Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 24!

 It's the middle of the week, and more than 2 months without an installment of Sidekick Carl, so I barely got one together. As usual, here's links for first, second and previous installments.

The facility looked like a truncated pyramid, 3 stories tall and 100 feet on a side. There was no sign to identify its purpose, only a 7-digit number and an emphatic sign that said: UN CAAPEP MAXIMUM SECURITY FACILITY TOP SECURITY CLEARANCE ONLY. The car that approached paused briefly outside the cyclone fence. At the wave of a badge, the gate opened.

An armored figure advanced to meet the new arrival. Lauren Carter smiled from the driver’s seat. “Greetings, Agent Carter,” the guard said with a deep but neutral voice. “How may we assist you?”

“I’m here to see a person of interest being detained at this location,” she answered. “I will be evaluating the subject for transfer to an alternate facility.”

“Ms. Carter,” the guard replied, “your clearance gives access to the grounds. But surely you are aware, I cannot admit you. We certainly cannot confirm the details of who, if anyone, is here.”

Lauren continued to smile as she lifted the badge to reveal a card beneath it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We aren’t supposed to show these unless needed.”

“Of course,” the guard said. “That changes things. Of course, any change in arrangements would require further review. But we can admit you.”

Soon enough, Lauren approached a cell a number of stories under ground. It was lined with bullet-proof glass. Within was a woman whose dark hair had grown long enough for an attractive short-length cut. She wore yellow fatigues with some semblance of styling, which Lauren recognized as a uniform for aerospace technicians. “Dr. Hartnell,” she said succinctly. The other looked up with interest.

“Sidekick Carl just found the Toxo Warriors’ lab,” Lauren continued. “The one outside Audrey’s colony. My husband is on the way with a Tactical Team. But I don’t think they’re going to find anything. Are they?”

And the woman who had become a supervillain smiled…

* * *

 

Audrey’s mutant tackled Dana, or tried to, just as the explosion went off. His efforts were just enough to push her out of the way before the door she was about to kick down became a spray of splinters. The metal loading door, by comparison, rippled and bowed without giving way. The real question was whether the walls would hold, and if they did not, whether they would fall inward or outward. In fact, they did hold, mostly, well enough that Dana quickly flattened herself against it to avoid the rain of pieces of the roof. She shrieked when something that was clearly not debris came hurtling down, a smoking shape with limbs that seemed to flail in every direction except the way they were meant to move. The form hit hard enough to throw up a secondary cloud of dust on impact. The mutant held her in place when she tried to rush out. It took a little longer for the last of the roof to fall.

Dana finally reached her husband as Audrey came around the corner. The towering mutant accompanying her was beating out flames in its fur. Bare moments passed before Audrey was at her side. “Well, you’re looking worse than usual,” she said.

Carl looked like a rag doll, his limbs and joints turned in a dozen incompatible directions. His white suit was now black, either charred or covered in soot, dust and chemicals. For a moment, he was ominously still. Then his head raised and turned, facing almost directly backwards. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, you’re getting old.” One at a time, his limbs twisted back into their natural shape, until he was finally able to sit up.”

“Oh, Carl,” Dana said. She could not hide a shudder as his right leg rearranged itself. “Are you… still you?”

“You bet,” he said. He rose to his feet, wobbling like a scarecrow in a windstorm. “That’s not even the worst I’ve been through. Ah, not quite.”

“Sure,” Audrey said. “There was one time I dropped a freight elevator on him…” Dana covered her eyes and screeched.

As they spoke, four armored figures swooped overhead. A moment later, the leader circled back and touched down. The armor was not much bulkier than a knight’s mail, colored deep blue. The figure raised a visor, revealing the irritated face of Agent John Carter. “Dammit, Carl,” he said. “We both know you’d hold onto the best lead for yourself, bur you could at least try not to get the building blown down.”

“The place was already wired to blow,” Carl said. “One of your teams wouldn’t have found any more than I did, and they would have died for real. Oh, and one of the Toxo Warriors was still there. He got out through a trapdoor. It’s probably a tunnel to the mall. If you hurry, you might still catch him.”

John Carter spoke gruffly into his mouthpiece, “Have you found any human signatures, or any traces of a vehicle?”

“If someone made a getaway, we should have seen it,” came the reply. “The only operable vehicles we’ve found are a bike and an open-topped scooter, I’m guessing the ones Carl and his companions used to get here.”

Carl shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The man I met was one of the original Toxo Warriors. We talked, long enough; he knew things I knew that nobody else would. He pretty much admitted, he was the one who made their biggest mistakes. But he still had plans and backup plans. He wouldn’t have bolted without anywhere to go.” He turned to Carter and said, so curtly it could have been an order, “Get Dana back to her RV. Now.”

The agent paused, only a moment. “Lopez, I need you to transport the Nine-Foot Woman back to her primary transport,” he said. In bare moments, one of his subordinates came back, a woman. She literally picked up Dana, rising just a little more slowly than she might have unencumbered. Dana gave a cry that might have been a whoop as they departed.

“All right,” John Carter said. “What’s really going on?”

“I don’t know,” Carl said. “I just wanted Dana out of here. I didn’t like the idea of her RV just sitting there either. I suppose, maybe, we actually came out ahead. The Toxo Warrior needed a diversion that might take out at least one or a few of us. The bomb would have done that well enough, if you hadn’t come after.”

