Featured Creature: The one that sank James Cameron

 

 

Title: The Abyss

What Year?: 1989

Classification: Improbable Experiment/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

When I started doing movie reviews, one thing that I considered very early is that I have seen the status and perception of a number of movies change, sometimes faster than I can account for what happened. This has had some strange effects. Films that were once “underrated” have risen to greater heights. On the more depressing side, movies I first encountered as unquestioned “classics” have sunk into borderline obscurity. This has played a non-trivial role in what movies I choose to review based on my further skewed priorities. Some movies I might once have considered have gone above my radar, while others have come back onto it. With this review, I’m covering the biggest and most personal example, an old favorite that helped get me into 1980s genre films. I present The Abyss, the ultimate underwater science fiction movie (see Leviathan), and the fact that it has retained that title for over 30 years should tell you how that went over.

Our story begins with a nuclear submarine that sinks itself chasing a mysterious underwater object. In the aftermath, we meet Bud, an engineer/ oil man in charge of a deep-sea habitat, and his estranged spouse Lindsay, a liberal-minded career woman who helped build it. They’re called on to ferry a military team to search for survivors of the wreck in waters near Cuba, which will be more or less important depending on which version of the film you’re watching. It soon becomes apparent that the team and its tough-as-nails commander are more concerned with securing nukes than search and rescue. Then the crew begin seeing strange lights underwater, while literal and political storms brew on the surface. When a hurricane cuts them off from the surface, they find themselves alone with an undersea alien colony- and a commander with the bends and a live atomic bomb!

The Abyss was a 1989 film by James Cameron (see… Galaxy of Terror?), produced by 20^th Century Fox. The film starred Ed Harris as Bud and Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Lindsay, with Michael Biehn as Lt. Coffey. Extensive effects were provided by ILM, including a CGI water tentacle. The soundtrack was composed by Alan Silvestri (see the Predator soundtracks review). The production was reportedly affected by on-set safety issues, budget overruns and tensions between the director and the cast. The film was released without a partially filmed sequence in which the extraterrestrials produce a global tsunami. A novelization was written by Orson Scott Card after the author was approached by Cameron, with the original ending and further narration from the aliens’ perspective. The film won an Oscar for special effects. Fox backed a campaign to nominate Biehn for Best Supporting Actor, but no evidence has emerged whether this received further consideration from the Academy. The Special Edition, with the original ending and new CGI effects, was given a limited theatrical release in 1993. Later home video releases sometimes favored the Special Edition over the theatrical cut. As of late 2022, the film has not been released on Blu Ray and is not available on digital platforms in the US.

For my experiences, this is one where it’s easiest to lay down my cards up front: This is by far James Cameron’s best film, and in many ways, it is the best genre film of the 1980s and even the ‘80s-‘90s, especially outside the “franchise” category. What has been increasingly strange to me is that in the timeframe between when it was released and when I dug into the Cameron library, there was no immediate or foreseeable need to argue the point. Sure, there would have been people who disagreed with me, but in any serious discussion, it could be expected to receive at least a respectful mention alongside the likes of Aliens (see my post on the novel while you're at it) and the first two Terminator films. If anything, it had an edge as Cameron’s “prestige” entry, the one that put him on a mainstream footing. Yet, in the intervening years, it is the film that has slipped through the cracks. For the present review, I watched both versions with an eye to accounting for why, and I am still left at a loss.

Moving forward, what stands out starkly in hindsight is that this is neither an ‘80s or a ‘90s movie, but a 1950s movie that happens to have modern effects and production values. (See also, unavoidably, E.T.) All the major plot points in either version harken back to the B-movie era, albeit very successful and sophisticated examples like The Day The Earth Stood Still and The Outer Limits TV series. (I must once again put in a marginally good word for Plan 9…) The finale of the Special Edition in particular is pretty much the “Architects of Fear” scenario, with all its obvious and arguable flaws. What keeps the present film relevant and interesting is that most of these issues are acknowledged on its own terms. Finding an advanced alien species already living on Earth would certainly divert the human nation-states from their own quarrels for a while, with or without a demonstration of force sufficient to wipe out industrial civilization. However, we have already seen vividly how a truly paranoid military mind reacts to the unknown, so we are not required to share the optimism of the characters or the filmmaker. If it comes to that, much the same can be said of the central romance. It’s all well and good that they have reconciled enough to work together in a crisis, but whether they would or should stay together is another matter.

The real pros and possible cons come with the effects and Biehn’s performance. The visual effects are top notch, to put it mildly. Together with Cameron’s direction, they do add a good deal of polish that would be missing in a recounting in cold blood, especially the bumper-boat duel of ludicrously non-threatening subs. If there is a downside, it is that the advanced CGI didn’t age nearly as well as the practical/ miniature effects, an issue that shows all the more with the Special Edition tsunami. All of this easily takes a back seat to Biehn’s incredibly, perhaps absurdly, intense performance. He’s not “better” than he was in his earlier Cameron roles. The real difference is that he finally has a character complex and conflicted enough to make full use of both his charismatic screen presence and the “dark” implications that go with it. What’s easily missed is that he is the one character whose reactions are truly proportionate to the situation. A high point and easy “one scene” contender is his terrified response to the severed water pseudopod, which continues to improve rather embarrassingly on both the scene and the effect. It all crystallizes in his utterly terrifying demise. In my “head canon”, I see it as a return to sanity and perhaps a moment of remorse, far too late.

