The Franchise File 2: The one with Gremlins in an arcology skyscraper

 

 

Title: Gremlins 2: The New Batch

What Year?: 1990

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, it’s Halloween, and I haven’t done nearly as much as I usually would with movies on or off the blog. I still have time for one more shot, and there is something I’ve been waiting for. It’s another case of a 1990s sequel to a 1980s movie (see Predator 2), one which never seems to have been either well-regarded or particularly notorious. To me, however, it has always been the most interesting and in many ways the best. I present Gremlins 2, a movie about monsters in an arc scraper, and that’s just the start of the fun.

Our story begins with a developer trying to buy the mysterious shop of the original film, where a certain creature called Gizmo has settled back into a peaceful life watching TV. When the old shopkeeper dies, a skyscraper soon rises on the grounds of the old property. It’s not an ordinary building, but an AI-controlled artificial ecology with a range of businesses, including a genetics lab where Gizmo is held prisoner. When his old friend Billy is hired by the developer Mr. Clamp, the do-gooder helps the creature escape. Before they can complete their getaway, the Mogwai gets splashed with water, causing him to spontaneously reproduce a group of mean, warped offspring. Soon, the spawn transform into scaly Gremlins intent on mayhem. When they get into the lab’s projects, they mutate further, into the likes of a flying gargoyle, a giant spider and an intelligent Brain ready to act as leader and spokesman in their conquest of the world. It’s up to Billy and Gizmo to save the day- with a little help from Dick Miller!

Gremlins 2 was a 1990 film by Warner Bros and Amblin Entertainment, a direct sequel to the 1984 film Gremlins (see also Critters). The film was again directed by Joe Dante (see InnerSpace), with writer Chis Haas replacing Christopher Columbus. The film starred Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates, returning as Billy and Kate, with John Glover as Daniel Clamp. Other cast included Robert Picardo (Dead Heat), Christopher Lee (Horror Express) and Dick Miller (Night of the Creeps, Terminator), the last returning as Mr. Putterman despite the character’s implied death in the first film. Effects were created by Rick Baker (see King Kong 1976). The soundtrack was composed by Jerry Goldsmith (see Deep Rising, Link, etc, etc.). A novelization was written by David Bischoff, with a significantly different ending. An NES game was released by Sunsoft. The movie was a box office disappointment, earning under $42 million against a budget of up to $50M. It is currently available for streaming on multiple platforms.

For my experiences, was a film I was aware of at an early age but didn’t see firsthand until adulthood, which I suppose contributed to my feelings about it. After I did see it, it quickly came in very high on my list of movies that people would probably expect me to like far more than I do. I don’t by any means dislike it, but I find it to have a strange vibe that probably would have failed to connect with me as a 1980s kid or an adult. Meanwhile, I was interested enough in the sequel to watch it at about the same time as the original. It immediately impressed me as a sequel that went in different and creative directions. Beyond that, it fit my tastes better than the first film ever did, in no small part because it really is more of a “straight” monster movie. Whether that makes it “better” is exactly what I have been asking myself going into this review.

Moving forward, the obvious upgrades are the arcscraper environment and the ensemble supporting cast. On both fronts, there are things to nitpick. The arcology angle isn’t that developed, but as a playground for the Gremlins, it’s as fleshed out as it needs to be. (I'll admit I pretty much ripped this off for the Eurypterids adventure.) In certain respects, the modesty is a plus; it’s especially noteworthy that the building isn’t played up as bigger than anything actually in existence then or now. There’s more to criticize in the uneven use of the cast, especially Lee as Gizmo’s captor. To me, the character feels like a “twist villain” in reverse, shoehorned into the beginning instead of the end. His high point comes in the faceoff with the Brain, alas never followed up with redemption or comeuppance in the finale. On the flip side, there are delights I couldn’t shoehorn into my cast list, including Keye Luke, whom I shouted out in Dead Heat, as Gizmo’s original owner and Robert Prosky as Grandpa Fred, a sort of cross between April O’Neal and John McClain. Glover handily steals the movie as the semi-sympathetic Clamp, even if his real-life counterparts are no longer funny. (It gets a lot more awkward in the deleted scenes…) The real highlight is Miller in a fairly substantial role. (Well, the Gremlins don’t kill him with a gun he just sold them…)

Then there are the creatures, and this is where the back and forth comes in between the two films. The Gremlins aren’t quite as menacing as they were in the original, though that means a more even tone for the technological mayhem, and the most dangerous of the lot feels like he was written to be far more prominent. On the other hand, the mutants are mostly an improvement, except for the female (who judging from the book must have been toned down from earlier versions of the script). Many high points come from the Brain, voiced by the late Tony Randall of The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; “one scene” honorable mention is definitely in order for his psychotic “interview” with Fred. (“Was that civilized?...”) For me, it’s Gizmo who comes up a little short, perhaps more so than before. What I could never buy into was the many pop culture references with the Gremlins, if anything ramped up here. I have never found it more worthwhile than the underexplored questions raised when the concept is considered straight. It would have been especially intriguing to see an exploration of the real relationship between Gizmo and his (???) offspring. Do they turn on him because he is not like him? Is he vulnerable simply because he feels enough parental love that he doesn’t want to fight back? Or is this all as “natural” as black widows eating their mates and unborn sharks devouring their siblings? (Yeah, that happens…)

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with an early moment. Gizmo is in the lab, being examined by a pair who could be either twins or clones. In fact, that’s Don and Dan Stanton, the twin brothers who appeared as the ill-fated guard and the T1000 in Terminator 2. When Lee’s Dr. Catheter (I did not want to print that) comes in for a tour, they let Gizmo out. The pair then turn on music, and bob along as Gizmo does a dance. It all feels as natural as his behavior left to his own devices in the first movie. However, he slowly gets closer to the edge of the table, until he suddenly makes a break for it. He barely builds up speed before Lee catches him. We get a perfect closeup of Lee as he holds up Gizmo for inspection. It’s a great moment, and perhaps enough from a great actor.

In closing, I come as usual to the rating, and this is one I could have rated even higher than I have. I just couldn’t quite talk myself into giving this the highest rating. On the whole, I would probably have given the original movie no less and no more, which I will admit is the fairest assessment of their quality. There are many ways in which the present film improves on its predecessor, but the real reason it does as well as it does is because of how many good ideas the original film offered to work with. My verdict on the franchise is that this is a case of “good enough” being just fine. These may never have been great movies, but they are memorable enough to endure as classics. That’s enough for me to end the Halloween season on a high note.

