The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Return to the wild!

 

It's Tuesday, and I've been busy enough to consider throwing in the towel a while longer. Fortunately, it just happens that I spent some decompression time at the Store of Stores, source of the silliest AWESOMEST dinosaurs to appear in this feature. So, here's a quick lineup of the latest sightings there, plus a few more things that even I wouldn't pay money for, which I swear I almost had ready over the weekend. To kick things off, how about a dinobot?

This here is, of course, a clear if generic knockoff of the Transformers Dinobots, previously represented in my original dinobot lineup and my relatively recent Grimlocks followup. This one looks good enough that I genuinely considered buying it, except that its price tag was in the same range as a real Transformer, and not just the discounted and/ or small ones I usually buy. Of course, I did consider that the exact same store sold me the mindbogglingly awful generic ankylosaur dinobot, possibly the worst thing I have reviewed for this feature that I bought new. The mask you can kind of see didn't help; it really is a full-sized Halloween mask with an alleged electronic feature. If that's what drove the price up, they lost the sale twice over. Oh, well. And then there was this...

So this is a bag of big dinos that appears to be from the same makers as the generic dino bag and the Oviraptor. This time, there's only about three of them in correspondingly large sizes, as far as I can tell solidly built. There's even signs of articulation on that ceratopsian. The problem, which you might or might not be able to see, is that the included T. rex has two heads, which somehow failed to be a selling point for me. It all comes down to the dictum I laid down with the patchisaurs, if you're going with dinos as an excuse for fantasy monsters, don't try to make them look like "real" dinosaurs. And here's another pic that might or might not give a better view. One more thing, I swear that Styracosaurus thingy looks exactly like a stop-motion model used in Son of Kong. Dammit, I'm going to go back and buy this thing, aren't I?

And here's another item, clearly intended to look like a therizinosaur. Wow. Just... wow.

On the other hand, there's this. I'm actually impressed. Is this supposed to be a dino, or the Alien as a plush toy?

And while I'm at it, a sighting from a previous visit. I'm sure this is from the same offenders as the generic bag. Well, if kids aren't traumatized, how will they get into dinosaurs?

And while I'm at it, a few from Walmart. This is the source of my header illustration. It feels like what would happen if a real therepod thought he could host a kid's show...

And another Walmart entry. It's brought me the Lanard megafauna, a Marx clone set, the cyborg zombie T. rex, and the actually good spinosaur; so you can't win 'em all.

And here's something different, from the store where I got the anime space jet transformer, now finally closed down. This had definitely been there a very long time...

And speaking of Walmart/ Lanard, I found this outside the direct-to-Walmart channels.

And that's enough for me to call it a day/ night/ week. This is truly what I do, and this time around, I've felt good going in and coming out. My material isn't always great, or epically bad, but I can always come up with something interesting. And while I'm at it, here's one more pic from the Store of Stores. Sometimes, something normal is the weirdest thing of all...

That's all for now, more to come!

Featured Creature Special: The one where the werewolves have guns

 

 

Title: The Howling

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Runnerup/ Parody/ Anachronistic Outlier

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

 

As I write this, I have been taking longer than usual to decide on a film to review. What’s different is that I have actually gone a good stretch without watching a movie at all. That brought my decision down to whatever I finally watched, and as often happens, I already had a rental that I was not looking forward to. So with that glowing endorsement, I’m wading into a movie that I had watched exactly once and still remembered being disappointed by. I present The Howling, the movie that deconstructed the werewolf ahead of An American Werewolf In London, and boy, did they not do it better.

Our story begins with a reporter named Karen who goes out on an obviously hare-brained attempt to catch a serial killer that ends in a last-minute rescue that leaves the killer bullet-riddled in the morgue. After the traumatizing experience, a psychiatrist sends Karen and her husband out to the Colony, a counterculture settlement where people go to reconnect with nature. But all is not well, as the inhabitants mutter of dark secrets and a resident maneater. Meanwhile, the body of the killer has disappeared, leading the reporter’s colleagues to suspect that he might not be as dead as the authorities believe. In fact, the killer and the inhabitants of the Colony are all werewolves, living a conflicted existence under the doctor’s direction. It’s up to the reporter and her work friend to get out alive- but her husband is already one of the lycanthropes!

The Howling was a 1981 horror film directed by Joe Dante (see InnerSpace, Gremlins 2), based on the first of a series of novels by Gary Bradner. It was the first of three werewolf films released in 1981, preceding Wolfen and An American Werewolf In London. No serious allegation emerged that any of the films had copied each other. The film starred Dee Wallace as Karen and Patrick Macnee as the psychiatrist Dr. Waggner, with Robert Picardo (see Dead Heat) as the killer Eddie Quist. Other cast included John Carradine (Shock Waves), Dick Miller (Terminator, Night of the Creeps), and Elisabeth Brooks (Deep Space???) as Marsha. Creature effects were created by Rob Bottin, after Rick Baker (see King Kong 1976) left the project for American Werewolf. Additional stop-motion effects were created by David Allen (see Dungeonmaster, Robot Jox, etc, etc, etc), all of which were cut or replaced except for a shot of a group of werewolves at the end of the film. The film was a commercial success, earning $17.9 million against a $1.5M budget. It received 7 official sequels, none of which appear to have followed Bradner’s additional books. The movie is available for streaming on AMC Plus.

For my experiences, this is a film I watched on VHS in college, probably before American Werewolf. What has remained most interesting is that the two films represent an already undisputed case of what I call a “runnerup”, as well as a much rarer case where two such parallel productions were roughly equal in their impact and stature (compare to AntZ and A Bug’s Life). To me, what has been most intriguing in a sad way is that the two films are in every important respect opposites to each other. One was a highly polished medium-budget film from a “mainstream” director. The other was openly a low-budget genre film by a newcomer who never outgrew his roots. Unfortunately, this is an especially clear-cut case where the establishment unquestionably produced far better results.

