The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Return to the Wild!

 

It's the middle of my second week of a month about to end, and I belatedly remembered I hadn't done a dino post. Since my other plans will require a bit more time, I decided to go ahead and do it today. Because I'm in a bit of a hurry, I'm doing a quick lineup of stuff I have sighted without buying since my last "in the wild" post. To start things off, I have something a bit different, a test photo of my best Marx space marine analogs fighting prehistoric creatures (see my Space Guys demo and the kind-of final installment of Chelsea the social worker). Here's another with the MPC sabertooth, taken on my phone.

Now to start the "in the wild" lineup, here's a repeat offender, the Walmart Marx clone set. This time aroune, I made my sighting at a grocery store, where I obtained the heavily overlapping bag of dinosaurs featured on my Youtube channel. Looking at it now, I'm tempted to buy this for the actually good unspecified-looking tyrannosaurid. On the other hand, it would mean yet another copy of the Hideous Abomination (see my mystery box video and post). At least this proves the good one isn't out of production as I had feared...

And here's something else different, a mystery dino from an online listing. I looked into this a while back, and the seller gave permission to use the images. The correspondent acknowledged not knowing where it came from. Certain other photos confirmed that it was hollow with no identifying markings. I confirmed certain affinities with a 1960s-era mode by Pyro that suggested a knockoff, but it's definitely neither original nor a direct copy. By my best guesstimate, it's 1980s vintage or '90s at the latest. Without knowing more, I wasn't about to put down money or storage space.

And here's the "in the wild" lineup proper...

A spino!

Baryonyx?

Zombie Tyrannosaurus!

Maniraptor with feathers... I think it was labeled a troodontid!

And a generic bag!

A robot stego, possibly also zombified.

Floriduh-metrodon???

This is different... I'm definitely not saying better.

Has anyone gotten Carnotaurus right???

"Say AAAHHH!!!"

A friendly face!

No. Just no.

And how about something completely different? This is Robby the Robot Vinimate and an MPC Teenette lady, under consideration as models for the Space Guys adventure. Thinking of all the ways this doesn't work out, even without getting sued...

And that's enough to wrap this up. That's all for now, more to come!

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one that's a slasher sequel without the slasher.

 

Title: Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

What Year?: 1983

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

As I write this, I’m looking ahead to Halloween, which has been my busiest time as a reviewer. It has also been the time I tend to end up looking at either starting new features or gearing up the ones that haven’t got off the ground. In the meantime, I ended up with something that I might have saved for later if I was in the habit of actually planning these things. It’s a very strange and fairly infamous entry in a famous franchise I have normally kept at a respectful distance. By my usual skewed standards, that made it of more interest than the more typical and popular ones. It was all the more appropriate to kick off yet another feature, dedicated to the horror genre. I present Halloween 3, a slasher sequel that tried to retire and replace its villain… and if you’ve seen any other entry in the franchise, you can already infer how well that went.

Our story begins with a gruesome attack that leaves the intended target mortally wounded. A rough and tumble doctor who will become our hero is called in to question the victim, who gives an unhelpful warning of an upcoming catastrophe. Meanwhile, Halloween is approaching, and the airwaves are saturated with ads from a manufacturer of Halloween masks called Silver Shamrock. The doc meets up with the daughter of the departed, who proves to be the owner of a shop selling the masks. This is enough of a connection to the Silver Shamrock headquarters, where they meet the charming old Irishman in charge. Soon, however, they uncover more deaths, apparently committed with a group of creepers who begin trailing them. It becomes apparent that these are not mere human attackers, but nearly indestructible android assassins who still bleed like their biomechanoid counterparts in the Alien franchise (which at this point is still just Alien…). They trace the killers to the factory, where they discover a plot to kill the company’s customers with boobytrapped masks that can only be triggered by convincing the kids to stand in front of a TV screen during a hyped-up Halloween broadcast. It’s up to our hero to save the day- but the bad guys have gotten the girl first!

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch was a 1982 horror/ science fiction film developed as a thematic sequel in the Halloween franchise, following the 1978 film and its direct 1981 continuation Halloween 2. The film was written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, from a script and story originally developed by British sci fi/ horror veteran Nigel Kneale. John Carpenter (see Dark Star, The Thing, etc, etc) returned as producer, reportedly on the condition that the film would not feature Michael Myers, who was (spoiler) shown killed by Laurie Stroud at the end of the second film. Carpenter also received credit along with Alan Howarth for the film’s soundtrack. The new film starred Tom Atkins (see Night of the Creeps, Lethal Weapon, Creepshow, etc) as Dr. Challis and the late Daniel O’Herlihy (The Last Starfighter, Robocop 2) as the villain Cochran, with Stacey Nelkin as the love interest Ellie. Dick Warlock, the second of two actors to portray Michael Myers in the earlier films, appeared as one of the androids. The film was commercially successful, earning $14.4 million against a $2.5M budget. However, it was poorly received by critics and fans, and was considered a box office disappointment compared to the earlier films. The next franchise entry, The Return of Michael Myers, was released in 1988. A franchise reboot was released in 2018.

