Movie Mania: My "worst" movies list

 As I write this, it’s the last weak of a rough month, and I’ve  been at home sick. I decided to use the time to do the one thing I have opposed in principle all along, a list of the “worst” movies I’ve reviewed. I already protested this concept in my own fashion just by doing a “best” list a while back. Now, I’m back for another round, and I’ve been trying to think of a way to make this different. What convinced me this was worth doing was a conclusion in parallel with my “best” list: Just as many of the movies I considered best still took a hit in ratings, many movies pulled through short of the lowest ratings, especially on my original Space 1979 scale, were at least as bad as those that got them. What interested me was whether things would be that different if I did things over again. So, here’s my list, and I’m going to start with the dishonorable mentions.

1.       Star Trek The Motion Picture- I absolutely mean it, and the fact that it’s just the runnerups should give an idea what we’re in for. Not quite the worst of the very few “franchise” movies I’ve reviewed, but the muddled story and hopeless pacing make up the difference in sheer frustration. The big bonus is that it doesn’t have the excuse of being a “threequel” or higher.

2.       Alien 2- A movie that did get the lowest rating, a mediocre knockoff with the chutzpah to pose as an actual sequel. Competent enough to ignore, if not for padded running time and a script that was clearly rushed through to exploit a legal loophole.

3.       The Time Machine (1978)- In here to represent the TV movie category. Quite possibly the most technically incompetent entry here, its numerous individual flaws are still outweighed by the clear indifference of those who made it to the source material and objective quality in general.

4.       Creepers- Would definitely be top 5 or higher if I had made it through a complete viewing. Cut-rate killer plant effects terrorize a cast who cannot act.

5.       Death Bed- Another low point for objective quality, a demonic piece of furniture in a castle devours curiosity seekers who have no reason to be there. Incredibly cheap, barely coherent, yet too damn weird to evaluate on any terms but its own.

And now, the real countdown…

10. Hard Rock Zombies- Quite possibly the worst film to be rated on my Revenant Review feature and scale. A very tame hair metal band is brough back to life by their fans, setting off a localized zombie apocalypse. Isolated bursts of creativity are lived down by distasteful themes and a non-existent story.

9. Sleepwalkers- The most actually offensive movie here, .and my nomination for worst Stephen King movie. A mother/ son pair of immortal vampires live it up between kills; bonus for vintage instrumental abuse.

8. The Nest- Maybe the worst actual “B-movie” to get on my radar. A town is terrorized by insects colony that evolve into humanoid impostors. Cheap but creative effects bring it up to 2/5.

7. Santa Claus The Movie- Easily the worst “big budget” film to get here, from Superman franchise offenders Alexander and Ilya Salkind. A promising update of the myth buries itself in second-hand nostalgia and inexplicably bad effects.

6. Space Mutiny- Yes, we’re still not even in “top” 5. A braindead jock and his lady love fight mutineers and stolen Cylon footage for control of a generation ship. Competent acting keeps it out of the basement.

5. Z.P.G.- A major reason I decided to do this (see The Last Child), the perfect storm of iffy production values, contrived melodrama and conceptual stupidity. Attractive white new parents are hunted by the authorities of a dystopian police state that doesn’t seem to know literally anything about reproductive medicine. Stupid, stupid, so stupid…

4. Man-Thing- A surprise from the current millennium, and one of my most recent reviews. Corporate goons and semi-random bystanders are picked off by a mysterious ecologically themed monster. Halfway-decent creature/ gore effects don’t hide a story that’s nothing happening to characters we care nothing about.

3. Inseminoid- One of my very first reviews, still one of the worst. A cowardly and incompetent starship crew is routed by a woman pregnant with an alien’s child. Kind of a tie with the marginally more interesting Prey by the same director.

2. War of the Planets- A movie so bad I initially wrote it off as too terrible to be of interest. An obnoxious space captain faces off with an ancient supercomputer on a distant planet, wins anyway. Hits just the right combination of incompetent and actively lazy.

1. Ingagi- The clear winner from the bad old days. Stolen footage and obvious fakery is stitched together into a “documentary” supposedly showing African natives intermarrying with apes. Lazy, inept and actively evil on every possible level.

 

Now, at this point, I could have gone with more dishonorable mentions, especially if I opened this up to animation. What interested me more, however, is whether I already need to revise my “best” list, which you the readers (if any) are free to take into account in judging the present list. At the time, I decided to limit the field to the films I had reviewed through very late 2021. With further hindsight, there are indeed a few new entries, most of which I wouldn’t have tried to compare with the films that figured in my best list. You can therefore consider the following list items 21-25 for the original list.

1.       A Christmas Carol (1984)- The one of most interest, as it figures in comments I have already been called out for regarding Duel on the original list. George C. Scott as Scrooge faces off with specters of Christmas Past, Present and Future, highlighted by Edward Woodward as the middle spirit. While I absolutely stand by my assessment of Duel as “greatest” of its kind, this one will clearly serve as an example of a made-for-TV movie that is by no means technically or artistically inferior. While it could never equal the impact and influence of Spielberg’s outing, it does offer a definitive take on its already overly familiar source material.

2.       Return To Oz- The most impressive of the 1980s fantasy wave that I have been surveying in greater depth. Dorothy is back in Oz, but this isn’t the kid-friendly land of the MGM musical. I said and I will keep saying, absolutely the best treatment of the books.

3.       The Gate- A late runner-up in the 1980s fantasy wave. Two kids and a teenage girl find themselves in the path of an invasion of stop-motion demons from a portal to the netherworld. Part dark fantasy, part urban horror, all fun.

4.       The Brain That Wouldn’t Die- My tongue-in-cheek entry. A man saves his fiancee’s head is the most comprehensible thing that happens as we meet a zombie, sex workers and a possible lesbian in the world of ca. 1959 exploitation cinema. A genuine cult/ B-movie, far better than many of its kinds and perhaps deeper in its symbolism and subtexts than it actually intended to be.

5.       Cross of Iron- On this list if only because I haven’t reviewed any other like it. Nazis fight a losing battle on the Russian Front, without interrupting a feud over who will receive the titular medal. A strange, in many lights uneven film by Walter Peckinpah, with a star-studded cast including Maximillian Schell of The Black Hole and David Warner of Time Bandits.

