No Good Very Bad Movies Special: The one that was the worst movie on MST3K

 

Title: The Eye Creatures aka Attack of the Eye Creatures aka Attack of the the Eye Creatures

What Year?: 1965 (copyright)/ 1967 (US release)

Classification: Parody/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/3)

 

In the course of my reviews, one thing I have regularly said from the beginning is that I do encounter movies I consider too bad to review. On that point, I have cited no less an authority than Frank Conniff, the self-described odd-job man of Mystery Science Theater 3000, who has recounted rejecting movies as unsuitable for the show’s purposes at a rate of 20 to 1. More recently, I have finally gone through the MST3K library to see what movies might be worth my time (see The Brain That Wouldn’t Die; also Space Mutiny). With this review, I’m condensing my research into one egregious offender that truly made me feel that even that crew had lowered their standards by acknowledging it. I present The Eye Creatures, a movie that on top of other flaws thought it could be funny.

Our story begins, after a tense exchange between surprisingly competent government men, with alleged teenagers making out at a lovers’ lane and several pervy elders wasting government time and resources spying on them. One particular pair of idiots are on their way to elope, only to run into a UFO that the authorities are well aware of but haven’t bothered to respond to. It turns out that the aliens are already on the loose, specifically tall, pale humanoids covered in lumps that are apparently supposed to be eyes with permanently open mouths. When one of the creatures gets run over by the idiots, the lawmen are somehow unable to find the body, though they do find a deceased drifter whose death is pinned on the kids. It’s up to the pair to break out of jail and stop the aliens, but the hardest part will be finding someone who actually cares!

The Eye Creatures was a science fiction/ comedy film directed by Larry Buchanan, as one of several films produced by AIP (see Futureworld, Meteor, etc.) for syndicated television. It was widely regarded as a remake of AIP’s 1957 film Invasion of the Saucermen, itself a parody of alien invasion films. The film was made in 1965 but not released until 1967. Its budget was variously estimated at $40,000 or under $25,000, either of which would be far lower than the $60,000 budget of Plan 9 From Outer Space in 1956. In some versions, the title was changed to Attack of the Eye Creatures, resulting in an error where “the” was shown twice. The film starred B-movie veteran John Ashley, then age 30, as the lead Stan, with Cynthia Hull, then about 18, as the love interest Susan. The music was credited to Les Baxter, a pioneer of the “exotica” genre, and film composer Ronald Stein. Ashley would describe the film as among “the all-time worst films ever made”, though he spoke well of Buchanan. The film was featured on season 4 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, in an episode apparently withdrawn from authorized distribution. The original film is available on multiple platforms.

For my experiences, my frame of reference is Mystery Science Theater, yet another pop culture phenomenon I was aware of but never into. At the time I started doing reviews for this blog, I had watched a few episodes, and found them just not my style. As I delved further into the show more recently, that feeling cemented, especially in terms of my standards and preferences for movies to review. Of the movies featured and in many cases made notorious by the show, the vast majority are the kind I would go easy on or simply ignore. The outliers that I found most worthy of attention were the relatively late films, especially from the 1960s. These definitely included the very worst ever featured on the show, like Manos Hand of Fate, The Creeping Terror and The Wild World Of Batwoman. But the present movie stood out to me very early as a very uniquely inept and offensive, and as usual, I’m going to spend a lot of time analyzing why.

Moving forward, one more background detail of note is the career of Larry Buchanan, nominated by 1000 Misspent Hours as “the worst professional director who ever lived”. It’s the “professional” part that indeed gets to a number of the core problems. The worst movies of the 1950s, per my usual refrain, were made by people who simply had no idea how to make a movie. This feels from the start like a different kind of animal entirely. The actors, for the most part, are people who can act. The shots are what you would expect from people who knew something about a camera beyond what it cost to get one. Above all, the writing and direction are clearly from by people who should know how to either do this right or let us in on the joke if they are trying to be “bad” on purpose. This is precisely where the movie pushes into the intolerable. The lead actor is simply too old, while his lady love is actively irritating. (And dear Logos, that hair…) The soundtrack, otherwise the one redeeming virtue, is comically exaggerated compared to what's on screen. Worst of all, both the plot and the alleged "jokes" repeatedly hinges on the authority figures being stupid, lazy and perverted. The most baffling offense against intelligence and taste then or now is a comment about movies presenting matrons off as youthful maidens, disregarding the fact that the pair on screen here are an actual teenager paired with a man old enough to be her teacher who looks old enough to play her father. (One more dishonorable mention goes to a “girl” who appears to be wearing a wedding ring...)

And that still leaves the elements that are actually inept. The obvious offenders are the aliens, which are incredibly bad even apart the prominently noted appearances of zippers, seams and shoes. The irritating part here is that the obviously bad suits distract from some promisingly creepy concepts, particularly the mobile severed hand (see… The Hand?). The real question here is whether there is a point where this should be considered part of the actual or attempted comedy. My answer is that these just don’t look like anything but guys in wonky suits, which is a peculiar flaw even among the most awful creature effects ever made. The gremlin in “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet” also had shoes showing, but he still looked like a gremlin. The alien in Dark Star was an actual beach ball complete with seams, but it still looked like an animal/ vegetable hybrid thingy.  The final insult here is that there are no more signs of distinguishable eyes than there were on the Alien rig. Meanwhile, the real star is the mindboggling “nighttime” lighting, all the more incongruous given the aliens’ posited weaknesses. What’s easily missed is that there are just enough shots that get things right to prove that the crew knew how to do it right. Once again, however, this just make the failures inexcusable, culminating in a finale where the “night” doesn’t look any darker than 6:30 on a winter morning.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the opening pre-credits sequence. It all begins with a guy carrying a briefcase chained to his wrist, who will remain by far the most actually professional presence in the entire movie. Even Crow and Tom Servo don’t deny the genuine tension as he passes through security in the standard top-secret facility. The unnamed G-man remains competent and assured as he opens the case, revealing a film inside. In a further “meta” moment, he sets up a projector, raising a certain vague hope that whatever he is taking so seriously is the same thing we’re going to see. Then, just in case you were feeling optimistic, you see the gimmicky lettering of the title, which if you have the MST3K cut will say, “Attack Of The The Eye Creatures”!

