Fiction: Retro gaming parody novel publication announcement!

 

It's Labor Day, which means this is still technically the last weekend of a month when I've so far done only two posts and absolutely no movie reviews. I'm breaking the silence to announce that my Nintendo fan/ parody novel (see demos 1, 2,  and 3, the mythology appendix and extra) is up for sale, as linked to here.  In the meantime, I threw in some art on top of the cover I already spent too much on, resulting in the interior title page above from an artist named Carlos Miguel Garcia. My specific instructions were to make a "1980s futuristic" ship, and I will be the first to admit that really is what Eighties "kit-bashed" sci fi ships were like. Here's another piece of artwork I shelled out for. For context, the description in the book has the mother dragon monster using a chokehold. And they're both being held hostage by the empress of an evil magic-mirror dimension...

So that's what I have to show for 4 and a half months of work and definitely more money than I'm remotely likely to get back. So was it worth it? Well, it probably helped keep me sane, which is something. And while I'm at it, here's my final version of the ship design everybody kept telling me not to use.

That's all for now, more to come... I'm still not saying when.

Really Good Movies! The one with the fakest fake tanks

 

 

Title: The Battle of the Bulge

What Year?: 1965

Classification: Prototype/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Underrated (1/3)

 

As I write this, I have just finished a week off, which gave me time to think over things I want to do, new and old. As usual, that led to two colliding trains of thought. On one hand, I have once again been thinking of dusting off this particularly infrequent feature, dedicated to actual good movies. On the other, I have been doing a whole lot of research on World War 2. That led me to consider a few movies that I had grown up with, and that finally brought me to the one I saw trashed the most. Of course, that was enough to convince me it was worth a review, so I present The Battle of the Bulge, a war movie that really tried.

Our story begins after a very dramatic tank-themed credits roll with an introduction to the actual Nazis preparing for their last great offensive, against the American forces gathered at the borders of Belgium and France. (Too bad about Operation Bagration…) The dastardly Krauts have a two-fold plan. One is to send English-speaking troops in American uniforms to engage in sabotage and general mayhem behind Allied lines. The other is to crush the forces of democracy with their new King Tiger tanks, commanded by a morally complex Teutonic officer. (Guess which one actually worked…) We then meet a grizzled tanker, a young officer, a charming local damsel and an assortment of other colorful characters who must roll with the tide as German might throws the allies into disorder and retreat. But the looming final battle will be for a prominent oil depot, and the ubermenschen must triumph or run out of gas!

The Battle of the Bulge was a 1965 war drama by Warner Bros, based on the Ardennes Countoffensive of December 1944 and the related Operation Greif. The film was regarded as an answer to 1962 Fox film The Longest Day. Robert Shaw was cast as the German commander Col. Hessler, following his appearance as Grant in From Russia With Love. His character was considered a fictionalized version of accused war criminal Joachim Piper, the only role to closely correspond to an identifiable historical person. Others in the ensemble cast included Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas (see… Horror Express? And the Gobots movie???) as the tanker Guffy. The film was criticized at the time of release for historical inaccuracies by a number of participants in the battle, including Dwight Eisenhower. It later attracted controversy for its use of post-war armored vehicles, including American Pattons identified onscreen as German Tiger 2 tanks, and filming at locations in Spain that did not resemble the terrain or conditions of the battle. It was a possible commercial failure, earning a North American box office of $4.5 million against a $6.5M budget. It would benefit from frequent airings on television. As of April 2023, it is available for free streaming on Youtube.

For my experiences, this might well be the first major World War 2 movie I ever saw thanks to 1990s TV. Long after, still long ago, I had my rematch and definitely found it poorly aged. What really stood out in the research and ponderings that led to this review is how far it already was from the war. In the culminating irony, it’s still earlier than the biggest and possibly last “modern” wave of war films in the 1970s (see Cross Of Iron), which I now know accounts for most of the ones that I can remember encountering in the wild back when. That finally brought me very cautiously back to this one. I am now prepared to say, it held up a lot better than it is given credit for.

Moving forward, the obvious things to get out of the way are almost all things that were almost entirely beyond anyone’s control. In particular, there was simply no way to portray tanks in the numbers this film required without using the real thing. There was even less that could be done to film significant numbers of functioning armored vehicles effectively and safely, except under conditions far more ideal than those of a “real” battlefield. I must further emphasize that the vast majority of the movie’s scenes at least show snow and forests rather than the sunny plains (in Spain???) that everyone complains about. I will further admit, the wonky tanks definitely threw me off more than anything else the last time I came back to this one. Even then, what really bothered me was that I had no trouble envisioning solutions to a number of problems. The actual King Tiger in particular was already advanced enough that any number of later tanks could have substituted tolerably for it with no modification beyond a big enough mockup of the turret. Hell, if they had just called them Panzer IVs, a mockup of the gnarly late-war versions would already have so much extra plating we wouldn’t even see the wheels and suspension that give the most trouble.

