Fiction: Retro gaming parody novel publication announcement!

 

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

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

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

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!

Adaptation Insanity: The one where the scariest thing is Dan Aykroyd

 

 

Title: Twilight Zone The Movie

What Year?: 1983

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

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

 

As I write this, I’ve been continuing to think over what I want to do with my blog and writing in general. In the process, I recently found myself with a string of movies that could all have suited my purposes. These included a movie I had thought about for a very long time, which I decided was enough to kick off a feature I had considered before as a spinoff to my Super Movies feature. This will be a look at movies based on other properties, which as a further twist will focus on things besides books and comics. Our first entry for consideration will be a film so notorious it could literally be its own category. I present Twilight Zone: The Movie, and yeah, I know all about the backstory.

Our story begins with a driver and a friendly hitchhiker singing TV themes and talking about a certain famous series, until the encounter turns lethal. We then see an unfolding anthology that starts with a middle-aged racist who finds himself transported back in time as the minorities he hates. We then meet the denizens of a retirement home who regain their youth with a game of kick the can, only to discover a price that won’t be a clear downside. Things are looking up as we move on to a school teacher who is invited home by a quirky little boy who proves to be a godlike superhuman with a captive “family”. Finally, we meet a fussy intellectual on a plane who sees a mysterious creature sabotaging the engines, but can’t convince anyone else of the threat. It’s all kinds of pretty good, I guess- but can anything be scarier than Dan Aykroyd?

The Twilight Zone: The Movie was a 1983 dark fantasy/ horror anthology film released by Warner Bros, based on the TV series created by the late Rod Serling. The film was produced by John Landis (An American Werewolf In London) and Steven Spielberg (Duel, ET), who directed the first two segments, “Time Out” and “Kick The Can”. Additional segments based on the original TZ episodes “It’s A Good Life” and “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet” were directed by Joe Dante (InnerSpace, Gremlins 2) and George Miller respectively. Frequent TZ contributor Richard Matheson (see… Jaws 3?) received writing credits for 3 out of 4 sequences. The soundtrack was scored by Jerry Goldsmith (see Link, Deep Rising, etc, etc, etc), whose early work included the TZ episode “The Invaders”. The cast included Vic Morrow (see Message From Space... wait, my first review?), Kathleen Quinlan and John Lithgow (Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai), with Burgess Meredith (Batman, The Manitou) as the narrator and Dan Aykroyd as the Hitchhiker/ Monster in a prologue sequence. The film became notorious for an accident that resulted in the deaths of Morrow and two child extras. It was a moderate commercial success, earning $42 million against a $10M budget, but subsequently suffered from controversy and limited availability on home video. Among series fans and genre critics, it was poorly received except for Dante’s segment. As of early 2023, it is available for digital purchase and rental.

For my experiences, I will say right off the bat that my usual format and length was out the window from the start. As far as the present film, what really stands out in hindsight is that I literally had no awareness of it until at least the middling 1990s, and still didn't watch it until around 2017. The astonishing part of that is that I was an absolute TZ junkie virtually from the time I had regular access to television at all. I would watch the original series, I would watch the ‘80s revival, I would read the tie-in books, I would narrate episodes to innocent bystanders. All of which is just to say, for me to have known nothing about this film means somebody really screwed up. The most obvious reasons, I must also say at the outset, are ones I won’t go into. I have reviewed movies with body counts before (see Brainstorm, which still wasn’t as uncomfortable as Hardware), and the only thing that really works is to keep it out of the picture. In those terms, my diagnosis is that this was always on track to be sleek, expensive and completely forgettable, which is not what it deserves.

Moving forward, I really couldn’t avoid a paragraph on the opening segment(s). The prologue is, if anything, underrated, especially in light of Dan Aykroyd’s performance. At face value, the role isn’t even against type, yet the actor becomes subtly unsettling well before the end, enough to ponder what might have been if he had gone further into roles outside comedy. We then get the embarrassingly good modernization of the TZ opening, with Meredith swinging for the fences. Finally, we get to Morrow’s segment, which I feel I am committing heresy by endorsing probably the second strongest in the entire movie. We get a strong set-up through the introduction to a very unsympathetic character who (in arguable contrast to the antiheroes of “Judgment Night” or “Death’s Head Revisited”) is never so monstrous that he can’t be identified with people a viewer might meet. What follows is a reasonably satisfying series of vignettes that never needed any other ending than its chilling final sequence. The “problem” is that this never quite reaches the level of true irony, unless you count the jerk’s surprisingly plausible ability to stay alive as long as he does, and there really isn’t a lot that could have been done differently. To me, the one good option would be to put him through the slights and resentment even “model” minorities in “modern” society face, perhaps by a “body swap” with the individual he's really mad at, but then, that would require political subtlety in an ‘80s movie.