In closing, I come back to the challenge I set for myself, can this or indeed any other film truly be considered the “worst” of MST3K. In my opinion, with the further handicapping I would apply in my own reviews, I suppose I would call it a tie between this and Wild World of Batwoman, which were tellingly featured before and after major changes in the show itself. (Yes, they did much worse than Manos Hand of Fate.) However, this is where one will find fundamentally different kinds of “bad” in play. Batwoman (the one where Servo literally screams “END!!!”) still had enough outright weirdness and actually amusing moments that I can credit it with trying to be “so bad it’s good” on purpose. The present film is marginally more polished and quite a bit more conventional, but the net effect is like hearing a twisted dirty joke from a smarmy old gentleman with a smirk on his face. For the decisive personal hate factor, this is the one that “wins” by a landslide. While I am sure I will be dealing with MST3K again, for now, this review will be enough. Onward and upward, when possible.

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!

Animation Defenestration: The one that put Tolkien on TV

 

 

Title: Return of the King

What Year?: 1979 (copyright)/ 1980 (broadcast date)

Classification: Runnerup/ Weird Sequel

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

 

I have often commented how much randomness goes into my movie reviews, especially in the fairly frequent event that my original plans go completely and hilariously wrong. How it happens varies. Most often, I don’t get to something within the timeframe set by my already flexible “rules”. Sometimes, a movie just doesn’t give me the right material to work with, at least without further thought. And now and then, I have a movie that goes back in the “maybe” pile simply because I’m not sure where it goes among my various features. This time around, I have a trifecta, one movie that fell through and another that I figured on taking more time to evaluate, and because I run by OCD or not at all, I’m reviewing the latter. I present Return of the King, an animated fantasy TV movie based on the Lord of the Rings, and of all the things you wouldn’t expect, you can start with an orc musical number.

Our story begins with our familiar Hobbit heroes recounting the destruction of the One Ring by Nine-Fingered Frodo in the courts of the elves. We then get dropped right into the final act, with Frodo captured by the orcs, Sam in possession of the Ring, and Merry and Pippin in the midst of the war between the free kingdoms of Gondor and Rohan and the vast armies of Sauron and his general the Witch King. Sam makes a perilous decision to free Frodo before continuing their journey to destroy the Ring, while the hobbits join the climactic battle at the gates of Minas Tirith. Of course, the good guys win, for the time being, but Frodo and Sam must still evade the orcs and Gollum to reach Mount Doom, and the greatest threat of all is the corrupting power of the Ring!

The Return of the King was an animated fantasy TV movie by Rankin Bass, based on the book and series by J.R.R. Tolkien. It was presented by Rankin Bass as a planned follow-up to the earlier TV movie The Hobbit, aired in 1977 by NBC. The release of the second film was challenged in court by the makers of Ralph Bakshi’s 1978  Lord of the Rings, possibly based in part on suspicions that it was instead intended as an unauthorized sequel to that film. Orson Bean returned as the voice of Bilbo and also Frodo, with John Huston as Gandalf and Roddy McDowall (see The Black Hole) as Sam. The film originally aired in May 1980 on ABC. It is believed to have been first released on VHS in 1991. In some cases, the Rankin Bass films have been sold and promoted as a “trilogy” with Bakshi’s film, though both parties had publicly agreed that their works were independent and otherwise unrelated. Return of the King is currently available on disc, but not in digital formats.

For my experiences, this is a movie I first encountered as a tape on video store shelves that I never picked up. At that point, I had seen Bakshi’s LotR (dear Logos, Bakshi) and knew of The Hobbit, and with that context in mind, it really didn’t seem that interesting. I picked up the trail again when I started reviewing both animated and live-action films from the late ‘70s to mid-80s boomlet (see The Black Cauldron, Willow, Dragonslayer, etc, etc). Once I looked up a few clips, I very quickly admitted that I would be reviewing this one sooner or later, but I held out quite a while to see if I could get out of paying to buy a disc. I finally ordered it with bonus points in the last week, while I already had other things on my plate. Once I watched it, I knew I had the winner… sort of.

Moving forward, the one thing that stands out from the beginning right to the end is that this movie manages to come closer to Tolkien’s storytelling style than any other adaptation that has come to my attention. What’s debatable, unfortunately, is whether this is entirely a good thing. The movie bombards the viewer with the same songs, retold tales and in-universe mythology you would get in the books, and it works in long stretches. It’s a bit thin to sustain the story, however, especially with so much of trilogy told in flashbacks and passing references if at all. (And how did we never get an animated Shelob???) Then there are choices that are just odd. This shows especially in the efforts to portray the influence of the Ring, which can at least be said to “work”. Even more problematic are the Nazgul, a common denominator with the Bakshi version. Here, the Witch King is faithful to Tolkien’s vision, if you can get past the inexplicable voicework, but the rest of the crew are incompatible and simply goofy. In my further opinion, the Pegasus-like steeds we see most of the time are better than the pterosaur monster used in the big battle.

Meanwhile, what really keeps the movie a mixed bag is the uneven use and development of the characters. There’s little to complain about with Sam and Frodo, who remain the focus of the story. Gollum is quite possibly the most compelling and flat-out best of all, as pitiful yet treacherous in his brief appearances as Serkis’ incarnation was over two movies. There’s also more attention given to some of the lesser villains, like the Watchers and the Mouth of Sauron. Far too many others, however, only appear because key events require them, egregiously Eowyn, who as far as I can tell gets absolutely no screen time before the showdown with the Witch King. Even Merry and Pippin don’t have much of an arc beyond that of bystanders. (Then there’s the easy joke when they complain about stench…) At the most fundamental level, this simply won’t make any sense if you haven’t read the books, an issue that shows especially in the opening escape from Cirith Ungol.