That leaves the characters and story, which admittedly don’t hold up as well as they could have. The usual problem with ensemble casts is that the time for real character development has to be divided between them, and this suffers a little more than usual. In certain lights, Shaw’s character does as much harm as good. On the balance, he does at least deliver on his outsized screen time, actually pulling off the cold-blooded, hyper-analytical Prussian military man. The only thing really debatable is the effort to show his disapproval of the conduct of his men, which is uniquely framed in the same functional terms as his tactics. On the Allied side, we do get a relatable and genuinely entertaining everyman in Savalas, who might just as well have been elevated to the lead. The rest of the cast is either too undeveloped or cliches (both in the case of the doomed love interest). What again sets this apart is that the story actually works in many of the issues that truly decided the battle and the war. The chronic oil shortages of Nazi Germany are a recurring plot point that takes a brutal twist in the finale, while the vastly exaggerated effectiveness of the Greif masquerade indirectly highlights the extent to which it was founded in pulp adventures over sound tactics. (It’s worth further note that participants who survived to be brought to trial emphatically denied that they had fired on Allied troops while posing as same.) An extra highlight that came close to “one scene” status is the discovery by the baffled Nazis of a fresh chocolate cake, with all that it implies about the logistics that the US brought to bear.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with one that I realized I remembered from way back when, which I probably wouldn’t have placed in this movie without actually seeing it. Toward the end, Shaw/ Hessler is talking to his subordinate Conrad, portrayed by Christian Blech, who was not only German but an actual Wehrmacht veteran. When his commander reports that they have advanced further than any other unit, the subordinate exclaims, “We have won the war!” That draws a monologue from Hessler, who admits that conventional victory was already beyond the Nazis’ reach in 1941. Instead, he maintains that their war will simply go on indefinitely. When Conrad asks what will become of their families, the commandant says chillingly, “They will become German soldiers, and you will be proud of them.” It’s as warped a view of reality as Conrad’s laughable optimism, yet it captures both the outlook of the Nazis by the end of the war and the eventual realities of the Cold War. Given the fate of his real-life counterpart, it’s all the more unsettling to consider Shaw’s quite casual remark in the midst of this: “The world is not going to get rid of us after all…”

In closing, what I come to is an idea I initially developed earlier in this review, on what I consider the fundamental tiers of war films. The truly and fully “Historical” films are the ones that are or claim to be effectively documentaries or biographies, like The Longest Day, based entirely on “real” events and the experiences of those involved. At the other end are what I count as Allegories, especially in the “anti-war” subgenre, which openly use the events and setting as the backdrop for a broader message. (Separate rant, the latter category is where Enemy At The Gates should have been placed all along.) The actual “average” is the War Drama, a fictional narrative set within the historical setting. These films don’t have to be as meticulous as the first or as thematically ambitious as the second, just functional enough not to be at odds with reality beyond what narrative conventions and available technology already impose. In those terms, the present film is no more a “failure” than Saving Private Ryan. By my usual refrain, it did its duty. After all this time, that’s enough to earn my respect.

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

 

Title: Hardware aka MARK 13

What Year?: 1990

Classification: Improbable Experiment

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revenge of the Revenant Review 29: The one with Mexican wrestlers vs. zombies in a helicopter

 

Title: Invasion of the Dead aka Invasion of Death

What Year?: 1973

Classification: Unnatural Experiment/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

With this review, I’m in the final countdown for this feature, and I already know I’m going to end up going way over sooner or later. Under the circumstances, I might as well go with a first, a movie I only watched specifically for the present review. It also marks the first time I’ve reviewed a foreign-language film without an English dub, and on top of that, the first representation of a subgenre that simply never caught on in the US. That’s as good a point to dive into Invasion of the Dead, a relatively late example of the Mexican wrestling movie genre… and if you’re wondering what this could possibly have to do with zombies, you lucky bastard.

Our story begins with a monologue about the vastness and indifference or active hostility of the cosmos that makes Criswell in Plan 9 From Outer Space look remotely sane. Also, If you’re watching this under the circumstances of this review, you’re going to be hearing this in Spanish with English subtitles superimposed over other subtitles. In short order, we’re introduced to the Blue Demon and Professor Zovek, two real-life Mexican folk performers who in this cinematic alternate universe are called upon by the police and other authorities to investigate a mysterious meteorite that crashes in what looks like northern Mexico. (Knowing anything about Latin American geography is not going to help…) Naturally, it turns out the meteor is the center of an entity or force able to reanimate the dead. But these aren’t your ordinary shambling cannibals, but cunning and ornery attackers who can plan ambushes, hide between rampages, and even hijack a helicopter, all directed by the malign cosmic power of the matte-black orb. Can Zovek and Blue Demon save the day, or will the zombies’ air superiority win the day?

