No Good Very Bad Movies 19: The one that Eddie Murphy hated

 

Title: The Golden Child

What Year?: 1986

Classification: Mashup/ Runnerup/ Evil Twin

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/3)

 

If there’s one thing that the history of this blog will show, it’s that I go easy on a lot of objectively terrible movies. With this feature in particular, I mostly haven’t even been scraping for the bottom (in no small part because I already hit it with Ingagi). Instead, I have focused on the obscure, unusual and even underrated, which has kept it relatively easy to keep what passes for my sanity. With this review, as my count approaches 20, I am declaring myself over it. From here on in, there will still be some good or “so bad it’s good” movies on the table, but my focus is going to be the ones I would go out of my way to give the hate they deserve. I’m starting with one  I had in mind from very early on, a film no less than Eddie Murphy described as a piece of kaka. I present The Golden Child… and you can probably guess the twist, Eddie Murphy was the star.

Our story begins in the mysterious lands of the East, where a band of bad guys storm a monastery to capture a very holy little boy. We then jump to the big city, where a detective allegedly specializing in missing children cases actually proves pretty good at his job until the script dictates that he should be funny. When one of the kids he’s looking for turns up dead, he’s approached by a mysterious Asian lady who insists that the killers are the same band that kidnapped the child monk. She reveals that the child is the avatar of good, destined to save the world, while his captors are determined to kill him but can only do so with black magic. Our hero joins the quest, fighting his way through goons at home and abroad. But the arch villain is no mere mortal gangster or fanatic, but a supernatural shapeshifter. To save the kid, the detective must face the embodiment of evil- to an ‘80s pop soundtrack!

The Golden Child was a 1986 action/ fantasy film from Paramount Pictures, officially in collaboration with Eddie Murphy Productions. The film was directed by Michael Ritchie from a script by Dennis Feldman with Eddie Murphy in the lead role of Chandler Jarrell, after the script was reportedly offered to John Carpenter (see They Live) and Mel Gibson respectively. Charles Dance was cast as the villain Sardo, with Charlotte Lewis as the romantic interest Lee Nang and Victor Wong as a mystic. Special effects were provided by ILM, including a stop motion/ go motion demon by Phil Tippett (all hail Phil). The movie was a commercial success, earning over $149 million against an estimated $25M budget. However, the movie received mixed reviews, and was publicly criticized by Murphy, Dance and Feldman. Its release came several months after that of Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China, also featuring Wong, which went on to last “cult” popularity. The Golden Child is available for streaming on multiple platforms.

For my experiences, this is a movie I probably would never have bothered to watch if I hadn’t seen it mentioned in a book on ILM. Even then, I didn’t give it a look until it turned up on TV. My immediate reaction was disappointment and vague irritation at what is at face value no more or less than a mediocre and very forgettable film. Over time, however, it continued to cross my mind, enough to look it up again once or twice before the viewing for the present review. It was hindsight and maturity that made me start to see this movie as something beyond the sum of its parts, not just bad and badly dated but self-important, ignorant, and even vile. Once I thought of this feature, I never questioned that I would be coming for it.

Moving forward, the very odd thing that only crossed my mind well into this review is how much this has in common with Big Trouble In Little China. I really am a lot less familiar with that film than this one, so I won’t really comment on this, beyond the fact that if anything, it’s Carpenter whose actions seem suspect. What is inarguable even from very casual consideration is that both films offered the same things, including prominent exoticism of Oriental cultures, and this one crashed and couldn’t even burn. It has a good cast, including a fair selection of Asian American talent, a decent picture of Asian religion and mythology, and absolutely the best special effects anyone could have gotten, yet it simply fails to do anything memorable with them. A definite aggravating factor is the egregiously '80s soundtrack, which repeatedly ruins what would be good, atmospheric shots and scenes. The most inexplicable failure is Tippett’s Sardo go-motion monster, which should be the equal of Dragonslayer’s Vermithrax. Maybe the horned humanoid base design makes it too Christianized, maybe the urban, daylight setting doesn’t set the right atmosphere. My verdict, however, is that the story and direction simply waste it, to the point that you can’t really see the damn thing most of the time it is on screen, and this is not a case where less is more.

Then the real ground zero is Eddie Murphy. It’s painfully obvious that those responsible for this film simply had no idea what to do with him, a common denominator with the likes of Jaws3 and Superman 3. This gets absolutely painful in his scenes with the Asian cast, which far too often amount to two stereotypes in one. What I continue to find bothersome, especially compared to the other entries I have mentioned, is that he should have had far more leeway than other African-American actors whose talent was wasted in films like this. He was the top billed star. The role was clearly and heavily re-written for him. His own damn company with his own damn name is in the damn credits. Surely, he would have been in a position to put his foot down or punch out. Instead, he contributes greatly to the willful effort to turn his character from a sensitive and competent professional in the opening scenes into an actually racist idiot in the finale. Then there’s the “goofy” laugh, most prominent at his worst moments, which is up there with the lesbians in Prey and the narrator in Ingagi as the most irritating sound I’ve heard in any movie I’ve reviewed. With the full benefit of hindsight, it’s an all-too-believable preview of the arc of his subsequent career.