The other segment I had to write up on its own is “It’s A Good Life”, based on both the TZ episode and the short story by Jerome Bixby. This is the one segment that is at least as good as it’s usually made out to be. I would go so far as to make favorable comparisons to the original series episode (one of the ones I can remember retelling). The most intriguing part is that this “remake” is even bolder than The Thing in reconceiving the source material as well as its “classic” adaptation. (The short story is still far more horrific…) Here, the child god-demon is content to hold power over a single house, resulting in a claustrophobic focus and significant ambiguities that certainly “work”. It’s never clear if this version of the character is less powerful, less ambitious or simply mature enough to preserve a line of contact with the “real” world. His meeting with the protagonist teacher is similarly debatable. It makes sense that she would succeed in connecting where others have failed, but it’s very possible that the miserable captives we meet in the house thought the same at some point. As events proceed, the cinematography and effects convey a sense of unravelling reality as much as Anthony’s power, augmented by the prominent cartoons. The materialized creatures truly feel like toons brought to life, still not as unnerving as the on-screen monster that dispatches the “sister” sent into its domain. Of course, there are many things I considered for the “one scene”, which will be from here. My own favorite is the would-be magician’s reluctant rabbit-out-of-a-hat trick, followed by the deceptively drawn-out reveal of Anthony’s real sibling.

That still leaves two whole segments, including Spielberg’s contribution. That is quite justly Ground Zero for the hate this movie usually gets, to the point that I am hard-pressed to say anything save that yes, it is that bad. My only dissent is that I don’t buy the suggested narrative that he was thrown off by the legendary troubles of the production. On the contrary, I find it typical of the sentimental, allegedly kid-friendly material that he was either being saddled with or bringing on himself before Jurassic Park forced the “system” to take him seriously again. Then there is the finale, which tends to get a measure of goodwill that I have yet to muster. For me, Lithgow simply does not work in the role. I also have to say, I find the gremlin strangely ineffective. Much of the time, you really can’t see the damn thing, and when you can, its wonky design borders on comical rather than threatening (yes, even compared to the suit they put Nick Cravat in…). The only thing that his improved my opinion after several viewings is the surreal camerawork, which at its best achieves a “comic book” feel akin to Creepshow. I can put in an extra good word for John Dennis Johnston as the quite sympathetic pilot, who really comes close to being in the right even with the gremlin.

Now I still have the “one scene”, and I finally went with the opening of the best segment. The teacher comes into a diner, where Anthony is playing Tempest (see… Night of the Comet?). The proprietor behind the counter is none other than everyone’s favorite cameo actor, Dick Miller (Night of the Creeps, Terminator, etc). He’s as entertaining as ever with more meat than usual as he charms the lady, throwing out multiple franchise references in the process. Meanwhile, an adult male patron becomes disgruntled at interference on a TV screen. In a curious bit of foreshadowing, he accuses Anthony of causing the static. The situation only escalates when the proprietor dismisses him. Finally, the patron takes matters into his own hands. As often happens, what follows is less interesting than the buildup. Does this mean that the townspeople suspect that Anthony is different? If so, does this also mean that Anthony’s abilities are weakened or largely nullified away from the house? Either way, why hasn’t anyone come to look for people who must be missing? Perhaps his powers are still effective enough to make people disregard the matter, or perhaps that is where some of the captives came from. As usual, no more will be said about it, which just makes it more interesting.

In closing, I would usually be defending the rating. This is one where there is simply too much baggage for me to venture a rating. As a whole, it’s better than people have wanted to give it credit for. The downside is, there are also things that are actually worse. All in all, that’s a pretty accurate representation of the series it’s based on. You can take it or leave it, but it’s time we stopped ignoring it. With that, I can find a little peace.

Image credit The Legendary VHS (Tumblr).

No Good Very Bad Movies Special: The one with Slinky killbots

 

 

Title: The Super Inframan

What Year?: 1975

Classification: Prototype/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

As I write this, I’m approaching 2 and a half years of writing this blog, and reflecting depressingly on just how far my view counts have gone down. So, of course, I have planned out one last ride to clear out my backlog. For this feature in particular, I had one more thing that wasn’t fitting in anywhere else, a movie so legendarily weird that I hadn’t gotten around to watching it. I took a look, and I knew it always belonged here. I also knew that it was something that I needed to wait to watch until I was ready to review, because this is the kind of movie where the first impression is what matters. I present Super Inframan, a movie possibly as weird as House.

