Featured Creature: The one that's the best giant spider movie

 

Title: Eight Legged Freaks

What Year?: 2002

Classification: Parody/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, it’s the second week of the month of Halloween, which is when I’m usually in high gear plowing through anything and everything monster/ zombie/ horror related. This time around, I’m still recovering from some big changes, and I have been debating whether to take it easy. I decided I owed it to myself to try to fill out the lineup with at least a few posts every week. I also got off to a head start watching a movie I have meant to get to for a while. For this feature in particular, there was one that was always going to be here. I present Eight Legged Freaks, the best 1990s monster movie that technically didn’t come out in the Nineties.

Our story begins with a ranting conspiracist who occasionally makes sense, introducing a story that we are apparently expected to take at face value. We then meet our cast, who will have less to do with him than anyone else: A drifter returning to a dying Arizona town; the lady sheriff and her geeky son and spunky teen daughter; the token corrupt mayor; and an exotic pets breeder with a collection of spiders. While the drifter and the sheriff play will-they-won’t-they, a toxic waste spill spreads through the ecosystem, causing a proliferation of enlarged crickets. (Wait, why did we never get a killer-cricket movie?) When the spider enthusiast feeds the crickets to his spiders, the rapidly enlarging arachnids promptly lunch him and spread through the town. Soon, the spiders have grown to low-end kaiju sizes, still able to climb, run and even leap. As the arachnids go into full rampage, the sheriff and the drifter must rally the townspeople at an outlet mall. But the deadliest of the creatures is already lurking right beneath their feet!

Eight Legged Freaks was a 2002 science fiction/ horror comedy directed by New Zealand filmmaker Ellory Elkayem from a script cowritten with Jesse Alexander, based on Elkayem’s short film “Larger Than Life”. The film starred David Arquette and Kari Wuhrer as the drifter and sheriff, with Scarlett Johannson (see Jojo Rabbit), 17 at the time of the film’s release, as the teenager. Other cast included comedian Doug E. Doug as the conspiracy theorist Griffith, Leon Rippy (see… Maximum Overdrive?) as the mayor and Tom Noonan of Robocop 2 as the spider breeder. The score was composed by John Ottman, also known for 2013’s Jack The Giant Killer and several films in the X-Men franchise, with a song “Itsy Bitsy Spider” sung by Joey Deluxe in the final credits. The film was shot mainly in Glendale and other locations in Arizona. Footage from the famous 1950s monster movie Them! is played during the film. The finished film was distributed by Warner Bros. It was a possible commercial failure, earning $45 million against a $30M budget. It received comparatively favorable reviews, including a positive one from Roger Ebert, and gained in popularity on home video and streaming.

For my experiences, this is a prime example of a film that people would probably have expected to make a lot more of an impression than it did. I saw what I now know to be the end of the film on TV (and dear Logos, the song…), and rented it somewhere around 2005 after hearing favorable comments about it from a friend. I don’t recall if I looked it up again until I bought a tape during the great wave of video store liquidations. With more leisurely viewing, I came to appreciate it far more, above all as a showcase of the very best 1990s-early 2000s CGI monster effects. As for the movie itself, it is a pretty good film that just about makes it to actual greatness.

Moving forward, the central reality is that this is a polished film that encompasses what is both good and bad in that description. The cast and acting, in particular, clearly represents far too much money and talent not to be satisfactory. The story and dialogue are likewise too solid to fail, without ever quite delivering the outright subversion that it hints at. Even the effects are, on a certain level, successful simply because nobody was trendy enough to mess with what had actually worked in the preceding decade: The creatures look like actual, functioning organisms; the action sequences are linear and coherent; and there’s enough goddamn light to see what the Hell is going on. What pulls things up are the peripheral skirmishes in the apocalyptic onslaught. It is here that things get genuinely unpredictable. Likeable characters can die where villains live. All the more impressively, at least one character set up for nothing better than a telegraphed self-sacrifice actually pulls through. The proceedings are greatly helped by the music, which perfectly fits the intended mood; it may be cliches, but they are livened by a sense of mischief.