That brings me to the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that continues to fascinate me far beyond its importance within the film. As the deep-sea habitat goes cross-country, the wackiest of the crew is caught in the sub bay with his pet rat. When a jolt sends a sub swinging, he has to make a dive to safety. Then he looks back and sees the rat, still in a plastic bag. It’s the shot of the rodent that has stayed with me all this time. Of course, it’s a typical, obvious Hollywood bid to make us sympathize with the animal while actual humans are buying it without further comment. But it’s also a perfect metaphor for everyone’s predicament, dependent on the thinnest of protection against an environment where they were never meant be anything but dead. What follows is, more than usual, predictable enough that no recounting is needed. The strength of the film and the filmmaker is that we aren’t required to agree with the character’s (dumb) decisions to stay engaged and invested in what happens.

In closing, I come back to why the film hasn’t fared much better. I have in no way changed my opinions on this film, and I absolutely blame its current state at least in part on quite typical mismanagement of intellectual properties that should be literally illegal. (How to fix that is a whole other trail of rants…) With maturity, however, I will admit it as a cautionary tale of what happens when genre films meet the mainstream, especially in light of Cameron’s subsequent career. It was and is very, very good, enough to blow away his fans and impress many more. At the same time, it marked the start of more critical appraisals of his strengths and limitations that were increasingly proven valid. Terminator 2 was good, perhaps as good as The Abyss, but it was not breaking new ground. True Lies was simply dumb fun. Then there was Titanic, which I trashed Gone With The Wind as a proxy for, and for the intelligent genre viewer, it has been all downhill from there. If there’s a moral, it’s that being the best isn’t everything. With that, I can end this as a fond memory. To better things ahead…

Image credit Goodreads.

The Franchise File 2: The one with Gremlins in an arcology skyscraper

 

 

Title: Gremlins 2: The New Batch

What Year?: 1990

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, it’s Halloween, and I haven’t done nearly as much as I usually would with movies on or off the blog. I still have time for one more shot, and there is something I’ve been waiting for. It’s another case of a 1990s sequel to a 1980s movie (see Predator 2), one which never seems to have been either well-regarded or particularly notorious. To me, however, it has always been the most interesting and in many ways the best. I present Gremlins 2, a movie about monsters in an arc scraper, and that’s just the start of the fun.

Our story begins with a developer trying to buy the mysterious shop of the original film, where a certain creature called Gizmo has settled back into a peaceful life watching TV. When the old shopkeeper dies, a skyscraper soon rises on the grounds of the old property. It’s not an ordinary building, but an AI-controlled artificial ecology with a range of businesses, including a genetics lab where Gizmo is held prisoner. When his old friend Billy is hired by the developer Mr. Clamp, the do-gooder helps the creature escape. Before they can complete their getaway, the Mogwai gets splashed with water, causing him to spontaneously reproduce a group of mean, warped offspring. Soon, the spawn transform into scaly Gremlins intent on mayhem. When they get into the lab’s projects, they mutate further, into the likes of a flying gargoyle, a giant spider and an intelligent Brain ready to act as leader and spokesman in their conquest of the world. It’s up to Billy and Gizmo to save the day- with a little help from Dick Miller!

Gremlins 2 was a 1990 film by Warner Bros and Amblin Entertainment, a direct sequel to the 1984 film Gremlins (see also Critters). The film was again directed by Joe Dante (see InnerSpace), with writer Chis Haas replacing Christopher Columbus. The film starred Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates, returning as Billy and Kate, with John Glover as Daniel Clamp. Other cast included Robert Picardo (Dead Heat), Christopher Lee (Horror Express) and Dick Miller (Night of the Creeps, Terminator), the last returning as Mr. Putterman despite the character’s implied death in the first film. Effects were created by Rick Baker (see King Kong 1976). The soundtrack was composed by Jerry Goldsmith (see Deep Rising, Link, etc, etc.). A novelization was written by David Bischoff, with a significantly different ending. An NES game was released by Sunsoft. The movie was a box office disappointment, earning under $42 million against a budget of up to $50M. It is currently available for streaming on multiple platforms.

For my experiences, was a film I was aware of at an early age but didn’t see firsthand until adulthood, which I suppose contributed to my feelings about it. After I did see it, it quickly came in very high on my list of movies that people would probably expect me to like far more than I do. I don’t by any means dislike it, but I find it to have a strange vibe that probably would have failed to connect with me as a 1980s kid or an adult. Meanwhile, I was interested enough in the sequel to watch it at about the same time as the original. It immediately impressed me as a sequel that went in different and creative directions. Beyond that, it fit my tastes better than the first film ever did, in no small part because it really is more of a “straight” monster movie. Whether that makes it “better” is exactly what I have been asking myself going into this review.

Moving forward, the obvious upgrades are the arcscraper environment and the ensemble supporting cast. On both fronts, there are things to nitpick. The arcology angle isn’t that developed, but as a playground for the Gremlins, it’s as fleshed out as it needs to be. (I'll admit I pretty much ripped this off for the Eurypterids adventure.) In certain respects, the modesty is a plus; it’s especially noteworthy that the building isn’t played up as bigger than anything actually in existence then or now. There’s more to criticize in the uneven use of the cast, especially Lee as Gizmo’s captor. To me, the character feels like a “twist villain” in reverse, shoehorned into the beginning instead of the end. His high point comes in the faceoff with the Brain, alas never followed up with redemption or comeuppance in the finale. On the flip side, there are delights I couldn’t shoehorn into my cast list, including Keye Luke, whom I shouted out in Dead Heat, as Gizmo’s original owner and Robert Prosky as Grandpa Fred, a sort of cross between April O’Neal and John McClain. Glover handily steals the movie as the semi-sympathetic Clamp, even if his real-life counterparts are no longer funny. (It gets a lot more awkward in the deleted scenes…) The real highlight is Miller in a fairly substantial role. (Well, the Gremlins don’t kill him with a gun he just sold them…)