Our story begins with a bus load of kids apparently on their way to defeat the Red Army with sonic warfare when they are attacked by a mysterious pterodactyl creature. In the aftermath, we learn that it’s the work of a mysterious ancient queen named Dragon Mom who has only just made herself known to the modern world. The actual military with guns, tanks and attack aircraft are helpless against her hazy combination of magic and super-science, but a scientist who for once has the full backing of the government believes he can turn the tide by transforming a heroic volunteer into Inframan, a cyborg with whatever powers will barely defeat the latest wave of Dragon Mom’s biomechanoid goons. Meanwhile, the monarch has sent an infiltrator to destroy the mentor’s headquarters while her forces close in. Inframan keeps her at bay, but when the scientist and his daughter are kidnapped, it’s up to the superhero to take the fight to them. There’s no doubt of the outcome, but you will still have no idea what’s going on!

Super Inframan was a 1975 science fantasy film by the Shaw Brothers (see Mighty Peking Man, Meteor). The film was regarded as a knockoff of the Ultraman and Kamen Rider tokusatsu TV series. It has also been described as the first Chinese superhero film. Danny Lee was cast as the titular hero, with Terry Liu as Dragon Mom and Dana Shum as the minion She Demon. The film’s profile was improved by a favorable review from Roger Ebert, who stated, “When they stop making movies like Infra-Man, a little light will go out of the world.” The movie has remained popular as a cult film, receiving favorable reviews from James Rolfe and Brandon Tenold. It is currently available for digital rental and purchase from Google/ Youtube, but not on the Amazon US platform.

For my experiences, I heard of this one from Brandon’s Cult Movies, and was immediately interested. What has fascinated me is the multiple directions of evident influence. On one hand, it’s quite obvious that the Hong Kong auteurs were ripping off Japan. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that Japan more than repaid the debt, egregiously through the Super Sentai/ Power Rangers franchise. I have continued to wonder about its influence on movies I had reviewed: The Transformers animated movie; House, which I really did not like; and Everything Everywhere All At Once. I finally bought and watched the present a few days before this review, which I started and then stopped before coming back as I approached my usual 3-day limit. That was about the time I needed to digest this properly. What I find is that I still cannot quite make up my mind, and what truly vexes me is whether this was meant to be funny.

Moving forward, the counterintuitive thing about this film is that it is not actually random in the way that House and Everything Everywhere All At Once are. Sure, the visuals, the effects and the powers of the hero and villains look like they could have been conceived by placing nouns on a dart board. At its narrative core, however, this is deceptively linear. The story and stakes are clearly defined. The villains and other entities are introduced early. The authority figures are competent enough to help, and draw an equally measured effort by the villainess to remove them before they get further. The characters are genuinely developed into generally interesting ways. As a corollary, the film plays its influences and premises on something resembling a “straight” basis, which is even stranger to say considering the villainess and her utterly demented goons. The mutants and biomechanoids may be surreal apparitions brought to life with indifferent production values, yet they are quite consistently portrayed as legitimate threats to the hero and the world, with genuine personalities to boot. This shows especially in the finale fight with the queen and the slinky goons, who thoroughly pummel the hero.

If there’s a con, it’s a shared feature of very weird Asian cinema: This rides a razor edge between inspired and simply exhausting. This is where the seeming seriousness of the material comes closest to being a defect. There are moments where the somber tone is welcome, especially in light of the kiddie fare that the tokusatsu/ kaiju genres were already devolving into. There are others where having a good laugh is your only shot at getting through this damn thing in good spirits and with some vestige of your sanity. Again, this is especially evident with the villains, particularly Dragon Mom herself, whose bizarre regenerative powers have regularly been discounted as comical. The highest toll, however, is for the good guys. This is set up as a superhero plot with real stakes and genuine weight, and it holds up for a while. By the professor’s solemn warnings, Inframan himself can only gain his powers at the price of terrible pain and an uncertain future, a problem we can easily believe after seeing the transformation. After a while, however, it becomes clear that the toll is never going to come, at least in any way that figures in the story. Thus, the most compelling element of the story becomes a bait and switch.

That brings me to the “one scene”, and I went through a new viewing to get back to it. Around the 40-minute mark, Inframan and a squad of enthusiastic agents chase after a double agent sent by Dragon Mom. A fight between the good guys and minions is in full swing when a newcomer appears. We get our first look in a distance shot of a desolate quarry. The figure stands at the top of the rock face, its face hidden by some kind of mane, and announces itself with a truly unnerving laugh before literally leaping into action. It quickly proves to be one of the most formidable antagonists out of the entire rogues’ gallery, trading blows and laser beams with Inframan until the hero finally dives into the water of the dodgy mill pond. The creature continues to fire away, drawing a blast like a depth charge with each shot, of course laughing all the while. What stood out on second viewing is that it finally stops and looks for any sign of the hero, dead or alive. As it peers into the water, it makes a sound quite different from the laugh or whatever it is, almost like a cat’s meowing. Naturally, that’s when Inframan counterattacks. It’s a well-choreographed scene that works far better than it should, in no small part because the film actually conveys a real sense of danger.