Moving forward, the most significant and counterintuitive comparison to be made between this film and American Werewolf is that the latter was a “horror comedy” but not a horror parody. The present film is in itself proof of the difference. It aims to be knowing and subversive in its genre references and inside jokes, the best by far being a lead villain who hands a gun back to the nosy guy reporter. The “problem” is that there is not a lot here that is funny on its own terms. The most effective satirical elements come, tellingly, not from the gags but from the domestic dysfunctionality of the werewolves. They are set up as leftovers from another time (which could have worked far better if we knew something about their aging if any) trying to adapt to modernity. Left to their own devices, they present an unsettlingly mundane picture of a cult: Banal, petty, bickering and often simply bored. It’s an intriguing angle greatly improved by strong acting and dialogue, but on a certain level, it never goes anywhere. In the final confrontation, it’s quite clear all the arguments among the pack are merely a half-hearted delay before the inevitable. The real surprise is that the lone dissenter doesn’t get lunched by his own side.

Meanwhile, my personal beef has always been with the effects, and that only got worse when I looked into the history of the production. At best, the creatures are outdated off the drawing board, adding to an already strong vibe of a 1970s movie that happened to come out in the Eighties. At worst, they are inert and distractingly odd. (And dear Logos, what were they thinking with those ears???) Before the inevitable objections, this was only a year before the same guy made The Thing, and two years after Alien. They could definitely do better. What’s worse is that the more rudimentary makeup effects are far more menacing, especially as seen on Picardo (whom I did not recognize despite noting his presence on many other occasions). His full transformation is the biggest washout, to the point that his intended victim easily deals with him while he is still standing there. A further indictment comes from the tryst between Marsha and the newly turned husband, which for all its awkwardness manages to achieve the stylized surrealism the film clearly intended to give. My true rage moment came when I found unused stop-motion by Allen in a bonus feature. The final insult came as I discovered that what I remembered as the only shot where the wolves looked good was in fact the only remnant of his work on the film.

Now for the “one scene”, I decided it was long past time to feature the late Dick Miller, the greatest cameo artist in history. He appears around the mid-point as proprietor of an occult bookstore. The clip I found starts with him talking to the secondary reporters about the patrons of his store, allegedly including a certain real-life cultist. When the lady reporter asks about grave robbery, he matter-of-factly gives them a book. Of course, the conversation turns to werewolves, and a case of silver bullets whose origin should count as a plot hole yet actually works. In the process, he lays out the werewolves’ strengths and weaknesses. For me, what makes the scene is when the guy reporter comes out and asks if he actually believes anything he has been saying. His reply is better heard than described. Suffice to say, it’s as good a deconstruction of the genre and underlying mythology as anything in the film.

In closing, what I decided was worth coming back to is what makes a parody. Obviously, that has become far more pertinent in a landscape where revisionism, deconstruction and “meta” humor have become a genre in themselves. As I have shown regularly, we were already in the same cycle long, long ago. The one lesson worth learning is that a “good” genre satire has to be something more, and the best explanation of what works is to look at the examples that already succeed.  If you had never seen a Star Trek episode, Galaxy Quest would still be funny. If you cut all the jokes out of Shaun of the Dead, it would still be a good zombie movie. By comparison, The Howling is and always was going to be the “runnerup” to American Werewolf. I can get why people like this one and might even find it more entertaining than its competitor, or I would probably give it a lower rating than I have. It still remains a film that struggles to be decent, let alone “great”. And with that, I can finish for another day.

The Kong File 3: The one with robot Kong

 

 

Title: King Kong Escapes

What Year?: 1967

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Improbable Experiment

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

 

With this review, I’m up to the third in this lineup, which would usually be the last. As I already alluded, this is the one that was going to be here all along. In a franchise approaching its 90^th anniversary, there have been all kinds of detours and dead ends, and one is the strangest and wonkiest of them all, not just in concept and execution but in the backstory of its creation. And, even more amazingly, it’s not the one that had Kong literally brought back as a zombie. Without further delay, I present King Kong Escapes, the one where King Kong does indeed escape.

Our story begins with a sub travelling under water, accompanied by a moody yet groovy score. It turns out that the crew is on an expedition to Mondo Island, to investigate legends of a giant creature called Kong. For some reason, this Japanese crew has exactly one female crew member who happens to be blonde, because apparently the template has overcome ethnicity. They discover this movie’s incarnation of Kong, who can politely be described as sleepy-looking even in battle with Mesozoic creatures. Naturally, he takes a fancy to the blonde, leading him on one hand to save her from the monsters but on the other trying to disable the sub when they try to leave. Meanwhile, a mad-ish scientist named Dr. Hu has built a giant robot ape based on Kong, as a means to mine the mysterious element X. When the machine fails, the doctor and a lady spy set out to get the real Kong. It’s  zany villainy on a collision course with good, and there’s no way this doesn’t end with Kong fighting his own double on top of a building!

King Kong Escapes was a 1967 science fantasy/ kaiju film from Toho and Rankin Bass, directed by Ishiro Honda. The film is regarded as both a sequel to the 1962 Toho film King Kong Vs. Godzilla and a film adaptation of the Rankin Bass cartoon King Kong aired from 1966-1969. While the characters Dr. Hu and Mechani-Kong were previously featured on the show, the film did not feature or directly reference characters or events from the earlier Toho film or any other entry in the franchise. The film starred veterans Akira Takarada as Hiro and Hideo Amamoto as Hu, with Linda Jo Miller as Susan and the original Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima as Kong. The film was released in the US by Universal in 1968 with a G rating, for a North American box office reported as $1 million. Toho continued development of films featuring Kong, but was unable to proceed after a deal with the US rights holders expired. The film is not available for digital purchase or rental in the US.

For my experiences, this is an egregious example of a film that has been a third-hand memory for most of my life. I first became aware of it from a single illustration of the robotic Kong, which I am sure I long thought of as Mecha-Kong. A little later, I saw King Kong Vs. Godzilla on TV, which in hindsight was a major reason I did not warm up to actual kaiju movies as a kid. By early adulthood, I had figured out that the references I remembered were to this film. It was still a few years before I watched it. It immediately stood out as a strange chimera. It’s as if someone set out to make a film based on all the stereotypes and assumptions people, especially in the Western sphere, hold about kaiju movies: Low production values, wonky effects, marginal acting, preposterous plots and an anticlimactic resolution. Fortunately, it also demonstrates why even a “bad” example of the genre can still be a lot of fun.