Then there are the creatures, and this is where the back and forth comes in between the two films. The Gremlins aren’t quite as menacing as they were in the original, though that means a more even tone for the technological mayhem, and the most dangerous of the lot feels like he was written to be far more prominent. On the other hand, the mutants are mostly an improvement, except for the female (who judging from the book must have been toned down from earlier versions of the script). Many high points come from the Brain, voiced by the late Tony Randall of The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; “one scene” honorable mention is definitely in order for his psychotic “interview” with Fred. (“Was that civilized?...”) For me, it’s Gizmo who comes up a little short, perhaps more so than before. What I could never buy into was the many pop culture references with the Gremlins, if anything ramped up here. I have never found it more worthwhile than the underexplored questions raised when the concept is considered straight. It would have been especially intriguing to see an exploration of the real relationship between Gizmo and his (???) offspring. Do they turn on him because he is not like him? Is he vulnerable simply because he feels enough parental love that he doesn’t want to fight back? Or is this all as “natural” as black widows eating their mates and unborn sharks devouring their siblings? (Yeah, that happens…)

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with an early moment. Gizmo is in the lab, being examined by a pair who could be either twins or clones. In fact, that’s Don and Dan Stanton, the twin brothers who appeared as the ill-fated guard and the T1000 in Terminator 2. When Lee’s Dr. Catheter (I did not want to print that) comes in for a tour, they let Gizmo out. The pair then turn on music, and bob along as Gizmo does a dance. It all feels as natural as his behavior left to his own devices in the first movie. However, he slowly gets closer to the edge of the table, until he suddenly makes a break for it. He barely builds up speed before Lee catches him. We get a perfect closeup of Lee as he holds up Gizmo for inspection. It’s a great moment, and perhaps enough from a great actor.

In closing, I come as usual to the rating, and this is one I could have rated even higher than I have. I just couldn’t quite talk myself into giving this the highest rating. On the whole, I would probably have given the original movie no less and no more, which I will admit is the fairest assessment of their quality. There are many ways in which the present film improves on its predecessor, but the real reason it does as well as it does is because of how many good ideas the original film offered to work with. My verdict on the franchise is that this is a case of “good enough” being just fine. These may never have been great movies, but they are memorable enough to endure as classics. That’s enough for me to end the Halloween season on a high note.

Image credit GoodReads. 

No Good Very Bad Movies 24: The one by Mr. BIG where nothing's big

 

Title: Picture Mommy Dead aka Color Mommy Dead

What Year?: 1966

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Prototype

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

With this review, I’m continuing a survey of very odd films by famous or infamous filmmakers, which might go on quite a bit longer than I planned. The funny thing is, very few of the entries under consideration have been in the latter category, either in terms of the film or the filmmaker. With the present film, I have the exception to prove the rule, a film by an especially notorious filmmaker who ended up with his own nickname, based on somewhat skewed perceptions of his work. The present selection is the movie that broke the mold, and as we will see, it’s up for debate if that was a good thing. I present Color Mommy Dead, a movie by the infamous Bert I. Gordon aka Mr. BIG, and as noted, there’s nothing about giant bugs.

Our story begins with the image of an evidently deceased woman in tacky/ expensive clothes consumed by a fire, just as someone takes a beautiful necklace off her body. After the mindboggling credits, we meet the survivors of the deceased, her husband, his new wife, formerly the governess, and their daughter Susan, a young lady of ambiguous age and even less certain mental maturity just returning home from a convent/ mental institution. Naturally, the girl is the only witness to her mother’s demise, but professes very convenient amnesia about the whole evening. In short order, we meet more rogues, particularly a cousin injured in the fire who speaks at length about the size of Susan’s trust fund. The girl becomes increasingly disturbed by the once-familiar surroundings, even wondering if she killed her mother. Meanwhile, the rest of the household spin their schemes, variously for lust, money, and the still-missing necklace. But Susan remains the wild card as history repeats itself, and even this pack of never-do-wells are unprepared for a girl with no agenda except being daddy’s girl!

Picture Mommy Dead was a 1966 drama/ psychological horror film directed by Bert I. Gordon (see Empire of the Ants), possibly the first of his films to be both adult-oriented and outside the science fiction/ fantasy genres. The film starred Gordon’s real-life daughter Susan Gordon, a child actress known for roles on The Twilight Zone and several of his earlier fantasy and adventure films, with Don Ameche as the father, Martha Hyer as the stepmother Francene and Maxwell Reed as the cousin Anthony.  Hedy Lamar was originally cast as the mother Jessica, but replaced by Zsa Zsa Gabor during filming. The film was made on a relatively high budget of $1M, compared to an estimated $15,000 budget of Gordon’s debut feature King Dinosaur. A novelization was written by the film’s screenwriter, Robert Sherman. Susan Gordon withdrew from acting following the release of the film, several months after her 17^th birthday. The elder Gordon continued his attempts at “mainstream” work with the 1970 sex comedy (!) How To Succeed With Sex, before returning to genre films with movies like Food of the Gods. The film has been released on home video, most recently by Kino Lorber in 2020. It is not available in digital format. Susan Gordon died in 2011; she is survived by her father and 6 children.