“But you said yourself, he would have a getaway vehicle waiting, somewhere,” Carter countered. “There has to be something we’re missing…” As he spoke, he looked over his shoulder at the lesser storage buildings.

 

And as he looked, the walls of the building fell outward as an enormous metal shape rose up, topped by glowing eyes and teeth at the end of a long neck. There was a sound that could only be laughter, as loud as thunder from the metal dragon's throat.

The 1980s File Finale: The one that's the worst slasher movie

 

 

Title: Sleepaway Camp

What Year?: 1983

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: Who Cares??? (2/3)

 

With this review, I’m filling out the 1980s lineup, and that brings me not just to a movie that I had in mind since I started the No Good Very Bad Movies feature but to a genre I knew I really had no way to avoid covering sooner or later. I speak, of course, of the slasher movie, and the thing about me and slasher movies is that I despise and reject them so completely that I really only watched them on the rare occasions I have chosen to go looking. Yet in those few forays, I feel that I have gotten enough of a sample to identify the best and also the worst, if not in terms of absolute quality then at least as egregious representations of the trend. That brought one movie front and center. I present Sleepaway Camp, among other things the one you can’t review without spoilers.

Our story begins with a gruesome boating accident that I literally didn’t connect with anything else in the movie before looking up a synopsis. After what’s apparently a time skip, we meet Angela, apparently the sole survivor of the accident, returning to the lake as a counselor for Camp Arawak, a wholesome establishment where the adult authority figures joke about statutory abuse in broad daylight. Soon, one of the creeps tries flat assault against Angela, who narrowly escapes. Soon after, he is hideously maimed in an incident that the management insists is a kitchen accident. Meanwhile, Angela struggles with friendships and possible romance, either freaking out or going catatonic whenever the possibility of mild nudity comes up. Soon, more people who have harmed, scorned or annoyed her start turning up dead, without any signs of a police presence. As the finale draws near, the kids and adults are paranoid enough for friendly fire, but none suspect Angela’s secret. Oh yeah, she’s a boy.

Sleepaway Camp was a 1983 horror/ slasher film written and directed by Robert Hiltzik. The film starred Felissa Rose as Angela, with the late Mike Kellin in his final role as Mel, the camp owner. The movie was filmed in late 1982, mainly at the actual Camp Algonquin, which Hiltzik reportedly attended at one time. Rose was 13 at the time of filming, one of several actual teenagers in the cast. The film was released in November 1983. It was an immediate commercial success, earning $11 million against an estimated $350,000 budget. The movie was controversial for portraying an effectively transgender character as the killer, as well as gore and a scene of male homosexuality. Two sequels were released in 1988 and 1989, written but not directed by Hiltzik. An additional film was shot after 1990, but did not receive a theatrical release. Rose was inactive by the 1990s, but returned in 1998. She appeared in a franchise “reboot” film, Return To Sleepaway Camp, in 2008, in which Hiltzik also returned as director.

For my experiences, if there’s one thing that’s truly interested me about slasher movies, it is that the most well-known examples are relatively late and often atypical. For example, since the giallo days, the genre could be differentiated from “traditional” horror by the absence of supernatural elements, which is one of several reasons why I prefer to count a certain franchise as an outgroup. This was in turn representative of a secular, often amoral aesthetic where anybody could die a brutal and meaningless death. Given that context, the present film is an instructive example both in its time and in hindsight. The franchise machine was only just getting in gear for Jason; Freddy Krueger hadn’t even shown up; and as of Halloween 3,Michael Myers was still technically dead. (Now that is one I want to get to…) And in the midst of it all we got this movie, a 1980s offering that still had a certain giallo feel (see Phenomenon for further comparison). Unfortunately, it also happens to be awful.

Moving forward, the main thing to note is the quite unique treatment of sexuality, certainly far removed from the pseudo-moralizing that I find more prominent in latter-day parodies than anything else. (Dear Logos, I hate Scream, and I like Wes Craven.) While the usual preoccupations are out in force, the actual goings-on are as mild as a sock hop, which in itself becomes uncomfortable long before the end. (Lest we give anyone too much credit, what we see probably as much as they could legally get away with given the actual underage cast members.) It becomes all the more disconcerting to see the kids escalate to murder over each other’s PG-rated favors. If it comes to that, there’s more than enough “head canon” room for multiple killers in the Twitch of the Death Nerve tradition. (Maybe…) What’s jarring if not entirely distracting is that the adults are far more perverse than the kiddies, murders and all. Mel absolutely should be sued into the ground and thrown in jail, and he’s still one of the very few authority figure you can be pretty sure doesn’t have designs on the kids. Almost everyone else over 30 could justifiably be shot on sight if they got near a minor. The real difference would seem to be that the grown-ups have the mature cynicism to recognize that it’s easier to stay out of jail without leveling up to homicide. That’s a point worth making, but an already wonky movie is not the ideal place to do it.