With that said, the “one scene” is truly the one to rule them all, and it somehow failed to come to my attention before I watched the whole thing all the way through. While Frodo and Sam are resting after their breakout, a column of orcs pass by and soon pick them up as presumed deserters. Up to this point, these have already been an intriguing take on the race, which as per my previous rants are almost always misunderstood. Here, there is at least some balance. They don’t look too threatening, or even much bigger than the hobbits, yet there are glimpses of the intelligence and intrigues manifested in the book. Now, they are heard singing a gloomy marching song that quickly becomes catchy. It practically puts them in a sympathetic light as they complain about being forced to march to war whether they like it or not, with the surreal chorus, “Where there’s a whip, there’s a way!” We get a further sense of the orcs’ point of view when the group runs into a column of Sauron’s human allies, who show more contempt for them than their enemies ever do. It all goes downhill from there, without diminishing the buildup. It’s an intriguing scene done well, which the movie could certainly have used more of.

In closing, this is one time I don’t feel a need to comment on the rating, This was easily among the most improbable experiments of the vintage fantasy wave, and by any standard the most ill-advised. What gets it above the lowest rating is that, for all its limitations, it still succeeds far more than it has any right to. What keeps it from going much higher is the unavoidable sense of disappointment that this wasn’t developed into a full treatment of the series. The real bottom line for both versions of the books is that they were films for the wrong time. The fantasy wave of the time was driven by interest from studios more than success with audiences, and one more movie wasn’t going to change that. What we have left is a film to appreciate for what it is, which is by all means good enough. And with that, I’m done.

The Rerun Review: The other one where babies are illegal

 

Title: The Last Child

What Year?: 1971

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Runnerup

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

 

When I started doing movie reviews, one of the first rules I laid down was not to cover TV movies. This has long since become a case of protesting too much, as I have long since covered a number of famous or infamous examples. The big surprise has bee that the floodgates didn’t open as soon as I started a dedicated feature. I decided, however, that I was going to have to make time for at least one wonky TV movie, and I very quickly came up with a very short list of candidates, including one I had to do a substitution for when I decided I couldn’t work with it. This time, I’m back with the alternate of the alternate, and oh boy, it’s about the single most irritating trope in science fiction. I present The Last Child, another movie that cashed in on the overpopulation panic.

Our story begins in what is intoned as the “not too distant future”, which by now would be at least 20 years in the past, where a woman who gets separated from her child in a crowned transit station is taken in when the police discover she is pregnant. We learn that this is still the US, where the government has implemented a one-child limit on family size. That brings us to our protagonists, a married couple (of course attractive and “white”) who are having a new child after their first died in infancy. Of course, the state isn’t making a reasonable exception, nor making the fair argument that losing a baby in 2 weeks in a society with modern healthcare could mean a bigger problem in their genetic codes. The laid-back police prepare to take the expectant mother into custody, but  don’t care enough to stop them from making contact with a bleeding-heart senator. The chase is on as the pair race for the Canadian border- and come on, did you think there was going to be a twist in a 1970s TV movie?

The Last Child was a 1971 made-for-TV movie produced by Aaron Spelling, originally aired by ABC. It was one of the first of several films dealing with overpopulation, preceding ZPG in 1972 and Soylent Green in 1973. The film was directed by John Llewllyn Moxey, a veteran of television shows including Mission Impossible, from a script by Peter S. Fischer. The film starred The Mod Squad’s Michael Cole and Janet Margolin as the couple, with Van Heflin as Senator George and Ed Asner as the lawman. An official credit was given to General Motors for vehicles used in the film. The film received some attention from contemporary genre critics including Philip Strick, who noted the film for its “lack of impact”. The film has been released on VHS and DVD. Fischer went on to write for shows including Murder, She Wrote. Margolin died of ovarian cancer in 1993.

For my experiences, I caught wind of this one while running down ZPG, which would definitely be on my “worst” movies list if I ever do the inevitable follow-up to my list of the best movies I’ve reviewed. In the course of trashing that odious little nothing, I already did plenty of ranting on the overpopulation craze. What I put front and center was simply that those claiming to be concerned about overpopulation were unable to portray the actual consequences of malnutrition, poverty, and overcrowding, at least in the medium of film. Going in, this film at least offered a more rational take on paper, particularly since its scenario was in fact eventually pursued in China. It seemed possible that this would be the one that made some amount of sense. On investigation, it proved to have a whole different set of flaws.

Moving to the movie itself, the one thing that’s beyond question is that this is the conservative counterpart to the allegedly progressive ZPG. The immediate consequence is that it can make its implied arguments in intelligible contemporary terms, rather than justify itself with hypotheticals that aren’t even proven “in universe”. In the process, we get a future fleshed out enough to feel lived despite the limits of its running time. Some of the more intriguing moments seem to allow for societal problems that might have little or nothing to do with overpopulation per se, like passing mentions of loss of life in wars abroad and the decline or general collapse of the automotive industry. Also of interest are the police, who are polite and startlingly restrained, at least when dealing with the middle-class, non-minority protagonists. The one big hole in the world-building is a sort of passive euthanasia program where medical care is discontinued at age 65, which in any foreseeable reality would start a civil war by the AARP. It would make marginally more sense if the politicians and their donors had written loopholes for themselves or were using their money for private care abroad; but then, we mostly just hear about this from the idealistic senator who might not be the most reliable source.