In closing, I come to the rating. What I suppose might seem odd is that I didn’t simply give this one the Unrated ranking, as I did Everything Everywhere All At Once and House before it. I certainly considered that very strongly, before and after actually watching it. I suppose the difference is that the other films were very much exceptions to my usual rules. By comparison, this one is exactly the kind of movie I would normally view and review. Within my admittedly skewed framework, I can understand what they were trying to do. In those terms, it’s not great, and was presumably never intended to be. It is good, hallucinogenically weird fun, and its light truly deserves to burn for a long time. With that, I can once again call it a day.

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, part 8!

 

It's the last day to do a third off-week post, so of course, it's more Space Guys! This will already contradict both numbers and specs I posted before, but I'm not bothering to change anything here. This is actually going through about all I have except notes and vignettes. As usual, a table of contents is at the end.

A day later, the time arrived for the launch of the Janus. Alek was called back to the Pegasus cockpit to assist, which earned Jason an invitation to accompany her. By apparent happenstance, the other two seats were occupied by women, Dr. Cahill and Tanya Plotnikov. Also present were Captain Raeder and a journalist named Lin, both seated in an observation lounge at the rear of the cockpit. Jason was vaguely unsettled to hear the women making small talk. It was Tanya who spoke first. “How is Harry?” she asked.

“He is doing fine,” Cahill answered. “He’s still teaching. We’ve been talking about early retirement.”

“And Jonathan? I heard he graduated.” The tone of their voices was already giving Jason a picture of two villains from Jax’s comic books discussing their mutually exclusive plans for world domination.

“Yes, he’s going to Stanford now,” Cahill answered. That jarred Jason. “How is Pyotor?”

“We are separated,” Tanya said. “It’s been a little while now. We haven’t told many people. We stay in touch. He has a post in Astana...”

As the chilly banter continued, the captain spoke to the reporter, a woman from Edo. “Our mission projections call for us to exit Mars orbit at 36,000 kilometers per hour, twice our holding orbital velocity,” he said. A flatpanel screen showed a widening spiral outward from Mars, through the treacherous orbits of its moons. “That will be assisted by drop tanks and several boosters that will be left for orbital retrieval. Once we pass Phobos, we will activate our secondary hydrogen thrusters. That will push the ship past Deimos at 42,000 kph, a little under 10% of our intended mission velocity. Of course, we will need to miss Phobos.”

“Of course,” Alek said. “Hitting a moon would be bad. Even little one like Phobos.”

“Yeah, Phobos always makes me nervous,” Jason said. Turning his head, he could see the moon emerging from behind Mars. In mere hours, it would circle back around the planet. He looked back to a news feed in progress. It mostly consisted of views of the ship from outside. It was by now almost covered in fuel tanks. On top of that, a number of boosters had been attached, each 45 meters long, to the ends of the pylons where the shuttles docked, to the tail, to the outside of the now-stationary life support ring, and even to the wings of the Pegasus.

The journalist turned to him. “Jason Freeman,” she said. “You’re one of the boys from Mars, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. He added defensively, “I’m 23.”

She turned her camera toward Alek. “And this is Aleksandra Kapek. Is it true the two of you were just married?”

“No,” Alek said. “We knew each other before, then we got back together. I tell him, I’m waiting for him to put a ring on it.”

Jason’s face flushed, and he turned his head away. Before the journalist could ask another question, the first of many reports came from engineering. “The fusion reactor is online,” the chief engineer Potts reported. “All turbines are at 80%, 95, 100.”

Moxon arrived in person to give his report. “The life support ring is fully evacuated,” he said. “I did a last check for any unsecured possessions. If any of you left something I missed, you’re cleaning it up.”

They heard next from old Yuri, stationed in an even tinier control room beneath the 10 meter dish at the front of the fuselage. “The directional array is locked with Olympus Mons,” he said. “We have a full telemetry feed. We’re also getting something extra, a feed of a news cast in progress.” Sure enough, one of the screens showed another pretty reporter in zero gravity, narrating alternating shots of the Janus from various manned and unmanned observation craft. The view shifted to the rear of the ship.

Finally, Alek spoke up. “The plasma thrusters are fully charged,” she said. She took Jason’s hand. “Bringing the hydrogen thrusters online. Starting launch sequence… let’s say, oh, 2 out of 4 primary thrusters per nacelle, AX factor at 25/75, plus 1^st-stage particulate boosters…”

The cameras showed the engine nacelles flaring to life. They looked like the dots of a set of dice all turned on one edge, shining a vibrant blue-white. The boosters in the tail also flared to life, a brighter orange color like open flame. From outside, it was dramatic. From inside, it felt like little more than a mild jolt, albeit accompanied by the returning gravity. “AX, is that argon/ xenon?” the reporter asked, clearly a question for viewers rather than herself.