If that still seems to leave the movie in a potentially favorable light, the real downsides start with the kills. If what you want is gore, what you get here is going to be dissatisfying. There’s only a handful of rather un-graphic attacks, one of which doesn’t even lead to an unambiguous on-screen death. Worse, the staging and photography are done in the strangely awkward fashion that I find best described as “stilted”. This is evident especially in the token shower slaying, which only makes sense if the attacker was carving straight down through places that would be hard enough with a chainsaw with an actual wall in the way. (Dishonorable mention goes to the death of the Angela’s arguable main antagonist, which has been described as far more brutal than I can make out.) All of this plays against a story that makes absolutely no sense. I may have paid less attention to this one than I usually would to an Italian movie, but I swear, I didn’t find anything to suggest a connection between Angela’s backstory and the eventual “reveal”, which by any standard comes out of nowhere. That just becomes a lead-in for the one shot that shows far more than we needed to see.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with what I find to be the most interesting kill. About halfway through, one of the jerkier teenagers goes to the bathroom after a swim. While he’s presumably occupied, someone slides a broom handle through the handles for two of the stall doors. Then, in a rather inefficient move, the unseen killer goes back outside, slashes a mesh screen window, and drops an entire hornets’ nest inside. It’s really so ineffective that a good lawyer could argue it’s not even intentional homicide, as even large numbers of insect stings are usually only dangerous to people with pre-existing allergies. (I suppose there could have been some earlier dialogue to set that up, but it’s already established that this crew is bad at showing their work.) The guy’s immediate reaction could just as well be considered comedy. He yells loud enough that you wouldn’t think he could be in that much trouble, but his distress becomes more extreme. Finally, in perhaps the most truly brutal moment of the whole film, the broom handle finally breaks. Almost immediately, he collapses, revealing an aftermath that doesn’t make any more sense than anything else. Still, it is the most intriguing and well-executed sequence of the movie, and that’s something even here.

 In closing, I come as usual to the rating. I freely admit that this, more so than the “worst” Bond movie, is a case where the heading is a bait-and-switch. The real parameters for the worst slasher movie, especially in the 1980s heyday, are about as hopeless as for 1950s monster movies (see Robot Monster while you’re at it). There were so many of them, with such low budgets and production values, that it would take a survey of hundreds to get a representative sample. Even then, at the end of the day, there’s just no bottom to find, just a morass of interchangeable ineptitude. With the usual adjustments for minimum professional standards, however, this is definitely a long way down. For a film that got an actual franchise, this is indeed an all-time low for an already motley genre and era. Yet, given the considerations already at hand, I must allow that it is not unique, nor a film I can truly hate. (That distinction still goes to Scream.) It’s not good; it’s not “so bad it’s good”; it’s just a product of a time we can be thankful has passed. With that, I for one can leave a genre alone for a while.

Fiction: The Adventures of Chelsea the Social Worker, Part 15!

 Have an extra week this month, so I'm going to try to get some fiction in. Of course, I'm starting with more of Chelsea! As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

The van had barely driven 4 km before Frank had to pull over. Diane rode shotgun beside him in the seat one of the Hexleys had occupied. Behind them, Chelsea and Shad sat holding each other. Hector the giant echidna sat facing them. The voice of Percy came over the officer’s organizer. “The Aster complex is still locked down; we’ve at least managed to secure the grounds for real,” he said. “We have Spike in custody, along with Lady Feaghan and Skinny. There’s a lot more people we’re looking for, so lockdowns are taking effect at the major transit hubs. If you can’t go any further, wait where you are until a transport gets to you. You definitely want to avoid any hassles.”

“Percy,” Chelsea said. “How many people died today?”

There was a long silence. “You don’t need to know that,” Percy said.

“But it’s not zero, is it?” she pressed.

“No,” Percy said. There was another moment of silence. “Look, there’s things you don’t know, orders we received. As bad as this was, it could have been worse, and there are a lot of people who will be safer because of what happened today.”

The device went silent. Frank looked critically at the echidna. “You knew,” he said. “About this, about that rubber cowboy freak. You were waiting for them to make a move. You let us out there as bait, just so you would have a chance to catch him.”

The echidna whistled and shrugged more expressively than usual. Shad raised his head from Chelsea’s shoulder for the first time since boarding. He frowned at Hector’s ongoing gestures. Nobody was really surprised when he offered a translation, or at least a transliteration. “He says Skinny would have found us wherever we went, if Spike hadn’t made a move first,” he said. “He’s not wrong. This was the one thing that would be too good for them to pass up. He says… I think he’s saying… they wanted to be sure Deve was with us.” The echidna finished by raising his arms and spreading his claws in a kind of fan.

Just then, a crew cab tow truck appeared in the rear-view mirror. As it approached, Frank suddenly seized Diane’s hand. “Dee, I have to tell you something,” he said. “You saw what I did back there. I probably wrecked Chelsea’s van. I suppose I tried to kill that guy. It didn’t matter, because I thought he might try to hurt you.” Chelsea was ready to say that Diane had nearly talked her way free, but Shad silenced her with a kiss. She managed to confirm that there were tears in Frank’s eyes. “I did it all because I love you, Dee. I love you, and I always will. I want us to stay together. I want you, I need you, only you. Just tell me you’ll think about it.”

Hector was already waving for them to board the tow truck. Frank held onto Diane’s hand more tightly. “Of course I love you,” she said. “You’re the only guy I’ve ever loved. I want us to be together. Just… just hold me.” Frank carried her to the truck.

 

Six weeks later, she finalized their separation.