That rounds out my list. In honesty, I don’t expect to need to revise it even as much as my “best” list. Most of the ones I have listed here are ones I reviewed or at least considered at a very early date. While I still have a few in mind that are at least as bad as those I listed here, none of them would fundamentally change the list you see here. (Also, at least one of the biggest stinkers is one I simply wouldn’t watch in entirety.) With that, I’m wrapping this up. That’s all for now, more to come!

Movie Mania: Top 10/ 20 best movies reviewed!

 

As I write this, I’m just about to his 200 movie reviews, without doing anything to monetize my work, and I decided to do something different, that is, what everybody else who does what I do does sooner or later: Assemble a list of the best movies I’ve reviewed.  This might seem either Herculean or moot, given the quality of the movies I usually review. In fact, a good part of the list that’s been emerging in my mind are ones I knew would be here as soon as I reviewed them, usually because I normally wouldn’t have reviewed them. The rest have tended to follow naturally by reputation as much as quality, though parts of this are still fuzzy. So, here comes the top 10 list, not necessarily in order but definitely by tier.

 

1.     They Live- A movie so good and successful I reviewed it on the technicality that there was a comic book. Two guys discover that aliens have secretly conquered the world and fight back. It’s a bona fide cult classic that’s become a mainstream success. Top of the line.

2.     Galaxy Quest- Another cult movie that went mainstream. The washed-up cast of a science fiction show are recruited for a real war by aliens who think their adventures are history. High-level snark turns into an effective tribute to Trek and the serials and B-movies that influenced it. Good fun, with lots of laughs and real heart.

3.     Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger- An old personal favorite, the swansong of the great Ray Harryhausen. The titular sailor goes on a voyage to a polar lost world to cure a prince transformed into a baboon. It’s Harryhausen at the top of his game with the baboon prince, a troglodyte and an assortment of monsters. A good and beautiful thing.

4.     Deep Rising- Really tied for three, another all-time favorite of mine. Mercenaries hired by a mysterious employer must fight their way out of a cruise ship infested by swarms of man-eating tentacle-worms. It’s a perfect blend of monster movie, action and comedy, with ILM-assisted CGI monsters and a Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack so awesome it got its own review first.

5.     Flash Gordon- My only top 5 substitution, one of the movies that got me doing this in the first place. Flash Gordon must save the Earth and Dale Arden from the over-the-top villainy of Ming the Merciless… actually, everything is over the top, including the theme song by Queen. It’s a genuinely clever tribute/ send-up and the most egregiously ‘70s thing on this list, though it happened to come out in 1980. “Flash…”

6.     Sole Survivor- One more favorite, a criminally neglected zombie movie from the director of Night of the Comet. The only survivor of a plane crash is stalked by undead assassins so stealthy only a nosey coroner notices them. It’s a polarizing movie among those who have seen it at all, worth a look wherever you can get it.

7.     The Hidden- Another bona fide cult movie. A mind-controlling alien goes on a crime spree in a series of hosts, just ahead of a cop and a federal agent with his own secret. It’s half sci fi, half police procedural, all action, with a surprising satirical bite.

8.     Krull- One more “favorite” that I spent years finding. When world of swords and sorcery is invaded by the sentient fortress of the Beast and his biomechanoid warriors, a prince leads a motley band on a quest to rescue his bride. It’s a fine piece of 1980s fantasy, with another awesome soundtrack.

9.     Terrorvision- My only other substitution on this list, a classic from the Band Crew. A kid fights an alien that climbed out of a satellite TV box, while his parents are more concerned with their swinger party. It’s dumb but fun with an edge, greatly improved by a very creepy monster, tongue-in-cheek performances from Mary Woronov and Gerrit Graham, and a bonkers theme song. Whoop, whoop…

10.  The Last Starfighter- Maybe the most iconic movie I’ve reviewed. A teenage guy discovers that his favorite video game is really a test for an interstellar Federation analog, and ends up flying their prototype fighter in the counterattack. It’s the definitive ‘80s movie, spiced up by Daniel O’Herlihy and Robert Preston.

 

An immediate word in order on this list is that there are certain movies I’ve excluded. First, I’ve chosen to look only at live-action theatrical films, so there’s no animation and no TV movies. Second, I haven’t adjusted the list for my most recent reviews, so I passed over Dragonslayer and a few others. Third, I set aside several films that I reviewed under very special circumstances, several of which I declined to give a rating. With all these adjustments, it still came out with the lineup I would have expected. 

 

The depressing lesson from this list is that my first and most extensive feature, Space 1979, barely got into the top 5, though I had no trouble filling out the rest of the list with these entries. There also aren’t any movies that are that obscure. What intrigued me more was that there weren’t that many that I gave the highest rating, either 4 or 5 depending on the feature. I suppose this is because I’m more critical of higher-profile of movies. It also reflects that these are movies that took more real risks, which in turn meant flaws in both concept and execution. The lesson is that ambition matters.

 

Now, because I really don’t know when to quit, here’s more to make this a top 20 list.

 

11.  Hancock- Possibly the only movie that I made a feature for. A disgruntled superhero prone to doing more damage than the bad guys saves a PR agent who teaches him to relate to ordinary humanity. It’s an underrated satire that still came out ahead of much of the modern superhero movie wave.

12.  Highway To Hell- The most egregious cult movie to come on my radar. A pizza deliveryman must rescue his fiancée from the devil in a post-apocalyptic Hellscape. It’s a surrealist fantasy that didn’t have an audience in its own time, very cool and it knows it.

13.  Duel- Narrowly removed for the top 10, the greatest TV movie ever. An unseen trucker chases everyman David Mann in the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg. It’s pure adrenaline with a side of social commentary, and that’s all it needs to be.

14.  Night of the Creeps- Classic 1980s zombie movie. Brain slugs reanimate the dead to wreak havoc on a college campus. Another action/ sci fi/ police procedural mashup, with Tom Atkins taking charge and stomping scenery.

