The two gentlemen reached into their jackets and each drew an identical weapon. The marsupial bounded into view, and they both paused when he shouted, “Do not fire! The creature must be destroyed with its young!” The evidently senior man narrowed his eyes and nodded. The creature buzzed its mouthparts one last time, before lumbering back onto its own trail of destruction.

It was at almost that moment that Daisy’s scream came reverberating up from the level below…

And Percy zeroed in on Wes, leaning over the rail of a balcony 1400 meters in the air.

Featured Creature: The one that remade Steve McQueen

 

Title: The Blob

What Year?: 1988

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’m into the final stretch of my Halloween lineup, and I was definitely ready for more entries in this feature in particular. As it happens, what I came up with included another 1980s-‘90s remake, following my review of the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead, which got me thinking semi-seriously about the possibilities of a full-fledged lineup. I don’t see that in the cards, in part because some of the best examples are ones I’ve already reviewed (see for example Invaders From Mars). Still, two in a row is something, and a good further indicator of how good the vintage remake wave could be. I present The Blob, 1980s version, and it is so much better.

Our story begins with a small town, some assorted teen angst, and a falling star. Soon, the focus shifts to a cheerleader, her date, and a long-haired biker who seems to be trying to rebel without actually attracting attention to himself. When the trio discover a hobo attacked by a fist-sized mass of pink slime, they rush him to the hospital. Alas, by the time the inattentive doctors get to the victim, the ooze had consumed him and makes short work of the would-be boyfriend. The cheerleader and the biker try to warn the town, while the slime continues to grow in size. Meanwhile, a group of government agents in biohazard suits arrive, quickly placing the town under quarantine. It’s up to the two youths to stop the creature and save the town. But will the cheerleader’s little brother be the next victim?

The Blob was a 1988 remake of the 1958 Steve McQueen film of the same name. The film was produced by Chuck Russell, from a script cowritten with Frank Darabont. The lead roles of Brian and Meg were given to Kevin Dillon and Shawnee Smith, then roughly 23 and 19, with Joe Seneca as the agent Meddows and Paul McCrane of RoboCop as Deputy Briggs. Extensive effects were provided by a team led by Tony Gardner, who went on to work in films such as Darkman, Army of Darkness and Batman And Robin. (Can’t win them all…) The movie was filmed beginning in early 1988, and released by TriStar in August of the same year. It was judged a commercial failure, with a box office of $8.2 million against an estimated $10M budget. The film received fair to good reviews from contemporary and later fans and critics, with some making favorable comparisons to the original. It has received multiple home video releases, including Blu Ray releases in 2014 and 2019.

For my personal experiences, this was a movie I first looked up right after I started Netflix. To my further recollection, I requested it and the original and watched both in one night. I vividly remember the first one as simply unwatchable, with Steve McQueen being out of place in his role and everyone else being painfully inept. By comparison, the remake was a riproaring ‘80s monster movie, not just for its effects but a quite good cast who generally look the right age for their roles. I’ve come back to it regularly as a genuine favorite, but have never given that much thought to it as review material. This is the kind of movie that goes over my radar. It’s remained readily available. It’s well-regarded among anyone who would appreciate this kind of movie at all. If it comes to that, it really didn’t even do that badly at the box office, to the extent that it earned back 4/5ths of its official budget where plenty of far more expensive movies (see Memoirsof an Invisible Man) didn’t even get halfway.

Moving to the movie itself, the thing that inevitably dominates discussion is the effects. This is where the movie is truly irreproducible. If it had been made much later, there would inevitably have been pressure to use CGI, which I personally think could at least have worked better when the medium was at the stylized level of The Abyss and Terminator 2. The real “problem” is that this would have cost enough to transform it into a “high profile” release, which as we shall see is not what the movie was or should have been. On consideration, it’s debatable whether it would have worked much earlier. The inarguable greatest strength of the effects and the movie itself is that the creature effects are either “practical” rigs that can interact directly with the cast or done artfully enough to look like they are part of the live-action frame. To achieve such results, especially on this movie’s budget, was something the effects guys had been working toward well into the ‘80s golden age. This is also as good a point as any to mention the violence/ gore, really almost free of blood. The body horror here reached an abstract level rarely approached (only Splinter comes readily to mind), with bodies violently mutilated like Briggs/ McCrane and a hapless handyman, or transformed beyond recognition like an ill-fated projectionist.