For my experiences, I first became aware of Bert I. Gordon at second-hand from books like The Golden Turkey Awards, where the repeated running gag was that all his films had something to do with animals or people being grown to giant size or shrunk to miniature. I finally looked into his broader filmography for the Space 1979 “Wells-A-Thon”, where several of his works fell under consideration. I was immediately intrigued to find that his output wasn’t quite as stereotyped as the jokes would have it, and knew that sooner or later, I would come back to it. Ultimately, what got this one in the lineup was that it proved to be the easiest to obtain. (By comparison, the sex comedy seems to be literally wiped off the face of the Earth…) I ordered it with some other items a few weeks before this review, and made space for it as the director lineup evolved. I watched it and started the present review in good time, and boy, is it 1960s.

Moving forward, the central reality of this film is that it feels oddly out of time, enough that I was very tempted to apply the Anachronistic Outlier label. At face value, it’s a startlingly late example of the whodunit, a genre that had already devolved to the point that the most significant examples were parodies like A Shot In The Dark. What stands out more, however, are the surreal visuals which would be easily be discounted as cliches 10 or even 5 years later but here can be granted as innovative. The question remains, of course, whether the mix of new and old elements is done well, and my answer is a qualified yes. The characters and their intrigues are seedy enough to call to mind the more sophisticated “noir” mysteries like Rebecca and Maltese Falcon, complete with several impressive double crosses that winnow the field before the finale. On the other side, the jarring imagery and choppy editing intended to convey Susan’s iffy mental state are at least not tiresome in the way they would become later, with some very good moments like the destruction of a painting and the truly random appearance of a falcon. The one thing that arguably gets in the way is the garish décor of the house. It’s so extreme and flat-out hideous that it could easily be taken as a satire of the fads of the day. In my judgment, however, it’s just as likely that the B-movie veteran and his crew were still working out color photography.

Meanwhile, the center of the movie is Ms. Gordon and her character, and this is where things get shaky. There would be an easy rant about the casting by the elder Gordon, yet the real problem is that the story never quite decides where to go. The actress definitely looks even younger than she would have been in real life, which can get uncomfortable in its own right, but without more specific comments about the character’s age, it’s very hard to judge whether she is ahead, behind or on a completely different track from where she should be. The deeper problem is that there’s nothing to create doubt about her place in the story. It’s only a very mild spoiler to say she is not responsible for any of the murders, and that leaves one or two real suspects. (I could go into a whole other rant about the very selective fire damage.) That in turn makes the whole focus on her a matter of the premise dictating the story rather than evolving with it. It’s only in the finale that the film progresses past gimmickry, as Susan’s revealed actions and character prove as unnerving as those of the actual killers. Indeed, this would be even more uncomfortable without the ambiguity regarding Susan’s development, which ultimately furthers the subversion of childhood “innocence”.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I really had a lot more to work with than I would have expected. There was one particular sequence, however, that I kept coming back to simply as a frame of reference to make sense of the story, the movie and whatever the elder Gordon was trying to do. After her return to the house and a long series of talks with the adults, Susan returns to her bedroom and her toys, so of course I looked into this. Most of the playthings are generic enough that they don’t clarify or clash with the timeframe before or since, like a clown and a sort of goofy/ creepy wolf. A couple seem specific to the ‘60s era, what looks like a large version of a Troll doll and a hippie-themed doll that matches one called Scooba-Doo made by Mattel in 1964. It’s not entirely clear how many of the toys are really familiar or introduced to make her homecoming happier, but she clearly finds them comforting, especially the hippie doll (which is going to show a much larger vocabulary before the end). The camera reflects her calm with clear and affectionate shots, until the voices of the adults start to echo in her head. From there, it’s choppy cam as the toys get increasingly disconcerting closeups, culminating in a scream. Then we are back with the girl, still holding the doll, with no adult coming to attend to her if the cry was real at all. This is surrealism that actually works, in no small part because it’s frame in the “real” world, and enough to buy my goodwill.

In closing, the one thing I have left to say is that, having viewed a fair sampling of Bert I. Gordon’s work, this one is the best by a wide margin, though dear Logos, that’s probably even less of a compliment than it sounds. It was probably never going to set a new direction for Mr. BIG’s career, but it proved for all time that he could do something different and new to boot, even if none of his critics or fans were paying attention. If it comes to that, one can just about see how the detour outside the genre ghetto marginally improved his later work. At the same time, the film embodies his unaccountable ability to stir up a measure of affection against one’s better judgment. Heck, it’s left me feeling generous enough to keep looking for the sex comedy. Yeah, it's out there. And with that, feel free to go to bed, possibly praying whoever finds it brings a flamethrower. It's a dry heat…

Movie Mania: Willow novelization

It's time for the first post of the second off-week of the month, and for once, I decided I've done enough movie reviews. To depart as little as possible from formula, I'm going to do another novelization review, specifically that of Willow. As a bonus, it happens to be from Wayland Drew, the author of the Dragonslayer novel, which I previously held up (well before posting a review of the movie) as perhaps the finest of its kind. Unfortunately, lightning did not quite strike twice.

For the background, I already covered a lot of this when I reviewed the movie. Willow was the last of the 1980s fantasy wave, and unlike many of its predecessors, it made a lot of money. It also got a lot of merchandising I can vaguely remember, including an NES game and a now-notorious toy line that I would probably have loved if I had gotten any. A novelization was presumably inevitable, though no tale seems to tell how the task fell to Wayland Drew. Per the lore, the novel is based on a script sold to Lucas more than the film, which is really on par for novelizations. As it happened, it was published immediately after a novelization of Batteries Not Included (a movie that never quite fit in my plans so far) in 1987, and the year before his last confirmed novel Halfway Man in 1989.