15.  Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)- Absolutely serious. A shipwrecked UN negotiator discovers an island where animals have been uplifted into intelligent humanoids. It’s the best adaptation of a classic science fiction novel, with superb effects from Stan Winston and the embarrassingly high entertainment value of Val Kilmer being a jerk, i.e. by all indications Val Kilmer.

16.  Two Evil Eyes- Another zombie entry, the most actually obscure movie I’ve reviewed. A trophy wife and her lover hypnotize her husband to change his will and then hide his body in the freezer, but he still talks to them; followed by another tale of madness and murder allegedly based on Edgar Allen Poe. It’s included as a stand-in for several otherwise worthier works of the late, great George Romero, which is more than fair given its inexplicably overlooked status.

17.  The Wild, Wild Planet- A substitution for a well-known mainstream film, included as a twofer for films before 1970 and Italian movies. An international lawman and sexist idiot  faces a madder-than-usual scientist whose plan to perfect the human race includes fusing himself with a feisty damsel. It’s a very, very odd film I was definitely too hard on the first time around, entertaining enough for “so bad it’s good” viewing with moments that are surreal or completely unsettling.

18.  Splinter- Another very good zombie movie, and best non-animated entry from the current millennium. Carjackers and their victims are trapped in a gas station by a parasitic lifeform that reanimates humans, animals and pieces thereof. It’s body horror at its most brutal, with top-notch effects and a good cast.

19.  The Dungeonmaster- Another representative offense from the Band crew, barely bumped for Terrorvision. A hotshot computer programmer is challenged by a sorcerer, leading to a series of barely connected episodes that span time, space and genres. It’s one big pile of random from seven different directors, yet better than the sum of its parts.

20.  The Phantom Tollbooth- One from the animation category. A boy travels through a fantasy land divided between the kingdoms of numbers and words, on a quest to save the princesses of Rhyme and Reason from the demons of ignorance. It’s egregious psychedelic Sixties animation allegedly for kids, and the final effort from MGM animation.

 

With that, I’m wrapping this up. I haven’t gotten in everything I hoped, and I’m already pleading with myself to get in just one more really significant film, but I know if I keep at this, the list is going to be 200. So, I’m going to wrap this up, call it a night, and figure out what I’m going to do for my actual 200^th review. That’s all for now, more to come!

Featured Creature: The one with the Jurassic Park guy and invisible Chevy Chase

 

Title: Memoirs Of An Invisible Man

What Year?: 1986 (optioning and development)/ 1992 (theatrical release)

Classification: Improbable Experiment/ Runnerup/ Mashup

Rating: Pretty Good! (5/5)

 

With this review, I’m starting yet another review feature, one which I have thought about on and off for a very long time, specifically for films which didn’t “fit” with my other features. The backstory is that when I started reviewing with Space 1979, the focus was on 1970s and ‘80s movies, with earlier and later films largely excluded. I opened up the field a lot more with the Revenant Review and Super Movies, but there were still entries piling up that I wasn’t covering, and the common denominator was 1990s films broadly in the “monster movie” genre. For a very long time, I simply planned to cover them later, ideally as another October/ Halloween run. But over the weekend, I finally got a movie that I felt forced my hand, in part because I would probably just buy it if/ when I’m ready to buy it again. In the process, I’m carrying over the Space 1979 rating scale with an “unrated” option, because what I have in mind is really all over the map. Here is Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, a team-up of John Carpenter, Sam Neill and… Chevy Chase?

Our story begins with a voice giving a monologue that hints at a longer story. As the angry narration goes on, the camera focuses on what looks like an empty chair, until a piece of gum is chewed and blown into a bubble in mid-air. We learn that our main character is Nick Halloway, a businessman who gets left behind when a vaguely described experiment that would normally done as far from civilization as possible goes awry. The end result is that Nick is left invisible, but is still detected by a group of government agents as he tries to leave the scene. Soon, he is the focus of a covert manhunt led by an agent named Jenkins. He manages to stay ahead of the agents while trying to salvage the remnants of his former life, including a romance with a lovely documentary filmmaker. But when Jenkins zeroes in on his lady love, Nick must go on the offensive to save her. Will he prevail, or has his luck run out?

Memoirs Of An Invisible Man was a Warner Bros production, officially adapted from a novel by Harry F. Saint. Its development was initiated by star Chevy Chase prior to the publication of the book, as a further effort to transition from comedy to dramatic roles; a number of further delays and departures were reportedly caused by disagreements over the tone of the film. The film was ultimately placed under the director John Carpenter, with Chase as the lead, Sam Neill as Jenkins, one year before his starring role in Jurassic Park, and Daryl Hannah of Blade Runner as the love interest Alice. Many of the film’s effects were created with CGI from Industrial Light and Magic, building on earlier work for The Abyss and Terminator 2, contributing to a final budget of up to $40 million. The movie was a commercial failure with a US box office of only $14.4M, and received many negative reviews for its handling of science fictional, dramatic and comedic elements.

For my experiences, this was a movie I was aware of when it came out, which is really looking like a bad sign. As with many things, I finally saw it on TV, and was reasonably impressed, particularly with Chase and Neill. What has interested me most is the number of genres and films it seems to reference, including a disconcerting number that came out at the same time or later. It’s clearly indebted to the Universal “Monsters” franchise, to the point of copying certain sequences and shots, and less directly to H.G. Wells, which put it on my radar during Wells-A-Thon. (I had also thought of giving this feature a head start for the ‘90s Island of Dr. Moreau.) If anything, it has an even stronger affinity with The Fugitive, actually from the following year, and the “chase” genre it inspired. The most random yet striking association that comes to my mind is InnerSpace, quite possibly the only movie to try something like this blend of elements and influences with inarguable success at the box office as well as other fronts. I find it all the more significant that this one started its difficult development about the time that film was in production.