* * *

 

Two days after the ordeal, Chelsea came to Deve’s home office. It was a tiny space, thin and stretched, looking down on the city from over 200 stories high. Technically, it was meant to be an office with provisions for occasional overnight sleeping rather than a residence, but Deve seemed free to use it as he saw fit. It proved to be nearly bare, except for a large bird cage and some kind of shrine. Deve sat at a desk that adjoined the main workstation. Overhead was a loft bed that showed absolutely no sighs of use. “Hello, Ms. Feaghan-O’Keefe,” he said. He was shuffling papers with six of his arms. “Understand, I don’t normally meet with subordinates privately. This meeting will be covered as counsel, however, as long as it stays within approved parameters.”

“Where do your arms go?” Chelsea said.

Deve seemed puzzled for a moment. “I see, yes, it might seem confusing from your perspective,” he said. As he spoke, two of his arms disappeared, then the number came up to eight. “They are there, a large but finite number, in fact. The ones I do not use remain in potentiality space, what you might think of as a half-dimension. It’s quite simple, if you have the right frame of reference.”

“Then what’s your frame of reference?” Chelsea pressed. “What can you see? The future? The past? Things that might have been?”

Deve smiled. “I can see what you mean, as you might say,” he said. “I only wondered when you might ask. The fact is, I have a unique ability, though not quite as unique as you might suppose. I exist in many forms in many time-space continua. But my consciousness is not limited to only one. I can learn certain things, simply by receiving input from other versions of myself. I would normally neither use it nor reveal what I have learned. It rarely helps, and sometimes does considerable harm. I would consider you a possible exception.”

Chelsea nodded. “I want to know about one thing,” she said. “There’s a continuum where Shad married the partner we assigned to him. Where we didn’t get together. Where nobody died. So can you tell me… Is he happy there?”

“Ah, I see,” Deve said. “I will admit, I was curious enough to look into it myself, some time ago.” He shook his head. “Nothing would have come of that. You would know that yourself, if you saw who it was. Ah, I have received a few inquiries what happened to the envelope. Sometimes, what the system says is right doesn’t work. You know that; you have seen it.”

Chelsea was surprised to find herself reluctant to admit as much. She managed a nod. Deve reduced his arms to four, and folded both sets of hands on the desk. “There is something I have to show you,” he said. He shifted and picked up the only ornament in the office. It was the bronze head of a bull, heavily oxidized yet still solid. At her widened eyes, he said, “I brought it with me, when I came here. And yes, it once belonged to a being not unlike myself. Its consciousness is dissipated, but it still holds certain powers sufficient for our purposes. Look into its eyes, and you may see what I could only tell you any other way.”

Sure enough, it had eyes, as dark as obsidian. But when she peered into it, she soon beheld images, albeit fleeting and fragmentary. The first seemed to show models on a table like Shad’s, one of a multi-armed statue, the other of a bull-headed humanoid. Then there were flashes of mighty forges at work, where the same figures glowed white-hot, and the briefest image of Deve as if seen through another’s eyes, his many arms and blades raised against a pair of double-headed axes that flashed in and out of view. Then, she saw herself, with her first husband, and once with a child between them, but it all faded away at the sight of her trudging through the rain. The torrent did not quite hide tears running from her eyes, and a trickle of blood from beneath a rag pressed to her forehead.

“Don’t worry, what you see is visible to you only, unless I saw it with my own eyes,” Deve said. “Keep looking…” Already, she could see herself, and she shut her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw herself with Shad. However, none of the images were quite the same, and many were clearly at odds with her past. She saw them meeting for the first time, but dozens of places: At the BIG center, only at showings months apart; at the office, sometimes as her client, sometimes as Diane’s, and here and there as a coworker; and at the zoo, at the stadium, in the shopping plaza, at the Hellas capsule hotel, even at a wedding for Diane and Frank. And then there were more scenes that followed, usually of their wedding. She noted one where the old Lady Feaghan was present, if unhappy, while she was visibly with child. Then there were more paths. She winced at the sight of Shad weeping over her own body on the plaza floor, and another of her doing the same for him as the shadow of a wraith approached.

Finally, suddenly, she saw what was clearly another path. There was Shad, sometimes with another woman, once with Diane. Then there was her, at work, at home, always alone, except for the company of Diane. The image seemed to fade as she grew older, until her blue-gray hair began to turn white.

That was when she drew back. “This is the reality one like myself can see,” Deve said, with a hint of tried patience. “There are many potentialities, but not all are equal. You think of roads not taken, as often as not because you will not admit why you did not take them. Would you suppose there was an even chance you would have given Shad up when his family tried to separate you? No, and you would be right. There were many paths, but they all went down one of three paths: Where the two of you partnered, where he partnered with another woman first, or where you never met.”

“Then were all of these… real?” Chelsea said.

Deve shrugged. “With potentialities, it is always a matter of degrees, not absolutes. The world you and I live in now is in many ways an outlier. Still, you and Shad met, and all else followed from that.”

Chelsea’s eyes narrowed, as they often did. “Those other paths… In some of them, we must have been together already. Did you… know that?”

Deve gave his subtlest smile. “As I said, you stirred up my curiosity,” he said. “No doubt, some of my other selves felt the same. Now, Lady Feaghan-O’Keefe, I must say I have other work to attend to.”