This all easily overshadows the characters and story. This is something where the movie sets itself up, drawing heavily on cliches both new and old. This contributes to a weak opening act, complete with a tiresome urban legend and a lover’s lane kill. In my estimation, things start to click with the scene in a hospital, which offers a relatively early take on realities that are now all too familiar. What’s most intriguing is that the still-small blob actually displays a degree of intelligence and stealth, enough to take advantage of the stupidity and indifference of human society. I have always been a little disappointed that the tensions and  satirical possibilities of these early aren’t explored in the rest of the movie. Fortunately, it does give nuance to the main characters that will pay off, and even a sympathetic angle on the skeptical authority figures. The movie quickly gets in gear, and from there is only slowed down by the overdone coverup subplot. By the time the blob reaches the movie theater, the movie is running on adrenaline and nihilism, except that we can relate well enough to the cheerleader and her kid brother as they run for it.

Now it’s time for the “one scene”, and there’s one that’s been off the charts since I first heard of the movie. In the midst of the blob’s attack on the diner, a not-quite matronly waitress runs off on her own. She makes her way to a phone booth, of the kind the Christopher Reeve Superman movies acknowledged were getting irrelevant. She has the sense to dial the sheriff, who has been her maybe love interest. By the time she gets through, the blob has surrounded the phone booth and begun probing the openings. It’s incredibly intense and claustrophobic, augmented but not driven by an impressive display of effects. What’s most interesting on that front is that there’s a sense of the blob’s limitations; it may act like a fluid, but it’s subject to viscosity and a sort of surface tension that slows down its advance. The line goes dead, just before the waitress and the viewer sees exactly what has become of the sheriff. It’s the last straw of despair that sets the tone of the scene, even before the booth gives literally all at once, with one last pitiful glimpse of a mop of hair in the midst of the swirling slime.

In conclusion, all I can say is that I really don’t have any more to say. I suppose it might seem like I’m being a little hard on this one. To me, this is in acknowledgment of its flaws, as well as the simple fact that it’s not quite up to the standards of the very best 1980s-‘90s remakes, notably The Thing and Night of the Living Dead. With further hindsight, this is a film whose legacy is what it should have been, a “classic” in its right but still a “minor” one. For a film made at a high point for the genre and the effects profession, 2^nd tier is more than good enough. I for one am happy enough to have reviewed a good movie, because oh boy, have I  seen a lot of the other kind.

Image credit VHS Openings Wiki.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Invicta vs. Imperial mixed lot!

 

It's getting close to Halloween, and I haven't yet done my dino blog for the month. I decided it was time to do something I've had for a little while. About a month ago, I ordered a lot of three dinos, mainly because I recognized one as of much more value than the others. What I got was a group more eclectic than a lot of the mixed army man lots I have. To kick things off, here's a pic of the one actually worth something.

This guy is a Baryonyx from Invicta, dated 1989 per Dinosaur Toy Blog. We last met this manufacturer with the plesiosaur last month. The company is a UK manufacturer, best known for selling to and through the British Museum. This was of further note as probably the first toy/ collectible to portray the species and by extension a "modern" spinosaur (see the Spinosaurus post), which many consider to be among the manufacturer's best. I had long since figured out that that these command some of the highest prices of any vintage dinos, usually with an extra hit for overseas shipping.  The upshot was that the Baryonyx alone was easily greater than the total price for the group put together. Here's some more shots of what I got.

Overall, this one is a nice enough find, but not really living up to its reputation. The best thing I can say is that it arrived in good condition, albeit with a gritty feel. It also gives good texturing for the skin, and a fair likeness of the head. As a nice extra touch, it's sculpted with a fish in one hand. But then there are things that are just unnecessary strangeness. The nostril is too far back on the head, for example, and the claws on the hand don't look quite right. The egregious problem is the feet, which are much too small and shaped so oddly they don't even match each other. What it feels like overall is something made too late and too early. It's bigger than a Marx dino, without being anymore playworthy, while still lacking the accuracy and overall quality that would come into play in another decade. Here's a closeup to show what I mean about the feet.

And here's a shot with the plesiosaur.

The other two were from a brand I have long been familiar with, Imperial. I mentioned them in my post on "bigmouth" dinos, the cheapest of the cheap vintage dinos, as well as the mystery Godzilla knockoff. I described Imperial as a maker of "bigmouth" dinosaurs, but I have gone back and forth whether their products deserve what that label means to me. They certainly made dinos and other creatures that look like bigmouths, but there are certain characteristics that are difficult to confirm or rule out without direct handling. As it happened, the lot was filled out with not one but two Imperial dinos. Here's the first, a stegosaur.