Invasion of the Dead was a film from the egregious Mexican filmmaker Rene Cardona, featuring Mexican lucha libre star Blue Demon and daredevil Professor Zovek. It was one of an estimated 25 horror/ fantasy films to feature the Blue Demon in the 1960s and 1970s. The film was reportedly planned as a sequel to Zovek’s 1972 debut film The Incredible Professor Zovek, then completed as a Blue Demon adventure after he died in an unrelated accident during filming.  German model/ actress Christa Linder appeared as Erika, the daughter of a scientist who becomes zombified. Limited information exists on the contemporary release or later distribution of the film. An English-language poster with the liberally transliterated title Invasion of Death appears to have been created for US/ North American distribution, but does not include a copyright or MPAA rating. While the film has reportedly been released on Spanish-language DVDs., it remains inaccessible for US audiences except through online videos, possibly based on European VHS recordings.

For my experiences, I heard of this one as usual from Dendle’s Zombie Movie Encyclopedia. Even that dedicated scholar of the genre describes it with astonishment and every sign of awe. I looked into it on and off, and considered it for this feature. I was finally and reluctantly ready to set it aside as I planned out the reviews that would bring the count up to 30 reviews. In the middle of it all, I gave it a go to fill a little time. It turned out that the video that was easiest to find was a video of bootleg-quality resolution with German subtitles that must have come with the source recording. (I know just enough Spanish to be dangerous.) It was the strangest and somehow most fitting viewing experience I had had for this feature since Horror Express. That alone was enough to convince me that the lineup wouldn’t be complete without this one. So, I set aside an entry from a popular series aside to review it. I’m going to dry to do this quickly because it’s getting late and again, too much analysis isn’t going to help matters.

Going in, the strangest part of this movie is simply that its assumed world is taken completely at face value. We have Zovek, a sort of hippie hunk, following Erika and her father where armed soldiers and police have already vanished. Even more surreally, we see the Blue Demon wear his mask without comment while solemnly consulting with various authorities and even examining evidence at his own proto-CSI lab. Things get still more curious when they do battle with the undead. Zovek manages to grapple with small groups of the revenants, before spending most of the final act running from their impressive numbers. By comparison, the Blue Demon mostly faces limited numbers of opponents, including several goons in vaguely ape-like stock makeup. His main fighting technique proves to be a sort of slap that usually stuns or disables individual attackers before they can gang up on him. Again, the odd part is that this is done with utmost seriousness. These are revenants that clearly aim to kill, and the protagonists react accordingly.

That leaves the zombies themselves. In appearance, these are even more no-tech than Sole Survivor, and almost as malevolent. Like many of the more creative zombies, they don’t appear cannibalistic, nor is it entirely clear that their condition is contagious. There’s old-school horror shots of the first wave rising from the graves (a conceit that George Romero moved the genre away from), and a mist-shrouded, eerily-lit cavern or quarry where they congregate. At the same time, they freely congregate in broad daylight in perhaps the film’s most impressive sequences, which must have been filmed about the same time Romero brought us the fully-lit hordes of The Crazies.  By comparison, the spark-throwing meteorite that gives them life never quite comes into its own, all the more unfortunate given the unearthly shots of the pit. There’s an extra pile of random in their seeming fascination with vehicles, which only comes up again in City of the Walking Dead. It supplies the most unique moments of the movie, yet to me doesn’t offer a lot for further comment. The ones I will give mention are a scene where Erika’s father collapses, drawing the protagonists to land the helicopter, and an entirely inexplicable moment where they are actually picked up by what proves to be a zombified driver.

In all this, you might be thinking I would be at a loss for the “one scene”. In fact, after a little more time than usual to think this through, I quickly came back to one sequence in particular, unlike many featuring the Blue Demon rather than Zovek.  A little past the one-hour mark (in a 78-minute movie), we see a power surge from the meteor, and a trio of soldiers who fell victim to an earlier attack rise to their feet. Meanwhile, Blue Demon and his sidekick lose their car to a zombie who actually runs over the sidekick (and yes, it does not look fake). While Blue Demon and his injured companion are recovering from the shock, the soldiers approach. The wrestler looks up from dealing with one of the undead, and freezes. The part that embeds it in my mind is a series of closeups of each soldier’s face. None of them have more than a trickle of blood from their wounds, and all share the same utterly blank expression. It all leads into a decent fight sequence, but in a common theme, nothing beats the unsettling tableau of the zombies just staring before the strike.