Image credit GoodReads. 

Movie Mania: Predator soundtracks!

 

It's Halloween weekend, and I still haven't gotten the nominal Thursday post up. This time, I have something I was waiting on. In the last month, I ordered the soundtracks for both Predator movies (see my Predator 2 review). Here's a rundown on how they compare. First up, here's a pic of the original soundtrack and insert.

Now, I really need to back up. I'm as much a soundtrack fan as I am a movie fan, and I can boast of knowing all the major guys from the 1970s through the '90s by both their names and their work. As a further consequence, I'm pretty good at recognizing composers without looking things up or waiting for the credits. The thing is, it's a trick whose results vary. Just for example, it's not hard to recognize James Horner (see the Krull soundtrack post), who had a certain vocabulary of cues he would usually work in. On the other hand, I've never pinned down Basil Poledouris (see the Conan the Destroyer and Starship Troopers soundtracks), the composer I've come to praise most often and highly. The composer I've had the highest success rate with is the one behind these soundtracks, Alan Silvestri, otherwise best known for the Back to the Future franchise. Just among the movies I've reviewed, I ID'ed him in Death Becomes Her, and I had already known he scored Mac And Me. Looking through my files, I found more that he composed that I hadn't remembered: Judge Dredd, The Wild (you really can't win them all), and The Mummy Returns. I still wondered if there were a few I had left unmentioned, so I checked his filmography. I was a little surprised not to find any more.

Moving forward, the disc I have here is actually the second release of the Predator soundtrack, put out in 2010 by Intrada. To my surprise, it has never been released as a digital album, so prices can be quite high. I got it by making an unopposed bid to a seller overseas. As a further reminder, I don't generally collect these things because I'm some techno-Luddite, but because it is far too often the only way to get what I'm looking for. There's really not a lot to say about the music itself. If you know the movie or the composer, it's everything you would expect. It's a little under an hour and 15 minutes, which is at least good background noise for the buck. The high points go with the build-up to the action sequences, capturing a sense of mischief that runs through the composer's work. If there's a downside, it's that there is little to remind you where in the film it would be. The nifty extra is the insert booklet, which has the feel of what they would have done if this had come out in the 1980s. Here's a couple pics of the contents.

Next up is the second album, which did get a "vintage" release by Varese Sarabande, an outfit that released the first version of the Predator soundtrack in 2003. It's 45 minutes long, so not quite as much return on the investment, though it's not as expensive as the original, either. As I commented when reviewing the movie, the music is improved as much as it could be improved, with a cool Afro-Caribbean vibe. If anything, it ramps up a bit for the finale, showing that the composer was getting better. Here's a few pics.

And that's really enough for me. I love movie soundtracks, and this is from a guy whom I would have expected to cover a lot sooner. (Also, Silvestri is still alive and active.) He may not be on anybody's best list (I would count him as about number 5 for his era, and Williams and Goldsmith were already tied for 1), but his music is distinctive and genuinely fun. It's exactly what you would expect from good movie music and good music period. That's all for now, more to come!

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one where Kenny is the killer

 

 

Title: Terror Train

What Year?: 1980

Classification: Knockoff/ Mashup

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

With this review, I’m continuing my semi-official survey of slasher movies, and I’m up to one I was actually looking forward to. As I have freely admitted, I have disliked slashers as much on principle as from experience. As a further consequence, many/ most of the ones I have seen are decent to good entries that fans of the genre acknowledge as well above average. On the other hand, I have on occasion found a film that I have been surprised isn’t much better known and regarded, and I consider the present example to be nothing less than one of the very best. I present Terror Train, a slasher movie good enough for even me to like. As it happens, I’ve been on the train.

Our story begins with a med school prank involving a real dead body that sends the intended victim into a breakdown. Fast forward, and we find the lunkheads and the semi-reluctant woman who participated on a night-long trip on an excursion train. It’s frat party meets masque as the coeds party away in costume, with further entertainment from a magician. But a killer has slipped into their midst, using the disguises of his victims. The body count rises, even as the actually competent authority figures in charge of the train lose track of one of the bodies. We all know this isn’t just a random guy, and he’s working his way up to the victim who might not deserve it. Will our final girl survive the night, or is this a one-way trip?

Terror Train was a 1980 horror/ slasher film directed by Robert Spottiswoode. The film was reportedly conceived by producer Daniel Grodnik as “Halloween on a train”. The film starred Jamie Lee Curtis as the damsel Alana and veteran stuntman/ character actor Ben Johnson as the conductor Carne, with David Copperfield as the unnamed Magician. The movie was filmed in late 1979 in Montreal, Canada, using an authentic engine and cars from the Canadian Pacific Railway. The role of the killer Kenny Hampson (yeah, 42-year-old spoiler) was played by Derek MacKinnon, described by Spottiswoode as a transvestite and a member of the local theatrical community. The finished film was distributed by Fox, with a reported $5M ad campaign that would have exceeded its original $3.5M budget. The film was a likely commercial disappointment, earning a box office of only $8M against its budget and expenses, and received mixed to poor reviews. Later critics and fans reappraised it as a superior 1980s slasher movie. Spottiswoode went on to a successful career as writer and director on films including 48 Hours and Tomorrow Never Dies. MacKinnon made several additional film and TV appearances, including an interview for the 1993 LGBT documentary Lip Gloss. A remake of Terror Train was released in 2022. As of late 2022, the original film is available for free streaming on Tubi.

For my experiences, I first heard of this film by pure serendipity, because the train cars used have appeared regularly at local railroad events. (Yeah, I do a lot of stuff I don’t write about.) I didn’t take an immediate interest in the movie, but it did eventually find its way into my rental queue early in the current year. After going in with especially low expectations, I was highly impressed with the film, enough to consider it not just one of the better slasher movies but quite possibly the best I had encountered first-hand. That really made it the kind of movie that usually does not suit my purposes, so I set it for another look down the line. After the rematch, I can still hold it up as at least among the smartest of vintage slashers.

