Fiction: Chelsea the Social Worker Epilogue!

 It's Monday night, and it's been dawning on me that I really have nothing. So I tried to think what I have backlogged, and realized my best bet was something I teased way back, the actual ending of Chelsea the (bad) social worker. So, here goes. As usual, the table of contents is at the end. And yes, this is exactly how I am with a baby...

Chelsea returned home to the sound of a crying baby. She entered the townhome unit on the second story, and quietly descended the stairs. What interested her was the sound of the voice drifting up.

 

“I don’t understand, cuddle bunny,” Shad said. She spotted him seated on the floor next to the crib, his back against a couch. “I changed you, I fed you, I read to you, you have your blanket and all your favorite toys.” As he spoke, the baby in his arms cast aside a squeaky dicynodont. “I just don’t know what you want.”

 

“She’s a baby, she doesn't want anything except attention,” Chelsea said. Shad looked up, and she gave him a smile. “I keep telling you, babies fuss. The more you try to make them stop, the more they fuss. They’re jerks that way. Hey, bunny, mommy’s here.” Shad handed off the baby, who if anything cried louder. Chelsea cooed nonsense as she cradled the baby, adding editorially, “Why are you making your daddy worry so…?” She freed a hand to clear the clutter of toys out of the crib, then laid their baby down and laid a blanket over her. As an afterthought, she took all but one especially beloved toy, a fuzzy caterpillar. She stood by without intervening as the baby continued to cry. After 15 minutes, she hugged the toy and quieted.

 

“She was doing okay most of the night,” Shad said. “We were having fun earlier. She just got fussy when I tried to put her to bed.”

“That’s because you’re a pushover,” Chelsea said. “By the way, have you noticed you talk to her the same way you do to me?”

Shad shrugged. “How else would you talk to a baby?” he said.

“That’s my sweet man,” Chelsea said. She kissed him on the lips.

 

“How was work?” Shad asked.

“The usual grind,” Chelsea said. “I delivered 12 state assignments, approved 3 petitions for separation, and got two couples assigned an instructor. How about you?”

“Oh, you know, stuff,” Shad said. He grinned. “I finalized our video.”

Chelsea grinned back. “You should show me,” she said.

“I was planning to,” he said. But he continued to look down at their daughter’s crib. “She turned out… different, didn’t she?”

“Well, anything can happen once,” Chelsea said. Leaning over, she ran a finger through the fuzz just beginning to appear on the bay girl’s scalp.

 

It was purple.

Table of Contents

Part I: The romance!

Part II: The parking violation!

Part III: Capsule hotel destruction!

Part IV: The Kelsiraptor, and Harryhausen monster bureaucrat!

Part V: The restraining order!

Part VI: The trial, part 1!

Part VII: The trial, part 2, with the King Kong Moral Contraband film!

Part VIII: The goon!

Part IX: The religion!

Part X: Kloe!!!

Part XI: The Arcostate Zoo, plus Spike's Southside Motorcycle Gang!

Part XII: Skinny McCoy!!!

Part XIII: The Harryhausen monster fight!!!

Part XIV: The Showdown!!!

Part XV: The Multiverse!

Part XVI: The Space Guys Spinoff Teaser! 

Robot Revolution: The one with zombies and an evil computer

 

The one with zombies and an evil computer

 

Title: Resident Evil

What Year?: 2002

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Mashup

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’m still coming out of a sabbatical from blogging that has included a complete moratorium on movie reviews. For my comeback, I decided it was time to fill out my count for this, my survey of robot/ AI movies, the feature that has done as much as anything else to keep me going. In keeping with what has been its own theme, I further decided to do something different. This time around, we have yet another murderous computer, only this time, it is technically a zombie movie. I present Resident Evil, the Patient 0 of the modern zombie movie wave, and I will be showing why the computer is much scarier than the undead.

Our story begins with an introduction to the Umbrella Corporation, a company with their own underground lab for nefarious bioweapons research, and the massacre of the staff of said facility by a series of lethal mechanisms that might or might not be working as intended. The carnage is followed up by little tasteful nudity as our heroine wakes up in the shower with no memory of where or even who she is. The story picks up momentum when the company’s paramilitary team arrives, revealing that her name is Alice and she is the custodian of the entrance to the Umbrella lab. It is also revealed that the facility has been taken over by a supercomputer called the Red Queen for reasons allegedly unknown. For no obvious reason, the team drag along Alice and a couple iffy guys they find along the way. Things go south when most of the team are wiped out by a laser cheese grater controlled by the Queen. But the real trouble starts when the survivors take the computer offline, unleashing a horde of zombified employees and a few more ugly surprises. The dwindling party must fight their way out, but they still don’t know each other’s agendas- and they may need the Queen’s help to stay alive!

Resident Evil was a 2002 horror/ action film written by Paul W.S. Anderson, based on the Capcom video game franchise of the same name. The film starred Milla Jovovich as Alice, following appearances in films including The Fifth Element (still don’t know if I can work with that one), Michelle Rodriguez and Colin Salmon as ill-fated troopers. The soundtrack was composed by Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Manson. The film was possibly the first major zombie movie of the 2000s, preceding the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. It was a commercial success, earning a box office of over $100 million against an estimated $33M budget, though reviews were mixed to negative. It was followed by five live-action sequels, including Resident Evil: Apocalypse in 2004 and Extinction in 2007, as well as a number of direct-to-video animated films. A new live-action film, Welcome To Raccoon City, received a limited theatrical release in 2021.  Anderson and Jovovich married in 2009. Their daughter Ever has several screen credits.

For my experiences, this film and franchise has been a textbook case of a film and franchise that stayed above my radar. I conspicuously declined to cover it for The Revenant Review, though I finally gave number 3 an entry in the out-of-control ebook edition. The obvious reason for this is simply that it is a profitable and well-known series that did not require comment. Another is by all means that I completely gave up on it at number 4. But the overarching consideration is just how many categories the first movie in particular stretches across, which became an immediate problem in the question of which feature to review it under. I could have covered it for the Horror Vault, or under my still nascent adaptation feature, where I already covered the Nineties Mario movie. By the time I loaded my ancient disc, however, I had no doubt it belonged here, if only because it truly represents one of the most formidable AI antagonists of the current millennium at least.