The central reality of this movie is that, whatever Chase’s intentions, it is a comedy, albeit a fairly “dark” one. What it does show is that his obvious gifts for comedy include a command of timing, body language and situational awareness. This comes through especially in the rather odd decision to show Nick visible for most of his screen time, notwithstanding the amount of money plowed into the effects needed to make him invisible. Due credit must be given to Chase and his costars (especially Neill) that this generally works. His posture and expressions are always in character with someone who is undetected but still wary, while the rest of the cast advances the conceit by acting around him without simply looking oblivious or stupid. As the movie continues, the invisibility conceit opens up more complex and tense scenarios, as he evades the agents, eavesdrops on acquaintances, and another man’s sketchy behavior toward Alice. This is as good a point as any to mention the effects just for comparison. The transitional-period CGI easily hold up at least as well as significantly later CGI, conspicuously Hollow Man, in no small part because they don’t look that different from ‘80s practical/ optical effects. However, while the effects led to some good moment, especially a shot of Nick inhaling cigarette smoke, they are never as flat-out effective as Chevy Chase is in full view.

The natural counterpoint to chase is Neill as Jenkins. In many ways, he is the best thing about this movie, but n another level, he is the one thing that doesn’t “fit”. The impression I get on critical viewing is that the character seems written one way and played another. With Neill’s invested performance, he falls comfortably into the mold of Deputy Gerard (who was after all a character on TV first) as a “good” guy on the wrong side. But the story keeps painting him as a full-blown “black ops” agent, with a generous helping of fanaticism under the surface. On consideration, I wonder further if the filmmakers didn’t quite know what to do with him. I find this especially in their two most direct confrontations, a middle-act scene when Nick infiltrates Jenkins’ office and the finale at a construction site, The first is easily the high point of the film and for both actors (indeed very close to a choice for the “one scene”), with both stars staying fully invested in their characters and the premise. The second, in contrast, becomes a series of increasingly questionable decisions that are unnatural for either character, culminating in a conclusion so unsatisfactory I literally forgot about it until looking up the movie on disc. To me, the best reaction I can muster is my usual tendency to think of a better way to do it, but beyond writing in some common enemy to unite against, I just draw a blank.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I was considering at least two or three well after I had returned the disc I used for this viewing. My final and difficult choice is a sequence I will admit I had forgotten, portraying the aftermath of the accident which has turned not only Nick but a good part of a building invisible. The individual moments may not stand out in casual recollection, but the surreal whole gives its own impression. It is easily the most compelling effects sequence in a film that often works at least as well without them. The structure looks like it is in ruins yet still standing, with furniture, walls, rooms and whole sections seemingly suspended in mid-air. As Nick and the investigating agents try to make their way through the building, they repeatedly run into walls and obstacles that are now invisible. In the process, the invisible man disturbs enough still-visible objects for the agents to realize his existence for the first time. (The state of his clothes will be a matter of recurring inconsistencies.) The tension rises as they close in, but the true culmination is when the structure finally disappears in full, either wholly disintegrated or else transmuted to another plane of existence.

In conclusion, I will acknowledge that this is a movie I have rated higher than it deserves (about on par with Dr. Moreau). There’s enough problems that I could have taken it down a rating. But when these issues are balanced against the effort and talent clearly invested, not to mention the disastrous misfortunes that afflicted the project, these are minor complaints at most. This is a movie that’s overdue for recognition as what it is: A clever, creative adventure that took moviemaking in new directions. It might not be “great”, then or now, but it gets a pass from me.

Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon Finale: The one with a happy ending

 

Title: The Island of Dr. Moreau

What Year?: 1977

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: What The Hell??? (3/5)

 

It’s time to wrap up this mini-series, and the final entry will be the one you knew was coming all along. I opened this lineup with an infamous H.G. Wells adaptation that came out when I was in high school. Now, I’m closing it with an adaptation of the same source material that I personal saw years before that one came out. As such, it is quite possibly my first encounter with H.G. Wells, and at the time, I was very impressed by it. As we will see momentarily, times change, and even a fairly short time can make a big difference. Here is The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1970s version, from the people who thought Futureworld was a good idea.

Our story begins with a man adrift at sea with a single companion. Things are looking up as they reach shore on an unfamiliar island, but one of them is attacking by a mysterious person or creature in the forest. The remaining survivor, named Braddock, finds himself in a compound that is the closest thing to civilization around, under the care of a physician named Montgomery and a more reclusive scientist named Dr. Moreau. In what will now sound familiar, he meets the other inhabitants of the island, including a lady friend, and soon realizes they are not ordinary people. In fact, they are animals transformed into intelligent humanoids by some haphazardly explained process, definitely with varying degrees of success. The newcomer meets their leader, a sort of wolfman who tries to teach the rest the way of humanity as Sayer of the Law. But some of the humanoids are already backsliding, and tensions rise when Braddock mercy-kills a crippled runaway. By retaliation or established plan, Moreau begins a new and sinister experiment, to turn a human subject into a literal beast. But when Moreau’s schemes start to go awry, can anyone escape the island, human or not?

The Island of Dr. Moreau was a 1977 film from AIP, also responsible for 1976’s The Food of the Gods and Empire Of The Ants the same year, with a reported budget of $6 million. The movie was widely regarded as a remake of the 1932 film Island of Lost Souls. As such, it notably retained a subplot where the Sayer of the Law witnesses Moreau murdering Montgomery. An additional story arc with a cat-woman character first featured in the 1932 adaptation makes her a specifically romantic interest, unlike the 1996 version, but left out a love triangle with the protagonist’s fiancée from the earlier film. The feature had a high-profile cast for a studio known for B-movies, led by screen legend Burt Lancaster as Moreau, with Michael York of Logan’s Run as Braddock and Nigel Davenport as Montgomery. Barbara Carrera appeared as the cat-woman Maria, while TV/ character actor Richard Basehart played the Sayer of the Law. Various scripts reportedly featured several darker alternate endings, including a scene where Maria reverts to a cat that remained in a Marvel comic based on the film. The movie has remained generally available for streaming and on disc, though it has dropped in and out of free streaming.

For my experiences, I have already recounted how I first encountered the movie on early ‘90s TV (see also Flash Gordon, Battle Beyond The Stars, etc). What stood out most was how dark it was, and I didn’t find it much less so after actually reading the book. Where the trail really picks up again was when I looked it up on free streaming somewhere around 2013. At that time, I was still impressed by it, though I recognized that the ending sidestepped the darkest parts of the book. Fast forward to when I started Space 1979, and this one popped up early and often. I held off on reviewing it mostly because of uncertain availability, but also because it didn’t exactly fit in with the knockoffs and runnerups I had set out to cover. It was technically a remake, but it’s still a solid film with a creative take on its sources plus a decent budget to boot. Once I had this feature in mind, I double-checked and found it available for free viewing, so I watched it, and quickly realized that this was a much weirder movie than I remembered.