In conclusion, all I have left to say is a comment on the rating, except I find myself wavering on whether there’s anything to say. Of course, there are far better movies in and out of the genre. Of course, it makes almost no sense. Of course, the production values are terrible. Of course, its whole genre niche is incomprehensible for any other time or place. Yet, it remains well-shot, unaccountably ahead of its time, and more genuinely entertaining than plenty of those “better” movies. That’s enough to stir up at least the quality of mercy in me, and that’s enough to give this one a passing grade.

Handheld Hotspot: Good LCD Games???

 

I'm just coming out of a rough week with franchise movies without anything new in mind that won't be a followup to my movie reviews. For the moment, I'm doing something different (except for the last time I did it), which happens to be what every blogger and Y*utuber has been doing forever: Looking at "retro" video games. But I'll be dealing not with Atari or NES, but with what are now commonly held to be the worst of the worst, handheld LCD games (and possibly some even more archaic and eccentric tech), starting with a lineup of entries from the most famous or notorious manufacturers. So were they "that" bad? Well, let's see, starting with the first item in our lineup.

Right off the bat, a major "myth" to correct is that Tiger Electronics wasn't the only player on the field, nor was it immediately clear that they were or would be the leading producer people remember them as. From my own recollections, many if most of the specimens I ever had at home were from Radio Shack, actually supplied by their parent company Tandy. Even for the 1980s, these were cheap and generic-looking. However, they were possibly the best in terms of reliable functionality: The controls were responsive and intuitive, the graphics were comprehensible, and it was usually easy to figure out what to do. This one is typical of their "'keep it simple" approach. You control a cyclist at the bottom of the screen, moving left and right Space Invaders style. Other bikers come down from the top, with a relatively sophisticated 3D perspective that was surprisingly common in these games. It wasn't a favorite, but I played it long and often enough to max out the high score, typically the only way to "beat" these games. The one flaw of the game is that it doesn't have an on/ off switch, so it simply ran until its one tiny battery ran out. I could change the battery with a screwdriver, but never cared enough to do it. Moving on, here's a game really from Tiger, and by consensus the good one.

Tiger has of course been ground zero for controversy and criticism, drawing the wrath of none less than the Angry Video Game Nerd. Having seen the onslaught of venting, my feelings have been mixed. Make no mistake, the critics aren't wrong, but they aren't giving the whole picture. The chief causes of Tiger's infamy are, first, that the company kept making LCD games long after they were "supposed" to be obsolete, and second, that they went completely overboard on licensing. What really happened was that the company went from making a relatively modest catalog of functional and sometimes entertaining games to a vast catalog of hastily churned-out titles that would have been as interchangeable as paper dolls if not for their idiosyncratic flaws in design and play controls. What's hard to assess is just how early this slide started and how long it took. They got on the tie-in gravy train very early, notably with a series of King Kong games in the early to middling 1980s (see Electronic Plastic and Handheld Museum for two comparatively intriguing examples). On the other hand, it didn't go into overdrive until as late as the 1990s, when they jumped on properties like Batman and Jurassic Park. To my best recollection, I got this one at the same time as the Jurassic Park game, and the difference is night and day.

What should have been a warning sign for that pair is that the Pinball game is dated 1987, at least six years before JP.  It was a simple, attractively designed game that must have sold well enough to stay in production for many years. The long-lost Jurassic Park game was by comparison quite possibly the worst LCD game I ever played, with a clunky layout (prominently featuring the pseudo-3D gimmick), overcomplicated graphics and gameplay, and stiff controls that were literally painful to work with. In further hindsight, the Pinball game had more than enough of its own problems, including unrealistic and oddly predictable ball mechanics. But compared to the 1990s onslaught of junk, it was a gem to be thankful for. Here's some pics I tried to take of the game in action.

That brings us to the final piece, easily the best LCD game I played. This was part of a series of LCD games from Konami, or so the labels say. Certain accounts say that they were really made by Tiger and released under the Konami name, but I have yet to see this substantiated. Konami's entries mostly stood out for their weird, oversized shells. Fortunately, this was more than made up for by their ergonomic shape, standardized controls and functional-to-good game play. The present item is noteworthy because it was the only Garfield video game I ever saw on sale as a kid. (I now know there was an NES/ Famicom game released only in foreign markets.) I begged for it and got it for Christmas, and it was... okay. But again, a handheld game had a really, really low bar to clear, especially if if had Garfield. Here it is in full glory.