Meanwhile, the biggest problems loom well beyond the cool car chase and undoubted “happy” ending. I personally am a disability self-advocate, “pro-life” and break-the-needle anti-eugenics, and even I would tell this couple it might be a bad idea to have kids. Then there’s the largely unresolved question of whether the problems are local or global. China pursued its policies for reasons that were peculiar to itself, and the same could be true of this future USA. It’s doubtful, however, whether fugitives would simply be welcomed with open arms. Even now, Canada’s as overpopulated as a Norman J. Warren film festival downwind from fertilizer plant (because I don’t make enough Inseminoid references), but it would still be a tall order to deal with millions or tens of millions of new citizens. Then what’s really left undiscussed is the complex nature of healthcare. It's easy to characterize taking care of the old and the weak as a drain on resources, even more so in a socialistic system. What really happens, however, is that medical care generates many jobs, and in the process redistributes wealth through all levels of society as effectively as any communist scheme. Denying medical care even to those who can pay for it is how you cut off your nose to spite your face.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the car chase. In the finale, the protagonists acquire a car, which is evidently out of the reach of many or most, and outrun the police. But Asner’s lawman still hasn’t given up, and as things transition from night to day, their vehicles pass fatefully. The part I love about this scene, indeed the whole movie, is the cars. They could have gagged up a few sci fi-looking car. Failing that, they could have gotten a few vehicles that looked advanced for the time, like the Stingray, an early Ferrari, or dinky European oddities like the Reliant Robin or the Messerschmitt Kabinenroller (why not a Mystery Men link?). But no, these cars as 1970s as a tie-dyed VW Bus. We get a good, tense chase as the lawman does a U-turn and gives chase. There’s closeups of the couple and Asner, the latter clearly gleeful but still focused. A hatchback briefly intrudes, which is easily the most futuristic vehicle we see at any point. and gets left behind by both parties after being run off the road.  They have to pay attention when a semi comes into view. The good guys go left, the lawman goes right, and you know what’s coming. The last impressive touch is that the law’s crashed car burns brighter than the actual oil tanker in Duel.

In closing, I come back to the same rants I already gave with ZPG. There were plenty of things we didn’t know in the 1960s and ‘70s, but the overpopulation scare was predicting the past. At best, it was an extreme way for honest proponents of birth control and women’s rights to make a point. At worst, it was a barely veiled defense of the eugenics movement that had already abused thousands in the name of prejudice and pseudoscience. In that context, this was a movie that could at least wring a human story out of it, which is enough to come out far ahead of ZPG. With that, I’m done.

The Rerun Review: The first one with a killer bulldozer

 

Title: Killdozer

What Year?: 1974

Classification: Knockoff/ Evil Twin

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

 

As I write this, I’m up to my repeatedly announced 200^th review, and I have been going through a lot of material just to decide what to review. I finally decided that it was time to do another TV movie review. It just happened I had one very promising lead, unearthed while I was at one of the local used shops. I didn’t buy it, but I quickly confirmed it was available to view in gray-area online videos. So, at the last possible moment, I watched the damn thing, and the easy punchline that I got my money’s worth definitely applies. Here is Killdozer, an adaptation of a classic story of possessed construction machinery that somehow managed to make that boring.

Our story begins with a meteor falling to Earth. We then jump forward an uncertain amount of time to an island where a construction crew is at work. When one of the workmen runs into the meteorite with a bulldozer, he falls ill and dies from a mysterious blue radiation. Soon after, the foreman narrowly survives an apparent malfunction of the bulldozer. He promptly disables the machine, but another workman takes it back online. The dozer begins to move seemingly of its own volition, throwing and crushing its operator (of course the black guy) and destroying the only radio equipment. The remaining crew are stalked by the slow-moving but unstoppable machine. Their only hope is to meet the killdozer in a duel with their remaining vehicle. But can they destroy the being that is animating the machine.

Killdozer was a 1974 made-for-TV movie originally aired by ABC. The film was based on a 1944 novella of the same name by Theodore Sturgeon, who shared credit for the script with one Ed MacKillop.  The film starred Clint Walker of The Dirty Dozen and Robert Urich of Magnum Force. A soundtrack was provided by Gil Melle, a jazz performer and composer who had previously worked on The Andromeda Strain. The movie received negative reviews from both contemporary and later critics. The film was released on DVD and Blu Ray by Kino Lorber in 2020. The term “Killdozer” has been used for an improvised armored vehicle used in a 2004 incident in Granby, Colorado. It is unclear if those using the label were aware of either the film or the story.

For my experiences, I read the original story early in my binge on “Golden Age” pulp sci fi. Along with “It” (see… Swamp Thing?), it contributed to my early and very high opinion of Sturgeon, and contributed to the somewhat misleading impression that the author simply wrote monster/ alien stories. I am sure I heard of the movie at an early date, but never heard of it being available until a chance sighting of the DVD. That was motivation enough to take a look at the movie for this review. I will not mince any words: This is bad. Very bad. Even more inexplicably and unforgivably, it’s just plain dull.

Moving forward to the movie, the first and foremost thing to be said is that it’s disarming on first impressions. If you know made-for-TV movies (see The Time Machine), this wobbles between tolerable and moderately impressive. The acting is good, the dialogue competent and frequently thoughtful, and the music almost distractingly well-done. The better moments get packed in early with an innovative meteor sequence (compare to The Green Slime only 6 years earlier), followed by the meaningful death and subsequent mourning of one of the crew. In the process, there’s some amusing references to the wartime setting of the original story, complete with the discovery of a photo of Veronica Lake. What quickly becomes apparent, however, is how little happens. The whole damn movie is barely over 70 minutes, and the murder machine doesn’t get its first victim until the half-hour mark. That wonky scene demonstrates a couple more things that will continue to weigh the movie down. First, this is very toned down, even compared to the pulps. Second, the bulldozer is really slow, to the point that the cast have to go out of their way to get themselves killed.

Meanwhile, the suspicion that quickly grew in my mind, which I had never seriously considered reading about the film in cold blood, is that this is a ripoff of Duel. Now, this doesn’t mean that this film owes its existence to that earlier and far superior TV movie. What gets suspicious very is the attempt to develop the machine as an actual villain, especially through frequent closeups. The unaccountable failure here is not simply that the killdozer isn’t threatening; it’s that it fails almost entirely at manifesting any sense of personality. This is all the more odd as Duel clearly succeeded at capturing malevolent personality in a non-anthropomorphic machine. Even Maximum Overdrive got this right a good part of the time, and it was a collaboration between Stephen King and narcotics. (Actually, illegal substances wouldn’t have been a bad backup plan…) The obvious difference is that those movies showed old, beat-up vehicles that looked like they had lived a life all their own, whether they were animated by an unseen sentience or just an extension of a human operator’s malign will. Here, on the other hand, the killdozer and indeed all the machines look so pristine this could just as well be a commercial. That goes a long way to account for the further anticlimax of the duel between the dozer and a far larger machine, which is so awkward that Dinosaurus would laugh at it. (Wait a minute, I haven’t reviewed Dinosaurus???)