Moving forward, what’s really noteworthy here is that this a fairly rare case of a vintage kaiju movie that is definitely trying to be funny. It is counterintuitively difficult to pinpoint the difference. All the elements here could be and were played “straight”, yet the presentation transforms them. Whether it’s the psychedelic costumes, vehicles and sets, the weird suit monsters and permanently spaced-out Kong, or the hammy acting, everything here is just a little “more” than usual, at least before the 1970s camp cycle (see Godzilla Vs. Hedorah), and that makes a big difference. It shows the most in the dynamic between Kong and the blonde, which is in many ways the most interesting and sophisticated variation on the formula. Out of the long trail of quasi-romantic figures, Susan is the first to succeed in telling the big guy what to do. She accomplishes this feat mostly by talking to Kong as if he was the petulant toddler he really acts like, with no regard for the very real possibility that he might simply squash her if sufficiently annoyed. The results are truly comical, with a disturbing edge that was there all along. It’s just as well that it ends with the pair parting in peace, implying that the ape has actually learned some kind of lesson.

On the other side of the equation are the villains and Mechani-Kong. The striking thing about the mad doctor and his fair-weather lady friend is that they are the one element played more or less straight. Despite their campy appearances (and Paul Frees swinging for the fences as Hu’s redubbed voice), these are competent and cold-blooded professionals who are absolutely willing and able to kill to get what they want. This is driven home with uncharacteristically brutal human-on-human violence that would be shocking in a G-rated movie if you haven’t seen the likes of The Green Slime and The Andromeda Strain. The robot ape comes across as nothing less than the sum of their malign personalities. We never get a full sense of its capabilities, yet it is a grim and formidable presence in its quite limited screen time. The bot’s greatest advantage is its hypnotic ray, which requires human intervention to neutralize. In true one-on-one combat with Kong, it proves itself quite capable without being completely overwhelming. It’s the environment of the tower that makes the fight memorable, as both combatants maneuver in search of an advantage. One more thing I have to say is that the bot’s early failure from radiation is a quite believable weakness for an AI (though there aren’t many things that wouldn’t be equally bad for the organic Kong). If there’s anything I might suggest changing, it would be to make this a factor in the finale.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s random even for this movie. Soon after the landing on the island, the blonde is menaced by a wonky dino admitted to the Toho stable as Gorosaurus. Its overall look is actually unusually realistic for a vintage kaiju, even if that’s not saying much. The only thing really “off” with mid-20^th century paleontology as a frame of reference is that the head, neck and forelimbs seem bunched up, a compromise presumably dictated by the mechanics of the suit. The lady has the presence of mind to scream and run away, cueing the now-infamous cut to Kong’s eyes opening as he wakens from either a long nap or a stoned stupor. (Okay, his eyes aren’t blood-shot, so we should lay off the drug jokes… nah.) It takes bare moments for him to arrive. That’s when we get possibly the most surreal moment of the movie as the gorosaur launches what proves to be its main attack, a sort of tail-bounce that allows it to hit Kong with both feet simultaneously. It’s every bit as absurd as it sounds, except, this kangaroo-like form of locomotion was considered very seriously in the Victorian era and portrayed in paleo art through the 1930s at least. It’s just an early highlight of a weird sequence that is definitely going for slapstick, and as with many things, it works.

In closing, I will freely admit the bottom line: By any technical standard, this is the worst Kong movie that can still be counted as within the franchise, a fact I certainly took into account in nominating King Kong Lives for that very title. It’s obviously not as polished or professional as De Laurentiis’ offering; for that matter, there were still undoubtedly entries far worse than either among the wave of knockoffs and parodies that the 1976 remake spawned (see Mighty Peking Man). Per my standard refrain, it all comes down to context and means. The real “problem” with King Kong Lives was that those involved could do far better. By comparison, this is a movie that delivers exactly what you would expect from those involved, inasmuch as one could have expectations of a studio that went on to make House. The crowning achievement and irony is that, even considered as a parody of what Toho had done before, it still comes out as well above average. In that respect, it can take its place with the likes of Galaxy Quest and Twitch of the Death Nerve. It’s weird, it’s silly, it’s dated, and for the right taste and mood, it’s just fine. Hail to the King!

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 12!

 It's time for the nominal start of the week, so of course I have another Space Guys installment that's pretty much all gratuitous world-building. By the way, these are all real place names. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

The voyage went on as Jupiter grew larger in the porthole. Jason struggled less with his own engagement than with the sudden marriage of Anastasia and Donald. Within a week, they could be seen openly displaying their affection in the recreation area around the captain’s cabin. Much of that admittedly consisted of Anastasia talking while he pawed at her. Alek made a point of teasing him. “See, he is a man’s man,” she said. “He grabs and takes. Why do you no do that to me? Am I not no good enough woman for you?”

Jason ignored her and joined the group. They passed a computer game console, consisting of a circular flat panel screen the size and configuration of a game table with two sets of controls on opposite sides. Currently, Jax and Yukio, the Edonian engineer, were using it to play Go. Surprisingly, Jax was in the process of winning. By Anastasia was playing one of the electromechanical games, a rudimentary simulator where the player controlled a descending model lander. When Donald sidled up behind her, she finally swore and hissed at him.

Jason chose an electromechanical target game, based on King Kong. Through a vision block, he could see a miniature ape atop a stylized spire, holding a wildly out-of-scale woman. The spire and the figures rotated as the crosshairs moved back and forth, in a fair simulation of a circling aircraft. Alex leaned in to look. The window was wide enough for one or two onlookers to see what was happening, but little of what illusion there was carried over when viewed from the side. He waited for the mechanical ape to set down the woman, then fired. He got the required number of hits on the second try, then allowed Alek to look as the flailing ape dropped out of sight. He then allowed her to take his free turn. Within bare moments, there was a crude but effective wail as she fired early, causing the ape to drop the woman and end the game. He suppressed a flinch when he found Moxon leaning against the next cabinet. “Say,” he said, “can I try?”