* * *

 

A few days later, Chelsea and Shad went to a police auxiliary lot to learn the fate of her van. Her possessions had been dropped off at their new home, but the van had been left in city custody. They found the tiny reproduction Fiat 850T next to a mine-clearing vehicle that could not have been driven in less than 50 years. They were no longer surprised to find Percy waiting, leaning against a 3.6 meter wheel evidently intended to run over the mines.

“So, we had our guys look it over,” the law enforcement AI said. “It took a lot of damage. The worst of it was probably from Skinny McCoy when your friend was running him over. The edged weapons he had definitely weren’t period materials. There were a couple good whacks on the main fan for the turbine engine, a cut brake line, major axel damage, and a busted transmission. Some of that probably would have happened even without Skinny. Bottom line, it’s a tossup if repairs will cost less than a new van.”

“Aunt Dolly is in charge of the family funds now,” Shad said. “She’s promised to pay for repair or replacement. It’s up to you, Blue Bell.”

“What happens if we don’t take it?” Chelsea asked.

“We’d treat it as abandoned property,” Percy said. “They might try putting it up for auction. If that didn’t work, it would go to a wholesaler. They would probably strip the furnishings and usable parts, then scrap the rest for raw materials.”

“We can’t do that,” Chelsea said. “I was driving the van the night we met. And the mattress… Well. It’s the mattress.”

“Yeah,” Shad said. “I really don’t want anybody else sleeping on that.”

“Would you ever want to?” Chelsea said. “For old times’ sake?”

“I don’t know,” Shad said. “I’ve held on to a lot of things. With you, I’ve been learning to let go. Then, if you think about it… if we keep it… sooner or later we’d be driving our kids around in it.”

Chelsea looked at the mine-clearing vehicle. A very wicked smile came to her lips. “Does that still work?” she said.

The vehicle rolled no faster than a man could have walked. By the time it had backed up its full length, the job was done, complete with an unspeakable sound. Percy opened a top hatch and stood up to survey his handiwork. The van looked like a cardboard carton run over by a delivery truck. “Okay,” he said. “I suppose I can say it could have happened by accident.”

They drove home in a borrowed Citroen Dyane. The camper mattress was folded up and strapped to the roof. Chelsea stuck her head out the open window and gave a ululating war cry. “What are we going to do with it?” Shad shouted to her.

“Who knows?” Chelsea shouted back. “Maybe we’ll use it for special occasions! Maybe I’ll keep it as a trophy! Maybe I’ll just give it a Viking funeral!” Then for a while, they were both quiet, and happy.

Part I: The romance!

Part II: The parking violation!

Part III: Capsule hotel destruction!

Part IV: The Kelsiraptor, and Harryhausen monster bureaucrat!

Part V: The restraining order!

Part VI: The trial, part 1!

Part VII: The trial, part 2, with the King Kong Moral Contraband film!

Part VIII: The goon!

Part IX: The religion!

Part X: Kloe!!!

Part XI: The Arcostate Zoo, plus Spike's Southside Motorcycle Gang!

Part XII: Skinny McCoy!!!

Part XIII: The Harryhausen monster fight!!!

Part XIV: The Showdown!!!

Featured Creature: The one with Bruce Willis

Title: Death Becomes Her

What Year?: 1992

Classification: Parody/ Mashup/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m continuing with certain plans related to features I’ve retired, especially The Revenant Review. In the process, I realized that I have in fact gone through a decent lineup of zombie movies in this feature with The Mummy Returns and Pet Sematary 2. That finally convinced me that this was the place for one more leftover, a movie that I had very solidly planned to cover in another format, right until I watched it. That was enough to convince me that I needed to do a full review, whatever else I did with it. As it happens, it was also once upon a time a genuine favorite of mine, which as often happens has made me all the more apprehensive about looking it up again. I present Death Becomes Her, a film that’s a big-budget romantic comedy and a zombie movie, and this is one time the tag is every bit as good as it sounds.

Our story begins with an insecure lady named Helen taking her fiancé Dr. Ernest Menville to a failing off-Broadway show by her old frienemy Madeline, by Helen’s account to test her man’s faithfulness in the face of a temptress who already broke up several of her relationships. In short order, the guy is married to the already fading starlet, leaving the abandoned damsel to slide into poverty, obesity and mental illness. At her lowest point, she sets out to eliminate her rival. Fast forward further, and we find that the starlet is even more of a has-been and meaner for it, while Ernest has gone from respected surgeon to admittedly talented undertaker. Suddenly, Helen reappears, slim, shapely and more beautiful than before. That ramps up Madeline’s insecurities enough to seek out a mysterious character mentioned by her plastic surgeon. This miracle-worker proves to be a sorceress with a potion for restored youth and eternal life. Unknown to her, Helen is not only well on her way to stealing back Ernest but is trying to talk him into murder. What they all soon learn is that those who drink the potion can still die- but their mind and soul will remain in the undead corpse forever!