Now, I’m already up to the “one scene”. About 15 minutes in, the foreman starts the bulldozer for no obvious reason in the middle of the night. The camerawork gives a better than usual sense of the machine inside and out. Within bare seconds, the machine is clearly out of control. The veteran character actor sells the scene with obvious confusion and growing alarm as he literally struggles with the controls. (In the story, the hero is physically battered in the process.) He finally cuts a hose, triggering a spray of steam or smoke. He finally either bails or gets knocked off. That’s when the machine backs up for a turn, its blade raised. There’s no mistaking the purposeful intent as it begins to advance… except, it’s too early to doubt what’s going to happen. It’s a good sequence that proves the movie was made by people who knew what they were doing, and that more than usual makes the final product even more disappointing.

In closing, the main thing I have to say is that this is the shortest review I’ve done in a long time. As for the rating, it may seem like a surprise that I haven’t given this movie the lowest rating, something I specifically revived my Space 1979 scale to keep for this feature. As usual, the driving consideration isn’t how “bad” the movie is, but how much I actively hate it. In those terms, this movie is just too harmless to provoke me. If it comes to that, it has the upside of being a very quick watch and a pretty fast review. With that, I’m ready to finish, with one more milestone in the rear view mirror. Punch it, Bishop!

Image credit Horror Patch.

The Rerun Review: The one with George C. Scott

 

Title: A Christmas Carol

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: Pretty Good! (5/5)

 

As I write this, I’m going into the final week of my second year with this blog, and confronted with the fact that I still haven’t turned any of this into things that would either reach a wider audience or earn actual money. Still, because OCD tendencies are the only reason I get anything done, I want to get in one more full week before I withdraw and reevaluate. In the process, I decided it was time to get back to something I had previously considered as a feature, with a name that actually made sense. Here is the reboot of Space 1999, which in turn was the abortive spinoff to Space 1979, and the first up is my favorite version of the most overadapted work in the history of modern media. I present A Christmas Carol, the George C. Scott edition, which a lot of people seem to forget was originally a TV movie.

Our story begins with the familiar figure of Scrooge, meaner and more rightwing than usual as he abuses his employees and refuses charity to his fellow man. Things take a turn for the odd when his former partner Jacob Marley appears, and as the introduction reminds us, Marley is dead (though he still uses the door). Marley warns Scrooge that his miserly ways have earned the sentence of existentialist damnation, wandering the Earth burdened by the chains of his ill-used wealth. Yet the unspecified forces of the universe have given him one chance for redemption; he is to be visited by three spirits that will show him the past, present and a bleak possible future. We all know the ending, but it’s all in the journey as Scrooge learns the price of greed and the power of Christmas!

A Christmas Carol was a 1984 film directed by Clive Donner, a veteran British filmmaker who had previously worked on the 1951 Alistair Sims adaptation Scrooge. The production was made by Entertainment Partners Limited and aired by CBS, with sponsorship from IBM; Fox subsidiary 20^th Century Studios was credited as distributor. The film starred the late George C. Scott as Scrooge and Time Bandits’ David Warner as Bob Cratchit, with Nigel Davenport (see… Phase IV?) as Scrooge’s father and Edward Woodward (d. 2009) as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Much of the filming took place on location in the English town of Shrewsbury. The film aired to very positive reviews, and received numerous further TV airings as well as VHS and later DVD releases. The rights to the film were retained by George C. Scott and later his estate, which reportedly limited its TV distribution to syndication on local stations prior to its first airing by AMC in 2009. The rights are believed to be currently held by Disney (make your own joke). The movie is currently available on Blu Ray and in digital format.

For my experiences, my strongest memory is that even as a kid, I was getting tired of Christmas Carol. I had been exposed to the original Dickens text, and loved it. I had seen what was then the “classic” treatment starring Sims, and had no complaints. I was already starting to be influenced by it in my interests and my own fiction. But there were so many other mediocre and flat-out bad treatments, especially in media supposedly for kids, that I found the tale as much of a humbug as Scrooge did Christmas. As far as I can further recall, I encountered the present version at a fairly late date in the middling 1990s, and in hindsight, I think this was what redeemed the story for me. As I have seen its stature grow greatly in the years since, I’ve come to suspect that the viewing public went through the same cycle. The current generation may not remember just how oversaturated the market was by my time (and I’ll give further credit to the Muppets adaptation as a “kids’” version that doesn’t insult the source material or the kids’ intelligence), but this movie still remains as one that stood the test of time better than many lesser and some equal treatments of the same story.

Moving forward, one thing more I will say is that I got in the viewing for this one as a Christmas Eve “tradition” with an old tape, so I was adapting to kaka off the bat. What really stands out from the start is that this by all means “looks” like a TV movie, though the shots and production values are certainly well above average. I have to say, if one were to judge by the opening sequence, one would easily expect a very mediocre treatment among many. The music in particular is solidly in sentimental, second-hand nostalgia territory, and it will not get better. What merit there is comes from the genuine English town and the impressively somber weather. This will remain representative of the movie’s relative strengths and weaknesses, most noticeably in the visions of Christmas Past. There is power and authenticity here, straining against the familiarity of nostalgia several generations removed.