For my experiences, what really stands out in hindsight is that this was the only Halloween film I was really aware of when I was growing up. Just from the summary, it certainly seemed odd, but of course, for all I knew, it could have been “normal” for the franchise. By the early 2000s, I knew the basics of the franchise without taking any interest in it, I’m sure mainly because of my antipathy to slashers. I finally saw the first movie, either right before or actually after watching the reboot in the theater. My only other foray was to watch the original sequel, which I would have to give another look to comment on. The one thing I drew from all of this is that the first two movies were pretty much two halves of the same story. I was unsurprised to find ample evidence that Carpenter was trying to bail on the whole thing after Halloween 2. I still gave little if any thought to a review, until I trashed Sleepaway Camp just a little before the present review. I decided it was time for a rematch, so I decided to try this film in particular and see if it suited my purposes. I came in with modest optimism, and came out simply baffled.

Moving forward, already a lot further in than usual, what settled me on doing this review at all was the music. The centerpiece on this front is the absolutely maddening Silver Shamrock jingle, all the worse for actually being pretty catchy. If you can look past that, this is a true showcase of Carpenter’s perennially underrated talents. The music calls all the way back to Dark Star and ahead to They Live. Most intriguingly, the score has a lot in common with that of The Thing, which would have come out just a few months earlier. This strongly suggests either that Carpenter contributed more to that now-definitive film than he has gotten credit for, or that he had already learned something from working with the great Ennio Morricone. By the finale, however, it has long since become clear that Carpenter is still learning the ropes here, as numerous cues clearly based on The Thing equally clearly fall short of it. What was a masterpiece of minimalism from Morricone just sounds more cliched than it is here, which admittedly hasn’t been helped by Carpenter’s own influence on often inferior filmmakers.

That brings us to the story and characters, and here is where things really start to go downhill. O’Herlihy is the real star here, charming and menacing by turns. There’s a hypnotic dignity as he gives his Celtic account of the “real” meaning of Halloween. To more refined sensibilities then or now, it’s just a version of the blood libel, yet there is a pre-Christian authenticity that is not easily discounted, surely helped by the actor’s Irish heritage. By comparison, Atkins is just workmanlike, feeling so much like his character in Night of the Creeps that I honestly wrote parts of this review on the assumption that he’s supposed to be a cop. A non-trivial problem is that there’s really no good reason for him to be the one rooting out the plot if he’s not law enforcement. The real weak link is the love interest, whose lack of attraction or any interesting traits highlights the fact that there was no reason for the relationship to be anything but platonic. The belated high points come with the scenes of the TV studio. It’s a given that none of it makes sense or would work even by the movie’s half-logic (how many kids are really going to stay up till 9 on Halloween just to stare at a TV screen?), but there is a pointed allegory in play that seems to mock the moral guardians who took offense at Carpenter and his peers. (I can’t avoid mentioning Looker, which tried to cover similar ground a lot less effectively.) It all ends with a callback to The Thing that really works as Atkins continues to try to halt the scheme, with a desperation that easily overrides any common-sense analysis.

After all that, I still have to say a little about the androids. These are easily among the most sinister on record. It’s all the more disconcerting to see them really bleed a range of unwholesome fluids. In the process, it’s established that they can be killed or disabled, but they certainly take a lot of damage. Considered in cold blood, it’s really all quite silly, yet in the best early ‘80s horror tradition, it genuinely works in context. If there’s a “problem”, it is that we never get a sense of their motivations and mental life, which is made particularly acute for one that replaces a major character. For the most part, they seem to follow orders without complaint or further reflection, which makes them far more sinister than they would be if they were the kind of AI that might question, defy or outright kill their creator. Still, there’s not much here that hasn’t been done as well or better before, with an odd familiarity that belies the movie’s ambitions.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s brief and odd even here. A little ways in, the doctor is in a bar where a cartoon is playing on the TV. He asks the doctor to change the channel, and suddenly we do see Michael himself, in an ad for what’s introduced as “John Carpenter’s immortal classic” Halloween! Of course, it’s a huge “meta” moment that begs for overanalysis. Does this mean the present film is supposed to take place in “our” world where the previous films did not? Is this an alternate universe where the franchise is based on real events? If so, was Michael unkillable because he was really an android? What intrigues me is what it says about Carpenter’s career and creative trajectory. There was definitely an ego factor that emerged early on, whether or not Carpenter himself wanted or encouraged it, and this casual reference definitely reflects that, with talk that was awfully strong only four years after the first film. (So, is this already the future???) In my opinion, however, there is an element of irony and perhaps self-deprecation here. The core fact is that Carpenter has had many points where he could have rested on his laurels, either by retiring or settling into rehashes of his earlier work. Instead, virtually every one of his films has been followed by another that has been quite different, for better or worse. I absolutely take this passing in-joke as an early sign that this was what he wanted all along. He deserves even more credit for Halloween now than he did then, but he deserves all the more credit for moving beyond it.