Moving forward, the first things to say are by way of explaining my lead-in. The most striking thing about this movie is that it rarely if ever depends on the characters being dumb. The killer is genuinely clever, enough that he manages to cover his tracks even after evidence of his handiwork is discovered. The body count fodder, by comparison, certainly don’t act very bright, but then they have little reason to suspect they are in danger until very late in the film. The biggest departure from the still-emerging formula is the exceptionally proactive train crew. Of course, they try to cover up the first murder or so where more immediate action could have stopped the whole thing, plus they fail to stop the bad guy from removing evidence. On the other hand, they are quite effective in keeping the civilians from either panicking or directly interfering with their inquiries, which would be by far the greatest risks in a real-life situation. Most impressively, they ultimately unload everybody for an orderly inspection, which sets up a twist I had forgotten the details of. Finally, it is the conductor who finally deals with the villain, albeit after he almost does in the damsel.

This still doesn’t cover the most intriguing elements of the movie, the costumes, the train, and the quite unique villain. The costume party, lit and shot in a willfully lurid 1970s style, seems to reference “Masque of the Red Death”, with an effective surreal feel that is often lost in actual Poe adaptations (see Two Evil Eyes for a possible exception). The hedonistic atmosphere is increasingly contrasted with the confined spaces of the train environment, which hadn’t been used since The Horror Express and are treated at least as effectively here (perhaps better than Curtis…). It has been my further observation that this is where science fiction/ horror films often “cheat” by honeycombing their claustrophobic vehicle with improbably convenient places for both the protagonists and the villain/ monster to hide or escape, but these only figure once or twice here. In these terms, the only film to adhere so honestly to the premise is the ”B-17” segment of Heavy Metal. Finally, there is the killer, who is at face value given good reason for revenge. The usual temptation to find sympathy for the villain is tempered by the nature of his attacks; it’s of particular note that at least one victim seems to be a random target of opportunity, belying any intention of limiting his attacks to those who wronged him. When we do get a look at him, he is unsettlingly ordinary, a commendable counterpoint to the toxic glamor that would surround the genre. Then there is his voice, which I simply cannot do justice by describing.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one of the kills that I honestly wanted another look at. It all starts with the killer making his way through the train in what looks like a Groucho Marx mask. He passes an especially jubilant partygoer in a lizard-man suit, who addresses him by the name of the original owner. (As noted, it’s not at all clear that the villain knew as much…) It’s enough to draw his attention away from another potential partygoer. By then, the lizard-man has raised his own mask to reveal his face. The camera focuses on the eyes of the masked pretender, which convey a clear sense of calculation and perhaps genuine amusement. The lizard-man finally announces that he has the “good stuff”, and leads him fatefully to a lavatory. As the door closes behind them, the partygoer looks over his shoulder, and finally seems to suspect that something is amiss. As he starts to ask a question, the villain raises his mask. The target finally moves, too late, and what follows is really barely a moment longer than what I have recounted. It’s a fine bit of cinematography, exactly what should be expected from a true best of the genre.

In closing, I come to the rating, and here, the real question is if this can truly be considered the “best” slasher movie. After both reflection and viewings of other material, I must say it is not quite there (that distinction definitely goes to one of the Halloween movies, and that would keep us up all night), which is the main reason I have given it anything but the highest rating. I will further admit that it does have its weaknesses even compared to other slasher movies. The one question I cannot answer is, what are you even looking for in a slasher movie? To me, a slasher movie I can tolerate is a pleasant surprise, so 3 out of 4 is praise enough. And if you are one of the people who really like slashers, there is no reason you wouldn’t love this movie. I for one can leave it at that, and call it a night. Further up and further in…

The Anthology Anthology: 1980s/ '90s Horror Anthologies

 

It's the last week before Halloween, and I decided it was time to do another anthology post. This time, I have two horror anthologies, one from 1984 and one from 1992. Fittingly, one is from a well-regarded anthologist and scholar while the other is sketchy on who if anyone put it together. To kick things off, here's the newer, more prestigious and much fatter book.

This is an anthology called Foundations of Fear by the respectable David G. Hartwell, published in 1992 by TOR, with a total of 660 pages plus the introduction, table of contents and other odds and ends. It's everything you would expect from the kind of horror anthology that peaked around the 1980s: Spanning decades; full of works by famous new and old names; and so massive you could use it as bludgeon to fight off the undead. A little more unusually, this isn't just short stories, either. The contents includes the entirety of Lovecraft's "At The Mountains Of Madness", and with this book's format and print size, even that is only a little over 60 pages. While I'm at it, here's the back.

As for the contents, this book is as close as you can get to an anthology that's a classic in its own right. What impressed me since I first discovered it in the public library is that there is almost as much science fiction as there is supernatural horror. Besides Lovecraft, there is "Who Goes There?" by John Campbell, the basis for The Thing, "Sandkings" by George R. R. Martin, and stories by Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick (see my post on the PKD collected works). Then there are a fair number of less classifiable pieces, like "Duel" by Richard Matheson (see my review of the movie). Then there is plenty of "modern" horror, some good (see below) and some unpleasant.

As usual, what really makes this collection interesting is the obscure stuff, and Hartwell has done a good job covering his bases. Two of the most impressive come early and back to back, the Victorian tale "The Little Room" by Madeline Yale Wynne and "The Shadowy Street" by Jean Ray. Both read as much like urban fantasy as horror (the latter more so), with reality-bending themes and vibes that feel like what might have been if Philip K. Dick had gone into fantasy instead of science fiction. Another semi-obscure story is "Longtooth" by Edgar Pangborn, of all things a Bigfoot tale. It's a fine piece I'm not sure if I ever read more than once but vividly remember; unfortunately, its strangeness is a good indicator of why the polished and well-regarded author never managed to be more than a peripheral figure in 1950s/ '60s science fiction. Perhaps the best in the collection is "The Entrance" by Gerald Durrell, an author otherwise known for humorous science and travel writing, published in 1980. It's another tale close to what I would count as fantasy, about a mirror whose reflections don't quite match our world. It starts out like Alice And Wonderland and ramps up into cinematic horror, with a willfully villainous undead entity so gruesome I have honestly wondered if the author had been influenced by any of the 1970s zombie movies.