Moving in, the central reality is that this is a film that owes all its strengths to a sustained vibe. From the settings to the creatures to the very minimalist music, this is sci-fi horror at its most cold and clinical, building and even improving on the likes of Re-Animator and Day of the Dead (see also Sole Survivor, the re-review I completely botched).  The undead themselves fit very well into this world. They are among the most malevolent and vicious revenants of the Romero/ “slow zombie” tradition, with a counterintuitive subtlety that suggests a measure of cunning. The very first of them (seen well past the 30-minute mark) is representative of the lot, at first lurching along as if merely distressed, then striking fatefully just as a target comes within reach. Of course, both the shock value and in-universe effectiveness of this behavior sharply decline as the film goes on, yet it is a consistent behavioral pattern that never fails to be unsettling. The one thing that can be counted as disappointing is that their evident ability to use tools and weapons never goes anywhere, but then by the final act they are already superseded by the surreal hellhounds and the foreshadowed mutated abomination.

In the midst of all this, the Red Queen is indeed clearly established as both the primary antagonist and by far the most formidable threat as long as “she” is online. In the context of this feature, there are especially strong parallels with The Forbin Project and of course The Lift. Even more than in the former film, the AI is completely rational in both actions and motivations and as much in the right as any of the human characters. As in the latter, the computer’s most formidable ability is its control over its arcological environment that might or might not have been originally granted by its creators. (I honestly have no opinion on whether Anderson might have been directly influenced by that very odd film, as I already documented the “killer elevator” as a startlingly persistent concept.) The holographic avatar and very English accent give a fine extra touch that doesn’t really resolve the AI’s status; one can sympathize as the machine pleads to be allowed to continue its duties, but it is already clear that one cannot trust its motives or its anthropomorphic affectations. It is impossible to avoid further comment on the completely surreal laser sequence (obviously on the board for “one scene”), which does a great deal to define the tone and reputation of the film (see also Ghost Ship). On a certain level, the intentionally lethal gauntlet is less impressive and intriguing than the seemingly improvised booby traps of the opening. What is easily forgotten after two decades of “so bad it’s good” fame/ infamy is that it is preceded by an effective and plausible set-up, in which the humans remain in apparent control until it is far too late.

That already brings me to the “one scene”, and there’s one I’m going to try doing from memory. In the face of the first onslaught of the undead, our heroes are driven up against a computerized door that is still locked for reasons that won’t be analyzed. The most technically minded of the group (if I’m not mistaken the same one who turned off the Queen) remains confident as he does a hacker bypass while the others hold back the horde. He does it all with a smoothness that leaves no doubt that he can indeed do this. He is openly satisfied as the door opens behind him, and what really got this in here is that I didn’t remember or expect what happens next.

In closing, what I come back to is how I feel about this movie and the franchise. My standing and long stated opinion is that the third film was the best, the second was the worst, and everything thereafter isn’t worth the trouble of counting in the same continuity. By further comparison, the original is almost overshadowed, which I will be the first to say is the last thing it deserved. Whatever else one may say, it was the right film that came out at just the right time to bring the zombie genre back to life. It also had the further virtues of being both a competent film and a genuinely creative one that never tried to be anything but itself. That should be a good enough epitaph in an age of remakes and reboots. I for one am happy to give it a final salute and call it a day.

Adaptation Insanity: The one that was the first video game movie

 

 

Title: Super Mario Bros

What Year?: 1993

Classification: Improbable Experiment

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

 

As I write this, it’s the end of a weekend, and I have once again been debating between several movies to review. This time around, however, I knew I wanted to get in a second entry in my newest feature before another one went by, and the one at the top of the list is pretty much the reason it exists at all. As a further twist, I swear I was ready to do this before the para-franchise blew up pop culture (and inspired me to write an actual novel in six weeks…). Without further ado, I present Super Mario Bros, the live-action version, and very possibly the reason it took three decades to get another one.

Our story begins with an introduction to an alternate universe where dinosaurs survived, and a baby left on an orphanage’s doorstep. We then jump forward and meet the brothers Mario and Luigi, whose last name is revealed to be Mario, two struggling New York plumbers. In the course of their work, Luigi has a meet-cute with a woman named Daisy, who leads the brothers to a portal to another dimension. They discover a soft-cyberpunk universe where dinosaurs evolved into sentient humanoids, which coexist with another race evolved from fungi. A conflict is in progress between the dino leader King Koopa and the loyalists of the Mushroom King, who has devolved into a filmy encrusting organism vastly more intriguing than anything else here. Of course, Koopa’s plans include taking Daisy hostage. It’s up to the brothers to save the day in the mildest possible way, and if you’re wondering what this has to do with the game besides the name, you poor bastards…

Super Mario Bros was a 1993 science fantasy film by Hollywood Pictures, based on the video game series by Nintendo. It was the first live-action theatrical film to be based on a video game. (I know, you can argue over The Last Starfighter...) The production reportedly went through a troubled development and further conflicts over intended audience and possible rating. The film went into production with Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel as directors. The cast was led by the late Bob Hoskins as Mario and Dennis Hopper (d. 2010) as King Koopa, with John Leguizamo as Luigi and Samantha Mathis as Daisy. Lance Henriksen appeared very briefly as the restored King. The score was composed by Alan Silvestri (see Mac And Me, Predator 2, etc, etc, etc). The film was a commercial failure, earning $38.9 million against a budget of up to $48M, and received mixed to unfavorable reviews. Hoskins claimed that he had been repeatedly injured and endangered during filming. The film was released on VHS in 1994 and several times on DVD, but fell out of print in the US after 2010. It is not currently available for authorized digital streaming in the US.