In closing, I hope finally to be brief. If it seems like my rating is at odds with my own comments, it’s because my own feelings are conflicted. Even sight unseen, I have long wished that this film had had greater success, if only because it showed there was another way to do a franchise than conveniently resurrecting the villain/ monster as often as needed. I will further allow that it probably would have failed in that regardless of its actual quality; the 1980s slasher trend had already been set in its course by other minds. But the fact remains that it did fail from numerous flaws all its own. It might not be worse than other slasher sequels or even others in its franchise. For a film that set out to carve a whole new course for a franchise and a genre, however, it could and should have been better. With that, I for one am calling it a night.

Mystery Monday: The Marx Moonship!

 

It's time for my 2nd planned week of posts this month, and it happens I have something backlogged. As an extra twist, I had already prepared both pics for a blog post and a video on the matter more than a week ago. Rather than do an immediate post, I included a photo with my Space Guys adventure demo. I used the intervening time debating what to do, and of course decided nothing until it was almost too late. What I settled on was to put up the video first, and use this post to follow up with a deeper dive. This was indeed a long, strange trip worthy of a feature that started with a figure I needed 30 years to identify. To kick things off, here are pics of my unassembled Marx Moonship.

Now for the details, for this adventure, I actually started off with the bare outline of the facts, which is more than I have often had to work with. This is a reissue of the Moonship, one of a ludicrous number of accessories originally included with Marx's Operation Moon Base playset in 1962. I had already featured the two other most noteworthy specimens in a previous post outside this feature, the space station and the Flash Gordon-y tower thingy. Unlike those venerable fixtures, however, the Moonship did not have an afterlife in the later Marx playsets. As further recounted by my lapsed correspondent Steve Nyland/ Space Trucks, the original Moonship has long since sunk out of sight except in astronomically expensive complete examples of the Moon Base playset. 

That brings us to the present specimen. It has been offered online for a while now. What is obvious is that the craft is black instead of blue, and the mold for the upper half was substantially modified, turning what looked like tail fins on the original (I have thought of them as retractable) into a more filled-out and decidedly redundant set of wings. It is also apparent that this was done to make the craft look more like a stealth bomber, which was in fact a part of the tailless/ delta wing lineage that presumably inspired the original toy.  That puts the origin of these things around the 1980s, if not later. The modified design is also missing two openings that appear to have been part of a firing mechanism for a pair of rockets/ missiles, which fits the controversies over such things in the early '80s timeframe. The most curious part is that these are coming out unassembled in sealed bags, with the included missiles still attached to the frame. This means either that someone is making these things from recovered molds, or (as I have opined to be far more likely) they have just been sitting around for an indefinite amount of time. The bottom line is that even the person or persons selling them probably don't really know. Here are a few pics of the unassembled components with the Truckstop Queen, who hasn't been coming out much lately; she's still definitely bigger than the thing she's being a reference model for, but it's much closer than usual.

And here's the absolutely awful missiles, which fall right out without the springs.

Another detail here is that the nose piece (actually half of one since it's only in the upper part) is definitely an addition. My initial assumption was that this was a replacement for a lost piece, but when I looked into it, I confirmed that original specimens are simply open at the front, reportedly so kids could aim through a corresponding hole at the back. I very seriously considered knocking the added piece right out, but I quickly concluded it's not going anywhere without using a knife. I will also mention, there is a horrendous amount of flash on the modified leading edge of the wings. After accidentally putting a notch in one trying to remove it (after all the photos were taken), I took a file to them. It helped, but they're still rough. Here's some shots of the assembled plane, usually with the nose visible. You may notice a couple ships to one side that will figure below.

Wow, you can really see that flash...

Now for the actually interesting question, just how did Marx get the idea for this conceptually very advanced design? It really does anticipate the space shuttle, and in fact is in some ways more  sophisticated. With my usual encyclopedic random knowledge and further research, it wasn't hard to find precursors. The bare idea of a triangular tailless aircraft was put to use in the Vulcan bomber among others. The further idea of turning such a design into a returnable air-to-space craft can be traced at least back to the semi-infamous Silbervogel Nazi drawing-board superweapon (see Jalopnik, if anything), which I turned into the Tottenkarte for the Exotroopers adventures. (I just might have to reuse my joke scenarios from that anti-series for the Space Guys adventure to make sense.) Of course, there were intermediate outgroups in this conceptual lineage, most intriguingly the Convair shuttlecraft concept from about the same time the toy came out. The picture that emerges is a toy that did incorporate some very good ideas, without coming out too far ahead of its own time.

Then there's one last thing. Ever since I discovered its existence, I have been absolutely certain that this was the basis for the arrowhead ship in my immortal arcade prize collection, which I had already traced to the Diener Space Raiders line. Here's a pic to illustrate my case. The funny thing is, in many ways, the prize ship fits what I've been picturing better than the original.