Now, it’s time for the “one scene”, and I’m going with the only one that continues to buy any goodwill from me. Into the first act, we find the kid left alone with just one of his guards by Sardo, who as played by Dance (by now probably best known for his bonkers turn in The Last Action Hero) is by far the most watchable character in the film. The guard left behind is interesting in his own way, an evidently simple-minded goon with a completely unexplained makeup gimmick that makes him look like a stereotyped caveman. (The one other goon that looks at all non-human is a freaky guy who favors a flail weapon.) While the goon plays with a slingshot, the kid uses is powers to make a soda can fly back out of the garbage. The can then crushes flat before transforming into a little stop-motion man, with the top as an oversized head. Show-tune music starts playing as the character dances, more like a puppet under the control of the kid than an entity given a life of its own, but that and other points are ambiguous. It’s by far the most impressive effects sequence of the film, and enough to get a laugh out of the child-like goon (one more  romanticized “feel-good” touch that pushes my hair trigger). Then a foot comes down, suddenly enough to be surprising even if you know what’s coming, crushing the little man flat. The camera shifts almost directly up to reveal Sardo, looking more threatening than usual. It’s a very good moment, but more than usual, it’s more frustrating than the ones that are actually bad.

In closing, the one thing I will freely admit is that this is one where I second-guessed myself more than once. I’ve been working further ahead than usual, which gave me time for some feedback in advance, including a few people who like this one. I feel in about the same position I was with Sleepwalkers; nobody’s been saying it’s great, but it’s never had the notoriety of “worst”. The one last thing I felt a need to do was watch Big Trouble In Little China, after finishing most of this review including certain comments above. What stood out to me is that Carpenter’s film isn’t much “better”, least of all in its treatment of Asian peoples and cultures. Yet, it is beyond doubt more effective on almost every level, and to me the most striking difference is that it never sacrifices dignity for supposed humor, a Faustian bargain that is exponentially more ill-advised when dealing with other people’s cultures. That in itself should be lesson enough to take away, yet it keeps getting lost on the studio system, especially as they meddle with remakes and reboots. With that, I for one am done.

Fantasy Zone: The other one that could have killed Disney

 

Title: Return To Oz

Title: Return To Oz

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m just past an arbitrary milestone for my number of reviews. With that out of the way, I’m back to this feature, which I haven’t decided whether to continue. What was decided long before was that at least one more movie would certainly be here, either the most famous or infamous and among the last in the timeframe I’m covering. It also made me realize I might have underestimated even Krull as the biggest money-loser in the ‘80s fantasy boom. I present Return To Oz, one of the first examples of a belated sequel/ reboot that is absolutely better than the original. Because I didn’t go out on a limb far enough giving Island of Dr. Moreau a good review…

Our story begins with a girl named Dorothy regaling her family with her adventures in a land called Oz, until they send her to an insane asylum. With a little help from a mysterious friend, she escapes and finds herself back in Oz, along with Toto and a suddenly talkative chicken named Billina. All is not well, however, as the Emerald City has been conquered by the Nome King, with the aid of a witch named Mombi and her minions the Wheelers. When the witch tries to collect Dorothy’s head, she escapes with the aide of the windup man Tik Tok, an animated effigy named Jack Pumpkinhead and a flying chimera of animal remains and furniture dubbed the Gump. Their escape takes them to the realm of the Nome King, who reveals that he has collected the rightful king Scarecrow as an ornament. To free him, the group must guess which ornament is their friend, or become ornaments themselves- and the Nome King still has  chip on his shoulder and tricks up his sleeve!

Return To Oz was a 1985 live-action fantasy film by Disney, loosely based on the second and third books of the series by L. Frank Baum. The project was reportedly conceived by Walter Murch in 1980 as an adaptation independent of the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz. Murch was ultimately brought on as director, as well as credited cowriter of the script. The film starred Fairuza Balk (ironically in Dr. Moreau) in her debut as Dorothy, with Nicol Williamson as the Nome King and Pons Maar as the chief Wheeler. Extensive practical and stop-motion effects were provided by Jim Henson Productions (see The Dark Crystal) and Will Vinton Studios. Bryan Henson performed as both puppeteer and voice actor for Jack Pumpkinhead. The film was possibly Disney’s greatest commercial failure of the era, earning $11.1 million against a budget estimated as up to $28M, a proportionately if not absolutely greater loss than The Black Cauldron. It went on to much greater popularity on TV and home video. It is currently available for streaming on Disney Plus and other platforms.

For my experiences, I can just barely remember seeing Wizard Of Oz sometime in early childhood, and I definitely recall seeing the very end of this one sometime in the early 1990s. The trail really starts for me when I tried reading the original books in college. From that experience, I quickly concluded that Baum didn’t hit his stride until Ozma of Oz and probably didn’t improve much after that. It was still quite a while before I got to this movie, enough that I’m not quite sure how much I had heard about it before I saw it. What I immediately concluded and have never wavered from is that this is the most faithful, definitive and flat-out best Oz movie that there has ever been and ever will be. I was further impressed by just how often I have met people who were absolutely freaked out by it, to the point that I have literally heard it mentioned spontaneously more often than Night of the Living Dead. To get a reputation like this obviously doesn’t mean doing everything right, but at least hitting the right combination of wrong to entrance and/ or terrify generations of kids who might have been too young for any incarnation of the franchise.

Moving forward, this is one where it’s easy to be either at a loss for words or get lost trying to describe everything. I find it easiest to look at the most striking characters. The obvious one is the Nome King, portrayed with a combination of animatronics, Claymation and suitwork, seemingly an animistic spirit or demon more than a corporeal entity despite his very imposing final form. I find Tik Tok, portrayed by a crew led by actor Sean Barrett and gruelingly put-upon gymnast Michael Sundin, just as impressive in his own way. He’s taciturn behind his surface charm, with a deceptive non-anthropomorphic streak; if it comes to that, he’s convincingly formidable as a literal one-man army. But to me, the most intriguing are the Wheelers. They are vastly more menacing than their counterparts, yet they are never entirely out of place in Oz. This balance owes a great deal to the good effects and costumes, which allow seamlessly convincing movement with a design that could easily have gone horribly wrong (and may well have given this production’s luck). Better still is the truly deranged performance from Maar (apparently in The Blob and one or two more I mean to get to), literally giggling with menace that doesn’t take away from his unnervingly childlike personality.