For my experiences, what stands out about this one is that I can very clearly remember following reactions to it when it came out, and I can attest that at the time, it really wasn’t that big a deal. Plenty of people were saying it was bad, plenty more was said about how much money was lost (in hindsight before there was really a frame of reference for the cost of post-1980s movies), but if one went by contemporary reactions, it was easy to conclude that it was nothing more or less than a typical early 1990s action movie. Needless to say, the fact that I am talking about it now is the surest proof that this was the one thing it was not. The crowning irony is, everything I have to say now is from three viewings over the last 5 years or so, and my own reaction is and always was that it wasn’t that big a deal either way. (Hey, I knowingly watched Inseminoid more than once, my brain is broken…)

Moving forward, what I have to say on the established vein is that this really is as close as it could have been to a “mainstream” Nineties movie. In those terms, it holds the line at average and regularly rises to decent or genuinely impressive. The story is solid and simple, with enough wild cards for real surprises. The cast is genuinely good, with Hopkins and Hopper pulling their weight and Leguizamo and Mathis being actually cute. (I realized in the course of my parody novel that I must have made up the Luigi/ Daisy pairing independent of anything I would have known about.) As a bonus, the villains and heroes are both reasonably competent, to the point that Koopa thinks to use his de-evolution machine to power up his minions. What really makes the film memorable is the quite well-realized grunge dystopia, which manages the cyberpunk feel while the genre was really still coming into its own in the live-action medium. The result is some hit-and-miss gags (a bit with an egg in a stroller is just weird) balanced against a world that actually works well enough for the bystanders to remain focused on getting on with their lives.

And if you were sensing a big qualifier, this is the kind of movie that will put “Not bad, but-!” on my tombstone. (It’s that or, “Don’t watch Shanks.”) The real problems with the movie tend to come in when it tries to reference the games, which tends to make even less sense if you actually know what they are referencing. The most obvious offense is the ludicrous tiny-headed design of the Goombas and the completely unnamed and unexplained creatures that appear to be Koopa troopers. (An extra distraction comes from the unnervingly inhuman masked worker drones toward the end, which feel like they wandered in from a Konami game.) Even worse are the moments when the movie tries to shift to a slapstick tone that someone presumably thought would appeal to kids, always telegraphed by wonky music that sounds like the very recognizable Silvestri (see my Predator 2 soundtrack post, again) riffing on himself. An extra rant is in order for that damn fungus, which is genuinely developed into a very intriguing concept of decentralized intelligence, but still gets used mostly for gags. The very brief appearance of the legendary Henriksen (I kind of forgot I actually reviewed Terminator) feels like an unintentionally fitting epitaph for the creature and the film.

Now I’m up to the “one scene”, there is truly one that will stay with you whether you like it or not, and it is the elevator sequence. (See The Lift???) As we build toward the finale, the brothers must sneak into an elevator to infiltrate King Koopa’s lair. When the Goombas and Koopas start to board, the heroes simply hide behind the bizarrely proportioned creatures. Just when it becomes clear that this could be a problem, Luigi notices that the elevator music is playing “Somewhere My Love” (aka the theme from the 1960s-scandalous film Dr. Zhivago). Our protagonists try nudging two of the creatures enough to turn their awkward shuffling into something like a dance. It quickly spreads, until the lot of them are dancing and grunting or humming to the music as the brothers climb out the top of the elevator like they could have at the beginning. The touch that makes the scene is that the creatures are still dancing when the doors open on their evident superior, who calls them to attention. It’s weird, random and unnecessary, and for the brief time it lasts, it’s exactly what a movie like this needs.

In closing, what I find myself coming to is what 1980s-‘90s video games really meant to kids like me. As I ranted when I was reviewing the cartoon, to us, even the cartoony fantasies of the later Mario games were something we took seriously. It’s a testament to their strength that they have held up longer and better than the vast majority of the romances and dramas that were supposed to be our window on the “adult” world. With that context, I can at least appreciate what this movie was trying to do. After years of being talked down to in watered-down cartoons (have I mentioned I saw the Battletoads pilot?), seeing our heroes as adults in a functional society was exactly what we were waiting for. At the same time, it is quite clear that it failed, and probably would have even without the external pressure to be “kid-friendly”. The only really good options here were an over-the-top romp like Flash Gordon or a full deconstruction like Hancock, but the Hollywood “mainstream” was simply not ready for either when it came to video games. What we got instead, as laid out, was a decent movie knocking on the door of either good or “so bad it’s good”. With that, I can offer my respects and move on. Punch it, Bishop!

Movie Mania: Heavy Metal soundtrack!

 

It's Monday and I still don't have my weekend post, so I decided to do something that actually came up in the course of my epic fan fi/ parody novel (see Demos 1 and 2) that I'm actually on track to finish. Most of this feature has been about movie soundtracks (see the Predator post from about 6 months ago), but this time, I have something different. It's a soundtrack of pop rock songs from one of the most famous/ popular movies I ever reviewed, and I actually like it. Here is Heavy Metal, the soundtrack! Here's a pic of the insert booklet.

Now, there's a lot of lore here that I already covered or skipped over. Heavy Metal was an animated anthology film based on the magazine/ comic of the same name, which was in turn based on the European publication Metal Hurlant. (Oh, yeah, my review is now in my zombie movie ebook.) In the process, the filmmakers made an unusual if not unprecedented decision regarding music. They paid for a top-notch orchestral score from Elmer Bernstein (see An American Werewolf In London and... Robot Monster???). They also got the rights for a lineup of contemporary rock songs from artists including (alphabetic order is easiest) Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick (see Rock & Rule, already intertwined with this saga), Devo, Journey and Stevie Nicks. The problem, as one can extrapolate from at least the last two, was that this was in fact pretty light on the "metal", but as I have pointed out, the title was technically that of the magazine first.

Moving forward, the real twist here is the very different fates of the two halves of the soundtrack. Both were released around the time the movie came out, on vinyl, cassette and CD. However, the orchestral score has gone on to fall into Copyright Hell, with any disc copies going for $50 and up, while the present album has remained available in both physical and digital formats right up to the present day. I got my particular specimen last year, in what I just remembered was the same order as my Blu Ray of Death Becomes Her. Before that, I had listened to it regularly on free music streaming. In fact, I can recall going to sleep listening to this, which once again brings us to the problem.