One more forgotten virtue of LCD games that this one presents front and center is that the cell-animation sprites really looked like what they were supposed to be. Even on NES, the Ninja Turtles and Darkwing Duck suggested rather than represented the characters, but Garfield looked like he came straight out of the comics. What made it all the more appealing was that they built the game around one of the longest-running gags on the strip, Garfield's unwanted song-and-dance performances and the incoming barrages of the unseen neighbors. Of course, they still overcomplicated things by having you rescue Odie from the moon, which you can only do by collecting enough lasagna from John. The most unusual feature is that you actually have a health/ energy bar, which makes the game possibly too easy. Add in 6 stages, plentiful powerups and a score that maxes out at 10,000, and you have a game where you can blow through any milestones very quickly. Still, it's fun with enough challenge to set your own goals and still have an interesting time. Getting through in one life is a decent benchmark; in many ways, it works best to aim for a lower score like golf. I tried to take some pics, but alas, either the batteries are low or the screen is finally giving out. If you look really hard, you might see Odie.

So, are these games any good? The real question is, what kind of expectations you bring to it. If you're used to getting days and weeks of gameplay out of a title, then these will disappoint very quickly. If you want 10 or 20 minutes of entertainment at a time, and you happened to have one of the games that was functional and entertaining, then there were worse things to make do with, especially if you didn't have a console or TV. The bottom line is, even if you grew up with these things, you're not going to get much out of them in the era of smart phones, and you probably didn't really get much further even then. What the old games deserve is a little respect for trying to do something new and different, because without that spirit, we certainly wouldn't have gotten any further.

Revenge of the Revenant Review 5: The one where the zombies kill the screenwriter

 

Title: Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things

What Year?: 1972

Classification: Prototype/ Unnatural Experiment

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!!

 

In the last installment of this feature, I freely mused on what it would take for a movie to get the lowest rating. This time, I’m back with an answer. I’m also taking the step of introducing a category not originally used for Space 1979. Previously, I have used the designation Irreproducible Oddity for the less classifiable films I have covered. What it has meant to me is that the films in question usually at least fit somewhere within a time and setting. City of the Walking Dead was an Italian zombie movie, Krull was a 1980s fantasy movie, Phase IV was a 1970s ecological parable, etc. An Unnatural Experiment is a movie that goes to another level, whether higher or lower. These are the films nobody else asked for, nobody else was trying to make and nobody else ever tried to replicate. That is as good an introduction as any to Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things.

Our story begins with a disturbance in a cemetery that appears to end with the ambush of the caretaker at the hands of a revenant entity. We then skip to the arrival of a filmmaker named Alan with his cast and crew (though we don’t see any cameras) on an island used as a cemetery. The auteur alternates between bizarre monologues about death, fate and cosmic terror and down-to-Earth berating of his subordinates, who openly insult and mock him in turn. He seems to single out a lady named Anya, who becomes especially vocal. Unknown to the others, a few of his underlings are already on the island play-acting as the undead, who appear to have tied up the caretaker, though there are plenty of other incidents that aren’t so easily accounted for. Alan’s grand finale is to dig up one very real corpse and read a demonic spell from a grimoire advertised to raise the dead, finally driving Anya hysterical. While he and most of the crew retire to the caretaker’s cabin, the spell proves to be very real. The dead begin to rise, quickly taking out the few who have lingered outside and besieging the cabin. After several attempts at escape end disastrously, Alan and Anya face a final onslaught alone, without any doubt as to the outcome. In the final scene, the undead board the crew’s boat and sail for a brightly lit city on the mainland.

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things was directed by Bob Clark, the future director of Porky’s and A Christmas Story. The script was cowritten by Clark and Alan Ormsby, who also starred as Alan. The film was reportedly made for $50,000 dollars with many of their friends and family in the cast, including Ormsby’s (then) spouse Anya Ormsby, also as the character of the same name. Limited information exists about the film’s contemporary distribution, though it is apparent that it reached “cult” status at an early date. Clark and Ormsby collaborated again for the (far superior) zombie-themed 1974 film Dead of Night, which also featured Anya Ormsby.

For my own experiences, I’m sure I first saw this movie sometime before 2010, and may have seen it a few more times before I bought a digital copy a few years back. I actually only thought of it consciously for this feature when I was working out an “unrated” category, at which point this one came almost immediately to mind. I was genuinely prepared to give it that rating, until I gave it another go. With the experience fresh in mind, I can say without hesitation or qualm, this one is just plain bad, in a very extreme and inexplicable way.