Going in, what interested me most was that such a comparatively obscure author was chosen to novelize a major film. Sure, vintage novelizations were anything but prestigious, and the semi-respectable novelizers like Alan Dean Foster (see the Aliens novels post) were busy enough that anyone else looking to do a job was unlikely to be turned down. Still, Drew presented an odd choice, an author with a modest profile and output whose work (apparently including Halfway Man) often fell outside the sci fi/ fantasy genre. The obvious connection is that a good part of the ILM crew had worked on the effects for Dragonslayer (and for that matter Batteries Not Included). If just one or a few big names at ILM had read the book, it might well have been enough to give the author an inside track with Lucasfilm and perhaps Lucas himself. Therefore, it's plausible that Drew was approached or even talked into it, at a time when he was by all indications getting out of the business. Whatever the backstory, Willow was his last ride, and certainly interesting on those terms alone. While I'm at it, here's the back cover.

Moving onto the book, I will admit I'm doing this on shorter notice than other posts like this. With other novelizations, I have gone in with at least two readings and normally a block of weeks or even months to think things over before posting about it. This time around, I'm starting the post before I technically finished reading it even once. On the other hand, I had been able to go through the majority of the book faster than any I've read in a long while, which I found more than enough to comment on the quality. As a bit of further context, I finished one more rereading of Dragonslayer not long ago. One more thing I will freely admit is that, if anything, the earlier novelization made me a little more critical of the present book. In those terms, Willow is in some ways more polished, but seems aimed at younger readers, which would certainly have been justified. What's more difficult to account for is that it seems more conventional than the film it's based on, complete with a number of convenient and comforting genre tropes that the finished film was bold enough to move away from.

On the plus side, there is inevitably a lot more worldbuilding and general depth in the novel. There's a lot more backstory for Madmartigan, Bavmorda and Sorsha, including a full account of the villainess's relationship with the father of the princess. There is also a whole story-within-a-story tale of a revered Nelwyn hunter/ warrior who barely gets a name within the film. We also get an expanded view of the powers of the magical infant, who seems to charm animals and the elements just by being what she is. Occasionally, things get more grim and graphic than the film despite the "kid-friendly" tone, conspicuously the implied fate of a group of mothers and children imprisoned by the queen. It's here that things get hit or miss by simple familiarity.  I find this most in the portrayal of Tir Asleen, which in the movie is just a big, distant castle. Here, it's so hidden away by magic that leaves its very existence conceivably in doubt, calling to mind the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty or the cautionary Lord Dunsany tale "Carcassonne". In addition, the revealed destruction of the castle is attributed to a spell of Bavmorda that you can easily predict will be reversed at her defeat. It's all unquestionably effective, but as already noted, it brings in familiar elements the movie did just fine without.

One more thing on the "con" side is a strange sort of temporal distortion that gets more pronounced toward the end, something I had noticed this before with the Dawn of the Dead novelization. Here, it's most notable with the courtyard fight, which is as far as I got. In the film, it's an almost comically over-the-top sequence with one of the most surreal monsters on record. In the book, the whole battle is covered in 10 pages, including only 3 with the Eborsisk. It's understandable that an author working with only pages in a script would fall short of the vision of a director, yet this is more egregious than usual. There's a further odd touch in the handling of the trolls, who represent perhaps the most intriguing combatants in the film. In the book, they're introduced much earlier, specifically as rather pitiful servants of Bavmorda. In an impressive touch, one of them actually talks, revealing an even more malign personality than might be expected. What gets weird is that the book describes the transformation of a troll into a "gibbering, jiggling mass of shapeless goo", without connecting it with the Eborsisk, which is portrayed as laying in wait the whole time. It removes several of the movie's more striking improbabilities, but on the whole, what we got on screen was more satisfying. One more thing is that the segment in the book ends at page 241 of the novel's 276 pages, and if you know the movie, there's a lot more that must have been crammed into even less space.

On the whole, this remains one of the more surprisingly impressive novelizations to be encountered. For me, it raises the niggling doubt how much of the universally accepted notoriety of 1980s novelizations came from those who had really read a significant number of them. There's no reason to doubt many if not most were as bad as people say, but even in the iffy ones, there's plenty that's interesting, insightful and just plain bonkers. It's exactly why I intend to keep my collection and add to it when I can. With that, I'm done for another day. That's all for now, more to come!

Fantasy Zone: The one where a dragon gets suicide-bombed

 

Title: Dragonslayer

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Runnerup

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

In the course of my reviews, something I’ve acknowledged again and again is that there are movies that are above my radar. What might be counterintuitive is that this isn’t a personal judgment. I may give good reviews to the most infamous movies ever made, but that’s not because I instinctively hate anything that’s good or popular. On the contrary, some of my all-time favorites are the ones I don’t feel I could do anything with as a reviewer. With this review, I’m finally getting to a definitive case and point, an undisputed classic I have repeatedly held up yet never found space to review, except for a post on the novelization. Here is Dragonslayer, the greatest 1980s fantasy film… at least before Willow.

Our story begins with a magician and his young apprentice Galen in a gloomy castle. A group of peasants arrive, led by a spunky youth who pleads for help against a dragon that has plagued their kingdom. It’s revealed that their kings have chosen appeasement, offering maidens by lottery as sacrifices to the monster. To prove the point, the king’s most trusted warrior arrives and murders the magician. Galen accepts the challenge and makes the journey, discovering on the way that the youth is a woman hiding from the lottery. When his magic appears to trap the dragon in its lair, the kingdom rejoices, except the king, who locks Galen in the dungeon. But of course, the dragon isn’t quite dead, and chaos ensues as it resurfaces. When the king’s own daughter becomes the next sacrifice, Galen must go forth to do battle with the dragon. Can he prevail, or has the sorcerer’s apprentice overestimated his powers for the last time?