Alek shook her head. “Nobody have no xenon,” she said with uncharacteristically blunt inflection. “There was no enough, anywhere. 100 cubic meters would cost more than a kilogram of gold, if demand were the same. The X is really for, who knows what is it?”

“Yes,” said the captain. “Unfortunately, we could not obtain the projected supply of xenon. Dr. Capek is right, it is quite rare for a gas. It was necessary to augment the supply with other inert gases, mainly krypton. We hope to obtain more when we refuel at Jupiter…”

“Then how does argon compare?” the reporter asked.

“Everything is better than argon,” Alek said. “Argon is kaka. But it is cheap kaka, plus Mars has maybe even more of it than Gaia. Activating 2^nd-sequence boosters. Going to 4 out of 4 thrusters per nacelle, adjusting AX to 35/65…”

“It’s her pre-programmed sequence, you know,” Tanya said to Jason. “She’s just talking.”

“Yes, of course he knows that,” Alek said. “But it’s fun, no?”

The boosters on the life-support ring ignited. Simultaneously, two more dots flared to life on each nacelle. The force became a steady push. Spent boosters began to fall away. The news feed showed that the flotilla of observation craft were either being left behind or overshooting the ship. Jason looked at the sensors and frowned. “We have to get the observation craft back, or one of them is going to go up our tail pipe,” he said. Even as he spoke, a feed from one observation satellite was cut off as it was wiped out by a collision with a booster. The others pulled back of their own accord. 

“Are we slower than the satellites?” the reporter asked, evidently confused.

“You are thinking wrong,” Alek said. “Speed does not matter in space. In space, you have to go faster than any person on Gaia ever has or ever will just to keep from falling down nearest gravity well. Space travel is about acceleration. When it come to that, Janus is, how you say, clonker. Americans talk about cars that go 0 to 60 in 6 seconds. If we started standing still with primary thrusters only, we would go 0 to 60 in 600 seconds. But a car does not mass 20 thousand tons, and it does not carry 5 times its weight in fuel. Give us a few hours, we would be coming up behind them again by the time they saw us go.”

“It’s Hercules and the Hind,” Jason said. The others looked at him in confusion. “It’s an old myth. See, Hercules was sent to capture a magic deer called the Golden Hind. But it turned out that every time he was about to catch it, it went just half the distance there was between them in the first place. So he got closer and closer, until it was just a hand’s breadth away, but he still couldn’t catch it… What, don’t they still tell stories about Hercules on Gaia?”

Moxon frowned. “That’s not how the story of the Golden Hind goes,” he said. “It’s Achilles and the Tortoise. It’s from Zeno. It wasn’t really a myth, it’s a puzzle.”

Alek patted Jason’s hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I like the way Martians tell stories. Here comes Phobos…”

Up ahead, Phobos drifted ominously toward the center of the canopy. The low-orbiting moon seemed directly ahead, but Alek’s screen showed that they would miss it by over 100 kilometers. Its orbit was fast enough that it was sliding off-center. As they passed, there was a sensation of banking. In fact, the close approach was just enough to turn them a few crucial degrees. “Bringing secondary thrusters online, AX holding at 40/60…” One more dot appeared in the center of each nacelle. A single light flared at the rear of each of the living modules. The moon passed and then receded. The news feed showed a distance shot from a ground-based camera as the ship went by. Alek pulled Jason in for a kiss. “Now for the fun part… firing 3^rd-stage boosters and hydrogen thrusters.”

The feed from Phobos showed the flash as the thrusters in the tail ignited. The boosters on either side of the Pegasus ignited with a thrumming that shook the fuselage. For Jason, it felt like having a barbell resting on his chest. The burn went on for 5 minutes, 10, then 15. By then, the force was lessening. “Levelling off to AX 60/40,” Alek said. Beside her, Tanya was drumming her fingers in boredom.

“That was about half our liquid hydrogen reserves, by the way,” the Federation officer said. “Also 25% of our xenon, or whatever they filled the X tanks with. And we’re still only going about 10% of our optimum velocity, including what we already had parked in orbit.”

“What happens now?” the reporter asked.

“We continue at flank acceleration for 8 days,” Raeder said. “When we reach 40% of optimum mission velocity, we will hold until we reach Jupiter, about 6 months into the trip. It’s really the fastest we can go and still receive logistical support from other ships. Once we pass the Jovian system, however, that will be moot. We will not pass within range of Titan Base until our return trip. Beyond the Saturnian system, there will be no other ships nor any base they could operate from. After we refuel, we will accelerate to optimum velocity for the remainder of the mission, which will be 14 months including deceleration time.”