If I’m going to get much further talking about this movie, I have to get one more thing out of the way: This is one of those movies that literally feels like being on a bad acid trip, or in my frame of reference being off my meds for about three days. I have commented previously in my Space 1979 reviews (see esp The Day TimeEnded) that not many people really appreciate what this really means. To truly capture being in a hallucinatory/ dissociative state isn’t a matter of psychedelic colors, freaky effects and/ or weird concepts, though any and all of those things can certainly help. What seals the deal is a narrative so disjointed and fragmentary, by accident or design, that it defies the very concept of linear time and causation. The counterintuitive part is that a movie can to all of these things and still be outrageously, incomprehensibly and inexplicably boring. That is what this movie is like.

Of course, we still haven’t really covered the movie’s portrayal of the undead. A major reason is that even that is often inseparable from Alan’s incessant monologues. To be sure, he is comparatively coherent and intermittently amusing when he gets in the presence of the dead, particularly the dug-up corpse he calls “Orville”. However, he gets all the more insufferable, and his more risqué comments get positively cringey. When the dead rise up, there is a strong sense that they have simply been driven to indignation by his antics, a reading reinforced by Anya’s rage. From there, the movie is effective but largely predictable. There are some good atmospheric shots, notably an eerie view of the gathering horde from the upper floor of the cabin, and a few ironic twists, such as the comeuppance of an underlying who tries to take a ring from one of the dead. But the one vivid and innovative moment is the finale, as Alan holds Anya squarely between himself and the undead, who seem perplexed enough to pause before the foregone conclusion unfolds.

For the “one scene”, however, the standout is the reading of the grimoire. As Alan recites the incantation, the camera (which is not at any point tied to the “point of view” of any character) takes in the island’s jungle-like landscape and several of the dead. A genuine sense of Gothic horror builds up, ant for a brief moment, the crew fall silent; Anya in particular stares ahead intently. Then others declare the summoning a failure, and the spell is broken. Then Alan goes off on the most surreal and genuinely entertaining of his monologue, directing his usual insults and abuse against Satan Himself. In a highlight, he protests pointedly, “I paid my money, I expect my merchandise!”

Out of all the films I have chosen or considered for this feature, this is the one I’m getting to early just to have it out of the way. Even with all I have written, I still acknowledge the film as worth watching. I will also freely admit, if you have seen it, there’s a very good chance it will linger in the mind long enough to be tempted to watch it again. It might be worth the trouble, or I wouldn’t be listing it here. Just don’t try too hard to find some deeper message or hidden genius, because it certainly isn’t here.

Mid Sized Marx: Evil Space Guy and Friends

For today, I have something that might or might not turn into a feature. At the tail end of the Miniature Giants series, I introduced an unusual acquisition, a pair of Mexican-produced Marx space guys in ca 4 inch scale. About the time I made that post, I received something I didn't feel I had time to cover then, a nearly complete set of reissue figures. Here, finally, is the full story. To start with, here's the Mexican pair in the bag they came in.

For posterity, I removed the staples (which were massive) to keep the bag and card intact. The card proved identical on both sides, with readable manufacturer's information but no year. Just from the look, I estimate it's from the 1990s or possibly even early 2000's, which makes the condition of the bag unaccountable. I have seen pics of preserved bagged sets from the 1970s that looked better than the best view I could get of these figures. The bag is simply and absolutely horrible, to the point that I had no way to examine or photograph the figures without removing it, and I have fewer regrets than usual. Next up, here's the Mexican guys, aka the old man and knife guy, with their reissue counterparts.

"Let's dust off and nuke the aliens from orbit. We don't need to, but it'll be fun."

"Why am I carrying a knife when the other guys have ray guns? And why am I the only one with a sheath for one???"

Things got terrifying with the next guy, who has a laser pistol sort of thing. I may have been a bit facetious when I said the old man was evil, but this guy is absolutely the real deal. Just look at that face!

"You think just because I'm 60 years old and made of plastic, I won't pull the trigger?"

The set is rounded out by a couple more "armed" space guys, including another with a pistol. He's perhaps the most interesting of the group. The pose feels like it could be out of the spy thrillers of the 1950s and 1960s (including but not limited to James Bond), reinforcing my assessment that these were released sometime between 1960 and 1965. He also strikes me as at least a little racially ambiguous; Mr. Sulu before Star Trek?

The set would originally have included an alien figure missing from the lot I received. I didn't miss it; I've seen quite a few Marx alien/ robot figures, and none of them heave resonated with me enough to pay the prices they usually fetch. The set is rounded out with two strikingly boring specimens, because the old days were a time of extremes.

And this wouldn't be complete without a few "story" pics, with a few cameos from the Galaxy Laser Team.