Meanwhile, the obvious driving force is Scrooge, suitably matched by the ghosts. Scott’s performance is so fierce as not to need further comment, beyond the particular emphasis on the deliberate references to Malthus and Spencer, truly the fascists and pseudoprogressives of Dickens’ day (see ZPG for my representative rant). What gets the story in gear and keeps it strong is the spirits. We get an early highlight with Marley, played to the hilt by Albert Finlay; I find it particularly amusing to compare his entrance with the very odd revenants of An American Werewolf In London. The Ghost of Christmas Present (played by Angela Pleasance, the daughter of Donald) remains strong through a sequence that otherwise slows things down a bit, while Woodward fully holds his own as the middle ghost. The finale reaches a point where many adaptations either excel or start to grind the gears, with the almost science-fictional/ dystopian vision of the future.  (Am I the only person to think the Ghost of Christmas Future and the Terminator are kind of the same thing?) Here, in my assessment, the story just holds its momentum, which is more than good enough. The ghost itself is vaguely cliched, though the counterpart that stands out the most to me is the obviously far later Witch King of Lord of the Rings (see my review/ rant on the cartoon). What keeps things moving is Scott, acting surely far more oblivious than the character really is as he is brought face to face with his fate.

That already brings me to the “one scene”, and I’m going to go with the savage high point of the vision of Christmas Present. We’re already well into the fine and forceful performance by Woodward, evidently a stage and actor and musician who extended his talents to a career as a TV/ character actor. His contribution is aided throughout by a strong physical presence, which gets unsettling if you try to figure out of there’s some practical effect trick to his height. (Apparently, he and Scott were about the same height.) In the midst of the Cratchits’ merry Christmas dinner, Scrooge asks the spirit if Tiny Tim will live. When the spirit matter-of-factly prophecies that Tim will not live to see another Christmas, Scrooge is clearly moved and distressed, incidentally showing that he isn’t entirely without emotion or empathy. The Ghost counters with his own Malthusian line about surplus population. Then he gets as in-your-face as a political comedian as he warns the rich man about judging who is “surplus”, with a line I can picture coming straight from the Evil Possum: “It may be that in the sight of heaven, you are more worthless and less deserving of life than millions like this poor man’s child!”

In closing, what I really come back to is the impact of the story on my own writings, and whether I’ve been in the camp that Scrooge represents. A major part of the story’s “point” is that even before his redemption, Scrooge is not so monstrous as to let his social-Darwinist leanings suppress empathy for humanity. But then the flipside is that short-term charity and half-hearted liberalism are as destructive as any philosophy that would oppose them; in short, it is a polemic against hypocrisy. For myself, I conceived the tales of the Evil Possum and the exotroopers as anti-war and anti-eugenics, whether or not they succeeded as such. (I don’t know if I could recreate or even reconstruct how sadistic, banal and utterly terrible the Possum’s original enemies were.) But then, I did all of it while voting straight Republican right up to relatively recent developments. Maybe I’ve changed, maybe I’ve just gotten less apologetic about being complicated, and my further self-defense is that the old-time eugenicists and modern-day reactionaries both hardly cared about consistency or coherence in their ideas or actions. At least it can be said that people do indeed change, for better or for worse, even if few if any do so as totally as Scrooge. And with that, I’m done for another day.

Image credit Countdown Until Christmas.

Animation Defenestration: The one that rotoscoped Tolkien

 

Title: The Lord Of The Rings

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

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

 

In the course of my reviews, I have mentioned occasionally my one actual “rule”: Every film I review gets one viewing within 3 days of when I write the review. This has in fact had a significant impact on the lineup of my reviews, as there have been more times that I finally punted on a movie because the alternative was watching the whole damn thing again. What might seem counterintuitive is that I haven’t pushed the limits that often, especially with movies I planned to review in advance. By the time I get to the point where I’m outright fudging, I usually find even my recollections start to get hazy around the edges. Once in a while, however, a little time is just enough to give me some distance to reflect. With the present review, I have a case and point, a movie I had long been familiar with but didn’t expect to get hold of as soon as I did. I present The Lord of the Rings, the animated version, from none other than my arch enemy Ralph Bakshi. Or, BAAAKSHIII!!!

Our story begins with an introduction with what will be for anyone in this blog’s demographic the familiar story of Middle Earth, the war of elves and men with the evil Sauron, and the adventure of Bilbo Baggins. As the story gets in gear, Gandalf reveals that the overpowered plot device of The Hobbit is really the One Ring, an artifact that concentrates the evil powers of Sauron in one package. It falls to Bilbo’s nephew Frodo to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, and the dawning realization for the viewer will be that they’re really going to try to tell a good chunk of the trilogy. In the process, we will see the invincible Ring Wraiths, various orcs, the Balrog, the Ents (or one of them), and the Riders of Rohan, all brought to life with Bakshi’s trademark blend of odd character animation and freaked-out rotoscoping. But all you really need to know is that even though this ends with a whole book still to go, it does not tease a sequel!

The Lord of the Rings was the fifth film by Ralph Bakshi, based on the first two books of the series by J.R.R. Tolkien, from a script by fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle. The film was released a year after the fantasy film Wizards, though both films would have been in production by 1976. It was not related to The Hobbit and Return of the King, both made for television by Rankin Bass. Like Wizards, Lord of the Rings was made with a combination of animation, live-action and rotoscoping. It was one of the most expensive animated films, with a budget estimated at up to or over $8 million. The voice cast included Christopher Guard as Frodo, John Hurt (see The Plague Dogs) as Aragorn and  Anthony Daniels as Legolas. The film was undisputedly profitable, but was controversial among critics and fans. Plans for one or more additional films were cancelled, and specifically left unmentioned in the film and contemporary advertising. An action figure line was produced by Knickerbocker, with only 8 figures; the line suffered from limited distribution among other issues, with a significant part of their distribution apparently coming from mail order offers in comic books. The film has remained available on home video.