And this is where I wrap this up. This really has been fun, despite the frustrating Wall of Nothing on many of my questions. As I said in the video, If you like Marx space stuff, get this one while you can. That's all for now, more to come!

The 1970s File: The one you can't watch

 

 

Title: Him

What Year?: 1974

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: Guinnocent!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

As I write this, I’m way behind on a range of things, including not starting my scheduled weekend review until after 9 PM on Sunday. After these hilarious setbacks, I decided it was time to do something new. It’s all part of a project I had pondered long before I created this blog, which previously figured here way back with (dear Logos) Ingagi. I speak of my “unmovie” file, the movies that were censored, suppressed, or flat-out lost to the void. I still haven’t decided just what I’m doing with this vast body of material, but with a 1970s lineup already in play, I decided it was time to cover the most infamous example of all. Here is Him, the original actual gay Jesus movie, and the real mystery is why there are people looking for it.

Our story begins, by the most reliable reconstructions, with a man having moderately indecent fun with a cat. We then transition to our protagonist, a young man of apparently Catholic upbringing and affiliation who is obsessed with Jesus. This is not just the usual religious fervor, but a fully carnal obsession. He will wander his way through modern life while continuing to either fight or nourish his fantasies of very worldly relations with the Son of God. And that is really about all we know, and did we need to know anything else?

Him was a 1974 LGBT erotic film by the artist Gustav Von Will, who starred as Jesus, and a director identified as Ed D. Louie. The film is believed to have been produced by and for the 55^th Street Playhouse, an independent theater that had been associated with Andy Warhol. It is believed to have shown for several months at the Playhouse, and was later shown at theaters as far away as San Francisco. The film received mixed to favorable reviews from underground magazines including Screw. The film was featured in the 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards by Michael and Harry Medved, as part of a critical survey of offensive and “un-erotic” trends in adult films. If the Medveds’ account was based on first-hand knowledge, as implied if not explicitly affirmed, they may have been the last to view or locate a print of the film, which disappeared from all subsequent records. By the 2000s, skeptics including critics of Michael Medved questioned or denied whether the film had existed, based in part on the Medveds’ admission to have included a fictional film in the book. Contemporary records, including advertisements and reviews, repeatedly confirmed the authenticity of the film, while the admitted fabrication was confirmed to be unrelated. In 2010, a partner of Von Will released a photo said to be from the film. Von Will died of complications from HIV/ AIDS in 1991.

For my experiences, I suppose this one is a major reason I got interested in “lost” films. I read about it in the Medveds’ book, and remained intrigued by their challenge to identify the film they made up without really seriously considering that this could be the one. I was taken rather off-guard when I found the trail of controversy around the film and its existence, but I rode the thread all the way down. (See the troopers at Snopes, Lost Media Wiki and To Obscurity And Beyond for the real legwork.) Later, I even made it a running gag here in the adventures of Percy the robot cop. (I was further inspired to come up with the worst adult film in the multiverse...) In the midst of it all, I have come back to the question, why should we really care about this film? I will be the first to admit, I wouldn’t watch this movie if they did find it. But even I must admit a certain Quixotic draw. Someone cared enough to make this damn thing, even if it was for the patrons of an adult theater. If the thread of memory and evidence is thin enough for the newcomers to deny it even existed, I certainly care enough to see them proven wrong (or right!).

The counterpoint in all this is something I have ranted all along (see my video on my worst movie list): Among the actual “worst” films ever made, the true bottom of the barrel are the ones that are just plain gone, especially from the silent era through the 1930s. What we can know about this film gives an unfortunately plausible picture of what they would really have been like. In a further irony, it bridges the most predicable categories of offenders: Amateur erotica, political propaganda and religious media, already as paradoxically interdependent as the heads of a hydra fighting themselves. What’s further apparent is that the survival prospects of such things are poor even without the frequent role of official persecution. Indeed, the single most curious footnote in this strange saga is that the only public outcry plausibly connected with it came long, long after the film had gone to its fate. For the 1970s, the idea of portraying Jesus as gay was seemingly either under the radar or over it, if only because run-of-the-mill Puritans were still able to ignore the LGBT community in day-to-day operations.

It’s at this point when one might genuinely wish not for the film, which surely speaks for itself even unseen, but for some account of what those responsible really wanted. What makes it mindboggling enough to remember is that it clearly aimed for something higher than immediate gratification. (Well, in addition to that…) Was the aim to be as extreme, and on a certain level silly, as they could be for an already “fringe” audience? Were they hoping to shock or outrage any religious conservatives who wandered in, as the Medveds  eventually did? Did they actually see this is a symbolic reconciliation of gay rights with Christianity? Or was the extent of their ambitions to shake a fist at mainstream morality, and perhaps provoke its defenders into acknowledging that other paths existed? Even here, the answers one could imagine are all too likely to be more interesting than the reality. Such is the allure of lost media, that even an entry as inauspicious as this invites one to find something more than what it in all likelihood was.