Now it's getting late and I need to get through the rest of this quickly. It's titled Chamber of Horrors and bears the publisher name Gallery Books and the year 1987. However, the copyright is 1984 from Octopus Books, an outfit I definitely have at least one other collection from. Based on this sample, their hallmarks were anonymous editors, dodgy copyright documentation and very mixed quality. Then there's the cover (virtually the same front and back), which has a certain charm. Here's a couple pics.

For the contents, the emphasis is on "classics" that would have been either in public domain or in the hands of an estate. The highlights of these are "The Red Lodge" by deconstructionist-Gothic master H.R. Wakefield, whom I first encountered of old in the alleged Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, and William Hope Hodgson's "The Derelict", which I had in mind reviewing Horror of the Zombies. Other big names include Ambrose Bierce, W. W. Jacobs, Guy De Maupassant and H.P. Lovecraft himself. Outliers include "The Bird" by Thomas Burke, originally part of his racially charged Limehouse Nights, and "A Woman Seldom Found" by William Sansom, a 1950s tale of love gone awry that has ended up on public domain sites. Of course, there is representation from the middle to low end of the modern era, including a science fictional but very horrific piece "Edifice Complex" by Robert Bloch (see also "No Way Home" by Bryan Lumley, briefly mentioned in my Death Bed review), Stephen King's unbooked early tale "Night of the Tiger", "Wood" by Robert Aickman, "Royal Jelly" by Roald Dahl, and "Back From The Grave", a buried-alive tale by Robert Silverberg. The high point on the modern end is "The Wall" by Robert Haining, apparently originating from the Pan Book of Horror Stories series, a Kafkaesque absurdist piece about a young man who finds himself bricked up in his own apartment. Dishonorable mention goes to "The Cradle Demon" by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, a truly vile, tasteless and misogynistic tale that I will admit is impressive in its own way.

With that, I'm wrapping this up. This has been perhaps brief and definitely more random than usual. But that's the appeal of anthologies. I can definitely say that both these books have impacted my tastes, my own writing and my life. That's enough to call it a night. That's all for now, more to come!

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one where everybody's the killer

 

 

Title: Twitch of the Death Nerve aka Bay of Blood

What Year?: 1971

Classification: Parody/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

When I started this feature, one thing I was planning all along was to cover the giallo genre, something I’ve ranted about regularly without actually reviewing, and it’s crossed my mind that some might doubt if I really know about it at all. In fact, I surveyed the field some time ago with a semi-random selection that included several of the most praised or notorious examples, but came out with nothing I could use except Phenomena (which I keep getting the title of wrong), a late and definitely odd example. Once I set out for a rematch, I knew the choice was one I don’t believe I got to until well after my initial dive, perhaps the most egregious and influential. It’s incredibly bloody, absolutely pointless and kind of fun. I speak, of course, of Twitch of the Death Nerve, aka A Bay of Blood, and you should be able to tell right off the bat that character development was not a selling point.

Our story begins with the murder of a crippled old woman, staged as a suicide by a guy who is himself promptly done in. It’s revealed that Casualty Zero was the heiress who held title to a beachfront property sought after by developers. With her death, interested parties are coming out of the woodwork, including her possible illegitimate son, a businessman and his mistress, a clueless amateur fortune teller and her equally distractable entomologist husband, and a husband-and-wife pair who brought their kids along for some reason. They all want the property, most of them will kill to get it, and very soon they are rubbing out each other as well as a handful of intruding teenagers. It’s kill or be killed, with an assortment of deadly hardware, and the parents just might be the ones with the drive to win. But the only thing more questionable than not bringing your gun to a knife fight is leaving it where your kids can find it!

Twitch of the Death Nerve was a 1971 giallo/ horror film directed and co-written by Mario Bava, a filmmaker known for horror and crime films such as Black Sabbath and Danger: Diabolik. The film was based on a story by Dardano Sacchetti, with the eventual plot reportedly being developed around various violent death sequences already conceived by Sacchetti and Bava. The film was shot in early 1971 at the vacation home of the film’s producer, Giuseppi Zaccariarello. The cast included Bond girl Claudine Auger as the protagonist Renata and Luigi Pistilli as her husband, with Laura Betti, an actress who had previously worked with Bava, as the fortune teller Anna. Gore effects were provided by Carlo Rambaldi (see Conan The Destroyer, ET). The film was first released in Italy under the title Ecologia del Delitto (Ecology of Crime) and later under the title Bahia De Sangre (Bay of Blood) in Spain. It was released in the US under its given title as well as Carnage, with a reported R rating. The film benefited from multiple re-releases through the 1970s, and became an influence on American slasher films such as the Friday the 13^th franchise. Bava died in 1980 at age 65. Auger died in late 2019. It is currently available under the Bay of Blood title for digital streaming on platforms such as Shudder, but is not offered for purchase or rental.

For my experiences, I freely admit to hearing of this one from Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews. What interested me from the start was that, from reviews and synopses alone, it clearly qualifies as a parody, not necessarily in the sense of intentional comedy (then again, we’re dealing with the Italians, so I’m not going to say no…) but certainly in the sense of satirizing and deconstructing the genres it is a part of. The entirely disconcerting part is just how damn early it is. Gialli had been around for a while by the time this came along, yet they certainly were not dying out as a “straight” form the way the old-school “whodunit” had been in the US (compare to Picture Mommy Dead). Even so, this film came along to skewer their conceits and cliches, under the direction of one of the filmmakers who did the most to establish the genre in the first place. It should have been the unkindest cut of all to fans and peers alike, except, it became one of the more popular and well-regarded entries in the genre.

Moving forward, if there is one thing where I might dissent with other reviewers, it is that I do find plenty to differentiate the characters. The most interesting character and on paper the closest we get to a sympathetic one is the heiress’s son, who is in turn the only party to be personally wronged by the others. However, per the official score card, he also accounts for most of the collateral casualties among actually uninvolved bystanders, albeit trespassers in his own house. By comparison, the one you would definitely root against is the businessman, whom I honestly thought committed many more of the killings. By the time we get to the nominal protagonists (whom I had no idea are actually part of the family), they really are the nearest thing to “good” guys. Sure, they knock off the most harmless of the lot for no particularly good reason, but they are the ones who have to deal with the contenders who already provided most of the body count. The core irony among many is that if they kept their heads down or just left, they would probably have come out on top anyway. The real head scratcher is that they seem to be the only ones to bring a firearm to the proceedings, which of course only comes into play when an ironic twist demands it.