Death Becomes Her was a 1992 horror comedy directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on a script by Martin Donovan and David Koepp. The film starred Bruce Willis as Ernest Menville, Meryl Streep as Madeline and Goldie Hawn as Helen, with Isabella Rosellini as the sorceress Lisle. Zemeckis openly described the film as a zombie movie. Extensive effects were used to portray the undead Madeline and Helen, including CGI by ILM and animatronics by David Gillis (see Leviathan, Tremors 2) and Tom Woodruff (see… Terminator???). The soundtrack was composed by Alan Silvestri (see… Mac And Me?), who had previously scored the Back to the Future trilogy for Zemeckis. Significant changes and cuts were made to the film, including the removal of scenes featuring Tracy Ullman. The film was commercially successful, earning $149 million against a $55M budget., and received mixed to positive reviews.  It has remained popular on home video, though a full-frame DVD release was heavily criticized. In 2016, the film was released on Blu Ray. No deleted scenes have been included with home video releases of the film.

For my experiences, I saw this one right around 1999, after seeing parts of it (of course including almost all the plot twists) in the course obsessively tracking 1980s-‘90s effects guys. What really stands out is that I really didn’t have a way to put this movie in context when I first watched it. Just for example, the casting of Bruce Willis would definitely have seemed as strange to anyone my age when it came out as it did when I got to it. However, I can now see that the studio decision-makers were probably just as likely to view Die Hard as the anomaly (see also my Lethal Weapon review/ rant).  At any rate, it was clear that this was something quite different than the usual effects showcase. This wasn’t non-human monsters and/ or over-the-top action sequences, but believable characters subjecting each other to absolutely horrible things, and yet, it still easily passed as comedy. I looked it up, I loved it, and then I let it go for a very long time.

Moving forward, what I find worth talking about is how devious the movie feels in the ways our sympathies are directed. If anything, Madeline is the most relatable character on paper. Sure, she’s vain, unfaithful and a willful boyfriend stealer. But she presumably has or had some kind of feelings for Ernest to stay married to him; she isn’t normally violent or even particularly dishonest; and if it comes to that, it’s quite clear that her peers and the public are judging her on age and looks even more harshly than she does herself. The misdirection is that the story arc keeps offering adversaries to cheer for, only to demonstrate unequivocally that they have even fewer redeeming qualities. Ernest makes a quite credible attempt to kill Madeline before she dies mostly by accident, and could easily have killed or maimed many more in descending to his current state of disgrace. Helen is, if possible, the worst of the lot. She is the one character to consider murder in absolutely cold blood, and she never treats Ernest as anything but a means to that end. Then the strangest tangent is the wild card Lisle, by far the most attractive and engaging character. Yet, even she has ulterior motives that are not made clear, particularly toward Ernest, and she says a number of things that we have good reason to believe are incomplete or untrue. My own “fan theory” is that she’s actually much older than she claims to be (apparently already varied in different versions of the script), which in turn would mean that she already knows things about immortality which she isn’t revealing to prospective clients.

And that leaves the special effects, which leave me stuck between saying too much or too little. In full hindsight, the effects are surprisingly limited both in running time and extent. The flip side is that they are so well-integrated with fine performances and top-notch storyboarding that many of the most difficult details are easy to overlook entirely. The most egregious example is Madeline’s first revival, shown entirely in the background while Ernest hastily consults with Helen. All we see is a blurred figure in the near distance (really, none of this would have happened without the outlandish proportions of the mansion), slowly going through a series of motions that look almost natural yet not quite. Even more noteworthy are undead Helen/ Hawn’s completely unnerving eyes, I’m sure done with some kind of special contact lens and a bit of trick lighting. I must editorialize further that this is how they looked on the much-maligned “square-screen” DVD, so I really don’t see what the fuss was about. The overall tone is at face value pure “splatstick”, complete with literally cartoonish injuries. (Helen in particular really shouldn’t be as damaged as she looks, but if she was, she would not be in one piece.) On another level, however, this is a horrifyingly intimate vision of Hell. These are characters whose minds and souls were warped and broken long before their bodies. The best one can muster for them is a cringey sort of pity as the undead women continue to fight over a man who could not be clearer about his intent to leave them both.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with one that is the most direct link to the zombie genre. Well into the second half of the film, Ernest rushes Madeline to the hospital with what he diagnoses as a “dislocated neck”. They manage to get far enough to see a doctor without any questions being asked, played by the late Sydney Pollack (d. 2008), an actor/ director/ producer/ demigod whose credits included Tootsie and Out Of Africa. Here, he turns in a subdued performance as a competent if unenthusiastic professional. The comic understatement starts as Madeline says, “I fell down the stairs,” drawing only a casual comment from the doctor. The doctor proceeds with the examination, showing his first sign of shock when he examines her neck. In a setup that will be familiar to genre fans, he looks for a heartbeat with his stethoscope, then quite casually throws it out when he gets no result. After trying out several instruments, he explains that Madeline has no heartbeat, room-temperature body heat and two shattered vertebrae. When Ernest presses him for an explanation, the fumbling doctor excuses himself with the comment, “I must get a second opinion.” After a few awkward minutes, Ernest steps out, to find that the staff are rushing to deal with a medical emergency. He finds the staff tending to a patient already flatlining, and then sees the face. It’s a fine follow-up to a great scene, and I will admit it took me a while to figure it out.

In closing, what I come back to is whether the movie holds up today. I have to say, my answer is a qualified “no”. It was a good movie for its time that marked a breakthrough not only in special effects technology but also how such effects are used. It also proved that a zombie/ zombie-adjacent movie could reach “mainstream” audiences as well as “respectable” horror movies. Finally, I can personally attest that it can still make me laugh, which was more than I necessarily expected after the last time I looked it up. The problem is that it remains not just a part of its own time but subtly “retro” even then, the kind of 1990s movie that feels more like an ‘80s movie that arrived just a little late. If that sounds appealing, it should be a rewarding watch. If not, you will do just as well to move on. I for one can end this with no regrets.