On the other side, if there is one, even I can’t avoid the feeling that the story is the weak point here. While it manages to cover the story arc of the strongest of the books, there’s still a lot that’s left out or watered down, notably a much longer and darker tale of a royal family snared in the Nome King’s collection. I find further dissatisfaction with the amalgamation that is Mombi, even with the infamous gallery of heads that usually gets hailed as the darkest moment straight from the books; among other things, the original character is quite different from the witch, vain where the other is calculating, and it makes a big difference in the impact. Even aside from such liberties, this gets unaccountably thin, all the more so as it is in many ways longer than it needs to be. The final act could be counted as a bust if not for the fine performances and mindboggling effects put into the Nome King. He’s a true agent of chaos, by turns charming, angry and coldly malicious, ultimately no less frightening in his final transformation than he can be simply musing and smoking his pipe, There’s an extra surreal moment when he reveals the ruby slippers, which even I forgot aren’t really in the books.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s a favorite of mine right in the book. During the escape from Mombi, Tik Tok and Jack (whom I had in mind specifically when reviewing A Quiet Place) are assembling the Gump. Tik Tok says with his usual solemnity, “Gump the head in the front and tie Jack’s feet together.” To me, what’s most amusing is that the first part sounds like it makes sense, but really doesn’t. Jack, as trusting here as he is in the books, merely repeats, “Tie my feet together.” While Jack fares as badly as could be expected, Tik Tok begins lurching about and babbling randomly. When Dorothy enters, she immediately diagnoses that his brain has wound down while his voice is still running. When Jack is confused, she muses matter-of-factly, “People do it all the time!”

In closing, all I have to add is that, because of some other unexpected developments, I’m finishing this review far enough ahead of time that I might have another done by the time it gets posted. If so, it will be a fitting close to this little feature, for the time being. It’s the essential example of everything weird, terrifying and great in 1980s fantasy. In my own assessment, it is the kind of movie that would usually by above my radar, despite its disastrous history, which I suppose is the main reason I didn’t get to it long before now. As I’ve been reminding people lately, I do watch and review good movies, and this was a true pleasure. And with that, I am done.

Rogues' Roundup: Gumby and Pokey unboxing!

 

In doing this blog, one of the givens is that there's a lot of random. That applies with my toy reviews, though it's usually not as obvious just because I'm usually already backlogged. This time around, I have a new and genuinely unexpected acquisition, which I found while at a certain chain that's both a restaurant and a store. By my experience, it leans towards what I would call "pseudonostalgia", licensed merchandise and knockoffs based on old toy lines and properties that aren't direct reproductions or reissues. I wasn't surprised to see a certain familiar pair on sale, which interested me more than anything else. Here they are together on card.

These are, of course, Gumby and Pokey. What stands out from hindsight is that their whole role in my childhood amounted to pseudonostalgia. I think I first learned about them when I was given a set of quite small figures of the pair sometime in the mid- to late 1980s, in all likelihood from an adult who was open to the nostalgia angle. (I still have them, but decided not to include them here.) Apart from that, I can only recall seeing the characters in a few ads, then mainly in already old comic books. I did certainly see other claymation as a kid, including the Will Vinton ads and specials and probably Davey And Goliath, as well as one or two odd sightings where even my recollections are shaky. Somewhat later, I watched Wallace And Gromit, a springboard to my love of stop-motion. Still, I only remember watching the genuine Gumby article in the last few years, and I have to say I've been jarringly underwhelmed. Apparently, what I've watched are 1950s shorts that preceded the actual show, which would presumably have been more polished. Even so, it's a weak nucleus for a property that was still considered relevant in the 1980s, let alone today.

With all that aside, there's still no question that these guys are just plain cool. The larger scale is definitely an improvement, bringing out both the dynamic simplicity of the designs and the smaller details that would be easy to miss, like Pokey's ears and the suggestion of a '50s hairstyle on Gumby. Here's a few pics of them unboxed.

Yeah, this doesn't work for either of them...

And here's a pic with the Truckstop Queen! She might be taller than Gumby, but I'm calling it even, and as I've frequently pointed out, she's huge.

Besides being big, these guys are advertised as poseable. It's on the same lines as proto-action figures of the 1950s and '60s, presumably with wire inside the rubber. From limited testing, they work well enough. Gumby can assume a range of poses and even stay on his feet. Pokey is wobbly by comparison, but he can at least assume a realistic pose. Here they are posed.

And here's a view from the rear.

With that, I've really gone as far as I can with this. It's been an actual quick post, which I'm more than satisfied with. Notwithstanding the perils of pseudonostalgia, these guys do bring back at least a small part of my own childhood. Even without that, they represent a milestone in the evolution of an artform I l love. And how about a few more pics with the Queen and Connie... and Kong???

"Sorry, but canonically, you're a kid."

"Giddyup? Lady, you're lucky your butt isn't in a pile of clay."

"Forget it, Gumby. He's from when stop-motion was for grownups."

That's all for now, more to come!

Fantasy Zone: The one with were-panthers

 

Title: Cat People

What Year?: 1982

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

With this review, I’m getting into the final stretch of my newest feature, which I haven’t quite decided whether to continue. In the process, I got some material done that I decided I would prefer to wait to post. The double-back brought me to a movie I had wanted to do all along. It’s another example of a movie usually placed in other genres that I consider fantasy, though it’s even further from heroic fantasy than The Gate was. As you might expect, it’s a very unusual film, and you won’t need to check the rating to guess that this is not the same as being good. I present Cat People, a movie so egregiously 1980s it has a David Bowie theme song.