Dragonslayer was a 1981 heroic fantasy film directed by Matthew Robbins from a script cowritten with Bill Barwood. The movie was made as a joint production between Paramount and Disney. The film starred Peter MacNicol as Galen and the late Caitlin Clarke as Valerian, with Ralph Richardson (see Tales From The Crypt and Time Bandits) as the magician Ulrich and John Hallam of  Flash Gordon  (d. 2006) as the warrior Tyrian. Effects for the dragon Vermithrax included “go-motion” by ILM’s Phil Tippett (all hail Phil), as well as a life-sized practical/ animatronic rig. A novelization was written by Wayland Drew. The film was well-received by critics and genre fans, including Roger Ebert and Peter Nicholls, but was a commercial failure, earning a box office of $14.1 million against an $18M budget. It was successful as a “cult” film on VHS. Later DVD releases were criticized for censorship and misleading claims about screen formats. Richardson died in 1983, before the release of his last credited film, the 1984 Tarzan adaptation Greystoke. Clarke died in 2004 of ovarian cancer.

For my experiences, this was a movie I first saw on VHS in junior high as an alleged introduction to mythology. The funny thing is, I don’t recall being that impressed with it. It was probably a decade or more before I looked into getting my own copy; I specifically recall choosing a VHS tape over DVD because of complaints and rumors about the latter. I watched that tape regularly for a very long time, and I still don’t knos ifit became a favorite, even compared to undisputedly flawed films like Krull and Conan The Destroyer. What kept it in my mind was how often it was spoken of well (plus a chance encounter with the novel). When I contemplated reviewing it, I puzzled further over how to classify it. It definitely felt like what I have called a “runnerup”, except that there was never really any one film to dominate the field. The very strange thing about the whole early to mid-‘80s fantasy wave is how few were successful commercially or in any other sense. It’s all the more odd that this film in particular would be the most infamous dud, as it actually got to theaters ahead of most of the rest.

In this review and leading up to it, the one thing I have increasingly appreciated is just how solid the film is on virtually every front. For me, this is more grudging respect, as there’s plenty of things that gets on my bad side. I don’t care for the impressionist soundtrack at all, for example, nor the virgin-sacrifice innuendo (ignored in the novel) and haphazardly developed criticisms of Christianity. I have also found the running time and pacing problematic, too long for an old-school creature feature without the depth of an epic. What I most actively irritating is the princess, whom I can’t regard as anything but spoiled and self-centered even in self-inflicted martyrdom. (Then again, Krull has Ken Marshall in the starring role…) Still, I will freely admit these are small if not entirely petty things next to what it does right. As fans have regularly said, this is above all a smart film, and this shows especially in its moral ambiguity. This isn’t a tale of pure-hearted heroes against pure-hearted heroes, nor an amoral vision of barbarians ravaging and ravishing across the landscape. Instead, we have a scenario where everyone has a point, and the hero knows he is fallible. The standouts that redeem the whole movie are Richardson and Hallam, who have an impact far beyond their surprisingly limited roles, enough that I will get back to them.

Then, of course, there is Vermithrax Pejorative, truly the definitive monster. Like many things, what’s easily underestimated is how little we really see. Much of the screen time is the dragon aloft, which paradoxically looks like not doing anything except for the frequent fire-breathing. We get a much better sense of the beast when Galen follows it into its lair, complete with a little extra fun when he encounters the brood of dragonets. What makes it all truly exceptional is the oddly prosaic design (reused in Rick And Morty), in which the wings must be incorporated into all modes of locomotion rather than being put out of the way by the convenient multiplication of wings. (There’s wonky continuity in an early scene when the dragon reaches out with what should really be its hindfoot, but this is a dream sequence.) It further fits the de-romanticization of the dragon; this isn’t a misunderstood thing of beauty, but a big, damn, beady-eyed murdering lizard. (Am I the only one who thinks it looks a little like the Skekses in Dark Crystal?) Still, there is real pathos, especially in the discovery of its young and its final battle with the resurrected sorcerer. My favorite scene of all with the beast is its brief encounter with the cleric, played by Ian McDiarmid before his Star Wars turn, embodying the thematic clash of paganism and Judeo-Christianity better than anything else in the film.

That brings me to the “one scene”, and it had to be the one and only scene between Hallam and Richardson. As the people of Urland make their plea for the magician’s aid, the warrior arrives and gleefully sets about dashing their hopes. Valerian identifies him by name on sight, and there’s a few moments of banter before he comes toe with the magician. When the elderly servant tries to intervene, Tyrian muses, “If he’s ready to lay a dragon in its grave, he has nothing to fear from me.” He continues to needle at the sorcerer, building on the servant’s well-meant words. Finally, Ulrich steps in, with enough dignity to silence the skeptic. He calls for a knife, which Galen throws down. Then, fatefully, the doors slam shut on the apprentice, surely a demonstration that would give even Tyrian pause if he saw it. Then we cut to Richardson as he says cryptically, “You can’t hurt me.” What follows will surely be remembered if you have seen the movie at all, and the one thing worth further note is that it’s the warrior who seems unnerved.

In closing, what I come back to is just what happened to start the ‘80s fantasy wave and keep it going in the face of ample discouragement. On that point, I already laid out my suspicions in reviewing The Black Cauldron (see also Leviathan for the even more improbable “underwater sci fi” niche genre). One studio greenlights a project, another decides to do the same with a similar one under consideration, and so on until nobody can say who really was responsible. The punchline of history is that the blind rush of the fantasy craze generated more real creativity than any number of profitable and properly analyzed “trends”. It might not have led to many films that made money, yet it produced the perfect storm for later film enthusiasts, a bumper crop of films that were strange, unclassifiable, goofy, and yet sometimes beautiful and powerful. That is the legacy embodied in Dragonslayer, and it’s enough to be glad for the whole fantasy boomlet. Because where would we be if Hollywood had to make sense?