Turning to the movie itself, the foremost thing to be said is that it is very much a product of the 1970s. As such, it is not only violent but sometimes surprisingly risqué, though nothing here is exceptional for “70s PG”. At its high points, the movie becomes flat-out surreal, egregiously a fight between a humanoid and a tiger, all the more disconcerting as they clearly had no way to do the scene without an actual animal. As a further upside, the effects are reasonably modern, provided by a crew that included Tom Burman, who went on to Howard the Duck among other films. This is an area where criticism tends to focus, and there are certainly problems, but I have never been satisfied that it is simply a matter of quality or budget. If anything, the underlying problem is that they try too hard and at times approach the material too literally. I see this especially in play with a pig/ boar creature, no worse technically than others but uncharacteristically awkward and grotesque. Incidentally, the roster specifically includes a hyena-man, whom I never picked out except by a very jarring laugh.

The most obvious flaws of the film, in my assessment, come from what is carried over from Island of Lost Souls. This is most blatant with the romantic arc between Braddock and Maria, which is certainly the chief reason the ending feels watered down compared to the plot. On consideration, the posited “happy” ending is more like solid “cringe”, especially since we don’t get very solid information on how Maria’s intelligence compares with humans. More fundamental problems rise from the central story point of Moreau breaking the Law by murdering his assistant, which simply doesn’t feel thought through. The obvious Biblical theme is really based on flawed scholarship that only cropped up in relatively recent times; “thou shalt not murder” was more a rule against vigilantism than anything else. (Yes, I really have a seminary degree.) In the context of the story, there’s no reason to doubt that Moreau could do anything short of carving up the Boar Man for spare ribs and lay down whatever interpretation of the “Law” would let him get away with it. It would make sense for him to lay down an absolute line at harming himself or other humans, which would work just fine for the purposes of the plot. Showing creatures of uncertain intelligence in turmoil because their literal god doesn’t follow a moral abstraction, however, is just muddled. It is worth further note that by comparison, the bestialisation of Braddock absolutely works, despite rather limited development.

With that, it’s time for the “one scene”, and this time, it’s a scene directly from the book. After Moreau’s demise, Braddock’s quite understandable decision is to run for it with Maria. To cover their tracks, he confronts the rebellious humanoids and declares that Moreau is not really dead, but watching them in spirit form. Meanwhile, Maria hoists the doctor’s carcass over their heads. The sight is enough to leave the humanoids genuinely intimidated, at least long enough for the pair to run for it. Then, in perhaps the most masterful shot of the movie, one of the beast-men literally pokes Moreau with a stick. Needless to say, the metaphysical conundrum of the book doesn’t last much longer, and the rebels are soon back in pursuit.

In conclusion, all that needs to be said is that this is undoubtedly the best Wells adaptation of the 1970s, even if it is almost by default, but also the one that does the most to date itself. What works, works as a ‘70s movie. Where the movie struggles, it is either from channeling its own time to a fault or trying and failing to update older material. In the end, what we have is a middle-of-the-road movie, and a fitting one to end the lineup with. It may not live up to the high mark of George Pal’s films, but it’s certainly far ahead of the likes of Empire of the Ants. In short, it’s a movie worth watching, and worth coming back to. For me, that’s tribute enough for a movie that helped introduce me to Wells.

Image credit Cyber Comics And Toys.

Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon 4: The one with Ray Harryhausen

 

 Title: First Men In The Moon

What Year?: 1964

Classification: Runnerup/ Prototype/ Parody

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

In planning out this feature, the most difficult decision was choosing a fourth out of the five I definitely wanted. In a sense, the penultimate entry was The Shape of Things to Come, but I already had that where I wanted it. I also wasn’t interested in covering the George Pal movies, which were too old and high-profile for my usual standards, or Food of the Gods, which I deemed redundant after Empire of the Ants. I finally did a deep dive for more material, including films indirectly influenced by Wells (Memoirs of An Invisible Man gets honorable mention), but there was nothing I was satisfied I could do justice on short notice. That brought me back to one I had had in mind all along, also outside of the time frame this feature was meant to cover but no more so than the 1990s version of Dr. Moreau. So here is First Men In The Moon, the only Wells adaptation from the legendary team of Charles Schneer and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, last sighted in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

Our story begins with a peaceful, multinational expedition landing on the Moon, which is our first hint how well this one aged. As the astronauts explore the surface, they make a perplexing discovery: A British flag is already planted, apparently from decades earlier. Soon, authorities on Earth find an old man named Bedford who may have the answer. He recounts that at the start of the 20^th century, he was the partner of an eccentric inventor named Henry Cavor, who claimed to have discovered a way to cancel the effects of gravity. We then follow their misadventures as the pair go on a very Victorian trip to the Moon with a reluctant lady in tow. There, they discover an insectoid race called the Selenites, who live beneath the surface of the Moon. Cavor and the lady are soon captured for study by the rulers of the Selenites. While the naïve inventor learns to communicate with the aliens and quickly tells them  rather too much about humanity, Bedford plans a bold and not very welcome rescue. But what will the expedition discover in the present?

The First Men In The Moon was a 1964 British/ American film released by Columbia Pictures, based on the 1901 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Nathan Juran, previously responsible for The Deadly Mantis and the Schneer/ Harryhausen film 20 Million Miles To Earth, from a script by Nigel Kneale, best known as the creator of the Quatermass series. Lionel Jeffries was cast in the role of Cavor, with Edward Judd as Bedford and Martha Hyer as the introduced romantic interest. The spacesuits used in the film were actual high-altitude suits developed by the RAF, reportedly also used in Dr. Who and the Star Wars franchise. The movie was deemed a commercial disappointment, with a North American box office of $1.6 million. Harryhausen and Kneale were both critical of the comedic tone of the film, which the latter reported was significantly expanded in rewrites of his script.  