They took turns through three rounds each. He outscored Moxon twice. The officer took it in evident good humor. By then, Alek had started into boasting about their partnership. “I am an enlightened man, and you know, he is a very enlightened man,” she said. “That is why we are waiting to get married. He takes care of me, I take care of him, we don’t need to rush.”

That got a scowl from Anastasia. “Oh, please,” she said. “You two are so traditional the Motherworld press think you are already married.”

Jason managed to cut in. “Well, we’ve both been wanting to ask,” he said. “You getting married was, well, fast. I’ve known you a long time, I never thought you were the marrying kind. There’s definitely no way you would do it just to stay out of trouble.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Anastasia said. “We were seeing each other. We just weren’t exclusive. There wasn’t anyone else I was going long-term for.”

Don put an arm around her. “Hey, it’s not like I’m the compromise candidate,” he said. “I’m smart, I’m cool, I’m fun. I can make her laugh. I can make her do more than laugh.” He reached down to her waist. She firmly moved his hand back to her shoulder.

By then, Jax had won his game. As he shook hands with the Edonian, Moxon sidled in. “I can play the next game,” he said.

“Nah,” Jax said. “I want to try the geography game again.” He punched a control, and a map of Gaia appeared. Moxon leaned over with interest.

“I can tell you about geography,” he said. Nobody opposed him as he took the Edonian’s seat, though there were glances of concern when he raised his trench knife.

The game consisted of prompts to select a country. Jax moved the crosshairs around the map with a pair of knobs. Moxon simply jabbed the screen with the still-sheathed knife. “Here’s where you farmboys are from,” he said, tapping the middle of the North American continent. “Good old US of A. Now part of the  Pan-Atlantic Union, of course. The closest thing there is to a capitol is down here; Mexico City. Chances are your parents left through the Merida spaceport here.” He tapped the Yucatan Peninsula to the east.

Jax moved the crosshairs to the islands of England across the Atlantic. “Aren’t they in the Union?” Jason said.

“Actually, no,” Moxon said. Jax nodded. “You could say they’re a member in all but name, but officially, they’re a neutral state. They backed out because of Ireland, among other things.” He tapped the island to the west. “They did join the Union, free and clear, but the damage was done.”

They went through France and more Union countries on the continent, then the central states of Deutschland. Moxon nodded toward the captain. “Deutschland tried to get it all in the Last War,” he said. “You know how that turned out. After the Great Peace, all the armies that fought against them withdrew on the condition that they would remain neutral in a war between the other powers. Now, it’s a matter of pride that they don’t have an army. Of course, if they ever need one, there will already be another Great War going.”

He traced the vast territory of the Federation, stretching from Slovakia to Upper Korea, plus satellites as far-flung as Cuba and Lower East Indochina. “The Federation was the Soviet Union, of course,” he said. “After the Reforms, they became the Trans-Eurasian Federation of Socialist Republics. Their Republics got a choice between staying with equal representation in the Party or becoming satellite states, and the satellites were allowed to stay or agree to neutrality. Most of them stayed.”

He jabbed at New Edo and Shen and the allied lands of Lower Korea and Upper East Indochina. “Then, of course, there’s the Alliance of Heaven, really, that’s their name,” he said. “Right before the end of the War, the Emperor of Old Tokyo made a peace treaty with the Leader of the Ruling Party of Shenzhou. Only back then, the Party wasn’t ruling anything, except the lands on the border with Russka. The Emperor said it was atonement for the wrongs of the war. It was really just lighting a fire in the attic while they ran out the back door. The damnedest thing was, they followed through with it.”

They came back to Dalmatia, which drew a chuckle from Moxon. “Dalmatia exists because the Hrvatskis took the wrong side in the Last War,” he said. “When the Jugoslav Union reformed, the southern part was carved out as a new Republic.” He traced an erratic line across the peninsula. “The Adriatic Federation bit was aspirational. They hoped they could get Greece, even Italy. All they got was Albania and Romania. The rest mostly went to the Alignment.” He outlined a swath of territory that went from Greece through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, plus the outliers of Siam and Israel.

The officer waved vaguely at the converging island chains of Indo-Malaya. “The Indo-Malay Federation was another start-up that didn’t get anywhere, though they at least got a lot of nothing to show for it. It’s a whole bunch of little islands full of people who speak almost the same language, pray to practically the same gods and all hate each other. No offense.” He looked in the direction of Aisi. “They finally got to act important when somebody convinced them to stick their noses in West Indochina.” He jabbed at a comma-like swath on the inner edge of the eastern peninsula.

He pointed to the swath between Iran and Siam that was Greater Hindustan, and the belt of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa across the oceans to the south. “This is the Indo-Oceanian Federation,” he said. “It’s the other reason England didn’t get into the Union. There was a deal to let the colonies in the Subcontinent go their own way, and straight to Hell for all anyone cared. But England convinced the non-Hindu provinces to accept peacekeepers from the other colonies, which was how the Federation started. I spent a lot of time there. In the Second Intervention, I saved a temple of the Jains in Karachi. The priests made me a Brahmin.”

Jax spoke up. “Wait a minute,” he said, “I know that one. It was 27 years ago. How the Hell old are you?”

Moxon turned his head and smiled. “How old do I look?” Jax said no more.

Moxon leaned back. “So that’s good old Gaia,” he said. “It’s a nice enough place, really. We have world peace, peace enough anyway. That beats the alternative. Just in case, we have the UN and the Strato-Corps. You could say we’re the world’s fire department, putting out little fires before they get big. You know, there was a time I did that, too.” As he spoke, he drove the blade through a partition.

As the game wound down, Donald happily took over the console. He started a game called Interceptor that was clearly intended to simulate a missile exchange. Each incoming projectile was represented by a curving line that could be blocked with another. The trick was that  there was a lag between the lines on the screen and the input from the controls that grew as the game went on. Alek joined in, laughing as she stopped one attack after another and drove her own offensive home. In the midst of it, Jason and Anastasia exchanged glances. They both made their way to the rear, where the ludicrous prefabricated bathroom filled the rear escape pod. She stretched out in the tub. He sat on top of the lowered lid of the toilet.  She said without turning, “It was your fault, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Jason said. There was already a note of wounded innocence in his voice.