“We’re in for the long haul,” Alek said. She squeezed Jason’s hand. “But we’ll be together, no?”

“You bet,” he said.

 

In the aftermath, the crew and complement moved into the spindly forward fuselage, referred to as the Mission Fuselage. The main quarters was a cluster of hexagonal modules that had been the domain of the pilots. Here, the central spindle joined with two on either side, joined by disorienting junctions that went to modules above and below before proceeding to the main shuttle bays. On the lower port section, the pilots held a riotous celebration. Raeder was there, leading the Malays and Tanaka the Edonian in a folk song. He was clearly turning a blind eye to Anastasia, who perched with Jackie and Vasily on either arm. Two American officers, Yates and Smith, sang mutually hostile arrangements of Dixie and the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Cahill was doing pirouettes in the near-freefall, while Donald demonstrated a pinball cabinet he had modified with magnets to simulate gravity.

In the midst of it, Jason stretched out on a bunk/ couch with Alek in his lap, his back held against a bulkhead by the ship’s miniscule G-forces. As often happened in private and public, her request to “make love” amounted to caressing her while she scribbled away in her notebook. When Vasily tried to make a joke of it, she said without looking up, “Oh, he is very good. I do math much better when he is making love to me.”

It was Jax who ventured to ask, “What do you do with the pencil?”

She paused at that. “Once, I stab him,” she said. “He was very, very good that time. He even finish before we went to Dr. Cahill. Since then, I keep between my teeth.” She proudly and happily held up the pencil, showing a number of teeth marks.

The others looked to Cahill, by then seated with Jax. “It would be confidential,” she said, “but yes, it happened.”

Suddenly, Alek called out excitedly, “Oh, here is Mehmet! Come, over here!” She waved to a new arrival, a usually reserved officer from Iran who had entered with Tanya. While she talked with or leastways at him, Jason made his way to Harrison. “Listen,” he said after a few pleasantries, “what do you know about them?” He pointed to Dr. Cahill and then to Tanya.

Harrison smiled and nodded. “Well, there’s not a lot to say about Lana,” he said. “Leastways, not much anyone really knows that she wouldn’t tell you herself. She has a husband back on Gaia, and a son, not much younger than you. There was talk whether her man was the marrying kind, or the kind who would give her a son the regular way. Nobody really knows anything.”

He looked to Tanya, who was already scowling at Cahill. It was not Harrison but Moxon who spoke, seemingly materialized already smiling. “Now, that is a good story,” he said. “Tell him, Harry, you always do it well.” Harrison just smiled as the officer took a seat. Jason had seen the same reaction from Alek, and moderated his feelings about the man accordingly. It made him think of a film he had seen of a lion walking through a herd of elephants. It was as if whatever darkness he sensed in Moxon could not touch what was good and bright in them, so he was content to dwell among them.

Harrison nodded. “So, by age 25, she had done a tour with the Navy,” he said. “She still had time to get doctorates in mathematics and linguistics… the perfect credentials for a codebreaker. She was a crack shot, too. She was headed straight for the top. I’ve met people who knew her then. Two of them said it was her idea to meet her opposite number.”

“Oh,” Jason said. “I think I’ve heard this… That was her?”

“Well, you’re ahead of me, but I’d guess yes,” Harrison said. “She went to a lecture by the Federation’s youngest analyst. He had credentials, he had experience, and he was handsome. Of course, she looked pretty good herself.” Jason looked back at Tanya. As he watched, she ran one hand through her hair and rested the other on her hip. She still looked good. “They met after. He asked her out to dinner. They started going steady. Nobody really cared, yet.”

Moxon nodded. “I met them back then,” he said. “The higher-ups thought she could turn him.”

“So, they got set to get married,” Harrison continued. “Maybe it was love, maybe he just knew how to push her buttons. Nobody was worried, yet. What they didn’t count on was, she had flipped for real. She started giving speeches in support of materialist socialism. She criticized Union leaders. She sent out letters with the names of scientists and academics who were working for military intelligence. Then she went to the Federation’s State network with a laundry list of the Union’s dirtiest secrets. That was when she defected, all the way. She brought them everything. Everything she had given us, everything she had learned about them, and everything else she had learned along the way. If we had been at war, she could have won it for the Federation single-handed.”

“Okay,” Jason said. “Then how did she end up here? Sure, it’s prestigious, but it’s not a job that top brass would jockey for.”

Harrison shrugged. “They gave her one promotion after another, for a while,” he said. “She preferred to stay close to her man. Ah, she also had five kids. That would have slowed her down. After a while, the promotions turned into desk jobs.”