Our story begins with a shot of a desert landscape where a young woman is tied to a gnarly tree as an offering to a black panther. Jump forward, and we meet a lady named Irena invited to New Orleans by her brother Paul. She meets a zookeeper named Oliver and his ambiguous lady friend Alice. Meanwhile, her brother abruptly disappears about the same time the zoo acquires a black panther that mysteriously turns up in a house of ill repute (which incidentally isn’t what zoos do at all). The authorities take a closer look, and conclude that Paul is a serial killer who has been feeding victims to the panther. Before the animal can be destroyed, the cat escapes and Paul reappears to lay it all on the line: They are both cursed to become panthers if they make love with anyone but a member of their own family, and kill to become human again. When Paul is inevitably taken out, Irena must face her choice: Forsake her love for Oliver- or become a man-eating monster!

Cat People was a 1982 horror/ dark fantasy film from Universal, based on the 1942 film of the same name by Val Lewton (see I Walked With A Zombie). The film was directed by Paul Schrader, previously best known as the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, from a script cowritten with cult filmmaker Alan Ormsby (see Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things). The film starred Natassja Kinski as Irena and John Heard as Oliver, with Malcolm McDowell as Paul and Annette O’Toole (see… Superman 3?) as Alice. A score was composed by Giorgio Moroder, including a theme song performed by David Bowie. The movie was a moderate success, earning $21 million against a budget of $12.5M. Contemporary reviews were generally positive; the same commentators described it as either erotic horror or fantasy. Kinski reportedly criticized the film as “manipulative”. Bowie recorded a new version of the theme song for the 1983 album Let’s Dance. The song was featured in the 2017 film Atomic Blonde.

For my experiences, I heard of this film well after I knew of the original, but definitely saw it first. With the benefit of hindsight, the 1942 film is interesting for its atmospheric style and its charmingly mild innuendo. (The 1944 sequel is far more impressive, among other things giving a possible early take on autism.) By comparison, the remake is self-consciously hip right off the drawing board, and it delivers the goods after a fashion. I will freely admit it has fascinated me, enough to inspire one of my more misbegotten fan fiction efforts (also how I first came up with a homothere in an RV). The lingering interest was enough for me to buy it quite a while ago, and then never watch it until I did this review. Time was not kind to it, to say the least, yet it’s still easy to underestimate how odd and wonky it is.

Moving into the movie itself, the central paradox of this movie is that it “feels” far more strange than it looks. While the camerawork is certainly moody, there’s very little of the atmosphere of 1930s-40s horror and “noir”. There’s even less of the choppy, jarring imagery that passed for surrealism in the 1970s and 1980s. The real tone of the visuals is a strange hyperrealism (see also, dear Logos, Shanks) that truly bears out a dark/ urban fantasy designation. This shows particularly in the many shots of the grim and gloomy zoo, all Victorian-era bricks and ironwork that would be Gothic with the capital G if it was in mist and shadows instead of all-too-clear lighting and camerawork. Curiously, there’s no pronounced shift as the film moves to the swamps and woods, which are no less “dark” though symbolically free of the literal cages of civilization. The real contrast comes with the “dream” sequences. Even here, the camerawork is clear and linear, while the barren desert landscape is mockingly vivid. It’s hard to avoid taking it all as a variation on the “noble savage” myth/ archetype, which is simply muddled here.

And that brings us to the common denominator of all the movie’s flaws: There is simply no point that offers more than fleeting moments of humor or fun. It may seem counterintuitive that this would be desirable, and you would be right up to a point. The concept of the story is either pure allegory or just plain stupid; on paper, you can't not play it straight. In practice, however, all this approach does is sink the tale further into self-important angst. It’s difficult to avoid drawing a connection to the ambivalent characterization and performances of the leads, who come across increasingly as self-indulgent and naïve rather than tragic or even likeable. Kinski in particular seems either very uncomfortable or just phoning it in. By striking contrast, McDowell and especially O’Toole are the ones who actually seem to be having fun here, which is exactly where the possibilities of a genuine dark comedy open up. On consideration, this would have been the right tone to give the premise proper cross-examination and development. Do we really know that the transformation won’t wear off? Are there acts that would satisfy both partners without triggering the transformation? And, to state the most prurient implication outright, what really happens if one of the shapeshifters pairs with a human or animal partner in beast mode? It’s absurd and gross, yet it’s the kind of honesty that might have worked.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and I’m going with the one that makes absolutely no sense even by this movie’s standards. As we hit the final act, Paul breaks into a room in Oliver’s house where Irena is staying, a strange and surreal sequence in itself. It’s what follows, however, that turns the dial to Bonkers. Irena has fled, leaving Paul to begin his transformation for no obvious reason. The effects by Tom Burman are truly grueling to watch, at least as good as An American Werewolf In London. Just one detail among many are the claws, which sprout straight from his knuckles. He’s still barely human when Oliver bursts in, enough to cry his name as if rage alone has been enough to drive the metamorphosis (one more intriguing interpretation that gets no help from the movie). We get the one real “noir” moment as Paul faces the were-beast alone in the dark, while Alice belatedly runs for a shotgun. Inevitably, the beast pounces just as Alice breaks in, and what happens isn’t that clear. It all builds up to Irena as she circles back to the ground below the window… and screams.

In closing, I am back to justifying my rating. On paper, this is the kind of movie that isn’t “that” bad on paper or even on first viewing. I will freely agree, there is plenty to like, and as usual, it bears repeating that the true worst of the worst were never meant to be covered on the rating scale I am using here. As time goes by, however, this is exactly the kind of movie where even its good points start to feel deceptive and treacherous. To me, the final verdict is that it is a movie that tried to be “adult” without understanding what makes a truly mature genre film. The predictable result was a film that just seems awkward and silly with hindsight. It remains worth watching, but as a cautionary example more than anything else. With that, I for one am done with it, at least for a while longer.

Image credit Todo El Terror Del Mundo.