All of this is really worked around the central reality that this is all literally and willfully meaningless. Up to a point, this is of course the point, and it is impressively successful in skewering targets well before their most currently familiar examples. Among other things, it offers a striking counterpoint to the “tragic villain” archetype now familiar as part of the superhero genre. The characters all have their motives and backstories that they think justify their actions in some way, but the glaring reality is that they are almost all after the same thing for the same reasons. By my assessment, it all runs into two glaring problems. First, for all the pretensions of sophistication, there are realities that the satire must ignore rather than merely work around. The real reasons the rich don’t slaughter each other like Hunger Games contestants have everything to do with systems developed and evolved by and for them. Second, despite its deconstructions, there is still at least one unnecessary diversion to establish several characters’ motives as a plot point. This can in itself be granted as part of the satire, yet the fact remains that it is far too long to be amusing or effective in any other way.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that I’m still not satisfied with the usual explanations for. A ways in, Renata is looking around the house (or one of them), before she has really done anything herself. She discovers a room with three bodies, all from a group of teens who wandered in. She is genuinely shocked and justifiably terrified. That’s when she sees the businessman, who promptly tries to kill her. Now this is where I find some doubt in certain summaries that say someone else murdered the bystanders. The businessman is certainly all in for killing her, as she would certainly be a threat to his schemes already. She runs, and manages to get a door between her and her attacker, which happens to be an awful lot like a certain horror movie a few years ahead. She manages to grab a clearly inadequate weapon before pushing against the door, which is made in large part of glass. Just when you would be thinking how long it will take for one of them to figure this out, she takes a swing and puts her nominal weapon right through the glass. It’s one of the more creative and effective moments of a well-executed film. It leaves the further question open if this is the moment she flat-out snaps.

In closing, what I come back to are my own suspicions about the real course and nature of the slasher genre. Back when I reviewed Sleepaway Camp, I pointed out that the whole genre was devolving into self-parody even in the early 1980s, a reality further demonstrated by John Carpenter’s valiant efforts to do something, anything else with Halloween 3. In that context, the present film feels like an eerie memento mori, made and released at virtually the same time Silent Night, Bloody Night was fumbling its way through a rudimentary outline of the slasher movie as an American phenomenon. My conclusion is that the slasher movie and the giallo before it were always on the verge of either intentional or unintentional or unintentional comedy. What this movie demonstrates is that a clever satire/ parody can not only overcome the limitations of its source material but actually improve on its better points. That’s just enough to put this one far enough on my good side to get to the middle of the ratings scale. Make no mistake, it’s absolute trash, but it’s the kind of trash that knows not to pretend to be anything else. For someone who knowingly wrote the Exotroopers series, that’s enough for a little mutual respect.

Movie special: Revenant Review ebook publication announcement!

 

It's the last day to post for the off-week, and I used the time to forge ahead on a long-term project. The upshot is, I finally published an ebook based on my Revenant Review feature. It's not yet clear if the ebook will be available for purchase bfore I need to get this post up. Update 10/26: The ebook is live, link here.

For now, here's the movie poster I used for the cover. The movie is titled Don't Go In The House, at least in U.S. release. I still have no idea what it is actually about, not do I particularly care. With my luck, though, I'll probably end up reviewing it sooner or later.

And here's something I thought of using, a foreign poster of The Incredible Melting Man, which I actually reviewed under Space 1979. It's really quite impressive, so of course it has almost nothing to do with the movie.

And while I'm at it, here's the link for my Space 1979 ebook!

With that, I'm going to post this page. I will update this as links become available. That's all for now, more to come!

The Classics File: The one that made Bela Lugosi

 

 

Title: Dracula

What Year?: 1931

Classification: Prototype

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

 

As I write this, I’m closing on fifty reviews for my No Good Very Bad Movies feature, and not far from 300 reviews total. It crossed my mind that the one thing I haven’t dealt with is perhaps the one kind of movie I hate most, the “overrated” movie, and this interested me enough to consider why. The most obvious consideration is that the most obvious suspects are the kinds of films I don’t usually deal with, say, romantic comedies and historical dramas. What really stands out to me is that there really is a measure of justice here. Genre critics and fans like me will dig up horrible movies from long before we were alive, but “mainstream” pop culture memory has the depth and longevity of astroturf. I personally have seen many blockbuster films that I was subjected to seemingly disappear from public consciousness in 10 years or even 5. The remnant that remains are the overrated classics, and these vex me enough for one last tilt at the windmill. To kick things off, I present Dracula, the cornerstone of a whole genre that has never satisfied me.

Our story begins with an outsider approaching the castle of an aristocrat named Dracula, a crumbling ruin that for some reason has a possum infestation. The count is ready to look for a new place in the big city, and he has brought our nominal protagonist on board as a real estate agent. The count soon arrives in merry England, bringing a mysterious plague with him. The cast of noblemen soon realize that Dracula is a vampire, an undead fiend that must drain the blood and health of the living to survive. To save British morals and possibly civilization, they must destroy the revenant- but a gentleman’s beloved is already in his thrall!

Dracula was a 1931 horror/ drama film from Universal, based on the novel of the same name by Bram Stoker. The film was directed by Tod Browning, known for horror/ surrealist silent films such as London After Midnight, and starred Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi in his breakthrough role. The film was an immediate success, and together with Frankenstein became the foundation of the “Universal Monsters” franchise. It also launched Lugosi into other high-profile films such as 1932’s White Zombie. Browning followed the film with Freaks, his most well-regarded and controversial work. The director subsequently declined due to conflicts with studio management and several box office failures, while Lugosi suffered increasingly from typecasting in low-budget horror and parodies of his earlier work. Lugosi died in 1956, due in part to substance abuse. Browning died in 1962.

For my experiences, a central reality I have already commented on is that I grew up with the Universal Monsters films without really experiencing them first-hand. (Ironically, the one I definitely remember seeing in my youth is Abbott And Costello Meets Frankenstein.) That left me in an especially odd position with Dracula. Of course, I knew of the film and character. I can remember reading an apparently faithful comic-and-cassette adaptation of the novel. I also became familiar with the tragic biography of Lugosi, and eventually found my way to Nosferatu. Most significantly, I became very familiar with “real” folklore about the undead. But until the viewing for this review, I had literally never seen the actual film, in no small part because I already knew that it had very little to do with anything people had actually believed in. I finally fit in a viewing one morning before work, and came out even more underwhelmed than I expected.