For my experiences, I grew up with Tolkien long before the Jackson trilogy came out (enough to model Zaratustra on the Witch King), and in hindsight, the art from sources like A Tolkien Bestiary had a greater impact on me than the books themselves. In my further recollections, I indelibly visualized the books as paintings and animation rather than flesh-and-blood “live action”, right up to reading the trilogy in college shortly before the first Jackson movie (see… Dead Alive???) came out. What’s striking as I think about it now is that the present movie had little if anything to do with it, though I’m sure I saw at least a small part of it at a very early age. What this further cements in my mind is that Bakshi was simply the wrong person for the job, for reasons that go far beyond my issues with his work. It’s the same problem I have considered regarding Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (especially after the Narnia movies came out); you don’t have to argue which one is “better” to see that asking either one continuing the other’s work would be an obviously and epically disastrous idea. (I’ll say this once: Lewis did not do “epic”.)

With that out of the way off the bat, I will be the first to admit that Bakshi handles this far better than he had any right to. To begin with, it’s astonishing how much of the books gets in here, and not just by passing mention. It clearly would have been better if he had been allowed to spread it out over two or three movies to flesh things out. As it stands, at the pace Bakshi manages (presumably with Beagle’s help), we could conceivably have gotten the whole damn thing done in the running time of a Peter Jackson extended edition. What’s downright unsettling is how well his style works, especially for the battles. The part that’s counterintuitive is that the rotoscoping and shadow-play silhouettes fall even further short of “realism” than conventional animation would have. What it provides instead, to very good effect, is an especially grim sort of stylization that would be almost inconceivable with more “modern” methods (the same rant I made in my Conan reviews). What was vaguely psychedelic in Wizards is a somber nightmare here, with bestial orcs shown nearly in monochrome except for their red eyes and purplish blood. (Honorable mention goes to the troll, seen only as a gnarly limb.) The high point is the Balrog, which I’m sure I remember from back when somehow. In cold blood, it’s underwhelming at best, but the presentation, the setting, and the buildup are every bit as valid as Jackson’s CGI monster.

You’ll already have guessed that there’s a big “con” coming, and it is simply this: The conventionally animated characters are awful and ugly, to a degree I neither expected nor can easily account for. The easy targets are the ones that don’t even look like the  books, egregiously Saruman, who goes through his one real scene in what looks like a Santa Claus suit. But there are many more that don’t depart from the books yet still look hideous, including virtually all the hobbits. Possibly worse are Aragorn, who just looks lumpish and seedy, and Gollum, who doesn’t get any favors from an excessively English voice performance. The absolute low point, however, are the Ring Wraiths, and this is where things get mindboggling. The Nazgul as described in the books could be animated with South Park construction paper cutouts and still be terrifying. These look as threatening as deliverymen and move like boys trying to sneak into a naughty movie (Fritz the Cat?). Things only get more frustrating when the rotoscoping is applied; it’s predictably and vastly better, yet still heavy on overcomplicated helmets and other details that are distractingly odd rather than threatening.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and even at the outer limit of the time I allow myself, there was one moment that stood out and still stays with me. In turn, it goes along with a deeper long-running vent. To me, the orcs of Tolkien are possibly the greatest “goons” in all media, rivaled only by the devils of Inferno and the gangsters of Robocop. What I find other adaptations and even casual synopses get wrong is that they are really very smart, often too much for their own good. At any rate, in the midst of a battle between the orcs and the Riders of Rohan, we get one good moment that captures this. While the orcs are being handily routed, one of the more clever specimens drags away their two hobbit captives. Only then, because there is never a situation that the orcs can’t actually make worse by thinking for themselves, does he finally try to figure out if they actually have the One Ring. The hobbits play this up by imitating Gollum (who they haven’t actually met) and muttering about the Precious. It’s enough to get the orc interested, but after just a few moments of this, the orc gets suspicious or irritated enough that he (?) justifiably decides to just kill them. It’s a good moment more faithful to the books than many more acclaimed scenes, but it’s already too little, too late.

In closing, what I come back to is a question I was pondering long ago, was there ever a time or a crew that could have made a “good” animated treatment of Lord of the Rings? I have already nominated Nepenthe, the crew behind Watership Down and Plague Dogs. Bill Tytla, the animator behind “Night On Bald Mountain” in Fantasia, might have done it if Disney could have brought him back from the grave. Other prospects would be into continental or eastern Europe, perhaps a freaky Czech like Svankmajer. (A stop-motion Gollum, possibly made from taxidermied remains? Don’t bother to run, you’ll just look like food…) In the end, the honest answer is that even in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the era of animation that could tell an epic tale like Tolkien’s was passing, as demonstrated by the mess that was The Black Cauldron. To try it again now would mean a fresh start, perhaps in the style of Secret of Kells or The Red Turtle, ideally with a few more years of distance from Peter Jackson’s series. It still might happen, but then, we’re already in an oversaturated reboot market. The best tribute now would be something original yet in the spirit of Tolkien, which is what we kind of got with Willow. (I will definitely get to it.) The positive takeaway is that anyone can dream, and some will always find a way to make it reality. And with that, I’m done with this damn movie, and boy, am I glad.

No Good Very Bad Movies 12: The one that was supposed to be the worst kids' movie ever

 

Title: Pinocchio In Outer Space

What Year?: 1965

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Knockoff/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

In the last few months, the big change on this blog has been that I’m finally doing animation in quantity. As a further consequence, I’ve had to make quite a few judgment calls about what belongs in this feature. At first, I was content with the Gobots movie as representative of the animation category. Then I added The Wild to represent Disney. As a follow-up, I took a look at one more movie as an option for either this or my animation feature. I decided it belonged here, not because it was “bad” but because of its notoriety and sheer strangeness. Without further ado, I present Pinocchio In Outer Space, and the strangest part off the bat is that they get the space stuff mostly right.

Our story begins with a reintroduction to Pinocchio, the most famous character from a book nobody has read. We learn that our protagonist has been a real boy, but got turned back into a puppet for bad behavior. Meanwhile, Geppetto is still running his toy shop even as the rest of the world is in the space race, which technically means at least 25 years passed in real time since the Disney movie. In a new wrinkle, Monstro the whale has returned as Astro, a rocket-propelled space cetacean that is smashing Earth’s spacecraft. On his way to school, Pinocchio meets Honest John, who gives a motivational song and a book on hypnosis, and Nertle, an alien of a species called Twurtles sent to investigate the disturbances in the solar system.  Pinocchio is ADD enough to join the quest, which will take him through space, a lost Martian civilization and an actual nuclear explosion. It all comes down to a showdown with Astro, with the book on hypnosis as the only weapon, and the all-important moral is… don’t skip school???