The Legion Of Silly Dinosaurs: Winston the Uintathere and friends!

 

It's time for the weekend dino post, and if there's one thing I've made clear, it's that my definition of "dino" isn't limited to dinosaurs even when I'm ranting that they aren't dinosaurs. For the purposes of this feature, the toy dino isn't about the creature but the nature of the toy: cheap, usually small, often outdated, and of course silly AWESOME (the gag I always wanted to do). This time around, I have one that I've had for a while now, and just maybe brought me through some hard times in my life. Here is Winston, the uintathere.

This little guy has a backstory in two parts. The toy is based on Uintatherium, a creature that lived in present-day Utah between 50 and 40 million years ago. It was the first mammal to reach megafauna size, probably about the size of a hippo. While it looks vaguely like a rhino, it was really a separate lineage called Dinocerata that lived and died while the actual ancestors of the rhinoceroses were still the size of pigs. Under further scrutiny, it had a number of features that were unusual for animals of its size, particularly a pair of large teeth with chin flanges to protect them. Even the iconic "horns" were stranger than they look, more like the knobs of a giraffe (of course, I know they're called ossicones) than anything else. It's presumed that they were vegetarians, though omnivory isn't out of the question. Here's a few more pics of Winston.

Now for the toy, I found this little guy at a rock show right at the beginning of 2015, right when I was starting my first job after almost 3 and a half years of searching (see my stalking post). I got him for maybe 50 cents, from a seller who as I recall had a bin of paleo toys. The only identifying mark was an infamous name Jaru, which I'm sure I've featured before. I then decided to take him to my job, which in hindsight was ludicrously tolerant (see the tale of the CVS giant robot). In pretty short order, I set up a little diorama that also included a Diatryma, which lived in about the same time and place, and an anachronistic plesiosaur. Here's a reconstruction of what it would have looked like. Aw, look at the little tree!

"Meat eater, plant eater, can't we all just chill?"

A little later, I got another uintathere as part of a patchisaur set. It was a sculpt I'm sure I had sighted before, bigger than Winston but a lot cruder in appearance. I came up with the name Winnie, which didn't help generate any further affection. Here's a couple pics.

And here's a detail that makes this one semi-traceable, a fairly pointless hollow space in the belly. I suppose it saved a fraction of a penny on plastic, but it's still just odd. I know I've seen the same detail in pics from other collectors, some of which I believe were said to date back to the 1970s. It certainly could have happened...

Then, just a couple months back, I picked up this with most of a gift card. It's from a manufacturer called CollectA, marked year 2017. It's probably the most impressive example yet, which might not be saying much. It's obviously fanciful and a bit wonky, but it certainly gets away from the rhino-with-extra-horns mold. Here's a few pics.

If it seems like I'm not giving the detail I usually do, it's because I'm having to work around the detail. It turns out this thing is anatomically correct, and definitely male, and there are places I don't go. Here's a few more closeups of as much as I care to show.

Frankly, I wasn't comfortable holding it in the places I am here.

And here's a couple pics of the tag.

Not shown: "Small parts, choking hazard." (CHOKE.)

And with that, I'm wrapping this up. It may seem random as usual, but this is one of the things that means a lot more to me than might usually come across. Maybe, just maybe, what I do will make a little more sense. That's all for now, more to come!

No Good Very Bad Movies 18: The one with Jeff Goldblum as an alien

 

Title: Earth Girls Are Easy

What Year?: 1988

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ mashup

Rating: Guinnocent!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

In the course of this feature, something I decided very early on was that it worked better not as an actual “worst” list but as a showcase of some of the stranger movies I run across. These are the likes of Phenomena, Death Bed and Troll, movies so odd and unclassifiable even I couldn’t do much with them anywhere else. This feature has worked all the more for the ones that catch me off-guard enough to require attention on short notice. This time around, I have one that hits that description so well I actually set aside a review already in progress to cover it. Needless to say, this is a weird one indeed, and the weirdest part of all is that on paper, it’s as close as I get to “mainstream”. Here is Earth Girls Are Easy, a romantic comedy with Jeff Goldblum as an alien, which in fair warning is a rare case of equal opportunity cringe.

Our story begins with a group of furry, neon-bright aliens who complain about not having female companionship while they coast through space on a ship whose designers seem to have decided Flash Gordon was too low-key. The adventure begins when they land in the swimming pool of an Earthwoman named Valerie who has broken up with her fiancée over a very indiscrete indiscretion. Though wholly anthropomorphic in anatomy, the extraterrestrials are truly alien, speaking in an unsettling language that seems like a cross between dolphin and velociraptor with occasional infusions of perfectly imitated but clearly imperfectly understood human speech. As usual, they learn the ways of humans, though only the blue guy named Mac makes much headway blending in. Once they assume human form, the three aliens make their way through a night on the town, an encounter with the ex-fiancée and an accidental convenience store robbery, all while a romance blooms between Mac and Valerie. Will he stay, will she go, and will there be one musical number that makes any sense???

Earth Girls Are Easy was a science fiction romantic comedy/ musical made by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group and general operation (see Maximum Overdrive, Leviathan, Conan The Destroyer, etc.) The production was reportedly developed and then dropped by Warner Bros before being picked up by De Laurentiis. The final film was directed by Julien Temple, previously known for short films and music videos, and filmed beginning late 1987. The cast was led by Jeff Goldblum as Mac and Geena Davis as Valerie, previously paired in The Fly, with Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey as the remaining aliens. Julie Brown appeared as Candy Pink, performing the previously-released theme song as well as “Big and Stupid” and “’Cause I’m A Blonde”. Reports emerged of significant editing and reshoots that delayed the film’s release, which ultimately coincided with the bankruptcy of DEG. The film was a box office failure, earning $3.9 million against an estimated $10M budget. It became more popular on home video. It remains available in multiple formats including free streaming from Youtube.