Moving forward, the literal elephant in the room here is the reason I usually don’t review “high profile” movies: This is a definitive example of a film that is almost inseparable from its own influence. It’s all the more unfortunate that it has been parodied often enough for a substantial number of people to know the parodies far better than the original. (The “bleh bleh bleh” running gag in the Hotel Transylvania franchise is actually a pretty good “meta” illustration of the problem.) For 1980s kids like me, it’s like growing up with a Weird Al Yankovic song and then finding the original he was making fun of. Things get even trickier with Lugosi, who has long since been reduced to a Rorschach test for critics; some will see a demigod before his tragic fall where others just see a ham who was always overrated. On that particular point, I feel I can be a voice of reason. I will be the first to say, Lugosi was a gifted and versatile actor. This, however. is absolutely not his best work (though certainly not his worst either…). Given that he got in at least a decade of “respectable” work between this film and his actual slide into low-budget typecasting in the early to mid-1940s, the whole idea that this was some irreproducible peak was always a backhanded slight to his actual talent. The actors who really can’t improve on their first major role are the ones who end up washed up long, long before he did.

After all that, I still haven’t really talked about the movie, and I freely admit that I’m not sure if I can. This is a film that truly feels like a prototype. All the elements of great gothic horror are here, surely by Browning’s hand: The spooky castle, the shadowy crypts, the inexplicably unsafe staircase (wait, was Death Becomes Her making fun of this?), the ethereal zoned-out vampiresses. They just don’t quite come together. Then sometimes they don’t work at all, egregiously the bats, which look at least as cheap and silly as the alleged effects in an actual Ed Wood movie. (Hell, Abbott And Costello looked like it had real bats.) What I find inexplicably lacking is any sense of tension, which in turn comes down to the lack of an engaging hero. For most of the movie, Harker and Van Helsing (I honestly never tried to sort out which is which) do little more than narrate Dracula’s misdeeds. When they do finally do something, their plan amounts to hitting Dracula when he can’t fight back. Only once does Dracula pit his full hypnotic powers against a would-be slayer, in a truly great scene that might justify the movie’s reputation if it wasn’t inconsequential to the plot. My final beef is that all of these issues were already present in the book, yet Stoker’s tale made it interesting and dramatic even in the Radio Shack adaptation.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I can honestly point to the moment this movie lost me. Very early on, we are given a view of the interior of Dracula’s castle, and it’s all well and good. We soon get to the crypt, and this is where things get wonky. First up, a rodent-like creature emerges from a coffin which is in fact clearly a possum, something a number of commentators confirmed. So sure, this could just be a stand-in for a very big rat; I discussed the surprising difficulties of filming live rodents myself when I reviewed the Willard remake (see also Of Unknown Origin). But then we see what are very obviously armadillos, a creature which is like the possum found only in the Americas and also is so unthreatening that is literally toothless. The strange thing is that I had seen these harmless creatures hyped as somehow dangerous before in Ingagi, so I decided to see if I could figure something out. Apparently, armadillos are something of a pest in the areas where they live, with a further disconcerting habit of digging up carrion and fresh graves either for meat or just in pursuit of insects already attracted by such things. So why did Browning see fit to put them on-screen here, as he apparently did in a number of his films? Did he expect audiences to accept them as dangerous based on dim rumors and simple unfamiliarity? Or are they simply here as a strange animal that few people at the time would recognize? I just don’t get it, and that is my refrain for much of what follows.

In closing, what I come back to is what “overrated” really means. It’s easy to joke about films that deserve to be forgotten or entirely lost, but after seeing how many good films have suffered that very fate, I cannot wish it even on the most terrible movies I’ve ever seen. On a philosophical level, it’s in the normal course of things that some films receive more praise and profit than they deserve. The “overrated” films that are a real problem are the ones that distract from ones that are as good if not better, and this is definitely a case in point. I haven’t been doing this review to tell anyone that this movie is “bad” or good. That is a judgment only the individual viewer can make, especially for a film this far removed from its own time. What I have said and will continue to say is that there are films that are better, like Nosferatu, White Zombie, even From Dusk Till Dawn in its own way. (Why have I still reviewed only one of those movies???) By all means, give it a look, and be glad we all have that privilege. But don’t let it stop you from looking at other movies. With that, I for one have said my piece.

Fiction: The Space Guys adventure, part 5!

 

It's the start of the off-week, so of course, it's more Space Guys. This time, I'll put a table of contents at the end. Also, here's a link for my posts on the bots and accessories. And this really is supposed to be a little ambiguous...

A week and more passed, as much as weeks counted on the ship. Already, there were enough crew to make the ship feel crowded. Jason and Jax were kept busy flying the shuttles that carried cargo and crew to the ship. In that time, he did not so much as say a word to Alek.

On the tenth day, he had returned with the contingent from New Edo on an 18-hour run from Phobos. There were six men and two women, the latter even less talkative than the former. He made the flight with Harrison as his copilot, really his teacher. The amiable man made the flight bearable. He even managed to connect with one of their passengers, John Tanaka, who identified as an Edonian Ranger. This was apparently the title of an elite corps sworn to their nation’s defense and to exploration in the name of the common good of humankind. He told nonchalantly of diving to the bottom of the 7-Mile Trench, crossing the trackless jungles of Indochina with no weapons or tools but a shovel and kukri, ejecting without a parachute 40,000 meters over the Kamchatka wilderness, and a dozen other hair-raising adventures that seemed to have no purpose but to prove his mettle.

Jason was bone-tired as he descended into the hold of the drive nacelle where the shuttle had docked. He passed a line of three storage tanks, and a pair of gaming cabinets. In the middle of the floor, two robots were at work, one chrome and one a brassy gold, stumping along on legs shorter than their stout feet. Their squat, 1.6 meter-tall forms made him think of mushrooms, if only because of the transparent domes that covered the workings of their electronic brains. They were already loading cargo modules onto a cart, using pincer claws on the ends of accordion-like extending arms. One swiveled its head to track him with two red eyes beneath the clear housing.