Grr. Rawr. I must be British because I'm not showing my teeth.

This one shows the Imperial style. It's clearly cheap, but not egregiously so. Conspicuously absent is the open, hollow mouth of a "bigmouth" dino. The material reflects the intermediate quality, flexible without being entirely rubbery. It's just good enough that I don't have a lot to say. Not compared to the motherlode...

This guy was one I ran across in research for the "bigmouth" post, and the pictures I found left me wondering if I might have owned it. I specifically remembered having a very large dino of the bigmouth type, with a yellow and green paint job. This one came closer than anything else I could confirm existed, especially in the color. Beyond that, it was clearly a successful design that still gets decent prices. Alas, even a cursory inspection confirmed this was not the dino I remembered having, and undoubtedly of far better quality. In particular, while it is sculpted with an open mouth, the internal space is cordoned off. Here's one more pic.

In the process of this post, I dug up a little more material I decided could wait for another day. What invited further attention was the perfectly unthreatening posing of those thin, little arms. It's so ineffectual, it calls to mind any number of stereotypes (not to mention the saga of When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth). As I pondered it, I realized I was feeling a certain deja vu, and that was when I thought of this.; image credit Joe A Day.

This is the GI Joe Dino Hunter playset, released in 1992 as a preemptive Jurassic Park cash in. I personally have no recollection of it, though I remember well the pitiful state of the final days of the Joe line. (I kept buying them anyway...) Among the few who know about it, this is remembered not just as a low point for GI Joe (really not even that low if you really remember), but one of the most notorious low-end dinos of all time (and one of the most expensive if you try to get it). Once I thought of this angle, the first thing I wondered was if Hasbro had simply bought up a stock of the Imperial dinos for the set. On examination, there were quite clear differences, especially the crossed arms, which if possible make the dino look even more ludicrous. On the other hand, the resemblance is far too strong to doubt that this is a direct ripoff. Just how Hasbro could have come to the point of stealing from Imperial is a whole other mindboggling can of worms. For extra hilarity, here's the box art.

And now, of course, I had to have a shot with the Truckstop Queen, with the Couch Mark 2. Holy kaka, this thing is big!

And the Duchess aka Connie...

"He's all apex predator to me!"

And with that, I'm wrapping this up. It's just enough dinos for a month that's been very busy, and I have plenty more lined up. That's all for now, more to come!

Super Movies! The one with a killer robot vs. a baseball bat

 

Title: Hardware aka MARK 13

What Year?: 1990

Classification: Improbable Experiment

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

 

As I write this, I’ve been doing a Halloween lineup, with some of the best and worst movies I have ever considered at all. I have also been debating the future of this feature in particular, which has finally been closing in on the kind of numbers where I have considered retiring a feature. This brought me to one particular movie that I have had backlogged for a long time, in part because I never quite decided where it belonged. My very belated decision was that it belonged here, and conversely, that I needed to cover this one before I could count this feature complete. With that, I present Hardware, one of the strangest movies I have ever encountered, and one I still can’t say if I consider bad, good or just over my head.

Our story begins with a masked wanderer returning from a desert wasteland to a very cyberpunk city. We learn he is a soldier named Mo, who collects various debris as a sideline. His latest find is a robotic skull that he decides to keep as a gift to his lady friend Jill, an artist who makes sculpture from scrap. She’s happy to take it for her latest work, but it turns out there are problems. First, the creepiest of an impressive rogues’ gallery of disreputable characters has bugged her apartment. Second, the skull is actually a functioning prototype of an advanced combat robot. In short order, the bot manages to summon or reassemble its remaining parts and restore itself to functionality. The machine stalks the lady through her apartment, seemingly prolonging the cat-and-mouse antics while efficiently eliminating any males who try to enter or intervene. It all comes down to a showdown between a damaged bot and the lady. Can she prevail, or has technology finally outmatched the wooden baseball bat?

Hardware was a 1990 British/ American sci fi film written and directed by Richard Stanley, funded by executive producers Harvey Weinstein. Similarities to a 1980 story from the comic 2000 AD led to a copyright infringement suit by Fleetway Comics, which ended with the comic being acknowledged as the basis for the film in later releases. The film starred Stacey Travis as Jill and Dylan McDermott as Mo, with William Hootkins, best known as Porkins in the original Star Wars,  as a voyeur known as Wineberg. The film earned an estimated $5.7 million in a limited US theatrical release, against a budget of $1.5M. Richard Stanley became inactive after the failure of 1996’s Island of Dr. Moreau, which he was originally chosen to direct from his own script. In 2017, Stanley confirmed that Travis had been a victim of harassment and retaliatory blackballing by Harvey Weinstein. The movie went on to be a “cult” film, despite (if not because of) negative contemporary reviews and legal issues that limited its availability on home video. Its most significant authorized disc release was by Severin Films in 2009.