“I had to marry Don,” Anastasia said. “After what happened with Vasily and Jackie, I got called in to see the captain. He laid out everything. Sure, it was for what I did, and maybe I deserved it. But it was still because of you and the little supergenius!”

“I don’t understand,” Jason said, quite honestly. “We didn’t do anything wrong, at least by what goes back home. Even what you did wouldn’t be a big deal. What does Command on Gaia care?”

Anastasia started to snarl, but moderated into a sigh. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “Remember those silly old shows that always had a man and woman in separate beds even if they were supposed to be married? The Federation State networks still won’t show a man and woman in one bed unless it’s designated for `health and education’. Or did you notice all the times they talk about how the Union outgrew segregation? There are Union stations that wouldn’t air interviews with Jill Lightower without hiding that she’s a morena. Now just try to imagine what it’s like dealing with sponsors in Outer Hindustan and the Arab League. So can you guess the one thing that’s got everyone up in arms? That Shen reporter filmed you and Alek in bed with her top off, while your partition was wide open!”

“What?” Jason said. “We always… wait… oh. Jax must have forgotten about it. Well, what are they going to do about it? The ship has sailed, literally.”

“They can send us home,” Anastasia said. “All of us. That’s why we aren’t going full speed. Of course, the official explanation is that it lets a rescue ship meet up with us if we had an accident or a medical emergency. But as far as Gaia Command is concerned, we aren’t just an unproven experiment, we’re a liability. When they see us living life our own way, they don’t want to see people who don’t know what the rules are supposed to be. They see superhumans who think we’re too good for their morality. If we won’t follow their rules, who’s to say we won’t stop following their orders? They wouldn’t send back the actual supergenius, oh no, they need her. They might let you stay if it kept her happy. But the rest of us… totally replaceable.”

She sighed for real. “The captain told me, it is essential to the program that the public sees a Martian in a stable domestic relationship,” she said. “He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to.”

Jason shook his head. “No way,” he said. “That’s not you. They might as well tell a full-blooded wolf to sit, roll over and fetch.”

Anastasia sighed again. This time, she smiled. “I had thought about it, really,” she said. “Even a woman like me thinks about settling down sooner or later. I was never getting there with Jackie. I should have cut Vasily off already. But Donald… I suppose he could have gotten here on his own eventually. Probably would have. He’s that kind of person.”

“Does he know?” Jason asked pointedly.

“Of course,” Ana said. “Well, he knows enough. He still thinks that makes him Number One, at everything. That’s why he treats me the way he does. It’s fine, really. Trying to change him wouldn’t be any better than trying to change me. If anybody could dig deep enough to do it, I wouldn’t want what would be left.”

She turned her head to meet Jason’s steady gaze. “Damn,” he said. “You’re in love, aren’t you?”

“Well, you’re an idiot,” she said, without hiding a blush. They were still sitting in silence when there came a banging at the door.

“Jason!” Alek said. “I know you’re in there! Ana, I know you’re in there too! Are you cheating with my fiancée?”

Jason and Anastasia looked at each other. “No,” Ana said with a lilting accent.

There was a moment of silence. “Well, why not?” Jason got up to leave.

Table of contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!

Part 8: The launch!

Part 9: The girl talk!

Part 10: The domestic disturbance!!!

Part 11: The Space Nazis!!!

The Kong File 2: The one with zombie Kong and Linda Hamilton

 

 

Title: King Kong Lives aka King Kong 2

What Year?: 1986

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

With this review, I’m continuing my Kong lineup. As often happens, I have had the first and last entries settled in my mind all along, yet the middle installment has required further thought. That in turn required me to look through a fair amount of material that I, even I, had not gotten around to watch. I finally gave one particular film a try, with a solid alternate already in hand. When I was done, I knew that it was the one I had to do, so of course, I waited until the last moment to try writing a review. I present King Kong Lives, the sequel to the first Kong remake, because that always goes over well!

Our story begins at the climax of the previous film, as Kong takes a swan dive off a certain building that became a whole other set of baggage. But it turns out that a big company has hired a lady scientist with the tech to revive Kong as a sort of Frankenstein’s monster, because in this kind of movie, corporations never make a mistake that they can’t repeat with exponentially worse results the second time around. Meanwhile, an adventure manages to capture a female of whatever the Hell this species is. The Kongette (there’s no way this crew was coming up with the name on their own) provides a source for a transfusion that fully revives the original. Once Kong is up and awake, he pines for the female in what is definitely not a Platonic way. When the sponsors try to keep the pair apart against their own interests, the star-crossed lovers break free with no significant assistance from the lady scientist who is still being treated as the lead. With company bounty hunters and the military out for Kong, this Romeo and Juliet story just might end in tragedy!

King Kong Lives was a 1986 film by Dino DeLaurentiis (see Flash Gordon, Conan The Destroyer, etc, etc.), produced as a sequel to the 1976 remake of King Kong.  The film was directed by John Guillermin from a script by Ron Shusett (see Dead and Buried) and Steven Pressfield. The Kong suits and other effects were created by the late Carlo Rambaldi (see… Twitch of The Death Nerve?). Linda Hamilton of Terminator starred as Dr. Franklin, with Peter Elliott making a credited appearance as Kong. A tie-in video game was released only in Japan, under the alternate title King Kong 2. While the film earned $48 million worldwide against an $18M budget, it earned only $4M in the US and was reported as a failure for the De Laurentiis organization. A legal confrontation arose when Siskel and Ebert were warned not to broadcast clips of the film to national audiences, leading Siskel to comment that the De Laurentiis Group “couldn’t find a single scene that it wanted you to see”.  The film has a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes (see Mac And Me, Terrorvision). It is currently available for digital purchase and rental, including free streaming from the Shout! Factory platform.