For my experiences, I can’t help but tie this one to an observation I first made with Star Trek and The Twilight Zone: 1960s science fiction TV and films had a particularly hard time when they were trying to be funny. I admit this is still very much an anecdotal assessment, and I certainly don’t claim to be able to explain it; if anything, I’m quite baffled. There are plenty of ‘60s comedies I like very much, including Dr. Strangelove, which many accept as science fiction. I’ve also read a lot of very funny science fiction from the time, when sci fi  comedy/ satire was advancing in leaps and bounds in the hands of writers like Fredric Brown, Harry Harrison and Ron Goulart. But whenever people tried to bring that to the screen, it always seems to end up strained at best, at least to me. What’s most curious of all with this one is that H.G. Wells had an underappreciated gift for humor that was more evident than usual in the original novel. Yet, even with plenty to work with in the source material, this movie in particular doesn’t hold up as well as actual Wells comedies like “The Purple Pileus” and “Jim Goggles the God”.

With all that said, it’s still difficult to judge where to start assessing the film on its own merits. On any amount of consideration, the greatest strengths of the movie are Harryhausen’s effects and Jeffries’ performance as Cavor, and it’s really the latter that does the most to sustain the movie, especially in the lengthy buildup to the trip to the Moon The inventor comes across pretty much as he does in the book, which I am once again going with from one or a few readings from a long time ago. His head is too far in the clouds for him to be openly greedy, but he also shows an unsettling indifference to the consequences of his work and the safety of others. Above all, he is genuinely funny, at least when he has enough room to run with the material. Meanwhile, Harryhausen’s effects fist come into play with a mishap that destroys a good part of the house, followed by the voyage itself, which I timed at just short of 50 minutes in. Here, we see the good matte work that distinguishes Harryhausen’s work as much as the actual stop-motion, with a further old-school charm that endures up to the present.

After sitting through all this, plus the awkward prologue, the encounter with the Selenites inevitably feels rushed, though its share of the running time is comparable to the page count in the book. What’s really striking is that Wells’ Selenites seem almost generic in hindsight, when in fact his vision of a hive-based civilization was decades ahead of similar written fiction and still ahead of science fiction movies even in the 1960s. It’s of further note that Harryhausen’s role in bringing them to life is quite limited. We see a giant caterpillar-creature that supplies the main monster action, suspiciously close to the 1961 debut of Mothra. The main event where stop-motion is concerned is a ruling Selenite who studies the human captives, easily among Harryhausen’s finest creatures, all the more noteworthy for being neither threatening nor specifically “good”. More representative and problematic are gangs of Selenites clearly played by men in suits. They quickly bring the film down to the level of more typical ‘50s-‘60s fare, conspicuously the rubbery creatures of Quatermass And The Pit. However, there are impressive moments, particularly when the camerawork gives a sense of their numbers without focusing on the all too visible flaws in the suits. It’s genuinely unnerving to see them literally swarm into action, particularly in a sequence where they easily strip the space capsule.

Now, it’s more than past time for the “one scene”. My choice is the main encounter between Cavor and the Selenite scientist who questions him. The scene starts with the lady walking in and out of a sort of scanner used by the Selenite. In a brief tribute to Harryhausen’s earlier work, she is turned into a stop motion skeleton; in a further demonstration of the master’s talent, even the short time taken to cross the scanner’s field is enough to give a sense of her motion and mannerisms that completely lines up with the actress’s performance. While the lady is indignant, Cavor remains too intrigued to acknowledge he is a prisoner rather than a colleague. As the scene goes on, he becomes excited as the Selenite repeats and then responds to his speech. In the process, we get several views of the scientist through his own scope, evidently magnified but not transformed. I find the appearance quite striking, in some ways similar to the Space Jockey in Alien. (There’s also an even stranger resemblance to Watto in Star Wars Episode I.) While Cavor is at the peak of his enthusiasm, the Selenite gives the movie’s most iconic quote: “Absolutely imperial!”

In closing, I must acknowledge what was already obvious: Of all the Wells adaptations, this is the one that was outdated by the time it was made. There can be no further doubt that the main reason it was made at all was that George Pal’s films effectively snapped up the most famed and marketable Wells works, while also demonstrating their commercial potential. Even so, the core problem was not with the book, but with the undue effort and screen time put into making it “current”. Add in the unaccountably awkward comedy and a “hero” so undistinguished I have literally gone through the whole review without talking about him, and you have a movie that was bound to go straight to the second tier. What’s really of note is that the film did as well as it has then and since. That is certainly owed to Harryhausen’s talent and fame, but also to the efforts of Jeffries, Kneale and Wells himself. It may be an also-ran, but it’s a runner-up to the very best, and still at least as worthy of attention as many more successful films. Give it a try, and the one thing you won’t be is unimpressed.

Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon 3: The one that was made for TV as a comic book tie-in

 

Title: The Time Machine

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Knockoff/ Prototype

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/5)

 

When I first thought of this feature, one of my first and hardest decisions for ground rules was setting aside made-for-TV movies. It’s a field that includes genuine classics like Duel (which I reviewed on a technicality) and Trilogy Of Terror , plus plenty more cult favorites like the Ewok movies, Gargoyles, 12:01, and a slew of Marvel titles I somehow haven’t gotten to. With this review, I’m finally bringing in a TV movie that stayed on the small screen, one that I have long known about and found intriguing but never looked up until now. It’s in play here because it adapted an H.G. Wells story that had already been the basis of an accepted classic of science fiction, with enough liberties to anticipate a number of future films. Here is the ‘70s TV version of The Time Machine, an adaptation that updated the novel for the era of Star Wars, and as we shall see momentarily, being forward-thinking was far from being good.

Our story begins with a tense scene as a space-defense outfit try to use an experimental laser to stop a nuclear satellite headed for Los Angeles. I won’t say what happens because I honestly wasn’t paying attention and I honestly don’t care enough to go back and figure it out. After the weapon’s less than satisfactory performance, the scientist who designed it is called on the carpet by his employer Mega Corporation. This is our “hero” named Neil, who for some reason reveals that he put his time and millions of dollars allocated for the space defense laser to build a time machine. He then proceeds to tell a familiar tale of a future where humanity is divided into two races or species, the good-natured Eloi and the mysterious and temperamental Morlocks who exploit them as food. Our hero helps the Eloi in a revolt against the Morlocks, before returning to our time to warn his employer of the coming disaster. Will he stay to change our history, or go back to his beloved Weena? Did you really need to ask?