With that, I’m wrapping this up. (A “one scene” is obviously out.) It’s just one trail among many in the world of lost films. For now, I deem it enough to represent the whole. My final verdict is, we can at least be glad to live in a society where people who want to make a 1970s gay-Jesus porno were free to do it. I will even go so far as to say that what they did was almost certainly more worthy of survival than the likes of Ingagi. That brings me to one last unwarranted philosophical moment courtesy of Gandalf: “Many that die deserve death; can you give it to them?” This is why we need media preservation, because even if what is preserved is pure coprolite, it will make the good stand out all the more. So go watch something good, or maybe create something you would rather destroy than show to anyone but you. If you want to be you, be you!

Fiction: Space Guys adventure demo!

 

I'm woefully behind my usual obsessive schedule, and in the meantime, I've been starting into something new that could waste vast amounts of time. Here's a link for the start of this in Chelsea the social worker, and one of my posts on the Marx 4-inch space guys and my newly acquired space girl. Also included, a preview pic of a Marx spaceship I just got!

 

The ship, from a distance, looked like an arrow, complete with the three-finned tail and a triangular head. For that matter, the resemblance did not diminish at closer examination, except for a flared waist amidships where a number of lesser objects were clustered. If viewed from the front or especially the rear, however, there was a certain resemblance to the symbol of peace, thanks to a ring supported by the three pylons of the tail. The designers would certainly have dismissed it as a coincidence brought on by a purely functional design. Yet, the fact remained that it was both a symbol and a product of peace. And the voyage ahead might well determine whether that peace would last or end in disaster.

At the moment, the ship circled a planet colored a deep but vivid red. Ahead was something like a five-spoked wheel, spinning gently. Several small craft were moored at regular intervals along its edge. Any other craft would have docked in one of the berths, but the incoming ship was almost half as long as its width. Instead, the ship launched one of its own lesser craft. Soon enough, the shuttle joined with the space station. An airlock opened, and a pilot emerged into the station corridor.

The pilot was a handsome man, no longer quite young. He was clean-shaven with an orderly haircut. He wore a jumpsuit of a material that looked vaguely like leather, with a harness that strapped across his chest and abdomen and a collar obviously intended to support a helmet. He gave what could almost have been a smile at the approach of two young men and a woman with reddish-gold hair who clearly made them nervous. “Hi, I’m Jason Freeman,” said one of the young men, somewhat more confident than the other. “I’m from the New Dakota settlement. On Mars, of course. This is my friend Jackson, and I guess this is Dr. Cahill.”

The lady stepped forward. It was evident that she was over 30, though certainly under 50. “That’s Lana Cahill, Doctor of Botany,” she said. “My specialty is astro-horticulture, which is the fancy name for studying how plants grow off Earth. I came here from England to help the colonies become self-sufficient. I understand these nice boys are pilots.”

Jackson ventured to speak up. “We’re all pilots out here in the Colonies,” he said. “Jason and me are the best, and we have the scores and the record to prove it.”

“I don’t doubt it,” the newcomer said with a chuckle. “I’m Lieutenant Harrison. I’m here to take you aboard the exploration vessel Janus.”

They followed the pilot through the hatch in what became a descent into the shuttle below. The shuttle pod proved to be a titanium alloy tube with a bullet-shaped cockpit on one end and a communications console at the other. The interior was almost but not quite tall enough to stand upright in. The lieutenant clambered straight for the door to the cockpit at the front. The men took two seats that faced each other in the middle. The lady took a seat at the rear, turned sideways to face the console. “Say, one of us should take that seat,” Jason said.

“I know what I’m doing,” Dr. Cahill said. “In fact, I have equipment in my office that’s more advanced than this. In fact, it must be newer than this.”

The airlock shut. There was a jolt as the shuttle cut loose. “It probably is,” Harrison said. “It’s 6 months each way from Earth to Mars, plus it takes at least 4 months to prep any equipment for Mars conditions. All our equipment needed two years of prep time minimum, and that was the stuff they didn’t have to build from scratch.”

Jason turned his head for a better look at the pilot. “Have you done this before?” he said. “A Mars run, I mean…”

“I did it once,” Harrison said. “That was enough, for a while. I’ve done most of my time on low-orbit runs, a Moon trip now and then.”

 Jason nodded before venturing the real question. “What’s it really like, on Earth?” he said.

There was a moment of silence. Then the pilot laughed again, quite kindly. “Anybody else but me prob’ly would ask you what it’s like out here,” he said. “You might as well get used to it. I don’t really get around much myself. Most of what I see is from orbit. From there, there’s no place that looks much different from another. Most of it’s big, blue ocean. On the land, you’re got lots of green, a few big splotches of desert, mountains and rivers like long snakes. Then you have the cities… They really don’t take up that much space, but they glow like suns. The biggest I ever went to was Hong Kong, I had to put on sunglasses to see. That was after flying in the dark, of course.”

Jackson spoke up. “You could be a poet, mister,” he said.