For my experiences, my one tangential encounter with this one is that I can recall sighting it on the video stores. What really came to my mind with this review was my own reappraisal of Dino De Laurentiis. I grew up on second-hand accounts that treated the filmmaker as a butt of jokes, albeit often in a semblance of good-natured humor. I went along with it to the point of making him the basis of a (likeable!) comic-relief character in my fiction. It was only when I started doing my own reviews that I started to come to terms with Dino as a significant and, at least in intention, serious filmmaker. What I found was that many other people have been making the same journey. What became ominously clear was that the present film has been left out of the De Laurentiis renaissance. Once I watched this movie, the impression I came out with was in many ways an “honest” effort, without the pretensions that built up around De Laurentiis’ most polarizing film. The corollary is, it is absolutely bonkers in ways I have spent the last few days trying to think of ways to convey.

Moving forward, the central and counterintuitive reality of this film and to some extent De Laurentiis’ work as a whole is that there is very little that is intentionally or at least obviously trying to be funny. This is something that I have for my own part come to see as part of the character of the Italian cinema he came out of. To be sure, there are actual gags, the funniest being the total annihilation of a very ‘80s sportscar. Yet, these are not really part of the De Laurentiis brand of surrealism. If anything, there are moments that feel all the more odd for being played straight. The quite lengthy resurrection of the first act is especially telling. It’s every bit as strange as it sounds in cold blood. At the same time, it’s the closest we get to anything resembling realism; there is a clinical feel here that conveys a further sense of real effort. (Alas, this is also the only point where Hamilton is anything but wasted.) The strange tone continues with Kong’s first escape attempt, where the guards and military vehicles descend into Wile E. Coyote slapstick that barely requires a response from the ape. Once the apes meet up, any humor very quickly drains away, generally to the film’s detriment. This shows especially in Kong’s battle with the military and the following birth of his son. There’s raw power in the ape’s Pyrrhic victory, but the new-born ape is just one more moment that’s weird without being interesting, all the more so as it is clearly just a grown human in a regular gorilla suit without magnification.

That leads straight to by far the biggest problem: The effects here are absolutely, inexplicably and inexcusably awful.  There were already plenty of problems with the 1976 remake, which in hindsight was just a little too early for practical effects to match the fine art of stop-motion. Here, at the height of the 1980s effects revolution, everything looks cheap, rushed, poorly thought-out or all of the above. The worst and most persistent problems come from the direction and camerawork, which repeatedly fail to provide either a scale to impress us or a context to know what if anything is going on. But I also cannot avoid a certain frustration with Rambaldi, all the more so after all the completely deserved praise I have given his work. This was the guy who turned H.R. Giger’s concepts into the Alien suit. (See Forbidden World and Deep Space for what could go wrong when people tried to replicate it…) The people who in his league during his lifetime could probably be counted on one hand. But this movie proves his tendency to be either very, very good or bafflingly bad. The apes here don’t match his so-so E.T. rig, never mind the Alien or Dagoth suits. It takes a lot to make me disappointed with a genuine effects hero, and I am well and truly mad.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with the one that really got my attention. As the finale approaches, Kong is being hunted by a band of company-backed bounty hunters. These aren’t just incompetents, but drunken, obnoxious louts who would presumably be even more unpleasant if there were women around. Surprisingly, they manage to trap Kong with a man-made avalanche that buries him up to the shoulders. It’s a perfect opportunity to throw a few of the gas bombs that have been established as Kong’s weakness in every incarnation, so of course, they laugh, take pictures and fire guns into the air while the ape snarls in indignation. They poke the ape with sticks and torches over the objections of one of their own, until Kong bursts free, burying the majority under their own rocks. There’s an unusually impressive shot as Kong pursues the 2 survivors, actually moving with something close to an actual gorilla’s knuckle walk. When the goons try to climb to safety, he grabs one and literally breaks him in half. He triggers another rockslide to bring down the other, whom he catches and swallows with no visible gore. We only see Kong chew, swallow, and after a moment, pull the ruffian’s hat from between his teeth. It’s a strange moment in a very strange film, but one of the last that really lives up to his potential.

In closing, all I can say is that after watching this, I have no problem with calling it the worst Kong movie. That comes with a few qualifiers. I’m not going to try to count foreign knockoffs, loosely inspired “tributes” and actual parodies. (I claim responsibility for the worst parody, even if it doesn’t technically exist.) I’m also not really considering what makes a film “technically” bad, a distinction that definitely goes to the 1960s incarnations of the character. (I’m definitely getting to that…) But on the Venn diagram of muddled story, poor effects and production values and pure wasted potential, this one hits the exact center of total failure. What’s really of note is that for all its failings, it’s still entertaining enough to be counted as underrated. The real lesson is just how elemental the appeal of the character and story have always been. If a franchise can remain relevant after 90 years, it can survive a lot worse than this. With that, I am ready to call it a night.

The Kong File: The one that was the first sequel

 

 

Title: Son of Kong

What Year?: 1933

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’m looking at things to clear out my backlog, and that brought me to an idea I’ve had on hold for quite a while. It’s nothing less than a survey of the oldest, most influential and most eclectic science fiction franchise of all time, which has already figured frequently on this blog and my fiction and non-fiction as a whole. Needless to say, I will be looking at the obscure and very odd outliers of a wild and woolly franchise whose management has been uneven to put it mildly. There was no better place to start than ground zero. I present Son Of Kong, the very first sequel to the original monster movie blockbuster.

Out story begins with Carl Denham, the adventurer and showman who brought King Kong to New York, now at the center of a very realistic wave of litigation. To stay out of court and perhaps improve his finances, Denham sets out on another expedition to Skull Island, following an obviously unreliable rumor of treasure. Everyone’s back except Anne and Jack, including the minority comic relief cook. Along the way, they pick up a new romantic interest, a clearly untrustworthy sailor who might know about the island, and finally a smaller and more friendly Kong. There’s wacky hijinks, strange creatures, and old fashioned heroics ahead as the expedition explores the island. But when the island is destroyed by a volcanic eruption, it will take all their daring do to get out alive!