He paused at the sight of another robot, at least 2.1 meters tall. It shared with the other robots the clear housing of its brain, which was only the top half of a roughly spherical head. Its boiler-like body was taller and proportionately thinner than the smaller robots, concealing its still much greater mass. It was supported by two strong legs and feet that could convert into tracks. He had passed it before without giving it any further thought. Now, however, it seemed different. The obvious difference was that a glow came from beneath the dome, barely visible in the light but quite clear in the shadowy recess where it stood. More than that, it seemed alert even as it stood motionless. He was still taken off-guard by sudden confirmation as an optical housing that ringed the middle of its head flared to life. The head turned, just enough to lock on him. The arms suddenly rose. Each bore three independently-swiveling metal digits that looked like egg beaters. It was not lost on him that they might very well scramble his insides like an egg.

Suddenly, a sharp, cold, seemingly unidentifiable voice called out, “Identify hostile.” The soft blue-white glow of the dome became yellow. The voice spoke again, “Restrain.” He cried out as the robot suddenly advanced, its claws already fully extended. He easily withdrew beyond its reach, but it was like the tale of the Tortoise and the Hare. The machine was not hindered by cramps from 3/4ths of a day sitting in a cockpit, nor did it have to look over its shoulder to avoid tripping over a cargo module or backing into a bulkhead. He might still have escaped, if the robot had not already cut off the path to the corridor of the life support ring. Perhaps it would not have mattered; he momentarily pictured running through the corridor, always sloping slightly uphill. At any rate, the triple claws gripped his shoulders like a crane in an electromechanical game. He kicked and struggled, purely as a matter of instinct. He had the presence to call out, “Hey! Stop! Let me go! I order you to let me go!”

That would indeed have been enough if an ordinary mech had laid hands on him, if its programming had somehow allowed it to do so in the first place. But of course, it was already obvious that this was anything but ordinary. Still, it was evident that it was trying to minimize the damage to him and itself, as it held him up at enough distance that his kicks only grazed its body. The voice called out again, “Execute maximum restraint.” Suddenly, the arms wrapped around his torso, drawing him into a crushing bear hug. He struggled to breath and soon failed. Just as sparks flashed before his eyes, the voice called out, “Release.”

He dropped to the floor. He was still laid out prostrate as a second figure advanced. He wouldn’t have recognized the silhouette standing over him, but there was no mistaking the singularly unfashionable shoes. “Alek,” he said. “Look, I was just… going to…” He slumped to the floor.

Alek dropped to a half-crouch. “You really screwed me over, Jason,” she said, her voice finally recognizable. Her diction was slow, meticulous, and perfect apart from one or two subtle oddities of pronunciation and emphasis. He finally looked up at her up enough to see her put on her glasses, which was just slightly comforting. He still slumped back to the deck, panting.

“You are hyperventilating, if it is no psychosomatic,” she said. She twirled a mechanical pencil. “I checked, the readouts show the machine didn’t apply a tenth of the force it would take to induce unconsciousness. If it were wrong, you should have bruises… Dammit. Chopper, carry him to my cabin.”

This time, the robot was reasonably gentle as it carried Jason to a cabin Alek evidently had to herself. He saw only then that she wore a sweater of the same tubed material as the dress she had worn at their first meeting, this time with a skirt from a servicewoman’s dress uniform. “What happened to the English?” he said.

“I can talk like this as long as I need to,” Alek said. She continued in the same almost uninflected tone, “Puedo hacer lo en espanol. Und Deutsche. E ruskiy. To Nihon. I naravno Hrvatski. But it takes longer, it is hard, and people always say I sound like my machines.” Her voice finally changed back to what he knew. “It is more pleasant when I talk like this. No?”

They reached the cabin, which had the partitions opened casually. In her own room, there was a quite spacious bed, cluttered with schematics, models, notepads, and even actual books. She cleared enough space for the robot to set him down sitting upright. The robot clomped over to a matching space across the way had been converted into a machine shop. As it hooked itself into a terminal, another of the small robots promptly began performing diagnostics on the larger machine. She matter-of-factly opened his uniform and undershirt to inspect his chest. As she did that, Jason took a closer look at the robots across the way, especially the smaller one, which was painted blue. “Tik-Tok,” he said. It was a name from his beloved Oz books, often shared in their letters.

“Yes, you remembered,” Alek said. She clearly was not impressed. She pointed at the small robot and the tall one with her pencil. “That is the demonstrator for the J3 model. I upgraded him to be my assistant. I have called the big one Nick Chopper, like the Tin Man. I know, Tin Man was a real man, not machine like Tik-Tok, until all his parts got chopped off by his own axe. But the way Chopper goes through spare parts, he really is like Tin Man. I replaced his whole brain board three time; maybe name should be Jack Pumpkinhead, no?”

By then, she had finished her inspection. “No bruising, as I thought. I am sorry, it is a new feature I am developing on the captain’s orders. It modifies Chopper’s program to allow it to restrain a human when it is necessary to protect others. I really did need to test it. Usually, we would ask for volunteers, but it is not the same.”

Past the end of the bed, there was a complete computer work station. She grabbed a semi-movable chair and sat down facing him. “You really hurt me, Jason,” she said. She held the point of the pencil level with his eye. “Not just this time, either. First you tell me you love me, then you stop writing when I offer to come to you. Now, I go out on a limb coming to you, you promise to marry me, you, you show me making love… And then you don’t even talk to me. But they talk about me, you know.”

“When I woke up, you were gone,” he said. “What did you expect me to do? Besides, practically everybody on the ship is either a super brain like you or an old spacer like Harrison. They don’t care what we do, and why would you care what anybody else thinks, anyway?”

Alek shook her head. Jason was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “People think I don’t care, they think I don’t understand either, they think I know about machines but not people,” she said. “But I do, and it hurts. Some of them think you treat me bad, like, like wicked man. The rest think I am not good enough woman for you. I can see it when they don’t talk. Sometimes, they talk like I am not even there. Everywhere, I hear them talk, even those two Melayu who hardly say anything. They are the worst. The things they say, absolute filth, just because they think nobody else understands Javanese. They even say I wouldn’t even know if I was a virgin.” Her cheeks flushed at that. “You knew I kiss boys before.”

Jason looked back into her eyes. “Why didn’t you stay?”

She blinked in vague surprise. “I may not be decent woman, but I am professional,” she said. “Did you think an intelligent, enlightened woman like me would spend all night in your bed before you are my husband, just to moon over you while you sleep?”