In fact, considered objectively, this is nothing more or less than a representative sample of 1980s pop rock with a bit of a "lean" toward the metal/ punk/ proto-grunge cluster. A good starting point for consideration is the one I have always been able to place within the movie, "Heavy Metal/ Takin' A Ride" by Don Felder, played at the start of the "B-17" segment. It's a surprisingly good fit for the material, and okay overall. For maximum confusion, it has the same title as the opening track, "Heavy Metal" by Sammy Hagar, which I completely forgot plays in one of my favorite scenes in the film. ("If there's one thing I know, it's how to drive when I'm stoned...") That's followed by "Hearbeat" (which I managed to reference in the Sidekick Carl adventure, still very much in my mind) and "Working In A Coalmine" by Devo. The fifth track, "Reach Out", turns up in the Lincoln Stern segment, and after Felder's track, I start to kind of tune out. Aside from one I'll get to in a moment, the most memorable of the remaining tracks would be "Radar Rider" by Riggs, played in the opening sequence "Soft Landing", and "Blue Lamp" by Nicks, an oddly dark song that I just figured out plays in the police station scene of "Harry Canyon".

That leaves three songs that stand out to me. One of them is a song that isn't in the soundtrack, "Through Being Cool" by Devo from the Taarna bar scene, which I cross-identified in Sky High. At one point, I kind of assumed it was in the soundtrack, as the digital version of the album was already down at least one track. I still can't fathom how it wasn't included, given that the band was already represented. Another is "The Mob Rules" by Black Sabbath, track 13, also from "Taarna", which I discovered was included here months before it was released as part of the album of the same name. Then there is by far the most noteworthy track here, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" by BOC, which was also included in the soundtrack prior to its album release. As far as I can recall, I knew of this song from multiple references in fiction, without knowing anything about it until I recognized the title lyric during a viewing of the film. Having heard it, I can say that it is truly one of the most emotionally powerful songs of the 1980s or any other time. The one "problem" is that it easily converts to generic angst, especially of the male variety, which it absolutely is not. Its appearance in the film could really be a case and point, as it simply plays at the discovery of the Loc Nar in "Harry Canyon" rather than any truly introspective moment. My further thought is that it could get back a lot of its depth from a cover by a woman, which I literally have not found even once.

So, that's the album. For what it is, it's a very important release that earns its enduring pace in pop culture. It's worth a listen as a whole as well as for its parts. And for one more thing, here's a pic I managed to take without glare, because apparently the Couch Mark 2 is really, really well-lit.

That's all for now, more to come!

The Horrible Horror Vault Revisited: The one with an evil boat

 

 

Title: Ghost Ship

What Year?: 2002

Classification: Mashup/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’m at the tail end of a phase of retiring some of my longest-running features, usually with some measure of relief. That has brought me back around to considering whether I should dust off any of them. It happened that the one that finally forced my decision was a horror movie from within the “modern” era, which I have usually specifically avoided outside of zombie films like Splinter.  I quickly realized that the one place it really fit was my one dedicated horror feature, the Horrible Horror Vault, and what made things interesting was that this one went in a quite different direction. I present Ghost Ship, a movie about a literal boat from Hell, and boy do I know there’s more than one.

Our story begins in the 1960s, with a captain and a little girl dancing on a cruise ship deck until a preposterously gruesome mass casualty event strikes. Skip forward, and we meet an evidently competent salvage crew with a butch lady boss who is technically second in command. A nondescript guy comes to them with a lead: After 40-some years, a missing cruise ship has been rediscovered, still drifting around what would in regular reality be the maritime border between two superpowers. This apparently seems neither improbable nor utterly terrifying to the crew, who sign on for a job. They discover a standard spooky ship where rats still scurry about and mysterious figures appear and disappear, particularly the captain and the girl. Just when the audience is thinking get the Hell off this thing, the crew discover a fortune in the hold, only to lose their own ship. The lady and her dwindling crew must survive the perils of the ship and the sea. But they are already part of a trap that claimed the lives of the original complement, and the stakes are their lives and their souls!

Ghost Ship was a 2002 supernatural horror film directed by Steve Beck and produced by Joel Silver (see Lethal Weapon, Predator 2) and Robert Zemeckis. The production was developed from a script that reportedly emphasized psychological horror over gore and supernatural elements. Similarities were noted to the 1980 film Death Ship (oh dear Logos, that should have been on my list of films too bad to review), ultimately including a very similar movie poster. The film starred Julianna Margulies as the lady boss Epps, with Gabriel Byrne as Captain Murphy and Emily Browning as the girl. Plans to film on an actual ship were rejected in favor of CGI effects and extensive miniatures, provided by the crew Photon VFX from Australia. The movie was released in October 2002 and on home video in March 2003. It received mixed to negative reviews but was a commercial success, earning $68 million against a $20M budget. It is currently available on digital platforms including HBO Max.

For my experiences, this is one I remember seeing around the time it came out without knowing it was “supposed” to have a bad reputation; I liked it, I hear nothing bad about it, and I distinctly remember at least one reasonably positive contemporary review. But what has really stood out is the whole “evil boat” concept. It’s a counterpart to the more niche “underwater sci fi” (see Leviathan, The Abyss) which I have covered with the likes of Deep Rising and The Ghost Galleon. (Wait, doesn’t Event Horizon kind of count???) In that context, what I have found most interesting is the degree to which it rides the line between horror and science fiction. The notes are Gothic, but the visual vocabulary is industrial, with shot after shot emphasizing the very solid if rusted and creaky walls, rooms and fittings of the ship. It’s a fascinating blend of genres, and that’s the other reason I remain very conflicted coming back to this film.