“Oh, who says I haven’t tried it?” Harrison said with another chuckle. “I’ve been around long enough to try a lot of things, once. I still only found one or two things I’m good at…”

They had pulled alongside the craft called Janus, visible through a porthole on the right. It seemed like a slow approach, but the Martians both knew that the larger ship was racing at many thousands of miles per hour, and they were going the other way. They first passed a roughly triangular section at the front, really a shuttlecraft big enough to carry two pods like their own in its underbelly. “That’s the Pegasus,” Harrison said. “It’s an Orion-class payloader. There are only four of them so far. I’ve flown one. They say it’s set to take over the low-orbit trade…”

“I know,” Jackson said, somewhat impatiently. “We’re rated to fly them, as soon as we get any.”

That drew another chuckle from Harrison. “I suppose spaceships are all you talk about out here,” he said. “Or all you hear about, anyway.”

By then, they were past the payloader to the long, thin fuselage, which on close examination was a connecting corridor lined with fuel tanks and cargo pods. A module at right angles to the main corridor sported a secondary docking bay and a 10-meter sensor dish. “It’s what the out-of-towners always talk about,” Jason said. “We usually have to ask to find out about anything else. When it’s not spaceships, it’s sports we can’t even play.”

He saw the pilot nod. “So what do you like to talk about?” he asked.

“Music,” Jason answered. “Movies. Cartoons. We like the ones about animals. Out here, we don’t have anything but lab animals in cages. Even those are mostly just insects in little glass boxes. You might see cats and dogs in the films that go back to Earth, but we usually don’t even see mice outside the big settlements. Port Eris got a couple goats once. We rode the monorail 300 kliks to see them. By the time we got there, they had both died. There were people paying to look at the bodies.”

“I heard about that,” Harrison said. “Too bad. I had an uncle who raised goats. They’re smart. Kind, too, in their own way.” Jason nodded, but his attention was diverted. They were passing the main shuttle bay at the midsection. It looked like the cylinder of a six-gun from one of the westerns, except with the bullets on the outside. The wheel was rotating to receive a larger shuttle. He was sure he glimpsed a face through the porthole of the craft. He could have sworn it was a woman, more beautiful than he had ever seen, indeed more beautiful than he could have imagined outside of the movies on record, with deep black hair.

“Now this is going to be the tricky bit,” Harrison said, with a hint of a nervous edge to his voice. They were approaching the rear of the Janus, and Jason was beginning to feel something between awe and outright unease at its vast size. He looked to Jackson, who was if possible more uneasy. Suddenly, the other Martian spoke up.

“Remember the old movie about the big gorilla and the really tall building?” Jackson said. “I read the Janus is longer than the real building was tall.”

“Mm, not exactly,” the pilot said. “The Janus proper is 360 meters, including the payloader. The Empire State Building topped out at 380 meters. I went there once, before… Well. Before. Say, you fellows have any girls back home?”

As he spoke, the pod twisted sharply. The porthole showed empty space. “Uh, actually,” Jason said, “Jacks is already, ah- married!” There was a sudden jolt as the pod docked with the spinning tail.

The Martians sat gasping. Jason took some reassurance from the sight of the woman smoothing her garments and rubbing her head. “There!” the pilot said cheerfully. “That was hardly any trouble at all!”

Jason scrambled through the hatch unapologetically. His first thought was to get out of the rattletrap tin can of the pod. His second was to find the dark-haired goddess he had glimpsed during the trip. He had pulled himself through the hatch into welcome gravity when he froze. He was in a corridor that was unaccountably dark. There were cargo containers and instruments all around, with little rhyme or reason. Then, from the shadows, a figure seemed to materialize rather than emerge. He saw little but a silhouette and one side of a face. A half-smile curled the visage as the head turned, revealing a hideous scar.

“Welcome aboard,” said the stranger. As he spoke, he raised a pistol.

Really Good Movies! The one with TV zombies

 

 

Title: The Signal

What Year?: 2006 (copyright)/ 2008 (general US theatrical release)

Classification: Improbable Experiment

Rating: Underrated! (1/3)

 

As I write this, I’m looking at really going through with an ebook compiling my Revenant Review feature. I’m once again coming back to this feature to take care of loose ends I didn’t get to before. This time around, I have a movie that I considered very strongly for that feature but never felt satisfied calling a zombie film, even compared to admitted gray-area entries and oddities like An American Werewolf In London, The Grapes of Death and Tourist Trap. To me, it’s a definitive example of a “zombie adjacent” film, sharing many conceptual and thematic affinities with the genre without quite falling within it. Considered as a zombie movie, it is both one of the strangest and one of the best of the “modern” era. I present The Signal, a post-apocalyptic film about a TV broadcast that makes people crazy… except, there’s a good chance they think you’re one who's crazy, and how do you know they aren't right?