For my experiences, I first caught wind of this one from one or two very favorable reviews. On further investigation, I was able to obtain it for a decent price by ordering from Europe (see also Allegro Non Troppo and Zombi/ Dawn of the Dead). By happenstance, I watched it for the first time with a friend. By the end, I was ready to apologize, except my friend apparently liked it well enough. At that point, it went to the “maybe” pile. I considered it regularly, both for this and other features, but I didn’t try another viewing until this review. After that, I was very close to throwing it in a quickly growing feature on “worst” movies, not because of my opinion of its quality but for its wild and willful disregard for narrative convention and coherence. On very close consideration, I concluded that this would simply be giving the wrong impression, so I reverted to my existing plan to cover it here. One more thing I will get out of the way off the bat is that this is the most unpleasantly scandal-plagued movie I have encountered after Brainstorm, and the rematch got even more uncomfortable when I more carefully considered the character of “Wineberg”. The only thing I will add on this vein is that Ms. Travis did have a decent career after this movie, mainly in TV roles, proving that scum can’t keep people down entirely.

Moving to the movie itself, what truly settled its place here is that it does indeed look very much like a comic book, perhaps more than any movie I have covered outside of The Punisher, Creepshow and maybe Lady Snowblood. This shows in any number of bold, jarring visuals (including a surprising amount of religious imagery), and also in a deceptive attention to detail. The ultimate result is that the movie’s world is for long stretches at least as interesting as the story and characters. The desert landscapes, filmed in Morocco, are bleak and desolate, yet purer than the grimy, crowded cityscape. There’s extra entertainment in the in-universe TV and radio broadcasts, highlighted by Iggy Pop as “Angry Bob”. What’s less fortunate is that there’s still not much here that you couldn’t have found in a late 1980s/ early ‘90s comic book. Then the biggest problem of all is that if this was a comic, it could easily be knocked out in 10 or 20 pages, where the movie keeps straining to turn a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode’s worth of good material into 94 minutes of running time.

Then the centerpiece is the lady and the robot, and they are truly equal. Jill/ Travis is spunky yet nuanced, without needing to intimidate or abuse men. What’s most impressive is that she truly feels at home in an apartment full of gadgets and junk, further suggesting that the TV format was always best for the actress and perhaps the director as well. As for the robot, what’s both most intriguing and increasingly frustrating is that it doesn’t really “look” like anything. A point in the thing’s favor is that there’s some ambiguity how much of what we see is original specs, damaged components or bits and pieces assimilated from Jill’s junk pile. That sets off the thought in my mind that this could have been better if the thing actually turned her own power tools against her. When the pair match wits, there’s plenty of very believable tension further aided by an unmistakable sense of malign intelligence and possible sadism from the machine. The one part where one must suspend disbelief or write this off is the ludicrous final battle, which honestly, seriously sees Jill armed only with a bat. The weapon is so obviously ineffective that she would surely be better off trying to stab what’s left into an eye or one of the visible joints, but the storyboarding follows the absurd premise through right to the end.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and what I’m going with is the demise of Wein Wineberg. After Jill’s first encounter with the bot, she very grudgingly accepts the creep’s help. They quickly realize that the machine has somehow disappeared. Eventually, Wineberg thinks to open the blinds. Even though Jill has specifically said the bot couldn’t have left the apartment, its glowing eyes are looking straight back at him from the other side of the blinds. What follows is easily the most gruesome and prolonged kill of the movie, and I can’t avoid taking it as a sure sign that the filmmaker was already fed up with the Hollywood “mainstream”.

In closing, I come back to the rating, which is one more reason I chose to keep this one in this feature. At the proverbial end of the day, I simply don’t like this movie. On the other hand, I certainly can’t say it’s “bad”, and I certainly respect those who do like it. Ultimately, I’m not going to judge any further, especially after giving a good review to Dr. Moreau, which I still consider among the very best I’ve reviewed at all. (If it comes to that, the very best are probably here in this feature.) If my forewarnings haven’t turned you off, and if you can find this damn thing, by all means give it a look. It deserves that much, and even if you’re disappointed, you certainly won’t forget it.