For my experiences, I can barely remember seeing this one advertised on ‘90s TV. My strongest and most relevant memories, however, are seeing ads and perhaps an episode or so of In Living Color, which I now know helped introduce Jim Carrey as well as the Wayans Brothers (see Meteor Man, kiiind of). With that frame of reference, my unavoidable impression is that this is what a feature-length episode of that show would have been like… and that this should have been a much better thing than it is. Aside from that, the main thing I have to say is that I’m doing this review now because I didn’t want to have to come back later; also, I’m trying to go through this in a lot less time and space than I usually would, because I’m off to a very late start.

Moving to the movie, the obvious pros are in the cast. Goldblum and Davis are predictably charming, as they were for Cronenberg. (It crosses my mind, The Fly just might be a case of a movie “too good” for me to review in my usual rounds.) Carrey and Wayans are even more impressive in their own way, to the point that it gets hard to tell their natural performances apart from the quite good practical effects and sound effects. Beyond that, what prevails is an impressive atmosphere of anarchy. The pretense of a plot serves to move from one joke to another. Over-the-top sight gags abound, like a bowling ball rolled straight into a CRT monitor. The musical numbers are surreal, especially an opening scene on the space ship that seems to echo the Star Wars holiday special. Then there is the dream sequence, a very clever parody of 1950s sci fi complete with Robbie the Robot. Alas what it comes down to is that the parts are better than the whole.

On the con side, the common denominator to every con is that this material makes Caveman look nuanced and sensitive. On this movie’s warped terms, the girls aren’t just “easy” but obliviously self-centered. Of course, this is supposed to be a parody, and its chief targets are clearly men, both real and stereotyped. It leads to some clever moments, conspicuously “Big And Stupid”, not incidentally from the same warped mind as “The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun”.  If one’s aspiration is to rise from sketch-format parody to full-fledged satire, however, this should come together into a message or at least a “point”. What we get here feels far too much like trying to have it both ways. It’s all well and good to show women being as superficial and objectifying as men, but neither side can be said to learn from the experience. Even the comparatively functional example of Mac and Valerie, who actually treat each other with respect the whole time, doesn’t seem to rub off on anyone else. Then there is the surreal stick-up by Wayans, which is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the aliens care more about candy than the freely offered cash.

That drops me right in the middle of not just the “one scene” but the one reason I reviewed this movie at all. For context, by the time the final act started, I was paying more attention to a correspondence on other stuff to review, when I looked up and saw Ms. Brown performing “’Cause I’m A Blonde”, an anthem to being obnoxious and very, very dumb and having men reward you for it. The number itself is as indescribable as it should be, in its own way even more mindboggling than “Homecoming Queen”, which somehow has yet to be wiped out of every continuum in the multiverse. What gets odd and increasingly hard to take as part of the joke is how completely the camerawork and choreography fails to make the performer actually attractive. Ms. Brown (who would have been 29 when this was filmed) has the kind of face and figure that would be striking more than “pretty” in ideal circumstances, and this is absolutely not doing her any favors. The real problem is that this comes from nowhere and goes nowhere, by all accounts because it was pushed into the movie to fill time. Then my conclusion about the only way to redeem this as contextualized satire is for someone to shake her and shout what I’m loudly thinking, that she’s just annoying and most of the men being nice to her are either desperate enough to hit on anything with a pulse or just trying to get her to go away.

In closing, this is another movie where I find I don’t have anything to say about the rating. This is the kind of movie that’s weird and wonky yet honest enough to take it or leave it. For myself, I can respect the people who like this movie. I’ll even allow that I would probably appreciate it more if I gave it another look, something I will need quite a bit more time. The real sum of all that’s good and bad is that it got my attention enough to change my plans. And from me, that’s high praise indeed.

The Adventures of Sidekick Carl Part 19!

 Have an installment of Sidekick Carl a little earlier than I have been lately. I swear I'm building up to something. As usual, here's links for first and latest chapters, and how about this week's Play People post?

The shape was pitch black, with luminous, shimmering red eyes. “You found me, and fought your way to me,” it said. “What do you want?”

Constructor’s stern face showed in heroic profile. “I want to know what you want,” he said.

It shrugged with the suggestion of arms. “My ways are not your ways, and yours are not mine,” it said. “I can see far away and far ahead, enough to see your place in the shape of what is to come. It serves my purposes to keep you on one course, and away from others. It is useless to explain more than that.”

 

“Then is it for our good, or our harm?” Constructor pressed.

It shrugged again. “Again, it is useless to explain,” it said. “Even you can see, the evil of one day can be a great good in the next, and what is good for one can be evil for many.”

“Then if you will not explain what you intend,” Constructor said, “I would rather you leave us alone.”

The voice was clearly bemused. “And what would you do to keep me from doing as I please?”

 

Constructor raised his rake. “What I can,” he said. As he spoke, Carl stepped to his side.

“Me too,” Carl said. Then there was laughter, and the eyes flared bright…

 

And Audrey’s kits chirped in approval, the smaller ones cuddling with her piebald mate on his bed. “Mama,” said one of the eldest, “do you think that’s what really happened?”

She bared her teeth. “I’ll ask him some time…”

* * *

 

Carl stepped to one side, examining the shape before him. It was like looking at a painting from an angle, distorting the shape without revealing any corresponding depth. Its form was a tapered body and a round head, with hints of brown or gold. Nothing was more prominent than the luminous red eyes. “So, you stayed after all,” Carl said.

“I could never leave,” the thing called Abl C’Doen said. Its voice was unaccented and neutral, almost but not quite nasal. “By your frame of reference, I am everywhere and nowhere. I can choose only when and where to act. You offered an agreement that I would not involve myself in your world’s affairs again. I have kept my bargain.”