Movie Mania! Aliens novels

 

For Halloween, I decided to go back to one post every weekday. I further considered padding things out with the Evil Possum, Sidekick Carl and other fiction, which offered enough existing and potential material for the spots between the movie reviews. I decided, however, that I had other material I wanted to cover within the holiday timeline, and the first and foremost is the present lineup. Lately, I've actually had time to read, so I've squandered the opportunity rereading novels from the tie-in Aliens line. Here's another pic of the back covers.

The literal centerpiece of this lineup is the official novelization of Aliens, from arch offender Alan Dean Foster. Ironically, the publisher's marks show that it was published by Warner Books, which I confirmed is indeed part of the Warner Bros media mega-conglomerate. Another amusing bit of context is that James Cameron went off on a rant in the novelization of The Abyss, in which he described movie novelizations, including "certain" adaptations of his films, as "cursory, mediocre, often inaccurate, and sometimes downright reprehensible". What I have found striking is that the only Cameron novelizations up to that point were this one and the extremely rare and obscure novelization of the original Terminator by Randall Frakes (who was in fact allowed to write the novelization of the sequel as well). We must therefore take Cameron's complaint as a dig specifically against Foster, and it's a curious one since this isn't by any means bad.

Moving on to the details, the novel is a lot of fun just for the franchise lore. The scenes that were restored for the special edition were all here all along. There's even a cross reference to the cut cocoon scene from the first movie. It also includes some famous scenes that didn't make either cut, particularly the infection of Burke and an attack on Bishop when he's solo. To my further recollection, I was personally confused by the scene with the sentry guns, which I never found compatible with the aliens' posited intelligence. (If I have to accept it, my "head canon" is that the drones figured out they could just throw things at the guns.) I must have seen it in one of the televised  versions of the film, and I'm almost certain I read it here before I finally saw the special edition in full.

What's even more intriguing is the detail. There's minor differences, mostly in the order of casualties in the nest shootout. Then there's details of the tech that must have been omitted or simplified for the film, such as a comment that the colonists' trackers are powered by their own bioelectricity (see, of all things, my microchip conspiracy post),  and another revelation that the atmosphere processing station is just one of many on the planet. In an extra wonky touch, several lines are bowdlerized, I suspect so school libraries would stock the book. More subtle but most telling are the shifts in the characters. The bonding between Ripley and Newt is played up more, perhaps  a bit too much. There's more detail given of Burke's intrigues and possible motivations. Most intriguingly, there's a quite different picture given of Hudson, who in the novel is explicitly a technician more than a fighter, despite his bravado. It is surely an indication how much Bill Paxton ran away with his role, and just how much the finished film was improved as a result.

Moving on, the other two are from a line by Bantam Spectra (also responsible for the first phase of the Star Wars "Expanded Universe"), based on the Darkhorse comics. What has always intrigued me most is why they went to the trouble of adapting material that was already in printed form, even if it was "just" comics. In any case, it worked better than might be expected, and these two are definitely among the best of the odd experiment. Most noteworthy is the first novel of the line by Steve Perry, based on a series published from 1989 to 1990 (see my Alien Contamination review for a little further commentary). The novels and later reprints of the comics infamously replaced Hicks and Newt with renamed characters who happened to have very similar backstories. The book at least fleshes out the conceit by giving more detail of the Newt analog's backstory. Unfortunately, it also makes some pointless revisions that undermine the emotional weight of the comic, particularly replacing the sleazy but explicitly human villains with reprogrammed androids. The "trilogy" was continued with the possibly better novelization of Nightmare Asylum, before hopeless efforts to harmonize with the movies reduced the final book to a muddled mess.

Last and perhaps least, but still by no means bad, is Aliens Berserker from Stephani Perry, who wrote several books in the series either solo or with the elder Perry. It's based on one of the most ambitious of the comics, centered on a squad of convicts who are given the near-suicidal task of locating and infiltrating alien nests. It's all to locate targets for the real firepower, an enormous exosuit that is fused with more than controlled by a psychotic human pilot. All of this gets satisfyingly developed without any major departure from the comic. The arguable exception is a semi-explicit romance between the heroine and the leader of the crew. In the comic, there's unquestioned sympathy for both characters, at least until the usual corporate machinations put them at odds. Here, with the story tellingly retold from a woman's perspective, the romance is a one-time hookup that the lady is already regretting, while the guy is rapidly getting creepy long before the end.

That gets through the post. The one thing I have to add is that this is a front-and-center example of why I don't like the whole idea of "canon", something I previously commented/ ranted on in my Ewoks review. Star Wars was the definitive case and point, since it was supposed to be modeled on folklore and mythology. In many ways, it applies even more with the Alien franchise, especially in light of the controversy and unpopularity of the installments after Aliens. At times, I've been tempting to go with the conceit of replacing Alien 3 with the comics. In reality, "canon" fits the comics even less than the movies, especially in the face of the later stories, which quite routinely contradicted each other with bizarre concepts. What I like and in a sense prefer is that the Dark Horse treatments were never intended to form a consistent "history", which after all is hard enough to achieve in the real world without dispute or debate. It was about taking the movies' characters and premises and telling your own story, and the films themselves could have faired a lot better if they had proceeded in the same spirit. The final irony is that in today's reboot-heavy environment, this is pretty close to status quo, or would be if the studio types would learn not to take themselves too seriously. And with that, I wrap this up. As always, more to come.