Pinocchio In Outer Space is a 1965 animated film, nominally based on the 1883 novel by Carlo Collodi. In fact, the movie drew at a number of points on the 1940 treatment by Disney. The film was a collaboration between producers Norm Prescott and Fred Ladd and the Belgian animation studio Belvision, possibly with the original intent of creating a TV pilot. The voice cast was led by Peter Lazer as Pinocchio and stalwart Arnold Stang as Nurtle. Martin Caidin, a novelist and historical writer previously given indirect notice in my Marx Soviet soldier blog for The Tigers Are Burning, was credited as technical advisor. Some have speculated that the animation was done by just two individuals, though IMDB lists a crew of 29, comparable to that of 49 on Disney’s The Jungle Book. The film was released with a reported length of 71 minutes, somewhat longer than the length of available recordings. The film received further notoriety from Michael and Harry Medved’s book Son of the Golden Turkey Awards, where it “won” as “Most Insufferable Kiddie Movie Ever Made”. Prescott continued as cofounder and executive of Filmation, while Ladd became prominent as an importer (and arguable butcher) of anime. Belvision remained best known for their TV and film adaptations of the Tintin comics. The movie was released on VHS and at least once on DVD.

For my experiences, the first thing I will say is that I read the faithful and complete story of Pinocchio as a kid, and I can confidently and absolutely say it is awful. By comparison, I really didn’t know much about the Disney movie until I ran it down as an adult. But then what really weighed on my mind going into this is just how broad and confounding even my early experiences of animation were. By the time I was 12, I had seen Fantasia and the Battletoads pilot (which I kind of owe an apology for comparing to Ingagi). I think that right there is why I may be exactly the worst kind of person to handle a film like this. If you’ve really seen the hellscape of bottom-tier animation, even an amusingly bad entry like the Gobots movie can be a pleasant surprise. When a film exceeds expectations far enough to be impressive, it can be as disconcerting as the “uncanny valley”. I was brought to the point of remembering a line from Heavy Metal; to bowdlerize, you know your perspective is shot, but you’ve got to work the controls like you’re straight.

Moving on to the movie itself, it can be said at the start that even in the 1960s, the absolute kaka of the animation field didn’t get anywhere near theaters, and this presents a case and point. On further consideration, it is at a minimum more tolerable than plenty of live-action kiddie fair, as evidenced by fellow Golden Turkey nominee Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  Even its notorious musical numbers are in my view far preferable to the alleged rock and roll of many a willfully hip offering. What certainly is jarring is the strangeness factor, which as often happens is magnified by its evident seriousness. The science offered is incongruously good, all the more so when compared to the gaffs and improbabilities of many science fiction shows and movies then and since. (It’s one of several movies I’ve seen recently to make me think of the iconic Galaxy Quest line, “Is there air???”) The monsters are clearly able to do real damage. The characters show understandable emotional reactions. Then there are the jarringly matter-of-fact Cold War references, up to and including a quite realistic mushroom cloud. (I suppose we should be grateful Astro’s rocket is on his fin…) Even more warped to my eye is the final moment of the movie, when a rocket roars past the celestial home of the fairies with no comment from them. Sure, it could be a harmless civilian craft, but I’d definitely be trying to find out…

What really made this movie interesting enough to write about, however, is the rather warped moral. My take on it is that the story, whatever its intentions, almost always puts Pinocchio in the right. Of course, the right answer to his moral dilemmas is to get Nurtle in touch with competent adults, but if the stupid kids in E.T. are supposed to get a pass, Pinocchio certainly deserves a break. He knows of a threat to property and human life; he meets someone who might solve it; and he risks his own neck to help him. Even more importantly, he clearly has empathy and concern for others, plus enough rational foresight to figure out that leaving a space whale to crater itself and a chunk of Earth isn’t going to help anyone. Yet, the dramatic emphasis is still on his breakdown at being scolded by the moralizing fairy who previously gave him humanity and apparently took it back for acting too human. Though I’m usually on Team Authority Figure, I’m definitely siding with the puppet over an entity with small-g god powers who literally knits while a possible ICBM goes through her yard.

That leaves the “one scene”, and for a change, I’m going with a musical number.  10 minutes in, Pinocchio meets the fox Honest John Sharp and his partner the cat, refashioned as Groovy. The pair are friendly to Pinocchio, who reciprocates for no obvious reason given the events of either the original story (which I definitely remember them from) or the Disney movie. When Pinocchio talks about his hope to stop Astro, the pair initially laugh, but then the fox bursts into a song, “Doing The Impossible”, illustrated with the usual examples of bees that can’t fly and spiders with webs stronger than steel. It’s standard platitudes, put to a catchy tune and some of the movie’s best animation. (I especially like the spider snaring the cat’s brief case.) And you know what? It’s a good message for young viewers, which gives a sympathetic  twist on the character to boot. It’s this moment and a fair number like it that redeem the movie, at least enough to be a curiosity worth attention rather than a self-dated relic.

In closing, this is one time I don’t feel a need to explain the rating. It should go without saying that I’m not calling this a great movie. If you go into this movie with the criticisms of its detractors in mind, it will be very clear very quickly that they were not wrong. What the mockery doesn’t capture is what the movie did right, and still more just how much audacity was behind it. The 1960s were in their own way as poor a decade for Disney animation as the 1970s and 1980s, as the already expansive media empire coasted along on old favorites and a few good new ones while the suits snuffled toward live-action films (including some very strong candidates for the “worst” Disney movie!). With that fully in mind, a brazen and reasonably clever knockoff like this was nothing less than a commendable antiauthoritarian gesture. It lost, and it deserved to, but it offered something worth remembering, even if you don’t want to. And with that, I’m done for another day.