Moving forward, the word that applies here is indeed “solid”. Everything here is genre formula done quite well, with good acting and dialogue, excellent effects, and a story that at a minimum gets a real payoff out of a “twist” villain. It all serves to illustrate that cliches become cliches because they can and do in fact work. What is most impressive is that there is still complex conceptualization and  genuine ambiguity. Several incidents could be actual hallucinations. Others appear to be a combination of illusions by the spirits and hazards already present on the boat. Then there are certain points where the ship seems to show a malign will of its own, to a degree that I considered including this along with The Lift and Willy’s Wonderland under the “possessed machine” category of my robots feature. It all builds to an unexpected touch of beauty in the finale when (fine, spoiler) the sinking ship releases the souls of the dead. The only points where this becomes a problem are where the film goes with shocks over substance. It shows most around the middle act, which sees multiple redundant jump scares and one obvious gross-out. But we already see it in the ludicrous opening, which just feels like an unconvincing ripoff of the laser cheese grater in Resident Evil, even though a little chronological review would indicate that this was mostly in the can by the time that movie came out.

With these issues already on the table, where my nitpicking instincts kick in is the reveal of the original atrocity that killed everyone in the first place. This is the point where the story becomes a straight-up Medieval morality play, and for the most part, it’s another twist that really works, especially once the characters start to question each other’s identities and motivations. The problem is that the chain of events follows neither logic nor proportion. By my further penchant for rewriting, what would have worked is a potentially non-lethal scheme that actually went wrong, like a staged “accident” gone out of control (essentially the set-up of Deep Rising and for that matter an intelligible solution to the actual Mary Celeste). Instead, almost everyone jumps straight to mass murder on a literal war-crime scale, which goes as far beyond the standards of “rational evil” as killing a bank president, vice president and the entire board of directors to rob the bank. Even if this went according to plan, it’s obvious that it would almost certainly end badly. The real “problem” here is that the movie specifically fails to sell this as a slippery slope that might tempt the ordinary viewer, and that specific weakness is in contrast to the unsettlingly believable conflicts that arise among the present-day protagonists.

Now for the “one scene”, the one that really lingered in writing this review is a scene that makes absolutely no sense in cold blood. In the midst of the middle-act slow-down, Byrne/ Murphy has wandered into the captain’s cabin, where he discovers the ghost of the original liner’s captain. What is surreal off the bat is, first, that there is neither fear nor surprise, and second, that this non-reaction actually follows from previously established characterization. The captain simply accepts what he sees, and gives careful attention as the ghost presents a file on the discovery of another ill-fated and infamous ship. Murphy says simply, “I know the story,” without telling the yarn anyway. He adds, “There were no survivors,” at which point the ghost holds out a photo we don’t see. Of course, it’s always possible that this whole interaction is simply how a character we know to be imaginative visualizes a discovery he made rummaging through a desk. For the film’s purposes, it doesn’t really matter, and the story is already moving on accordingly.

In closing, I come to the rating, and this is a fairly rare case where I have been going back and forth the whole time. By my own admission, the main thing this film has had going for it is that I can remember a time when I viewed it quite favorably. Channeling early 2000’s me, I would probably have given it the same rating then that I do now. In other ways, however, time and more experience with the genre(s) have been unkind enough that I came close to knocking the rating down to 2 out of sheer disappointment. What settled things in my mind was simple perspective. This may never have been a great movie, but it still stands as one that did far better than might be expected and in some lights better than it really deserved to. (With Death Ship anywhere in the frame of reference, Sleepaway Camp would get the benefit of a doubt.) That’s enough to hold its own in my book, and that makes one more film I’ve made my peace with. Bon voyage!

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 22!

 It's the middle of my attempt to do a full week of posts, so of course I'm taking a short cut with the Space Guys. This is really a new part of the adventure, but for now, I'm keeping the numbering and table of contents at the end. And hey, I worked in the Marz building!

 

The voyage of the Janus went on for months after passing Uranus, but the boredom and isolation that had fallen over the crew never returned. There was laughter, singing and a return to games, music and books that they had long declared themselves tired of. The morale was further improved by the appearance of one more orb in their path. “We didn’t announce it in the mission plan because we weren’t sure of the alignment,” the captain said. “You are seeing the paraplanet Pluto, within the orbit of Neptune.”

They did not pass as close as they had to other planets, so it did not appear on the porthole. Still, it was near enough to take turns looking at the orb from the communications tower during their closest approach. It was white beheld with the naked eye, mottled gray with hints of brown when viewed with magnification. Jason and Alek spent their turn talking with Old Yuri.

As Pluto receded, the captain made another announcement. When they gathered, he looked unusually solemn. Jason noted that he stood side by side with Professor Futura. “I have just received approval from Gaia to give a special briefing,” he said. “It should coincide with simultaneous broadcasts on the Homeworld and Mars. Moxon, load the disc.”

Moxon took out a disc with the markings of sensitive material. Jason realized that it was the same one that had been played for the mission briefing. The officer flipped the handling caddy before loading it in the video record player. The first image that came up showed the sigil of the Union of Nations and the stylized rocket of the space agency. Jason instinctively put an arm around Alek at the sight of what appeared next.

At a glance, it looked like a crystal, with four major sides subdivided by corrugations and protruding multitiered buttresses in place of its corners. Then the camera’s focus shifted to show its surroundings. It was the Southlands of Mars, not far from Hellas Basin. The object reared up from a level plain at the foot of the ice caps which dwarfed it. Even on that enormous scale, it was obvious that the object was immense, certainly as tall as the Janus was long, quite possibly even taller than the bygone Empire State tower it was compared to. It was evident that it tapered up to what looked like a cupola, topped by a dome and a tall, narrow spine that looked like an antenna. The focus shifted again, and Professor Futura came into view. He wore an archaic pressure suit with a dome supported by a square frame. He looked visibly younger, but only by five or ten years rather than more than Jason had been alive.