Image credit IMDB.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs Special: Field Museum unboxing!

 

I'm a day late with my second off-week post, and I'm taking a break from other things to cover another chapter on my big vacation. I previously covered a selection of Mold-A-Rama dinos I got during my trip to the Chicago Field Museum (see also the space capsule and broken plane). As a follow-up, I put in an order from the museum's online giftshop for stuff I either didn't find in-person or wasn't confident I could stuff into the only suitcase I could afford to carry. As it turned out, I only got 2 out of 3 items I ordered, but those two were enough to fill out a post and also a video. Here's a few pics of the main attraction, a Tarbosaurus bataar from CollectA, with a 1/72 Dino Riders Diplodocus for reference.

"Why does a dinosaur 5-10 times my size need guns???"

As noted, this is supposed to be a representation of T. bataar, T. rex's closest relative and probably the second-largest carnosaur of the very late Cretaceous (see my T. rex Vs post and video). While it lived somewhat earlier than the last known Rexes, it's clear that it was a parallel lineage rather than an ancestor, with some features more "advanced" than T. rex including even smaller arms. It coexisted with animals including Therizinosaurus, Saurolophus and Deinocheirus, which got it a place in my misbegotten first novel (see also the Lego dino post). It was, at least through the 1990s-2000s, probably the best known tyrannosaurid, represented by a range of good-quality adult and juvenile specimens. Per conventional wisdom, the largest T. bataar individuals were about half the size of Rex, but the fans are not yet convinced.

Now for this guy, he comes from a manufacturer I've found to be rather notorious among paleo collectors, previously sighted as the manufacturer of my very anatomically correct Uintatherium. Before finalizing my order, I found a review of the same one from 2010, which confirmed that this was going to be old on arrival. Indeed, an inspection confirmed a copyright date of 2009 (printed in a way that flattens out the chest). The old sculpt is further indicated by the incorrect orientation of the arms, though that still turns up in far more recent dinos. I also noted several whitish spots where the paint had worn off, presumably either in shipping or just from clonkings during very long storage. Here's a pic of the underside.

What interested me was that the height was listed as 1.5 inches, which would have been so unusually small as to offer potentially greater collector value than a big one. I unpacked it with several toys already prepared for reference. It was immediately clear that this was much taller than that, though still smaller than usual outside of the bagged sets. Here's a pic of the thing with a Galaxy Laser Team commander, previously confirmed to be 2" exactly, and the original/ mini Processed Plastic version, which is about 1.5". All in all, the GLT astronaut comes out at about the right size.

I think the amall size contributed to And here's some more reference pics, with the 1" Dino Rider people. I also threw in a toy soldier from a much larger group that I got mostly from a bulk bag and partly from capsule toys about 10 years ago, many of which look like WW1 infantry. Ironically, a 1.5" dino would have been a good fit for these. Not that I was planning a gruesome battle scene...

And here his with Sidekick Carl and the Construx driver, aka Agent John Carter. It might not be clear here, but the Construx guy is exactly the same height as the dino, which comes out as 3" pretty much straight up.

All in all, this is still a very good dino.. It is at least a dynamic and reasonably modern pose. The "real" probllems are quite subtle. The skin is a bit wonky, like a plucked chicken, and it's a lot rougher than it really should be at this scale. The shape of the head also feels like an awkward compromise. Yes, T. bataar had a proportionately longer and narrower head than Rex. However, the difference wouldn't be this pronounced except on a young individual. This is where the small scale helps. You can call it a juvenile, a T. bataar, an Alioramus, etc, and it will fit the science.

And while I'm at it, here's the other half of the order, a ludicrously gigantic Quetzalcoatlus!

And how about a few more pics from my trip?

Maximo!!!

Mazon Creek!!!

Sue!!!

Winston???

Pareiasaur... almost in frame.

And the man-eating lions... or possibly framed.

And that's all for now, a lot more to come!

The 1980s File: The one with the flying Chevy

 

 

Title: Repo Man

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Mashup

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

With this review, I’m continuing a lineup I started without really knowing what I would do. I knew I wanted to do Never Say Never Again, and I had another I had meant to do all along. For the third, I considered a number of famous, infamous and obscure movies from the 1980s. The major parameter I settled on was to do something I wouldn’t review under normal circumstances, which set aside the sci fi/ fantasy genres and most horror. That still left several very promising candidates. (I’ll name-drop Heathers, dear Logos…) In the end, however, I went with one that simply landed in my lap. I present Repo Man, and truly, it is one of the most Eighties of all Eighties movies.

Our story begins with a proto-slacker Otto who has just been fired from his job and found out his girlfriend is cheating on him. At his early low, a stranger approaches him, offering money to move what he says is his own car. But it turns out that the car is really being repossessed, and Otto has found his true calling. Soon, he is deep in the world of repo men (and repo wives), where he learns of dangerous car thieves and coveted bounties. In the process, he meets a new girl who insists she knows something about the biggest bounty of all. It’s a mysterious car we have already seen, a Chevy Malibu driven by a weirdo with glasses that leaves a trail of dead bodies and even worse when anyone opens the trunk.  Everyone is after the ultimate Maguffin, and Otto is the one person who the weirdo has taken for a ride!