Then there are the spiders, and this is where people might be surprised by what I find good, bad or unobjectionable. To start with, many/ most of the spiders look to be about the same mass as a human, which I am willing to grant as within the bare minimum of plausibility. (How could I not plug the Evil Possum Vs Eurypterids?) Further credit is due that the much larger spiders seen later do not replace their more compact counterparts, or make them less threatening. The tarantula that is the biggest we see serves as nothing more or less than a battering ram for the others, while the end-boss queen owes her menace first and foremost to her mastery of her own hostile environment. The biggest hole in the biology is that the film unquestioningly copies the cliche of spiders gathering in swarms (see also, of all things, The Beyond), which in reality makes about as much sense as using feral cats to run the Iditarod. Even then, there is at least a sense of a hierarchy that might or might not be sustained under other circumstances, as witnessed by one hapless specimen that the tarantula seemingly stomps be accident. Meanwhile, any further objections are easily overruled by the surreal high point of the jumping spiders, who are neither mutually hostile nor coordinated but simply focused on the chase as they each leap after a suitable prey.

Now for the “one scene”, in all the wealth of material (honorable mention has to go to the conspiracist mentioning L. Ron Hubbard), I’m going to go with a deleted scene that I know well from my old tape. In the final act, we find the main characters underground in a mine that the drifter keeps reminding them is full of explosive gas. There’s a distant scream (one more thing I was meaning to rant about on the biology), and then a swarm of tiny spiders rush in that I swear I remember seeing in here somewhere. (I now suspect that effects shots were interchanged with an earlier gross-out sequence that undeservedly made the final cut.) Alas, in the version of the scene I could find, we see literally nothing even as the cast react quite convincingly. After they draw back, the leads start stomping. Then the jerkiest of several jerk teenagers steps forward and begins squashing in bulk. He remarks that these are much less intimidating than the ones we and they have already seen. The geek abruptly warns them to stop, and when questioned, says succinctly, “They’re babies.” Then the scream is repeated, and he adds the hypothesis that it is the mother. And my whole point in including it here is that this is just the stuff they cut out of this one.

Now I come to the rating, and this is one where I kind of changed my mind. My plan going in was to give this one no more or less than 3 out of 4, and that is probably about what it would deserve entirely on its own merits. But further viewing convinced me that this is a movie better than the sum of its parts. The decisive consideration was that this is indeed a comedy, and as such subject to hits and misses that can come down to simple taste. Yet, with due allowances, it lives up to the tradition of Dark Star and Galaxy Quest as a parody that is at least as good as many “straight” examples of the genre it is supposed to be making fun of. On a sadder note, it also proved to be one of the last gasps of an era that reinvented the monster movie without leaving the Hollywood “mainstream” any wiser about how to make a good one. This is one time where “good enough” is more than enough. “…Okay, he did all right…”

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Return to the wild!

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's all for now, more to come!

Robot Revolution: The one where the robot stomps Mexico

 

 

Title: Kronos

What Year?: 1957

Classification: Prototype/ Mashup

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

With this review, I’m back for more robot mayhem. After sacrilegiously starting with a movie still in theaters, I decided it was time to go the other way and look at an entry earlier than my usual 1970s-‘80s timeframe. That presented me with a wealth of material, but also some strange blind spots, especially when it came to the “killer robot” theme. That brought me to one particular film that has all the hallmarks that would usually draw my attention: Obscure, strange, difficult to classify and as it happens, quite good. I present Kronos, the definitive killer robot film of the B-movie era that very few seem to have actually heard of.

Our story begins with a mysterious object descending to Earth, observed by two scientists. When the object lands in Mexico, the proper authorities send them to investigate, unaware that one of them has been possessed by the energies of the strange object. Our hero, the younger and handsomer doctor Leslie Gaskell, goes south of the border with his spunky lady friend and a couple assistants who do the actual work. They discover a Godzilla-sized robot that is disconcertingly uninterested in the usual death and destruction. Instead, it mostly sits there, ignoring any attack and occasionally and incidentally flattening small swaths of civilization when it lurches from place to place.  In fact, it is a probe sent by an unknown civilization to absorb Earth’s energy supply by passive accumulation. To stop it, the doctor and his love interest must overcome the robot and the enemy within. But the Earth may already be doomed when the military feeds the enemy with an atomic bomb!