Our story begins with a woman watching TV with her lover, before hurrying home to her clearly suspicious husband. Meanwhile, a strange, constantly-shifting image starts appearing on TV screens and a range of other devices. Whoever watches the broadcast soon become erratic, distressed or openly violent, with a speed and degree that varies widely. As the odd apocalypse unfolds, the lady is forced to escape her apartment to get away from her husband, with the aid of a clearly unreliable survivor with enough of his marbles to improvise a gnarly mace. The ordeal leaves her wandering, zoned out to the music of a Walkman, while we double back to the building, where her husband has holed up with a mixed group hosted by a woman who still thinks they are gathered for a party. Finally, we come back to the boyfriend, apparently the only person to recover his sanity after being exposed to the signal, in a race to find the lady before her husband does!

The Signal was a 2007 independent horror film originally shown at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was written and directed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry, with each having full control over a separate segment of the film. It was reportedly made in 13 days on a total budget of $50,000. The cast included Anessa Ramsey as the lady Mya and AJ Bowen of You’re Next as her husband Lewis, with Sahr Ngaujah as Rod. The film did not receive a general release until early 2008, to mixed to positive reviews. The film’s DVD release included three shorts based on the film’s scenario, all credited to Gentry. It is available on digital platforms.

For my experiences, this stands out for me as a “forgotten” movie that I personally can remember being fully aware of when it came out. As usual, it was a while before I saw it, but I don’t think any later than 2012 and maybe as early as 2010, which is almost immediate by my standards. I have also been almost sure I originally saw it on Netflix streaming, except I also remember seeing the movie with the shorts, which I have never found except on the DVD. (I’m going to go ahead and say that the experience is just not the same without them, especially “The Return”.) Beyond that, my strongest recollection is an early suspicion that this was an unofficial adaptation of Stephen King’s Cell. That will give as good a jumping-off point as any, as this is among other things a far better use of the ideas shared with the novel than the “real” movie that we eventually got.

Moving forward, the most noteworthy thing by far about this film in the zombie genre context is the degree to which it develops a point of view for its zombie analogs. This isn’t especially unique; there have been sympathetic “character” zombies before and since in films like Dead Heat, Shatter Dead and Warm Bodies, with the definitive example still being The Crazies. What is different is that most such films ease the viewer into accepting the “good” zombie (especially of the “character” variety) as in some way different from the rest, or else reveal they were “bad” all along (see Life After Beth). Few besides Romero really accepted the full implication that the “infected” characters who remain likeable and non-threatening (for the moment…) are still a part of the bigger problem that will have to be dealt with sooner or later. Grapes of Death was one; this film is another, perhaps even more effective. Here, most of those affected by the signal still envision themselves as the heroes who will save the day or at least them, and many freely admit that they will have to overcome or control their own derangement to do it. The problem is that far more often than not, they just end up becoming the villain of someone else’s story. Then there is the husband Lewis, who by absolutely all indications is simply acting out tendencies that have been bottled up all along.

On more detailed analysis, most of the arguable and inarguable problems with the film come from its necessarily hit-or-miss experimentation. Just how much it works for any given viewer is very likely to depend on which segment seems best or worst, which in turn is definitely open to mood as well as opinion. Judging from correspondences, many/ most favor the first part, which has the raw vitality of the best zombie movie openings. Less optimally, it is the one segment that is supposed to be focused on the lady, who in fact is already eclipsed by Rod, the one major character whose status is never resolved to my own satisfaction. To me, the movie hits its peak in the middle act, which I find reminiscent of Link, of all things. What it shares with that film (yeah, the killer monkey butler one) is the feel of a mannered Victorian murder mystery gone entirely awry. Here, we have Lewis devolving as already outlined, locked in with a hostess who has apparently only killed once in actual self-defense and an unexposed bystander who just tries to go with the flow. The dynamic quickly becomes malign positive feedback, to the point that the conformist helps dispatch one of the unfortunate few to intrude, while the other two get fuzzy on who’s who and indeed who’s alive. It’s telling and unfortunate that the least is usually said about the finale. It is by my own appraisal the weakest segment, enough to bring down the rating. On the other hand, it does have its own strengths. I find it especially intriguing that it’s only here that hallucinations of the actually impossible play a major part, conspicuously Rod’s return as a reanimated head. Whether or not it was planned, it’s a crossed boundary that was best saved for last, the final breakdown of reality as well as reason.

That leaves the “one scene”, and if it was all up to me, I would go with “The Return” short, which is the main reason I didn’t just buy this movie long ago. But since even the occasional deleted scenes I have featured were at least intended to be in the movie (see Lethal Weapon and for that matter Link), I’m going to go with a bit from the middle act, tellingly by the same collaborator who went back to do the shorts. Not long after our introduction to the principle characters, someone arrives insisting he’s come for the party. After a very tense debate whether to terminate him with prejudice, the two guys let him in. What follows is a surreal and oddly grating encounter I’m surprised I didn’t remember as I did several other specific moments from this part in particular. At face value, the new arrival is the most “normal” we see at any point in the proceedings. The increasingly obvious problem is that he acts far too normal to be both rational and aware of the actual situation. Still, one can allow that he may be trying to play it cool as the middle man already is… right up to the point when he starts talking openly and crudely about his chances of finding a lady friend once the other guests arrive. It’s a mindboggling moment even for this film, and like many of the best, it never is entirely explained.