“I am at the foot of the Structure,” the Professor said. “All observations confirm that it is an artificial object intended for habitation. From corrosion and geological evidence, it is at least 1,000 and not more than 2 million years old. Preliminary findings further indicate that it was constructed by and for organisms comparable to humans in all major characteristics. We have entered and partially explored the lowest tiers of the structure through several compromised or unsecured entrances. Our efforts have been hampered by repeated equipment failures associated with electromagnetic anomalies from the structure. In particular, we have been unable to reach or enter an evident control center in the spire. I have determined that any conclusive investigation will require an exterior ascent and likely forced entry. I have prepared to affect such a breach. I will be accompanied by my wife, Irena Futura, who is recording this film. The rest of the party are under orders not to follow or allow others to enter.”

The film showed a small party climb up the exterior of the building with a series of rocket-assisted grapnels. The ascent culminated in the entry of the cupola through an already damaged window. There was an evident skip to an aerial shot of the cupola. There was a flash from the cupola, seemingly no more consequential than a glint of sunlight, until puffs of smoke erupted at the base of the spine. The spine listed and then toppled, momentarily filling half the frame before the camera and presumably the aircraft veered away. The camera zoomed in again, on a figure waving from the damaged window. There was another skip, showing the tower from a distance. It collapsed in smoke and flames, as ice and debris cascaded down to cover it.

Futura spoke up. “My wife and I spent 17 hours inside the spire of the Structure,” he said. “I brought no cameras or recording equipment, only limited writing materials. We spent the first 11 hours examining the lower superstructure, which I ventured to describe as the Globe. In the twelfth hour, I breached a possible control center at the meeting point of the dome and the spire. We found a series of computing stations, several of which were functioning and partially operable. These proved to be primarily for calculation, and thus a source of our most detailed information on the Builders’ numerical characters and mathematical system. After 4 hours of investigation, I attempted to use one of the higher-level stations. This activated a self-destruct mechanism which ultimately collapsed both the Structure and a large section of the polar cap. The device simultaneously sealed the entrances to the control center. Over the course of 47 minutes, we successfully escaped, and were rescued by our expedition’s hovercraft.”

The gathered crew gaped, except Donald, who scowled. “I spent the next 36 hours assisting my wife as she drew her observations of the structure from memory,” Futura concluded. “On my advice, the existence of the Structure was placed under highest classification, known to a few thousand individuals over time. A select few have been given access to our recordings and data, including a number of members of this expedition. A much smaller group have examined our drawings, which have remained in my possession. Three of them are here, Tanya Plotnikov, Mehmet Eskandari and Aleksandra Kapek Freeman.” Jason turned to Alek, who gave him a vaguely embarrassed smile.

“Hold on,” Donald said. “Here’s what I’m hearing. You found the first evidence of alien intelligence in the Solar System, from before regular people figured out gunpowder. So, you went in alone, didn’t take any pictures, and made the whole thing blow up. Then at the end of it, they took your advice and let you keep the only records that mattered.”

Tanya spoke up. “I reviewed the raw feed at the time, when I was consultant for Union intelligence,” she said. “Every decision Colonel Futura made was justified. There were extreme difficulties with equipment failure and unexplained lighting anomalies every time the expedition attempted to photograph the Structure interior. One of the technicians was almost killed trying to collect a sample of material. There was ample evidence that these difficulties were caused by active interference from the Structure itself. It had to be further assumed that a second expedition would be met with even stronger countermeasures, if the structure did not self-destruct. An individual or very small party without electronic instruments was the best chance we had.”

“Okay, so what do you have to show for it?” Donald said. “A few drawings of what you can remember?”

“The full report has over 500 drawings,” Alek said coolly. “Every one that could be checked against independent data was accurate within 0.5%.”

“Sure,” Jason said. “But why keep it secret until now? There’s more, isn’t there?”

“I had to consider several hypotheses,” Futura acknowledged. “All of them implied that the entities who built the Structure were very concerned that no other species or culture would be able to imitate their technology or identify its origin. Perhaps it was for their own protection. Perhaps it was for ours. Perhaps the two are one and the same. But Dr. Capek, excuse me, Dr. Freeman, and Dr. Plotnikov can explain that better.”

Alek stepped forward, smiling. “Thank you, I am proud to report my findings,” she said in her flat voice. “I prepared this report as an appendix to an earlier analysis by Mehmet and Tanya. Of course, their work is already quite comprehensive. I have only added what is useful to comment on.” Behind her, a canvas screen was set up with a microfilm projector. It showed the first in a long series of photographs and drawings, each of the latter as painstaking as a Greek statue or a Dutch still life. They showed almost gothic entryways, spacious corridors and atria, compact cells and storerooms, elegantly simple light fixtures, abstract patterns that seemed to be artwork, and here and there an interactive control surface, from doorknobs to instrument panels. Several drawings showed keyboards with as few as 8 and as many as 24 keys, most of them bearing sigils that looked like a wheel or a star, with varying numbers of arms and more arcane dots, circles and rings at the center. There was even a pair of lavatories, each comprised of a line of self-contained stalls that held a slot toilet in the floor and a showerhead above.

“Now, the central and repeated finding of both Futura’s report and the later analysis is that the Builders of the Structure were very similar to humans, biologically, mentally and even culturally,” she said. They came to a series of drawings of what could only be the dome of the Globe. This proved to be meeting place roughly the shape and nearly the size of Shakespeare’s amphitheater. There were regularly spaced signs with more of the sigils. “Their evident mode of locomotion is that of a bipedal vertebrate, their reproduction bisexual. Their height can be extrapolated as between 1.2 and 2.1 meters. Their geometry, numbering and architecture are based on multiples of 4 and 12, common to terrestrial cultures despite the biological fact that we have ten digits. The use of primary colors in their art further implies a similar visual range.”

She straightened. “In fact, this correspondence is altogether anomalous,” she said. “Consider all the ways an extraterrestrial species might differ from humans. They might be half our size, or half again. They might have six fingers on one hand and three on the other. They might have eight limbs instead of four. They might be color-blind, or able to see spectra beyond human vision, especially if their native star was of a different type than Sol. They might have entirely different senses, like the echolocation of a dolphin or the electromagnetism of a platypus. This requires a reconsideration of the Structure’s origin. That is borne out in one more anomaly… Almost every trace of writing was removed from the Structure.”