“So you didn’t have anything to do with the Toxo Warriors coming back,” Carl said.

“No more than I did with their existence,” it said. “And before you ask, I do not know who they are or where they are. I could find out, of course, but if I were to share it, our agreement would be void. I will not tempt you before you would choose to ask.”

“That’s all well and good,” Carl said. “We found them before- or the first two, we know that much- and we can find them again. What I want to know is, what are they doing? And who are they working for? You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know something.”

“Naturally, I have insights,” C’Doen answered. “There are certain things that distort what you call time and space in ways that an entity like me can detect in advance. Such a disturbance will come, if the shape of events does not change.”

“Right,” said Carl. “Like, say, if someone rebuilt or reverse-engineered Dr. Hydro’s wormhole generator.”

“It is the likeliest explanation,” C’Doen said. “There are other possibilities I have considered; all of them are even further beyond your knowledge.”

Carl’s helmet hid his face, yet his smile was clear in his voice. “If they make it work, could they threaten you?”

“It would pose a certain risk,” the creature said. “It would be enough to reach the planes where I dwell, or draw me into yours if I did not withdraw myself. Then a being of your world could challenge me, try to take my power or make me their servant. It would by no means be on equal terms, whatever they might imagine; still, it would be a contest on what you could call a level playing field.”

Carl shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like the Toxo Warriors,” he said. “At least not the ones I met. Whatever they were doing wasn’t about money, but it wasn’t about power either. It might be different, if they were working for someone else.”

“I would agree, and I admit you are a better judge of humans than I,” C’Doen said.  “I have considered further, who might think to challenge me. There are not many; some you would know, others you would not.”

“I already have my own list,” Carl said. “Dr. Hydro. Gravatar. Galaxarian. The only problem is, they’re all supposed to be dead. Or do you know something I don’t?”
“I could already tell you more than you know,” C’Doen said. “The price would be what we already discussed.”

Carl nodded warily. “How about this?” he said. “I’ll tell you what we think we know, you tell me if we’re wrong.”

The eyes flared brighter. “That is acceptable.”

“All right,” Carl said. “Gravatar got thrown into interplanetary space when his gravity chariot was damaged. The last anyone knew, he was on a trajectory for the sun at 0.01% of the speed of light. Nobody could prove he really bought it, but if he was coming back, he’d be here by now.”

“True,” C’Doen said with surprising directness.

“Dr. Hydro is pretty much the same deal,” Carl continued. “We don’t know where he went, and he’s tough enough to survive a lot of places he could have gone. But his wormhole generator was smashed, and he never had a way back.”

“True enough,” C’Doen said.

Carl’s eyes narrowed. “Then there’s Galaxarian,” he said. “He was bigger than big when Constructor was just getting started. It took two Hombres Aceros, Constructor and Captain Thunder to bring down his mobile command center. When it did, it came down hard, enough to scatter debris for 800 kilometers, after Constructor said they tore his head off. But… I never heard anything more about the head.”

“You’re on the right track,” Abl C’Doen said. As it spoke, the eyes flared bright. It paused before continuing, “You know, it was because of you that I offered the agreement. I could tell, you are more powerful than you know, and you have grown since then. You can be greater than Hydro, perhaps one day as great as me… if you choose that path.” The eyes glowed brighter, so bright he was blinded for a moment. When his vision cleared, there was only night.

It was just then that Dana leaned out the door of the RV. “Are you coming to bed?” she said.

He looked at her, She wore a basket ball jersey that came to her midriff, and a pair of shorts that just barely covered her hips.

“You bet,” he said. She took his hand and led him inside.

Later, they lay on the dinette that converted into their bed, his head at her feet. He cradled her calves, as long as his upper body. She shifted with a happy sigh, without stirring. Before he drifted to sleep, he realized why he was awake. There was a faint buzz, accompanied by a flashing light covered with duct tape. The RV’s satellite phone was activated. He managed to pick up the audio handset without engaging the viewscreen. For the first few moments, he heard only breathing. That was enough. “Audrey,” he said.

“Carl,” she said. “I talked to Dana… our Dana. She knows more than she said. I told her I could tell. She told me… she knows where the Toxo Warriors might be.”

“Okay,” he said. “What now?”

“I’m going to find them,” she said. “Then, if I can… I’m going to kill them. I need to know… if you’re in.”

He rolled over to gaze at Dana. It took only a moment to say, “Yes.”

No Good Very Bad Movies 17: The one with a head transplant

 

Title: The Brain That Wouldn’t Die aka The Head That Wouldn’t Die

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Anachronistic Outlier

What Year?: 1959 (filming)/ 1960 (copyright)/ 1962 (theatrical release)

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

With this review, I’m back for more actually and allegedly “worst” movies, after a very deep dive into some very notorious material. What I found myself running into frequently were a specialized category within what I call the Anachronistic Outlier: Movies that look and feel like they “should” be from the 1950s that really came out later. There are many reasons for this. Some actually were made in the ‘50s but had delays in production and release that held them back. Others were continuing ‘50s trends, particularly the “monster movie” and the early sword and sorcery wave. Then there were those that are just so rough and outright primitive that they just scream 1950s B-movie even if they date well into the ‘60s. The one that stood out had already intrigued me, enough that I also considered bringing back a retired feature to cover it. Here is The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, a ‘50s movie that came out in the 1960s and feels just a little like 1970s.

Our story begins with a handsome maverick doctor saving a patient while arguing bioethics with his father. In short order, we also meet his fiancée Jan. Then tragedy strikes as the doctor wipes out his car on the way up to a cabin that looks more like a community college annex. He walks away, but all that remains of Jan is her head. With experimental transplant and life-support technology, he restores Jan to life, despite her repeated protests. The doctor leaves Jan in the care of his disreputable assistant while he sets out on an even more ambitious experiment: Find a new body for Jan- even if it means killing a living woman to do it!