In closing, all I have to add is that, while it could still find its way into certain plans for the Revenant Review, this is one that never quite belonged there. Whether it counts as a zombie movie need not have been a problem, but it still wasn’t the kind of movie I had set out to cover. That also puts it in a problematic position within the current feature. While it has started to get a reputation as a neglected or “forgotten” film, I find this no more warranted than discounting it as entirely bad.  From what I can both remember and reconstruct, its actual status is close to that of The Thing, which it already has plenty in common with it thematically: It was reasonably well-known when it was released; it was well-regarded by many critics if not most; and it has remained accessible up to the present day. If anything, it was never polarizing enough to attract the hostile comments The Thing sometimes did, and of course, it cost too little not to have made a profit for somebody. However, it still never risen to the status of an undisputed “classic”, either of the conventional or “cult” variety, despite already approaching the edge of the 10-20 year window in which such things usually happen if at all. In just a little more time, it might well become a ”forgotten” film, especially if someone manages to botch the digital rights. For now, I will praise it as what it is and always was, an offbeat gem that’s just a little more satisfying for staying that way. With that, I can rest.

Rogues Roundup: Archer space people!

 

It's the Tuesday after a week off, and I was genuinely debating what to do for this. As it happens, I just got a new acquisition today that might turn into something bigger. I've been looking through stuff I either already have or had considered getting for a story based on the Marx space guys (see, of all things, my latest and kind-of last installment of Chelsea the social worker). One of several things that brought to mind was the Archer line of space guys, which I had exactly one of, previously featured in my sort-of research post on the space guy-to-astronaut evolution. One thing that had come to my attention was that Archer, unlike Marx, had made several female figures. So, I looked around and found a deal on a space guy and space lady. Here's the pair on the Couch Mark 2.

As you can see, the space guy is a copper-colored with an unambiguous gun, as opposed to the hair dryer/ vacuum/ massager thingy the previously featured figure was apparently arrested for carrying. I'm satisfied that he is or at least could be an original. The metallic tint matches the one I already had, and they make the same ceramic clinking when tapped or knocked over. I wasn't so sure about the lady. She has a different coloration, and the plastic definitely seems different, perhaps intermediate between the very hard plastic of the Archer space guys. On further investigation, however, I concluded that the copper guy was the one that was definitely a latter-day copy, based mainly on a prominent bit of flash I just confirmed is visible in the photo above. (My sometimes-correspondent at Space Trucks has been on this for a while.) I remain skeptical whether the other two are entirely of common origin, but I'm satisfied that they are at least of comparable vintage. Here's more pics; one more thing I'll mention is that I had a lot of trouble getting the lady to stand up on the book.

Now this is where she's just mocking me...

I am so smarter than an inanimate piece of plastic!

"Did you prepare my nuclear curling iron?"

Of course, the real question is how well these play with the Marx space guys. A major consideration is that these are all 3.75 inches, which along with the obvious style differences aren't a good match for either size of the Marx figures. (See the 4-inch evil space guys, part 1 and 2 on the 70mm space guys, and the Mexican fluorescent figures while you're at it.) Still, they're close enough to pass as human/ humanoid natives for the explorers to interact with. (Ironically, they are the right size to mix with Star Wars figures as long as they don't have to fit in a cockpit.) My pictures still don't nearly do justice to how preposterous the space lady is both in garments and endowment. You might get a better look at the air tanks in back, which someone was making a joke about; they are in fact identical to what you will see on the guys. Here's a few shots with the 4-inch evil space guys.

"I swear, I'm holding it for a friend... and I have no idea what it is."

"No worries, these things are bulletproof."

"So you have an orbital nuclear weapons platform; you still pay for your own beer."

And here's a few more experiments. First, the 70mm space guys with the large Tomy Rascal robot, ironically the most authentic 1950s-style bot I have. It's clearly descended from Robby the Robot (see also the giant W@lmart version), a great, innovative non-anthropomorphic design that I would happily use if I thought I could both afford a scaled copy and get away with using it.

And here's the tall Tomy bot and regular-sized Rascal with the Galaxy Laser Team lady. Now this looks promising scale-wise...

And how about the turtle-crab alien? I'm conflicted, because I already had an awesome alien design from an unmade stop-motion movie. (Heck, here's the only surviving clip.)

And here's the space lady with Sidekick Carl and a new version I got recently. The new guy needed a little touching up after his backside broke off. Awesome!

Ad for a little more random, here's the mid-size space guys with an amphibious troop carrier I don't believe I ever blogged about before. Hey, cheap, lazy and random was what Marx was all about.

And that covers everything I wanted to get to. Needless to say, things are brewing that could waste a lot more of my time, though I hope to bring a few other things to an end before I get a lot further. That's all for now, more to come!