Moxon smiled. “I’ll tell you what really happened,” he said. “She never thought long-term. She gave her new bosses everything up front. The thing was, we already knew what she knew. More than that, we knew a lot more than she thought about her methods, not to mention her weaknesses. She got herself to the top… but she had nowhere to go.”

“Yeah,” Harrison said. “It was really worse than that. She burned all her bridges on the way out. Not just with the Union, but with her colleagues, her friends and her family…”

“What it comes down to is, the Federation is all she has left,” Moxon said. “She’s the one person they know will stay loyal if push ever came to shove. It’s not that she wouldn’t betray them; she can’t.” Even as he spoke, he departed with a chuckle.

“Hey farmboy!” Anastasia called out. By then, she was playing on Donald’s machine. “I just set the high score!” Abruptly, she kissed Don on the lips.

Jason’s gaze was back on Alek. “What about her?” he said. “All the times we’ve talked, she’s never said anything about politics.”

Harrison smiled, his expression as innocent as Moxon’s was knowing. “I met her a while back,” he said. “I suppose you could say we’re old friends. What I can tell you is, people think she doesn’t talk politics because she doesn’t know what’s going on, or care. They’re wrong. She could tell you more than you would ever want to know… but she would rather have her math. Be glad for that. It’s why she’s as happy as she is. Be glad for it.”

He pointed back to Tanya. “People like her are the ones who care about politics,” he said. “Territory, wealth, armies, control. It always comes down to control. That’s where it got her. Do you think she’s happy with where it got her? But I’d wager she would still give up everything for her man. So if you have a good thing, hold on.”

That night, as much as it could be called night, Alek openly slept in Jason’s bed for the first time, though they were clothed in their outer garments and in full view of eight others including Anastasia and the Malays. He continued to touch her long after she was asleep, drawing the occasional half-intelligible murmur. When he finally followed her into slumber, he dreamed of hiking the Hellas Rim, of course with her. In the dream, they walked hand in bare, warm hand, which even his dreaming self told him was preposterously impossible. When they reached the top, they looked across the land. In the far, far distance, they saw a strange obelisk, surely at least half a kilometer high, as tiny and slender as a needle with distance. Alek pointed and started to say something. That was when he awoke again, in dark near-weightlessness. He sighed and kissed the base of her skull. Soon enough, he was asleep again.

 

In the darkness, Moxon smiled.

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!

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one with Terry Thomas and a killer rope

 

 

Title: The Vault of Horror

What Year?: 1973

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Mashup

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m preceding with my plans for a Halloween lineup, and I’ve been debating what to do with this feature in particular. It should be clear from the title as well as the preceding entries that I was inspired by movies that are all kinds of not great. It would be easy to fill out the lineup with actual “bad” movies, even after the dumpster dives I already did for No Good Very Bad Movies. As I keep ranting, however, making fun of bad movies has never been what I do. It also happens that the title itself is a reference to a movie that I have already held up as very, very good, so it is only natural that I should finally review it here. I present The Vault of Horror, a comic book sequel that improves on the original, and that was already pretty good.

Our story begins with a view of the London cityscape, set to egregiously dramatic music. We then find several dapper gentlemen who find themselves stuck on an elevator that leaves them in a subbasement where nobody seems to be around, though they still have no qualms about eating from a plate of cheese. The men began to tell their dreams and visions, leading into a series of tales of murder, mayhem and revenge. There is an heir who goes to the wrong restraint after murdering his sibling; an obsessive-compulsive who drives his young(er) wife over the brink; and a magician who will go to any lengths to obtain the secret of an Indian mystic’s rope trick. That is followed up with an insurance scheme that collides with a pair of graverobbers. Finally, we get a zesty tale of voodoo where a painter uses a curse against the patrons who wronged him. But when all the tales are told, they must still find out where they really are!

The Vault of Horror was a 1973 anthology horror/ fantasy film by Amicus (see The People That Time Forgot), produced as a sequel to Tales From The Crypt released the previous year. The film was based on stories from the EC comics Tales From The Crypt and Shock SuspenStories, but none from the Vault of Horror comic, which had been the source of a segment in the original film. The film was directed by Roy Ward Baker, known for A Night To Remember, replacing Freddy Francis. The cast included Terry Thomas of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Mary Poppins’ Glynnis Johns as the dysfunctional Mr. and Mrs. Critchit, Kurt Jurgens as the magician, Tom Baker as the vengeful painter and real-life siblings Daniel and Anna Massey as the estranged brother and sister of the opening segment. Two different versions were released, one rated R on US release and the other PG; the latter version became more controversial. The film was poorly received by contemporary reviewers, many of whom already viewed the original film unfavorably, but became reasonably popular with genre fans and critics. Both cuts of the film have been released on disc, most significantly a 2014 Shout release containing both versions and Tales From The Crypt. As of 2022, it is not available for digital purchase or rental in the United States.