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die was an independent film by B-movie producer Rex Carlton and director Joseph Green, who shared credit for the story and script. The movie was reportedly shot in 1959, with a copyright date of 1960. The film starred character actor Jason Evers as Dr. Cortner and Virginia Leith as Jan, with Anthony LaPenna as minion Kurt and Adele LaMont in her only known theatrical appearance as the model Doris. The film did not receive a theatrical release until 1962, when it was released by AIP (see Futureworld, Meteor, etc.) as a double-bill. The AIP release included two versions of the title. The film was widely ridiculed for low quality and its bizarre premise, though it was also noted for unusual gore effects and exploitation themes. An “uncensored” cut would likely have been rated R. The movie was subsequently featured in The Golden Turkey Awards and Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is in the public domain, reportedly due to copyright errors. Carlton produced a total of 10 films, several of which were released after his death in 1968. Green only directed one other film, The Perils of PK in 1986. Leith died in late 2019, at the age of 94.

For my experiences, this is a movie I knew by its notoriety long before I saw it. I finally watched it in a 2-pack with a far more obscure (and honestly worse) film. With my usual warped frame of reference, my immediate reaction was pleasant surprise. Of course, it’s not “great”, but it’s far above the actual bottom of the B-movie barrel, and it’s aged better than plenty of big-budget dramas and “message” films of its time (see Robot Monster and When Worlds Collide respectively). At the least, it’s a prescient take on modern medical ethics. In a wider view, it’s a sleazy but honest “slice of life” that covers sex workers, violence against women, gender and class double-standards, and even a possible LGBT character. This is where the movie feels both behind the curve and oddly prophetic. What’s genuinely impressive is that even pure “cringe” moments make a real point, particularly as the respectable, clean-cut doctor charms those who should be wary. The egregious example is the absolutely painful fight between two burlesque girls, lent a pathetic sort of pathos by the fact that their guy has long since moved on.

Moving on, we get to the core story, which is where the comparatively high standard of competence really matters. All the significant cast are capable actors given reasonably well-developed characters to work with, while the obvious problems have as much to do with self-dated (if not already outdated) styles and mores as with any fault in the performances. What gets legitimately unsettling is that the actual leads interact very little with each other, to a degree that only makes sense if the relationship was shaky to begin with. That Bill cares more about the challenge of saving Jan than he ever did about her is Armchair Psychology 101, but Jan is dysfunctional in her own way. She justly declares her hatred for Bill, yet there’s no introspection about their relationship or how her feelings and trust must have misplaced. If it comes to that, we never get a formulaic “remember our good times together” speech, which really means Jan can’t be nearly as oblivious as she seems to Bill’s nature. In the midst of it all, the most functional and interesting character is Kurt, revealed as both an assistant and guinea pig. At a minimum, he’s the only one who admits his failures and his ambitions. In the process, he reveals almost everything we learn about what the Hell is going on, at one point monologuing even after Jan interrupts him. There’s surely an intended indignity in his demise, staggering about with his “good” arm torn off.

Then there are the “creatures”, Jan and the mostly unseen monster in the doctor’s comically inadequate closet. This is where I seriously debated whether I should have included this one in the Revenant Review. The head is done well enough, without any distracting trickery. Outside of a few establishing shots, Jan is seen almost entirely in closeups, accentuating Leith’s performance rather than the effects rig. The changes in angles give a further sense of the gadgetry around her, which all looks reasonably functional. Then there is the monster, represented by Israel-born giant Eddie Carmel when it appears. Kurt describes it as the sum of the doctor’s “miscalculations”, originally “a mass of grafted tissues, lifeless… broken limbs and amputated arms”, which I maintain absolutely qualifies as a zombie. Naturally, what we do finally see doesn’t live up to the description. Still, it’s fascinating for sheer improbability, especially the asymmetrical face. There’s a nice extra touch of contempt in the startlingly graphic death of the doctor, which feels like a parody of the cannibalistic zombie yet comes a full decade before Night of the Living Dead.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the meeting of the doctor and the model. He initially walks in on her posing for a group of male photographers, which I am sure must have been shot twice by the original crew. She quickly sends away the group, brutally crushing a guy who tries to his on her. When Dr. Cortner doesn’t leave, she is wary but respectful. They discuss their mutual past, referring at several points to an “accident” that clearly wasn’t accidental. What follows is at face value more routine melodrama, culminating in an underwhelming reveal of a scar that hasn’t been visible in repeated closeups. The part that’s intriguing in a tawdry way is her repeated statements that she doesn’t “date” men, followed by a quite casual mention of a “girlfriend”. It may not quite as suggestive as it sounds through modern filters, but I’m satisfied that this is meant to imply that the character is or at least might be lesbian/ bisexual. And what’s vaguely impressive is that this is all done without any appeals to neon-sign stereotypes that were certainly in exploitation vocabulary (compare with Prey, if anything). It’s just a normal conversation between a man and an otherwise “normal” woman that would really stay the same however you read it, and that’s as thoughtful a take as we got for a very long time.

In closing, all I have to add is that this movie is here first and foremost as an example of what people think of as a “so bad it’s good” movie from a peak era of such things. Nobody ever said it was great, but between its flaws and its actual merits, it’s more than enough to be entertaining. On a deeper level, it’s the kind of art that expresses the anxieties and presumptions of its time better than more capable and well-meant works. Look deeper still, and you will find disconcerting insights that remain relevant far ahead, even if it is for reasons the creators could never have intended or expected. Call it good, call it bad, you will remember it. For me, that’s good enough for a passing grade.