"Jeez, I stepped outside for 5 damn minutes..."

"Who are you calling `retro'?"

"I knew the blue acid was a bad idea..."

That's all for now, back for more tomorrow! Or whenever. 

Space 1979: The one with a mass shooting with a laser gun

Title: Laserblast

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Ripoff/ Parody/ Evil Twin

Rating: Dear God WHY???

One of my influences in conceiving this series is a strange memoir by MST3K star and editor Frank Conniff, briefly titled 25 Mystery Science Theater 3000 Films. He recounts that his most common question about his work for the show is whether there are movies too bad even for the show's purposes. I won't try to repeat his answer, but I thought of it when I watched the present specimen, because this is the first one that I was tempted to disqualify simply for being too horrible to be of interest. But here it is anyway, because it makes me that mad.

Our story starts with two alien spaceships landing on Earth. One is occupied by a humanoid that looks like a cross between a zombie and a caveman with a weapon that seems attached to his arm, the other  by two tortoise-like alien bounty hunter types. The first alien's weapon clearly doesn't do much good, as he is quickly incinerated by his pursuers. Fatefully, the enforcers don't bother to pick up the clearly visible weapon. We are then introduced to our "hero" Billy, a young man with a beautiful girlfriend and a physique he shows off by walking around with his shirt open who still gets picked on by everyone including two idiot cops and an old man. He discovers the weapon on a trip to the desert and begins to experiment. Soon, his appearance changes, while his own rage builds up, and he begins using the weapon to take out those who have wronged or annoyed him. It all builds up to a completely predictable rampage through the town and the "tragic" ending.

Laserblast was a relatively early production by Charles Band, the 1980s answer to Roger Corman; of course, he will be turning up here again, though not as frequently as those already familiar with him might guess. Per the lore (aka Wikipedia), Band conceived the film as a "mini Star Wars", and made sure to make plenty of references to that film both in the script and the movie's advertising. He assembled what would become his regular crew, including stop-motion master (or at least sorcerer's apprentice) David Allen. The film went on to notoriety as a cult film, including being featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000.

As usual, I personally saw this film well before this review, but looked it up again for a better assessment. I genuinely didn't remember it well enough to judge it in advance, which anyone following these reviews should now recognize as a very bad sign. After critical viewing, I seriously considered writing off this one, and put off writing a review much longer than any other film so far. I suppose I might still have discarded it, if not for the problem of where it would fit in the classifications I have set up. In almost all accounts, it is simply counted as a Star Wars ripoff/ knockoff, and this time, I resisted that label mainly because I find that to be almost giving the film too much credit. What finally convinced me was the film's outrageous trailers and advertising. Even then, the usual impression that Laserblast imitated Star Wars remains quite misleading. On the contrary, the real "ripoff" is that considered on its own, the actual film has almost nothing to do with Star Wars at all.

That brings us to the movie's real problems. First, it is incredibly boring, and that coming from me is like Quentin Tarantino saying a film is too violent. So far, only two films have rated this low, Inseminoid and Zardoz, and dull is the one thing they certainly were not. I love world-building enough that I could have put up with a training video from the alien bounty hunters' academy. (From what we see, they could have flunked out of the same school the ones in Critters went to.) But most of the movie is scene after scene of nothing remotely interesting happening. This accentuates the second and far deeper problem, which is that almost none of the characters have any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Billy in particular seems like a creep in his best moments; even when he is beaten up for trying to protect his girlfriend, he registers as only slightly mopier than usual. This shows even more with the bullies, who seem driven less by madness, greed or sadism than by low-grade indifference to anyone but themselves.

As for the "one scene", the best I can offer is a moment of inspired lunacy when Billy wanders along a road, already partly transformed. The weapon he carries looks something like a cross between a Lewis gun and a vacuum cleaner. As previously mentioned, it appears attached due to a tube that covers the user's arm (shades of Videodrome??), but most of the time, Billy appears able to take it off at will. The strange appliance/ appendage doesn't stop a guy in a VW Bus from stopping and offering him a ride with absolutely no question or comment. Soon after, Billy opens fire again, notably destroying a Star Wars billboard. The good Samaritan, whom we can safely assume is supposed to be stoned on either the good or very bad stuff, merely says, "Far out!" Of course, the driver is next, and a distance shot shows that the door goes with him. How Billy survives after that isn't entirely clear, and I certainly don't care enough to try and figure it out.