Son of Kong was a 1933 science fantasy film by RKO, created as a sequel to King Kong released the same year. The film was the only direct sequel to Kong made by RKO and the cast and crew of the original film. A script was created by Ruth Rose, credited as co-writer on the original film; Rose stated that the script was written to replace all dramatic elements with comedy. The film starred Robert Armstrong returning as Carl Denham and Helen Mack as his romantic interest, identified as Hilda but not named in the film. Other returning cast included Frank Reicher as Captain Engelhorn, Victor Wong as Charlie and Noble Johnson as the islanders’ chief. Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot did not participate, nor was there any evidence that they were offered the opportunity to do so. Willis O’Brien again created special effects for the film, which were limited by RKO’s decision to complete and release the film by the end of 1933. Armstrong reportedly favored the sequel for the expanded role of his character. It was not otherwise well-regarded by critics or fans, and became largely obscure. In 2005, the film was released as a set with the original film and Mighty Joe Young. It is currently available on digital platforms including free streaming from Tubi.

For my experiences, the real background here is the misadventures I went through to get the original King Kong in the 1990s-early 2000s, which I covered when I reviewed the 1976 De Laurentiis remake (see also Mighty Peking Man). After the difficulties I went through for that, I was neither optimistic about nor particularly interested in finding the present film, which I definitely knew about. I finally watched when I got the “franchise” box set as a gift, around the time the 2005 remake came out. Once I did see it, I immediately found my opinions mixed. On one hand, it was obviously far inferior to the original, as well as clearly further weighed down by the rushed production. On the other hand, it is far better than one might gather from casual accounts, and in certain lights better than it had any right to be.

Moving forward, the obvious strengths of the movie lie in the cast, which is mostly a case of leaving well enough alone. Armstrong as Denham is as good as before if not better, in situations that genuinely develop his character. The inherited supporting cast prove that they were always part of the successful equation, especially Johnson (see my rants under Gone With The Wind and Ingagi), with Wong coming up from behind as underrated. Most impressively, Mack is in many ways an improvement on Wray. By my assessment, she gives her character a more mature and melancholy quality than Ann Darrow, which is all the more striking since she was actually significantly younger. That coupled with Armstrong’s more subdued character gives a chemistry far more interesting than that of `the original leading pair. (On the other hand, the real-life age difference gives a solid cringe.) Beyond these obvious points, the story truly builds on the original with some surprisingly realistic consequences. There are even moments where the effects and camerawork improve rather embarrassingly on the previous film, particularly a trip through a half-submerged cave and a dynamic head-on shot of a charging cave bear.

That leaves the stop-motion, which is normally where I would be holding myself back. The unfortunate reality is, it’s not hard to envision the film done just as well entirely without them. The little Kong is a fine creation that takes the art and technology in new directions (compare especially with the prince in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger). In far too many ways, however, it’s a case of too much and not enough. The animation isn’t nearly up to the standards of other O’Brien films. (And if you don’t want to be horrified and depressed, do not look up his biography for this time period…) At the same time, the “cute” moments tend to be predictable at best and overdone at worst, with only a mishap with a gun really building on the character. The problems are magnified with the other creatures. The best of the lot is a ceratopsian, originally in the “spider pit” scene of the original, while the bear and a briefly seen plesiosaur both pass. Things get far more difficult with the dragon-like creature of the intended climactic battle, which is the best explanation I can think of for certain talk of a spinosaur somewhere in the franchise. It should have been among O’Brien’s work, and it is by all means very good, yet there are too many corners cut in both the model and the animation, egregiously the uncanny eyes. The common denominator is that only the laziest, greediest suits could have thought that an early release date was a fair trade for the money and time that could have been put into improving the effects. It gets that much harder to take little Kong’s repeatedly extended digit as anything but an expression of Obie’s feelings on the studio system.

Now for the “one scene”, I was honestly debating between a few choices. I finally skipped ahead in the review just to take a look at one of them. At only the 13-minute mark, the leading lady is introduced as Helen, the star attraction of a late-colonial backwater theater. As she takes the stage, Charlie loudly claps, conspicuously alone. She then goes into her predictably underwhelming act, while the camera mercilessly shows the silent stares of the audience. In the middle, we cut to Denham and the captain as they comment at her expense. Denham says in her defense, “She’s got personality… if someone would show her what to do with it.” It’s an effective introduction to a character. The truly funny part for the seasoned bad-movie veteran is that as not-great as it is, the “joke” act is still vastly better than plenty of completely “straight” musical numbers. And that reminds me, I have to do something with Wild World Of Batwoman…

In conclusion, what I come back to is what I am always saying about sequels (see Ghostbusters 2). Sequels are always going to be stuck between studio management, fans and general audiences who have consistently failed to comprehend the things that make an actually good one. The present film is at face value depressing proof that things were no different in the days when sound film was a new and nearly unknown medium. The brighter side is that it proves that even maximum interference and stupidity are not quite enough to keep genuine merit from shining through. The final proof is that I can absolutely say that this film is nowhere near the worst one I have considered for this lineup. And with that, I’m going to go lie down for a while.

The Classics File 3: The one Hollywood wants to unmovie

 

 

Title: Gone With The Wind

What Year?: 1939

Classification: Mashup

Rating: Disqualified!

 

With this review, I am at the end of the last lineup I had planned for my No Good Very Bad Movies feature. That brought me to the reason I did this at all, a movie that I have meant to take on for a very long time. It’s a film that has itself gone through a complicated arc, from a blockbuster to unquestioned classic to a problematic “product of its time” to an artifact the mainstream would rather bury in the memory sandbox. I for one have been looking forward to giving it what it deserves. I speak, of course, of Gone With The Wind, and oh dear Logos (which is an actual name of God in the actual Bible), this damn thing is 233 minutes??!!