Kronos was a 1957 film by German director Kurt Neumann, produced by Regal Films, a company affiliated with B-movie produce Robert Lippert. The film’s story was credited to Irving Block, who also contributed to the film’s visual effects. Filming was reportedly completed within 3 weeks in early 1957. The film starred B-movie regular Jeff Morrow as Dr. Gaskell and Barbara Lawrence as the love interest Vera, with John Emery as the double agent Dr. Culver. The film received favorable reviews from contemporary critics as a superior low-budget science fiction film, and gained a following as one of the best genre films of the 1950s. Neumann followed the film with The Fly, released shortly before his death in 1958.

For the broader context, what really intrigued me going into this review was the counterintuitive role of the robot in 1950s science fiction films. On consideration, the subject of robotics and AI at this time offer an unusual case of cinema matching or even getting ahead of printed genre works. By the mid-‘50s, rebellious or purposefully warlike robots were no longer the rule or even necessarily a “norm”. In their place came the likes of Robby the Robot, who was if not entirely non-threatening at least clearly devoted to serving and defending his owners. The downside to this was that these robots usually got no further than supporting cast in their own stories. Like the zombie of the previous decades (see I Walked With A Zombie and for that matter my Revenant Review ebook), the robot was literally subordinate to its master/ creator, rarely if ever granted autonomy or motivation beyond killing the villain for the hero’s convenience. With all that in mind, the present film stood out very strongly, and as I have been saying, it had already been on my radar as an exceptionally good film for its own or any other time.

Moving forward, the obvious points to get out of the way all come down to the fact that this is a “formulaic” film that shows why the formula worked in the first place. Everything here is what you would expect to find, done anywhere between average and unusually good: The stoic/ generic authority-figure hero; the technobabble; the plans that either succeed immediately or fail never to be tried again; and the love interest who gets into just enough trouble to need rescuing. It is in the lady where the film comes closest to finding its own path. Sure, she doesn’t do much beyond setting up a confrontation between the hero and the possessed traitor. (Sorry, the statute of limitations on spoiler warnings expires at 50 years…) Still, there’s certainly no overt condescension in how she is treated or portrayed. If it comes to that, she does get through most of the film without falling into any more or less peril than the rest of the cast. Most intriguingly, the romance arc does show her willing and able to say what she wants, which I will get back to.

Meanwhile, what certainly is unique is the utterly implacable “monster”. Whether classified as bot, alien invader or kaiju, this antagonist earns its place in the highest ranks of B-movie creations. On paper, it’s so non-threatening that a case can be made that it would go away if simply left alone (intriguing enough in itself). When the giant is on-screen, however, any objections become moot. This truly looks as huge and menacing as it is meant to be. That it tends to ignore humanity quickly becomes unnerving in its own right, with a further note of indignity often missing in more conventional alien invasion spectacles. When the damn thing does move, there is no doubt that it is truly unstoppable. What gets the bonus is a slowly revealed cunning, which builds to a real payoff when it turns the usual nuclear counterattack to its own advantage. The movie never really resolves if this is by its own intelligence or the direction of its unseen masters. The difference from the usual subordinate killbot is that there are no easy or certain answers, only the blank wall of the unknown and unknowable. Of course, one more honorable mention is in order for the double agent, every bit as inscrutable as his master.

That leaves the “one scene”, and there was one I was definitely going to come back to. A little past the 30-minute mark, we find the hero and his lady friend running ashore at the end of a romp in the surf. They settle down to kiss. Things get really interesting when the lady says, “Dr. Gaskell, will you marry me?” What I went back to sort out was the doctor’s reply, which turned out to be, “Can you cook?” Of course, it’s clearly supposed to be obvious that they are both joking, which on consideration makes the entire exchange all the more intriguing. They go on with a playful yet thoughtful exchange about gender roles. Just when everything is settling down to above-average routine, the doctor quite casually admits making the “biggest boner” in science. Before one can try to sort out the etymology and nuance on that one, a light mercifully appears on the horizon. In the midst of that, the two lesser scientists race in, clearly indicating that they have been within sight and hearing. It’s everything you would expect from a “good” B-movie: It’s dated, it’s horrifying, and it’s smart enough to know it.