With that, Tanya stood up. “What Dr. Capek has mentioned is a central finding of our report, though we do not necessarily endorse all of her conclusions,” she said. An image appeared of what could only be shelves, completely empty. “To begin with, there was extensive evidence that printed records other media had once been present, only to be removed. This was unremarkable. We might do the same, if it held instructions for making gunpowder or the atomic bomb. Yet, there were many cases where completely innocuous inscriptions had been removed or defaced, including the lavatory. This was not explicable. There are dozens of languages and scripts of human origin that have never been translated beyond the most rudimentary level, if at all. The only reason they would have cause for fear is if mere comparison with other scripts would tell us something they did not wish to be known.”

She brought up a series of images of signs from the Globe. “It was only these characters that we were allowed to see, most likely because there were too many to remove, and perhaps because they were too intuitive for definite conclusions. Even so, there are certain similarities with known symbology. The swastika. The mandala. The Yin and Yang.”

“Yeah, and the Mercedes Benz logo,” Donald said, as one of several three-spoked sigils appeared. “So what? Are you saying these are aliens who talked to cavemen, like in the silly old magazines?”

“No,” Alek said with a smile. “I am saying they were humans. From Earth. And they knew we were coming.”

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!!!

Part 12: The inevitable geography lesson!

Part 13: The wedding!!!

Part 14:  The spicy chapter!

Part 15: The bad guy backstory!

Part 16: The Dinner!

Part 17: The alternate history!

Part 18: The weapons exposition!

Part 19: The alternate history Captain America!

Part 20: Zero G repairs!

Part 21: Bad Guy backstory, Part 2!

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 20!

 It's the last day of my off-week, and I couldn't decide on what to do, so of course, it's another installment of the Space Guys, and this time, something actually happens. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

The approach to Uranus was the closest of the voyage since the Janus had left Mars. It was only when the gaseous giant’s buzzsaw rings filled the viewports from top to bottom that the orb began to drift to the starboard side. “We will be making a small maneuver as we pass the giant,” the captain announced. “It will be necessary to fire the primary engines several times over a total of four hours. You will have 12 to secure your possessions and evacuate the life support ring.”

It was also announced that the ship would receive a special broadcast from Earth, described as “live”. Yuri had explained what that really meant. “What the Martians and spacers will be used to are transmissions that are recorded, compressed and played back,” he said. “We do this to reduce the risk of interruption by static and outages. For this mission, our speed is also a concern. Going perfectly straight, the distance we travel in one hour is enough to add almost 1.5 seconds to the time it takes for a transmission to reach us. That is more than enough to put an uncompressed signal out of sync. But while we are rounding the planet, we will be almost stationary relative to Earth. It’s just the right window for a live transmission… live, that is, except for the time it takes to reach us.”

Alek insisted on holding a dinner in her own quarters while they listened to the broadcast. She also invited Jax, Jackie and Sandra. Sandra came with Vasily, while Jax brought Dr. Cahill. The table was set with flares as candles. Tik Tok and Chopper brought plates of rehydrated vegetables, while Scarecrow and the Patchwork Girl prepared soy steaks in the kitchenette. Vasily sat in almost complete silence, while Dr. Cahill chatted happily “I’ve been making regular reports on the crew’s health, mental and physical,” she said. “I’m really not supposed to say so, but we’ve performed far beyond expectations. There were very serious concerns that a crew this size would be unable to function over such a long voyage…”

That finally brought a sullen remark from Vasily. “If this is good,” he said, “what in holle were they thinking would be bad?”

“There were concerns about whether the crew would be able to adhere to the diet and exercise regime,” Dr. Cahill said matter-of-factly. “Some believed there would be… political problems. There were even proposed plans to restore control if a disorder broke out. I advised that it was better for the morale of the crew not to develop them further.”

“Why did they think there would be a problem?” Alek said. “We all get along so well…”

The dinner went on. The transmission began, shown on the video screens around Alek’s cabin and lab. It was a concert in Bonn, held in Deutschland’s majestic national concert hall. It proved to be a performance of Holst’s Planets, beginning with Mars. Alek and Dr. Cahill were puzzled when a tenor vocalist began to sing during the first interlude. Jax and Jason squirmed in discomfort. Anastasia and Vasily were merely bemused. It was a hymn of the sending forth of armies, to be followed by the release of the holy doves that would be the sign of peace. The chorus implored the elder god for strength, victory, and failing all else, that at least a few of their valiant warriors would live to return.

“Okay, so, a composer on Mars tried putting words to some of the music, like they were hymns to the Old Gods,” Jason said. “We tried not to make it a big deal…”

The music continued, doubling back to Mercury and Venus, who each received a few lines of praise. Then came Jupiter, whose entire middle movement became a hymn to the lord of Olympus: “Jove, king of highest heaven, to you we give the utmost praise. You send the rain on just and unjust, set the course of Sun and Moon. You are the protector of the stranger, the avenger of all wrongs. Light our way with justice and truth…”

By then, the Martians were all in tears. Alek looked around and laughed. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “It is just, Jupiter is Zeus, no? I know the stories about him. Sometimes, he is funny, but he is not no never a good god.”

“We know,” Jason said, wiping away his own tears. “Those are, well, the stories. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t stand for what’s good.”

It was Jax who chimed in. “Jupiter is simple,” he said. “He’s more powerful than mortals, but never acts like he’s better than us. When he does good, he helps everyone. When he does punish anyone, it’s for breaking their word or just acting like they’re higher than the rest. That's something.”

“But there is no Zeus,” Alek said. “Olympus is a mountain. Jupiter is just a ball of gas. The Greeks already knew that. So why tell the stories?”

Jason only frowned at that. “She is teasing you,” Anastasia finally said. “I like the stories. They’re good stories. That’s enough.”

They remained in a good mood as the concert continued, though the music for Saturn and Uranus was as gloomy as the grim gods. Alek became ever more elated, until Jason began to wonder if she had found a way to synthesize alcohol. Then, just as unaccountably, she burst into tears. She rose to her feet, not wobbly but stiff. When Jason moved to follow her, she waved him back. “Wait, wait,” she said. “I am not… no… feeling so… not good.” That was when Jason caught her as she pitched forward. One more word came from her lips: “Argon.”