In closing, I will return to the problem of classification. In my opinion, what this film really is is a parody of Star Wars, and I use that in part in the most traditional sense,: The imitation of a thing for the specific purpose of mocking it. It does that just well enough to qualify as an Evil Twin. Star Wars gave us a universe where the heroes were unquestioning idealists and villains scarcely needed a motivation beyond being evil for its own sake. Laserblast gave us a world so dull and cynical that a loner shooting up the town with a ray gun is barely ahead of the curve. The most unfortunate part is that if this was done well (especially to the standards of Band's later productions), we could have had a minor masterpiece to add to the impressive ranks of dystopian fiction that followed. Instead, we got a movie that looks and feels as lazily mean as the characters who populate it, and that truly makes it a work without any justification to exist.

For links, I rate highly a video by That Junkman analyzing the Laserblast trailer. As usual, see the Introduction for details of my rating scale and classification system.

Timmee Tuesday: Galaxy Laser Team!

For today's installment, I'm featuring a group that should be old friends by now, the Galaxy Laser Team reissue set. I have been wanting to give these guys their own installment for a long time, but they weren't quite fitting in the features I had started. I finally decided the best option was to use them to introduce something new, and I finally settled on a feature dedicated to Timmee Toys, which I now know to be more responsible than any other company for the mysterious army men and generic toys I grew up with.

As I have recounted in other installments, I grew up with a Galaxy Laser Team space guy and their insane alien, which usually got mixed together with the Rogun Robots and the arcade-prize fleet. When I figured out what they were, I ordered a reissue that came out around 2013. A bit later, I ordered a large-sized set called Star Patrol, consisting of large-sized versions of 6 of the 8 sculpts used in Galaxy Laser Team. Here is a lineup of the figures, starting with a mixed group.

Here are the space guys with the GLT bot plus the two Rogun Robots I had back when. I don't have a lot to add beyond the fact that the Rogun bots are not only better but in many ways closer in style to the astronaut figures. Next up is a new acquisition and a few things I dug up.

This is a sub-army man scale space guy I picked up with a mixed auction lot, something I had heard of once or twice before. He's about 1 1/2 inch tall, and of high enough quality that I am satisfied it is based on a Timmee mold, though whether this specimen was made by them is a separate question. He's featured here with a "vintage" alien which I suspect to be a bootleg/ knockoff, and two reissue "spaceships". The planes are quite good, even futuristic for the late 1970s, but they're one more thing that doesn't quite fit. They are clearly still regular planes (though the X-wings weren't much better), and on top of that, there's nowhere to carry a crew. Without re-envisioning the scale, there's only space for one or two guys in the cockpit, with space for a cargo bay and a ramp to access it being conspicuously absent. Here's the little guy with a lineup of the rest of the crew, which will incidentally show how much smaller the space guys are than the others.

The lady in the set has intrigued me the most. She was left out of the large scale set for reasons that are unclear, and further stands out as based on Star Trek. She's also the only character who is clearly at the controls for a ship, which just might make her the captain. Here's another pic of her, in two colors.

Here's pics of some more guys in large size.

These two are the heart of the set. Obviously, they're knockoffs of Han Solo and Chewbacca, but creative enough to be interesting. The Solo analog has touches of much earlier science fiction, including a strangely ornate helmet. He has made me think of an ancient set of characters I came up with called the Galactic Police, sort of semi-benign version of the Borg, especially with multiple clones around. In hindsight, it blows my own mind that I came up with them when I was a kid.

Here's closeups of the alien and the bot. I think kids were literally traumatized by how weird the turtle crab is. The army man scale versions of both were significantly altered in later production, to the point that the back of the robot was simply left out, but the large scale molds escaped unscathed. The only apparent reason for the change was to save plastic, which has given me the further suspicion that they were produced in greater numbers.Something I get a kick out of is that the original and altered versions of the alien's shell correspond to the shape of a female and male turtle. That's one big female...

And I don't know what to make of this guy. Everyone says he's a Darth Vader knockoff, and I'm sure they're right up to a point, but I'll be damned if he doesn't look like Magneto. The freaky part is that Timmee did make Marvel Figures (as covered with the Legendary Battles set), but apparently several years later. Was there an earlier plan for a Marvel set? Might Timmee have made a mold before they had licensing lined up, and recycled it when a deal never went through? Were there other sculpts that were reused, or lost entirely? As always, anybody who would have known isn't likely to talk.

Finally, here's some "story" shots. Some are semi-serious ideas, others jus for fun, but it's all part of the Galaxy Laser Team legacy.

Dead or alive, you're coming with... you.

What do you mean, offbrand Wookies can't be evil slavers? That's just stereotyping!

You have a baton, he has a gun, I'm standing by the controls for the airlock. How do you think this ends?

Okay, now we're screwed.

Hey, I can finally hold something!