Repo Man was a 1984 comedy/ science fiction film written and directed by Alex Cox. The film was produced by the late Michael Nesmith, a member of the Monkees, who reportedly secured a distribution deal with Universal. The film starred Emilio Estevez (see Maximum Overdrive) as Otto and Harry Dean Stanton (d. 2017) as his mentor Bud, with Tracey Walter (see Conan the Destroyer) as their colleague Miller. The main theme/ theme song was written and performed by Iggy Pop (see… Hardware?). The punk group The Circle Jerks made a credited appearance as a nightclub band. The film was a modest commercial success, earning $3.7 million against a $1.5M budget, and earned good reviews from critics including SF/ fantasy authors and scholars such as Neil Gaiman. A cut for network television was created by Cox. It became a successful cult film on home video and television. The film remains available on digital platforms. The soundtrack also remains available on CD and in digital form, though Amazon does not offer the digital album.

 For my experiences, this is one I first heard of from books on science fiction movies. While I was interested, I didn’t watch it until I noticed it available for streaming, probably upwards of 10 years ago. What kept it in my mind was the question of whether to count it as science fiction. I was going back and forth on that just in writing the review up to this point, finally conceding the point simply because many other sources do so. In my own opinion, this is another film where the best description is surrealist/ urban fantasy, a gray-area distinction that comes up more often with films usually classified as horror (see Troll, The Gate). Even then, I find it to be a “mainstream” comedy with genre elements rather than vice versa. In further hindsight, that is the main reason it works as well as it does.

Moving forward, I have to say that this is a movie I just don’t “get”, and I am all the more sure of that after a fresh viewing. What does work for me is Estevez, whom I have always found entertaining and memorable, though I can only think of about 4 movies I have seen him in. Stanton, who I forgot was in Alien twice, is even better, without pushing beyond his costar status. Together, they have a very effective rapport that takes a raw turn when they compete for the same prize in the finale. The one actor who stood out on my usual radar immediately was Walter, who I needed a moment to place. Here, he’s an odd-job man who doesn’t do much until the very end, yet is still watchable enough to leave an impression. Finally, even I have to put in a good word for the music. To me, it feels like it could fit in the 1960s as much as the 1980s, possibly because of the known tendency of “trendy” pop culture to circle back on its trail every 10-20 years. It certainly works, especially in the finale, which has to be seen to be fully appreciated.

Meanwhile, if there’s a “con” to go with this, it’s that the movie doesn’t have much of a plot, and feels like it has even less than it does. Much of the running time is just listing to Otto, Bud and their colleagues complain, which is certainly entertaining. The rest is episodic misadventures and subplots, most of which have little if any impact on the finale. Even the overarching tale of the Chevy doesn’t really develop, which up to a point surely is the point. We see its effects, and we get some sense of its owner, played by the late Fox Harris (also in Deep Space right around the time of his death in 1988), but we never really get any answers to what it is or where it came from. This leaves it not just a Maguffin but the post-modern reductio ad absurdum of a Maguffin. Everybody wants it, nobody knows what if anything they can do with it, it quite clearly causes harm to most if not all who encounter it, and in the end, it’s nothing more or less than a poignant symbol of hopes deferred, lost or unattainable.  In a sense, this is a case of “too much and not enough”. It doesn’t have the deceptive linearity of a well-developed satire like Dawn of the Dead, yet it never reaches the anarchy of the likes of Earth Girls Are Easy. It’s just a competent “mainstream” film that stays within its limits more often than it pushes them.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the one that’s out of left field even here. As the finale approaches, we meet up with Otto’s ex Debbie and her new boyfriend, the surviving two-thirds of a gang of robbers that lost a member trying to take the Chevy. As they engage in casual substance abuse, the guy starts to babble about settling down to marriage and family, until the lady gives him a stronger dose. Only then do they go into a liquor store where Otto, Bud and a cop we’ve seen here and there are hanging out. Their guns are already drawn, which doesn’t stop Otto from making oblivious small talk with Debbie, while her new guy emphasizes how completely okay he is with shooting everybody. It quickly turns out that Otto is in fact the only person present who isn’t armed, leading to an almost mechanical shootout worthy of a spaghetti Western. All you need to know is that when the cordite settles, we’re back to Otto and the ex. He gives her a speech about starting over, culminating in the line, “I can make you a repo wife!” It’s at least enough for her to throw him food instead of shooting him. And the absolutely mind-boggling part I literally didn’t believe until I watched a video of the whole sequence again is that absolutely all of this happens in just over two minutes of screen time. Truly, they don’t do pacing like they used to.

In closing, this is a movie where I have no more to say, and really nothing to defend on my own part. As I laid out, there was never going to be a timeline where this one would have been a favorite of mine, however soon or late I had gotten to it. That certainly hasn’t stopped me for appreciating what it is, while also recognizing what it isn’t. If you happen to be one of the people who do love this movie, I’m the last person who will tell you you’re wrong. (Hey, I gave Maximum Overdrive a good review…) All I have to add is, stay with what you love, at least as long as it won’t kill you. That’s enough to call it a day.

Image credit Discogs.