In closing, what I come back to is how I really feel about 1950s science fiction films. In the course of my reviews, I’ve been very sparing with the “B movie” era and genre(s). It’s been easy to say that they have simply been outside my areas of interest. (See my Plan 9 review way back when, which is also in an ebook.) But the underlying reality is that these were never a big part of my formative pop culture experiences. Sure, I had heard of the major ones, and I saw several of the very best and worst at a fairly early date. For me, however, I just didn’t get interested enough to put in the time and money it would have cost  to undertake a proper exploration in the days before online shopping and streaming, and to a significant extent, I never caught up. I would like to think that the upside is that I was able to go in with a truly neutral  perspective. I’m not nostalgic about the era, and I wasn’t one of the ones laughing at the low budgets and “outdated” effects (which, suppressed rant, were usually outmoded or rock-bottom cheap at the time) either. It’s the right perspective to appreciate the ones that truly rise above the rest. In those terms, the present film is a clever and creative offering that can hold its own against “classics” with actual budgets (see When Worlds Collide). That’s tribute enough for a film that had to wait a long time to get its due. With that, I can finish with a salute. Not bad, for a human.

The Kong File 3: The one with robot Kong

 

 

Title: King Kong Escapes

What Year?: 1967

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Improbable Experiment

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Title: King Kong Lives aka King Kong 2

What Year?: 1986

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Kong File: The one that was the first sequel

 

 

Title: Son of Kong

What Year?: 1933

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Franchise File 3: The one that was the most hated sequel

 

 

Title: Ghostbusters 2

What Year?: 1989

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’ve been finishing up the last few loose ends from Halloween, and the present lineup has been right at the top. What crosses my mind was that sequels have always been where I diverge from the crowd. Sure, I trash actually bad sequels as avidly as anyone else, though very few have been anywhere the bottom for the kind of movies I deal with. The flip side is that there are a great many polarizing or entirely unpopular sequels that I regard favorably even compared to the original films. In my reviews, I have definitely focused on the sequels where I’m willing to argue. For this lineup in particular, I decided to take my time to come up with one that really needed my kind of treatment. That brought me to a case that I have long regarded as perhaps the most unaccountably hated of them all. I present Ghostbusters 2, quite possibly the most despised sequel I actually like.

Our story begins with a reintroduction to the heroes of the last film, now split up by bankruptcy and legal troubles. Peter Venckman is a basic cable host, Egon is doing conventional if sadistic psychological research, Ray and Winston are reliving the glory days at kids’ birthday parties, and Dana is a newly single mother by a guy who has come and gone off-screen. But something is brewing under the city, a pink slime that seems to feed on anger, strife and misery. It’s all just a harbinger of the emergence of Vigo, the ghost of a tyrant residing in a painting at the museum where Dana works. With help from her unrequited would-be love interest, the evil spirit prepares for his return, with Dana’s son Oscar as his vessel. It’s up to the Ghostbusters to save the day again- but they will have to beat a court order first!

Ghostbusters 2 was a 1989 fantasy/ science fiction film by Columbia Pictures, produced as the first and only direct sequel to the 1984 film Ghostbusters. The film was directed by Ivan Reitman (see Heavy Metal), with Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson (Congo) returning as the Ghostbusters. Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis and Annie also reprised their roles as Dana Barrett, Louis Tully and Janine Melnitz respectively. Max Von Sydow (see Flash Gordon, Never Say Never Again) performed as the voice of Vigo, with Peter MacNicol of Dragonslayer appearing as his minion Janosz. The film was released in parallel with the fourth and fifth seasons of the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, which the live-action sequel diverged from on a number of points. Official merchandising included games for NES and Game Boy. The film was commercially successful, earning over $215 million against an estimated $30-40M budget, but was poorly received by critics and fans. Reitman reportedly refused to take part in further installments of the franchise based on problems with the production. The second film has received some reappraisal among modern critics. It was not directly referenced in the 2016 reboot. It remains available on digital platforms.

For my experiences, I covered this franchise in most depth when I wrote up the reissues of the Kenner toys. As with many things, I knew of the franchise without really experiencing it first-hand, though for once, I can definitely recall seeing the original film at a quite early date. For me, the real experience was the animated series, and to the extent I can recall having an opinion at the time, I greatly preferred the cartoon. Once the show and the toys trailed off, the franchise slipped from my consciousness until one afternoon in ca 1998 I can clearly recall, when I found both movies being aired back to back on network TV. It was a rediscovery of the first film and my first encounter with the present one, and where I found far more to appreciate in the original, I felt the sequel to be on its level if not better. Ever since, I have been baffled by the hate it gets… up to about the time I bought a copy.