The Time Machine was a TV movie originally aired by NBC in November 1978. The movie was made by Sunn Classic Pictures, otherwise known for paranormal-themed documentaries, as part of a series of TV movies nominally based on the Classics Illustrated comic, then in reprints after an initial run that ended in 1969. A comic based on The Time Machine was indeed published in 1956, four years before George Pal’s feature-length adaptation of the novel. The comic and both movies differed from the book in their portrayal of Weena and the rest of the Eloi as of normal human size and able to speak English dialogue. The TV adaptation added a subplot to tie in the movie with nuclear war and strategic missile defense, as well as several episodes where the time traveler goes to earlier historical periods. The film starred TV actors John Beck as Neil Perry and Priscilla Barnes as Weena, several years before their most prominent roles on Dallas and Three’s Company respectively. Beck had previously appeared in Cyborg 2087, a time-travel paradox film from 1966. Sunn went on to make the 1983 movie Cujo, their only readily verifiable theatrical release. The 1978 movie has reportedly never received an authorized video release, though copies on DVD are available. The novel was not adapted again until 2002, when a new version was directed by Simon Wells, a direct descendant of the author.

For my experiences, I believe The Time Machine was the first H.G. Wells novel I ever read, I’m certain no later than 6^th grade. What’s disconcerting is that I don’t really recall reading it since then, which leaves me in hazy territory even for my world’s-worst-superpower memory. (I did somehow figure out I read the most notorious of the lost/ censored chapters.) I suppose what true me to this time-forsaken oddity was the simple question of whether the original story could be filmed. If the question were put to me at any age, I would have said animation all the way, though the comic attests that even the liberties of that medium could be squandered. Given the limits of live-action film, certain compromises were inevitable. What intrigued me about the TV version was that its creators clearly decided to go their own way from the starting line, fashioning a story that sounds almost as much like Terminator as Wells’ actual novel. (Cyborg 2087 already promises to be an even stranger coincidence to run down.) I finally watched it as an online video that made my copy of The Horror Express look like the Blu Ray of Alien for the extra junk factor. What I had no way to anticipate was just how completely they squandered every opportunity handed to them.

Of all the problems of the movie, the obvious one is that the original story only occupies a fraction of the film, with the time traveler arriving in the future more than 50 minutes in. That in itself could have been an interesting choice, especially if this had been filled out into a miniseries format, but the preceding misadventures do little more than fill air time with sets and costumes that look like they were recycled from unrelated projects. When we do start learning about the future, we get off to a decent start. This time around, it is specified that this is the result of a combination of ecological decay and nuclear warfare, making the story topical. Most intriguingly, we learn that the Eloi are clearly intelligent yet significantly dependent on the Morlocks, to the point of relying on an irrigation system apparently set up for their benefit.

This brings us to a far more fundamental problem with how the source material is handled. The Morlocks are a very complex set of villains. On one hand, they are the quintessential image of the savage brute; on the other, they are a potent symbol of the downtrodden, feeding on what may well be the descendants of their former oppressors. As further portrayed here, they are intriguing even when unseen, and unnerving once they appear, tall and lean with luminous eyes possibly even more effective than their Pal counterparts, even at no-bit video quality. All of this revision begs for a finale where they get to speak for themselves. They might be reasoned into a truce, they might reveal their knowledge of the machines in their domain, they might give an account of the lot of their ancestors. But the moment never comes, because neither the writers nor their hero bother to try to talk to them even though all the evidence indicates they could.

That leaves us with the biggest problem of all. The time traveler per the book already had plenty of issues; like many Wells protagonists, he is a cipher always on the edge of fading into the background of his own story. His counterpart here, on the other hand, is a short-sighted, self-justifying weasel. From the get-go, he endangers millions in his own time by neglecting the job he is being paid for. Then he still tries to put himself in the right by admitting several excursions that could have profoundly altered history. Finally, in the main event, he freely plans the defeat and possible extermination of the Morlocks without even considering if the Eloi can survive without them, all on the preposterous rationale that he is saving “civilization”. His character might still work if he had the idealism of a Don Quixote or the hot temper of an Othello but he never comes across as out for anyone but himself. In the end, even his return to Weena simply seems like one last retreat from responsibility.

With all that, I still don’t have the “one scene”. This time, there was never much doubt of my choice. In the time traveler’s very first excursion, he runs into a woman in Puritan dress fleeing from a band of witch hunters. Needless to say, the mob doesn’t take kindly to someone in strange dress at the controls of an incomprehensible machine that has appeared from nowhere. Their leader solemnly pronounces him a witch (warlock?), and they set a fire to destroy him and the machine (notwithstanding the fact that even witches were kept alive long enough to appear in court). It’s an absurd scene that should have been either developed into a longer episode or set aside. Still, there’s enough solemnity to feel a kind of understanding with the mob more than the perplexed time traveler, who of course disappears without any further effort to aid the accused witch.

In closing, all I can say is that this is bad, certainly worse than Empire of the Ants, indeed worse than more than one movie that I have disqualified as “too bad” to review (see War of the Planets, again). But once again, it is not objective quality that settles whether this one gets the lowest rating. If anything, what leaves me personally annoyed is the parts that work just well enough to show that this could have been good. Even so, I can’t quite say that I hate this one, mostly because what I feel instead is an indifference that is almost worse. My final verdict is to let this one lie in the rubbish pile where I probably should have left it, forgotten and even more deservedly ignored.

Image credit goes to Space 1970. I further recommend The Chiseler for an account of the strange saga of Sunn Classic Pictures.

Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon 2: The one by Mr. BIG

 

Title: Empire of the Ants

What Year?: 1977

Classification: Knockoff/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)

 

With this review, I’m continuing my lineup of movies based on the work of H.G. Wells. This time around, I have a movie that took more liberties than usual with Wells’ source material, meaning that it’s quite debatable if it’s based on Wells at all (see The Shape of Things to Come). As a bonus, it gave me my first look at a notorious filmmaker whose work I’m sure most people would have expected me to be an expert on. What I found almost as interesting was that this very threadbare effort still had an impact on how Wells’ work was presented to the public. Here is Empire of the Ants, as presented by Bert I. Gordon.

Our story begins with a pseudo-documentary sequence quite correctly portraying the abilities and total superiority of ants, effective enough to feel like we’re watching Phase IV. Any comparison is quickly dashed as we are introduced to a crooked real estate developer Marilyn, her boyfriend and a rogues’ gallery of characters about to go on a river cruise to view their alleged property. It’s quickly made clear that anyone who invests is going to be ripped off. Unfortunately, it also turns out that the land has been overrun by a colony of giant ants. The group must forge their way through the swamp, with the ants never far behind and sometimes apparently ahead. Eventually, Marilyn makes her way back to civilization, minus her boy toy and several of their marks. But the survivors aren’t safe yet, as the ants already have their own collaborators in the nearest down, under the thrall of the biggest ant of all!

Empire of the Ants was written and directed by Bert I. Gordon, also responsible for the previous year’s Food of the Gods and 1965’s Village of the Giants, based nominally on an H.G. Wells story of the same name. While these and other films earned Gordon the nickname “Mr. BIG”, he had in fact also made a number of horror and “straight” mystery/ crime movies, as well as the exploitation comedy How to Succeed With Sex.  The film was distributed by B-movie mill AIP (see Futureworld, Meteor, The People That Time Forgot, etc.), with co-founder Samuel Z. Arkoff credited as executive producer. The movie starred Joan Collins and Robert Lansing (see The Nest), four years before Collins found new fame on the soap opera Dynasty. The ants were mainly portrayed with footage of genuine live insects enlarged with rear-projection and other optical effects carried over from Gordon’s earlier films, with life-sized puppets used for a number of closeups. An anthology of the original story and eight others by Wells was published by Tempo Books as a tie-in with the movie. Oddly, a second Wells anthology titled Empire of the Ants was released by Scholastic in 1977, with very little further overlap in content. While a number of Wells works included giant insects, the ants in the story are of ordinary size.

For my personal experiences, my main reference point for this one is junior high, when I first recall reading Wells’ short fiction. I can still remember my first encounters with true classics like “The Crystal Egg”, “In The Abyss” and “The Red Room”. It will be commentary enough to say that I have no recollection at all of when or even if I read “Empire of the Ants”, which in hindsight had already been far outdone by Murray Leinster’s “Doomsday Deferred”. I definitely did learn of the works of Bert I. Gordon, especially Food of the Gods. In planning this mini-feature, I very seriously debated between that or the present movie, as I simply did not see any instructional value in actually covering them both. I made my choice because plenty has already been said about the earlier film, and because Empire of the Ants was far more obvious in drawing on earlier films like Them and Phase IV rather than Wells’ actual story. For the extra random factor, I watched the movie as a sketchy upload that kept getting interrupted by ads in Spanish, because there was no way I was paying money for this one.

With that out of the way, I have to say this one gets off to a halfway decent start. The shots of the ants and the swampscape (filmed on location in Florida) are effectively foreboding, while the  human characters are at least horrible in unique and interesting ways. There’s also the obligatory shots of nuclear waste, which are done effectively enough to make a bridge between the preposterous fears of the ‘50s and the “serious” pretensions of the ‘70s. Once the group is on the run, there’s some good old-school tension as they struggle and frequently fail to escape the ants. There’s some extra “so bad it’s good” fun in the hilariously bad decisions of the cast (conspicuously an otherwise sympathetic old couple who stop at a “shelter” about as secure as a cardboard box), which could be taken as a slasher movie parody if Halloween wasn’t still a year ahead. Things actually improve substantially in the final act, which feels like a cross between Them and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The only real flaw in the setup is that the most genuinely interesting ideas don’t turn up until it’s a bit too late for them to be fully developed.

The overarching problem is the ants themselves. I would normally be the last to complain about “bad” effects (compare Dark Star and Jaws 3); show me stop-motion, practical, optical, a goddam beach ball, I’ll say yes to all. But these effects go far beyond inept or outdated. This would have been second-rate at best when Mr. Gordon started making movies, and we have the likes of George Pal’s War of the Worlds and Harryhausen’s Beast From 20,000 Fathoms to prove it. But the obvious flaws are just aggravating factors in two much deeper problems. First, the filmmakers can never get their scale straight. In the more convincing shots, the ants look no bigger than the humans, perhaps as small as dogs. In others, especially toward the end, they are literally as tall as semi trucks. Second and worse still, they are rarely truly threatening, as a direct and foreseeable result of using “real” ants. Left literally to their own devices, the insects mostly just mind their own business, just like the complex social creatures they really are. It would be tempting to say that the film would have been better off with just the practical rigs, except it’s all too clear how those worked out.

For the “one scene”, there is truly no topping the surreal finale. After reaching town, Marilyn and most of the survivors are captured and led to the ant queen, appropriately housed in a sugar plant that looks vaguely like a pyramid. The authorities explain that the townspeople all serve the queen, but must be kept in line with regular “indoctrination”, which consists of being sprayed with a mind-controlling pheromone. The scene is impressively grim as we see the docile townspeople lined up outside the queen’s chamber. In one of the Gordon’s few shows of advisable restraint, there are glimpses of the queen herself, but never a clear look at the entire creature. Soon, Marilyn is pushed inside, and there is a closeup as she either freezes or braces herself… and then the spray comes.

In closing, I freely admit that this is easily among the worst movies I have reviewed for this or any other feature. However, I have always been very clear that when I give a movie the lowest rating, it is for reasons that go well beyond mere technical ineptitude. Compared to the cynicism of Laserblast, the laziness of Warof the Planets, or the flat noxiousness of Inseminoid, movies like this one are too harmless and a little too sincere to actively hate. If it comes to that, it just might have led at least a few young people to Wells’ actual work. In my book, that’s enough to give this one a reprieve.