For my experiences, I already covered a good deal of this when I reviewed Tales From The Crypt, which I have started to think I was a little too hard on. In that review, I raised the question which film is better. What has interested me most, however, is the very disparate status of the two films. The original movie has remained an undisputed “classic” that even critical reviewers take seriously. The second film, in contrast, has remained lesser-known, bordering on obscure, to the point that I myself can’t recall knowing of it until both films came out together in a combo pack. Once I did watch it, I found this to be the most unaccountable and certainly unfair thing about it, because whether or not you favor it over the original, the present film is just as worthy of attention.

Moving forward, I’m starting with the best, which is the second segment with Thomas and  Johns. This gets my pick for the best piece of either movie (perhaps equal with “Blind Alleys”), admittedly in no small part for hitting very close to home for me as an autism-spectrum self-advocate. It’s a poignant and surprisingly nuanced tale of two flawed characters who in no way deserve their fates yet cannot avert the inevitable. Everything else speaks for itself, especially the performances of the leads. There’s a perfectly good follow-up in the middle act. At face value, it’s a predictable old-style morality play with what is in cold blood one of the most ludicrous monsters on record. The real horror is in the details, starting with Jurgens’ ruthless character and his equally cold-blooded partner (played by TV stalwart Dawn Addams). There’s disturbing subtlety in the seemingly spontaneous unfolding of their plan, which neither of them really has to argue or explain to the other. The quite obvious consequences add a certain note of hubris; as the anti-hero learns too late, newfound belief is not the same as respect. Any and all further objections are overridden by the vengeful magic rope. (Just saying that should tell the innocent bystander what I’m dealing with here…) None of the effects in this little franchise were particularly good even for their own time, and this is definitely not the best, but for malign personality in a nominally inanimate object, this is right up there with the truck in Duel.

Oof course, it will already by obvious that not all the segments are this good. It doesn’t help that the first story is the one I have long considered the worst. I came out with a somewhat better impression of it in the viewing for this review. At least there is style and ingenuity as the especially foul murderer finds himself in a restaurant full of the undead, culminating in a justly publicized tableau as his would-be victim appears. I still can’t reach a better opinion of the penultimate segment, a contrived variation of the buried-alive tale that should have been laid to rest (pun unavoidable) by the preceding film’s realistic depiction of embalming as a plot point. It might sink the whole movie if not for the finale, not nearly as strong as the original’s, but still a lively tale greatly improved by Tom Baker’s incredibly low-pitched voice. (See, of all things, my Golden Voyage of Sinbad collectibles post.) One more thing I can’t pass over is the theme music, I’m sure created as a mashup of “Night On Bald Mountain” and “Dies Irae” (see… Chopper Chicks in Zombietown???). It could easily be counted as ludicrous, particularly against the sunny city scenes; by further comparison, the absolutely awful “Toccata” track of the original film (yes, you can make Bach sound bad) at least fit the somber Gothic scenery. Still, there is effort here that pays off with real effect then and now, which is more than can be said for the “trendy” synthesizer scores that would multiply as the decade progressed.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with one that I didn’t quite fit into my comments above. In the midst of the final segment, Baker as the exiled artist finds his way to a witch doctor. It begins with a dark hut, and the inevitable drumming that doesn’t actually seem to come from on-screen. When we get a look at the shaman, he is decidedly more like a westernized extra than an authentic practitioner, which in context actually works pretty well. In keeping with this modern aesthetic, both parties get right to their business without trying to impress each other. When questioned about his purpose, the artist simply says, “Revenge.” With some reluctance, he goes through with the quite simple ritual, by now accompanied by a genuinely eerie flute. At the end, he asks with a hint of mockery if the witch doctor will give him a doll to stick pins in. He answers as if stating the obvious, “You are artist, you don’t need doll.” It’s a scene that could embody the whole style of both films: Outwardly atmospheric, inwardly economical, and entirely effective.

In closing, I come back to which film is “better”. At this point, I am ready to admit that I could go back and forth simply based on mood. The real lesson to be drawn from that is that this film and Tales From The Crypt are far more different than they might appear in description or even casual viewing. The first film was closest to the comics, a fact which is self-evident even to those like me with only a general knowledge of the period and genre. As such, it was more colorful, more action-driven, more open with its humor and in many lights more “fun” overall. This film went back and dug deeper, down to the more serious and “adult” bedrock that was there all along. To me, that makes it the more successful and innovative of the two when all other allowances are made. The real bottom line is, there is no “bad” choice here; the only thing that’s overdue is for more people to give them both a chance. That’s enough for me to bring this to an end for another day.