Moving forward, my foremost reaction is the already running theme, what the Hell did people want, anyway? In terms of the franchise parameters, this doesn’t build on the original like the undisputed “best” sequels such as Dawn of the Dead, or reconceptualize as boldly as the likes of Predator 2. What it does do is put the characters in new situations without changing their nature, which is plenty in itself. From the outset, we find the Ghostbusters in the aftermath of fame, leaving some of them wiser and others just disillusioned. The further story arc that emerges is one of far more complex problems that require both new tactics and genuine character development. That, in turn, offers some surprisingly sophisticated social/ political commentary. The mood slime becomes a symptom and symbol of human problems that can’t be defeated with proton packs. The apathy and flat hostility the Ghostbusters meet as they try to rally the city leads to both the funniest and most poignant moments of the film. A quote from the mayor is up there as my favorite from either film and in line for the “one scene”, “Being miserable and treating each other like dirt is every New Yorker’s God-given right!”

On the con side, this certainly one of the clearest cases of a sequel that was forced to be “trendy” at the expense of both creativity and faithfulness to the original. A curious consequence is that many of its “meta” gags and references specifically fail to account for the continued popularity of the franchise and especially the number of kids like me who were getting into it through the show. (The He-Man reference is probably nothing more or less than an indicator of how old the script must have been…) The big chip on my shoulder is the music. The original had a balanced mix of old and new pop music and a traditional orchestral score by Elmer Bernstein (see… Robot Monster?). The score by pop composer Randy Edelman is not an improvement, to put it mildly. Then there are repeated intrusions of the still-young rap craze, which I have long held up as responsible for the worst music in the history of modern media. (I’ve heard 1920s alleged jazz that’s about as bad, but how many people hear that spontaneously?) This isn’t even “that” bad, given that someone apparently paid enough for actual rap/ hip hop artists instead of a pastiche of a studio suit’s impression of the genre, but it’s one more thing that makes the movie feel more dated now than it would have at the time of its release.

That still leaves the simple question, what could they have done better? This is one thing I am actually good at. The first thing I would say, covering a major area I didn’t get to above, is that the effects should stay as they are. There’s already some very good touches, especially the bathtub of slime, the spectral nanny and a zombified fur coat that missed the cut in the first film, that don’t slow things down. On the other hand, we could have done with a lot less of Janosz. (I have a whole other rant about the same guy declaring himself ashamed of being in Dragonslayer…) My most radical idea is quite simply to lose Vigo entirely. The first act already does fine with the focus on the mood slime, so it was completely feasible to keep it there. The “what if” that rises to my mind is to have the slime evolve into a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man analog, and make the Statue of Liberty sequence an actual kaiju fight. It might not have “worked”, but this is the kind of creativity that should have been in play if the minds behind the franchise had been given free reign.

That leaves the “one scene” very late, and my choice was settled in the first viewing. A few minutes in, Dana seeks out Egon, who has gotten back in at the university. He is observing a man and woman from behind one-way glass who are clearly unhappy. He matter-of-factly explains that they have been waiting over two hours for what they think is a marriage counselling appointment. We only get brief glimpses of the couple, but that’s enough to make it clear that they probably need real counselling and definitely don’t need any more stress. It’s a brief glimpse of domestic and institutional dysfunction that sets up the more mature themes of movie. As the conversation winds down, Egon comes to another room where a little girl is happily cuddling a puppy. There’s every sign of enjoyment as he says, “Now, take away the puppy…”

In closing, what I come back to is the nature of sequels. The real common denominator is that they are set up to fail at both ends. It’s well-established that the studio system rarely backs a sequel ambitious enough to improve even modestly on the original.  On the other hand, audiences rarely help; they will say they want a sequel that is “better”, but routinely complain when it is different enough to have a shot at it. The culminating irony is that, if you judge the sequel by the ones considered at least arguably “best” in their franchises, you get an astonishing column of successes: Empire Strikes Back, Wrath of Khan, Aliens and even the odd “threequel” like Day of the Dead and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (see my Raiders review/rant). If it takes 5 or 10 Futureworlds to get one Dawn of the Dead, it’s a small price to pay. In that company, Ghostbusters should stand as an example of how to be good enough. That’s enough for me to give a respectful farewell to a quite good lineup. “Choose and perish!”