“You might be surprised,” Jason said. That got a smile from her. “It wasn’t that, anyway. I told you, down there, getting engaged isn’t just about you and me.” By happenstance, Mars came into view in the porthole, with Hellas visible to the south. “I had to tell my folks about you. I didn’t hear back from them. It happens all the time, and right now, the traffic for this ship has the wires jammed up all over the planet.”

Her face became hopeful. “What did they say?” she asked.

“My parents were happy,” Jason said. “They knew about you, of course. They think we would be a good match. They just asked to have a video of the ceremony if we do get married. Well, if you still want to.” He looked at her intently. “Look, I’m sorry I put you through that. So… what can I do to make it up to you?”

“Be an indecent man,” she said. “Treat me like, like you are the hound dog and I am in heat. Follow me, hug me, kiss me, hold me, grab me and try to make love to me while everybody is watching. Especially those dirty Malay.”

Suddenly, she sprang up and took off her glasses. She strode the length of the cabin and her lab twice and back again. When she stopped, she started to smooth her sweater down. It soon stretched down her hips, until he realized that it was her dress or one like it. “I am sorry,” she said. “I am getting excited.” Her face flushed immediately. “Not like you are thinking, perro. I am thinking of math. I can see it, not just numbers, also lines, shapes. I need this to draw what I see…” She snatched up a notebook and plopped down beside him, ignoring a scale model of the Janus that crunched audibly beneath her. She licked her upper lip as she began to draw. Somehow, he was less shocked when she kissed him.

“There,” she said. “Now, I can really think. Better, in fact. Thank you.” He stared as she sketched a series of ellipses that together formed something like a flower. He shivered, this time with unquestionable pleasure.

It lasted until he looked down at the unsorted papers on the floor. Among them was a Sparky the Space Squirrel poster, with a cluster of holes drilled where it would hurt the most. “Moxon was here,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” Alek said. She pointed with her pencil toward the lab, then in the direction of the gaming cabinets. “That was his room. He let me have it. He still comes back for target practice. I convinced the captain to put those in so he wouldn’t shoot his real gun.” Only then did Jason make the connection that one cabinet was a shooting gallery. Suddenly, she deposited herself in his lap. “But please don’t talk about him. Just kiss me, and touch me, and talk to me like you are making love.”

After a while, he removed his undershirt. By then, neither of them noticed the bruise on his back.

 

Part 1: The demo!

Part 2: Arrival!

Part 3: The spaceship Janus!

Part 4: The briefing, and romance!

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Return of the Marx clones!

 

I'm starting my weekend post really late, and it happens to be the point where I would usually do a dino post. Fortunately, it also happens that I have a dino set I just posted an unboxing video for... and it is exactly the same as one I made a post about in late 2020. To kick things off, here's the glorious packaging post-unboxing.

I honestly don't know how this happened...

Now, I did have a reason for this. Over time (see my Hideous Abomination video), I've said quite a bit in praise of a figure that came with this set, which I've called the generic tyrannosaurid. It's a carnosaur sculpt that's vaguely impressive if you have had my level of traumatizing experience with knockoff and generic dinos. It's a good-sized dino in a "modern" pose that looks more or less like a tyrannosaurid. Which tyrannosaur is admittedly hazy; it's the wrong shape for an adult T. rex unless it's a juvenile. But call it Albertosaurus or Alioramus (see T. rex vs.) or even Allosaurus, and it will work well enough. In the course of my further recent experiments with "diorama" scenes (see last month's dino post), I decided that this was my best option for a general-purpose carnosaur. That, in turn, convinced me to get another one if I had the chance. That brought me back to a set I had sighted at the grocery store rather than Walmart, with the very familiar name Jaru (see Winston the Uintathere), and sure enough, this was in there. Here it is on The Couch Mark 2.

And here are a couple pics of the pair together.

It will be obvious from these pics that they aren't identical, and the newer one is in a number of ways worse. The paint and colors look vaguely overdone, the blue in particular is heavy enough to look less realistic, the paint on the teeth is wonky, and the plastic itself has a cheap, waxy look. Still, it's not a lot worse, and they managed to get one of the eyes in about the right place. Here's the regular dinos that came with the set, all clearly copied from Marx.

And here's most of the rest (I realized I missed a "fierce" hadrosaur on my new desk), alas including another Hideous Abomination and the patchisaur Pteranodon. (Okay, I admit it, I actually like the pterosaur...) 

After the generic tyrannosaur, the most interesting and flat out good thing to come with these sets was some rock/ terrain pieces. Both came with four. Two are just rock outcroppings that have already served me well as stands and general decorations. More intriguing, if not quite as useful, are a set of cliff/ mountain pieces that look more suitable for "distant" background elements. I have long been convinced that they are based on the matte paintings of Skull Island in the original King Kong. It has also crossed my mind that they look pretty close to how the edge of a meteor crater would from the inside. As with many things, the new set looks a bit different, though this time in no way worse. Here are the new pieces with examples from the old set in the middle.

And with the Space Guy Who Doesn't Care for scale!

And here's some alleged plants. I suppose they could be giant alien parsley...

And here's the whole pack of Hideous Abominations, including the "original" from the mystery box lot. If I had nightmares, it would be of these guys chasing me, only they'd fall over and scream for me to kill them or something. But no, I just dream about shopping...

For a creature that couldn't walk, it's embarrassingly easy to make these guys stand up...

Then for something different, it happens I also got an army man set from the same company. This was really very good, clearly made with a lot of effort or at least a good choice of who to copy. Here's a selection of sculpts. Several of these are different in style, color and material, enough to make me wonder if they came from (at least) two different suppliers. Despite this, they are uniform in overall quality. And look at the beautiful barbed wire...

And here's the vehicles and terrain pieces. As I commented unboxing this, the walls are clearly man-made, but it could still fit into a fantasy/ sci fi piece as ancient ruins of one sort or another. The funny part, I'm absolutely sure that helicopter is a transport called the Hind... made by the Soviet Union.

Now, it's time for the main event, the tyrannosaurs vs. the space marine analogs!

And that's a wrap for now. This is another reminder why I collect this stuff. It's always interesting, and once in a while, you get a thing of beauty. That's all for now, more to come!