That brought Vasily to his feet. He looked up and around. In every direction, propellant tanks lined the nacelle. “Is there anything flammable in these?” he drawled.

Donald snorted. “You know chemistry,” he said. “Argon is so non-reactive, we use it in the fire extinguishers.”

“Good,” the Russian said. He picked up a flare and touched it to a page from one of Alek’s notebooks. With significant coaxing, the paper began to smolder. He slowly lowered the sheet.  60 centimeters from the floor, the flame fizzled and went out.

“Alek figured it out when she was about to pass out,” Jax mused. “Figures. She’s the smallest of us. Lana, will she be all right?”

“Certainly, if we get her oxygen or get her out of here,” Dr. Cahill said. “But there’s enough propellant gas to flood the life support ring. We have to find the leak.”

“It’s not that simple,” Donald said. All eyes turned toward him. “The tanks are self-sealing. It would take small arms fire to breach one. A leak this bad would have to come from one of the lines to the engines. If the fuel isn’t getting through, the simplest explanation is that a thruster is out of the line. If the problem is bad enough, firing one thruster might short the whole nacelle. We have to find out, or we can’t complete the voyage or go home.”

“Then how do we fix it?” Jason asked, not really doubting the answer.

“We go outside, farmboy,” a voice said. He did not recognize the voice, yet he was not surprised to see Moxon in the doorway, already in his pressure suit.

By the time Jason had suited up, Dr. Cahill had brought Alek a breathing mask. When consciousness returned, she became giddy all over again. “Check the diagnostic panel,” she said immediately. “It will show you where short is.”

Donald was in fact doing just that. “It’s in the port thruster,” he said, pointing to the left dot of the five that formed the engine assembly. “I could fix it myself. I just need my pod from engineering.”

“There isn’t time,” Jason said. He knew he could not give a reason why, but no one challenged him.

“He’s right,” Moxon said. He had already opened the airlock in the floor. “If we don’t fix this, we could lose the ship.” He moved to close the hatch as he climbed down. When Jason followed, he simply continued his own descent without comment. Jason met Alek’s gaze before he closed the hatch.

 

The airlock opened in the middle of the nacelle. The pair emerged tethered against the outward pull of centrifugal pseudogravity. Moxon went left. Jason went right without comment. Between them, a projection ran the length of the nacelle. On very close examination, the edge glowed a dull red. Jason raised his head. Directly ahead was the tail of the ship, seemingly spinning of its own accord. If he twisted his neck, he could see Uranus, circling like the sun in time lapse. He shook his head and continued to crawl, his eyes on the matte white paint of the hull.

By the time Jason reached the end of the nacelle, Moxon was already twisting a wheel that controlled flow to the mixing tank. Jason moved on to the thruster. It was a meter and a half wide, and looked like the bottom half of a nesting doll. He shown a light on the nozzle. There were 6 concentric rings all told. He examined them for any damage or fault. There was nothing to see, nor had there been any reason to think he could see the cause of the problem. For the first time, Moxon spoke over the channel: “You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you, farm boy?”

Moxon took out a current meter, consisting of a simple probe, a gauge and a well-insulated handle. Jason saw that the gauge was illustrated with an early version of Sparky. The lowest was the squirrel smiling. The successive measures went from him grimacing in surprise, to sparks between his tufted ears, to his ears smoldering and eyes replaced with X’s. He touched the outermost ring, and the needle stayed at the lowest level. He tested the next ring, and another, with the same result. When he applied the probe to the fourth ring, however, the needle went straight to the highest level and then dropped back. Jason saw that the tip of the probe had melted.

Reaching in carefully, Jason and Moxon undid two of the bots that held the assembly in place. The rings came free, only to be halted by tethering filaments, exposing the circuits, sensors and valves beneath. Now, they could see with their own eyes a blocked valve and its cause, an overloaded insulator that had run like wax across the assembly. That was when the hull resonated with an impact that jolted Jason by sound alone. He looked up and beheld an object like a pill with tiny arms attached. It was Donald in his pod, anchored by a filament launched from a cluster of implements between the arms. Anastasia followed in a second pod, with a tapered shape and faceted surface that made Jason think of a geodesic peanut. She carried a replacement for the ring. “Thanks,” Donald said. “You found out what we could have told you from engineering. Now let’s see if you can actually help.

The repairs took 10 minutes. Jason and Moxon did help enough that it probably took no longer than it would have without them. “There’s going to be more sensor damage, but Alek already has Chopper working on that,” Donald said. “Get back inside.”

Jason made his way back along the handholds that lined the module. Now he could see the front of the ship, from the ovoid science module to the Pegasus moored at the front, and beyond it, the giant planet and its vertical ring. He looked to one side, and froze. Within his reach was a line that had cut across the central projection. For a moment, he was unsure if it was Moxon’s line or his own. A quick check confirmed that his own remained on the same side. He took a closer look, and saw that some combination of heat and friction had cut halfway through the line. He told himself that it would be something to tell the officer when they were both safely inside. Suddenly, the line began to twist and then grow taut. The worn section tore, until it was parted by three-fourths. He grabbed the line and reeled it in, until he gripped the intact length. When he finally looked up, he beheld Moxon reeling himself in, methodical rather than desperate.

 

There was time to finish their dinner before the evacuation bell sounded. Moxon joined them, in evidently good humor. Jason stared pensively at nothing in particular. When Alek tried to draw him out, they both knew he merely humored her. Anastasia finally carried Donald out. Alek followed, with one backward glance. That left Jason alone with Moxon.

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!!!

Part 12: The inevitable geography lesson!

Part 13: The wedding!!!

Part 14:  The spicy chapter!

Part 15: The bad guy backstory!

Part 16: The Dinner!

Part 17: The alternate history!

Part 18: The weapons exposition!

Part 19: The alternate history Captain America!