Our story begins with a text crawl and a lovely montage praising the Antebellum South, minus the slave auctions, whippings and rampant poverty. We then meet seemingly the most hopelessly degenerate specimen of an impressive bunch of hypocrites, inbreds and general-purpose idiots, a tart named Scarlett O’Hara whose ambitions begin and end with marrying a guy named Ashley who has clearly declared his intent to marry another woman. Meanwhile, the inconvenient Civil War starts, occasionally distracting from her antics as she goes through a marriage to a promptly killed soldier and a series of encounters with a smuggler named Rhett Butler. With the help of her servant Mammy, Scarlett keeps control of her family plantation, while Rhett inexplicably works away at her resistance. Soon enough, the pair are married with a kid, but tragedy strikes. It all comes down to a choice between the man she wanted and the man she got- and 83-year-old spoiler, they both throw her overboard!

Gone With The Wind was a 1939 drama/ historical romance from MGM, based on the 1936 novel of the same name by Margaret Mitchell. The film was produced by David O. Selznick, known for RKO’s King Kong, who reportedly acquired the rights to the novel a month after its publication. The eventual film was directed by Victor Fleming from a script by Sydney Howard. Clark Gable and Vivian Lee were cast as Rhett and Scarlett, when the former was 40 and the latter was 26. Other cast included Leslie Howard (see Petrified Forest) as Ashley, Olivia De Havilland as Melanie, and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy. A score was composed by Max Steiner, returning from Kong. The film was an immediate success, earning a box office estimated at over $390 million against a $3.85M budget. McDaniel won an Oscar for Supporting Actress, the first Academy Award given to an African-American. Gable continued to act until his death in 1960, prior to the release of his final film The Misfits. Leigh became otherwise best known for stage and screen appearances with her spouse Laurence Olivier. Mitchell died in a traffic fatality in 1949, without publishing another major work of fiction. She became posthumously known as a collector and proponent of erotica. The film remains available on digital platforms including HBO Max.

For my experiences, what I feel a need to comment on is the Disqualified category, which I created for this feature specifically for films I would not or could not watch in full. It might sound like this means a film so bad I literally quit, but that’s really not how these things work. For me, actually bailing on a movie is usually an early and potentially respectful decision (see The Plague Dogs). The ones to figure in this feature have been the ones I knew I was not going to get through, and even then, I have usually gotten through far more than I expected. With this movie in particular, there was simply no way I was even going to try to watch the whole thing in one go. I settled for watching it in two parts on consecutive days, with the intention of liberal fast-forwards. In the end, I probably only shaved a few minutes off its mindboggling running time. My final verdict is that it only belongs here because it’s the only feature where I have given myself the right parameters to comment.

Moving forward, I went into this with some fairly distinct memories of watching it on VHS, and many more of seeing it referenced and parodied. What has kept me vaguely and morbidly fascinated is that its reputation is completely belied by any recounting in cold blood. If the “point” of this story was to show that Rhett and Scarlett were not just evil racists but immoral, contemptible, irredeemable, completely horrible yet utterly banal human beings, there isn’t a single story point that would change. What is even more baffling is that for all the glowing revisionism of the text crawls, the Confederacy is put in an even less favorable light. It’s genuinely moving to see the devastation of war, which makes the later first act far more engaging than anything before or sense. But to the truly neutral eye, it remains quite clear from the film’s own accounts that virtually all responsibility lies on the slave owners, specifically portrayed to be as stupid and absent-mindedly cruel as the Abolitionists could have imagined. One more rant this sets off, it is also clear on impartial analysis that the plight of the poor white conscripts who made up the bulk of the Confederate Army was even more immaterial to the Lost Cause mythology than that of the slaves.

With that out of the way, I have more than enough to proceed just on how intolerable I find Scarlett/ Leigh in particular. This is a chicken/ egg paradox that vexes me enough that I really couldn’t claim to give this film a proper rating if I had intended to. The character as written feels permanently arrested as a spoiled 15-year-old, repeatedly proven unwilling and unable to learn from any of her adversities. As the hours pass, the clearly capable Leigh somehow transforms this creature into something even more transcendently uncharismatic and unlikeable than she was before. To give just one example, when she is weeping at becoming a widow, Leigh’s delivery seems to emphasize that she really is in all likelihood more upset by “wearing black” than anything else. Where Gable gives enough depth to wish his character a better fate and a better cause, his counterpart seems to dig for ways to make the viewer want her to die. And I know it’s a subjective judgment, but I find Leigh to be one of the most unaccountably irritating screen presences I have encountered, to the point that I’m sure I used at least half my allotted skip time when I got tired of her voice. To give some frame of reference, I find her worse than the rich girls we were supposed to hate in Heathers (which I regularly considered for this feature). Indeed, the one character/ actor combination I can think of that I could compare is Ken Marshall in Krull, and I actually like that one.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s quite early. Right after Scarlett receives news of secession, we find Rhett and Ashley among a gathering of Southern gentlemen enthusiastically declaring their prowess. When Ashley proves less than enthusiastic, the rest appeal to Rhett. He matter-of-factly points out that the Union has more weapons, factories and ships than the Confederacy ever will. He finishes by commenting, “All we’ve got is cotton, slaves… and arrogance.” Of course, the gentlemen are outraged, without offering any comment to foreshadow that these were indeed the foremost among many reasons the South foreseeably would not and could not win the war. As commendable as it would seem, this is the part that leaves me actually angry. The Lost Cause fairy tale was not just biased historiography but toxic nonsense that did real and ongoing harm, and the people who willingly cast Noble Johnson in King Kong should have known that better than anyone. I have said as long as I have been writing reviews that there is such a thing as immorally bad. In those terms, the only thing worse than propaganda for an evil cause is propaganda from those who don’t even believe in it.

In closing, I find I come back to Ingagi, an actually censored film that by any standard deserved it. I have deemed it unnecessary to comment that this film has grown controversial enough to draw arguments over censorship. In reality, the strongest efforts of the film’s detractors aren’t remotely comparable to the general unmovie-ing of Ingagi, yet I find a common denominator in the implicit embarrassment of the “mainstream” media, first and foremost at the simple fact that they were successful. To me, taking on this film wasn’t about its politics or its history. It’s about calling the powers that have always been to account for every bloated blockbuster that has been promoted, praised and then conveniently forgotten by seemingly everyone but me. You can forget your mistakes, or pretend you have, but I won’t. With that, I can say that this feature has brought me closure. Who’s next?