Revenant Review Extras 3: The one where everybody's dead

 

Title: Dead And Buried

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Prototype/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the course of this feature, it’s never to say when I’m going to “end” something. Still, I finally feel like I’ve come to the point where I can say “one more, once”, just to round out the numbers. That left me with one last slot, and I found I had no trouble thinking of entries to fill it without simply becoming overwhelmed. My final choice was one that had been at the edge of consideration all along, from the middle of the late 1970s-mid ‘80s period I had focused on, yet never quite made it into the lineup. I finally gave it a look, and decided it was indeed the one to cover. With that, I present Dead and Buried, a very odd zombie movie that somehow still fades into the background.

Our story begins with a photographer on a scenic beach who is approached by a beautiful woman, only to be brutally attacked by a mob. We then meet our hero, a small-town sheriff named Dan investigating the same attack as a fiery car crash, and his lovely, perky wife Janet. While the sheriff gets nowhere, we meet more of the locals, including an undertaker who views every death as an opportunity to make his customer look better than new. Meanwhile, several more bodies pile up as the townspeople murder visitors with no obvious provocation, and soon, a few new citizens move in. After witnessing the tail end of one of their attacks, the sheriff realizes that the attackers are most of the town, and their victims are being returned to life. Soon, the trail leads him to a deeper truth: Many or most of his friends and constituents are already undead- including his wife!

Dead And Buried is a 1981 horror film directed by Gary Sherman, from a script credited to Alien screenwriters Dan O’Bannon (see Lifeforce, Dark Star, etc.) and Ronald Shusett. O’Bannon later stated that he had only provided limited input on an existing script by Shusett, with little if any impact on the finished film. The film starred James Farentino and Melody Anderson as the sheriff and his wife, with Jack Anderson as the undertaker Dobbs and Robert Englund as one of the townspeople. Special effects were provided by Stan Winston. The finished film was distributed by AVECO Embassy (see The Manitou), with a box office estimated at $216,000. A novelization was written by Chelsea Quinn Yarboro. The movie received an evidently successful release on VHS, and has remained both well-reviewed and readily available. As of this writing, it is available for free streaming on Amazon Prime.

For my personal experiences, my main recollection of this film is simply tripping over it while I was looking for other movies that were of more interest at the time, especially the now-unquestioned classic Dead of Night. At some point, I grudgingly decided to watch it, and though I never disliked it, it has continued to stir up a sense of vague annoyance that it certainly doesn’t deserve. What has built up even more over time is a more acute than usual sense of déjà vu common to the “runnerup”, except this time the movies it most strongly calls to mind are unquestionably from later in the timeline: The power-mad reanimators of Dead Heat and Chopper Chicks In Zombietown; the grizzled hero and over-the-top violence of Evil Dead; the horridly decayed revenants of Heavy Metal and the Return of the Living Dead franchise; the murderous townsfolk of Hard Rock Zombies; even the general despair of Shatter Dead. At a certain point, the film itself becomes a conundrum. On one hand, it clearly anticipated or actually influenced a great many films in the following years (plausibly through O’Bannon, notwithstanding his efforts to distance himself from it). On the other, it never really stood out from the pack, even if it was ahead of most of them. In my analysis, I decided a review was in order just to give it a fair shake it never got, least of all from me.

Moving to the actual film, the foremost thing to say is that almost every aspect of the production is better than it needs to be. There’s very good acting and dialogue, without any gimmicky “big name” casting. The cinematography and camerawork are even better, providing tension and a certain level of emotional involvement. The one thing that might be counted a disappointment is the quite limited gore effects, but this only goes to show that the genre was doing just fine before such things became a staple. The big qualifier is that there are definitely major issues with the story. There’s never any real question that the vast majority of the townspeople are in on the various murders, and most of the attacks occur without the victim putting up enough of a fight to test their capabilities. Numerous further plot holes are created by the discovery that they are themselves undead, including several “clues” that could easily have been erased, without the sense of ambiguity that redeems lesser movies like The Child and Tourist Trap. (If I’m using those as good examples, you know we’re in trouble…) Ultimately, almost everything really interesting is crammed into the finale, which is superb yet somehow oddly predictable, though that at least can be put down to the movie’s own success.

More than usual, the most intriguing aspect of the film is the undead, and these are a very unusual lot. It is implied that they are created by a combination of science and black magic, but there is no effort to flash out the kind of pseudo-rationalization that is almost always unneeded.  We only see one of them actually created, a revived victim who simply gets up from the undertaker’s table and walks out. Whatever their origin, these revenants are evidently “normal” in their intelligence and abilities, though the question is gradually raised how much of this is reasoned action or rote memory and behavior. The main point for autonomy is the murders, which don’t serve any obvious purpose or give them any particular pleasure. When Dobbs is unmasked as their maker, he frankly recounts that they require regular attention to remain presentable. He holds up Janet as his finest creation, with the further remark, “She could go three weeks, a month!” The following confrontation with Janet herself is the clearest indication of the creatures’ mental life, at first cheerfully oblivious, then histrionic in her despair.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going to go with one I didn’t remember. At about the 45-minute mark, the sheriff witnesses one of the attacks. As he moves to investigate, he accidentally hits one of the townspeople. He stops to examine the victim, then whirls around at a jump scare. What we see is easily the best and most gruesome effect in the film, a severed arm lodged in the grill of his vehicle. We get a closer view, which makes it fairly obvious that the prop is lashed in place with a convenient rag. Still the motion and detail are very convincing. That’s when the “victim” rises and stuns the sheriff. The true horror and hilarity comes when the revenant grabs the arm and runs off almost sheepishly into the fog. It’s one of many moments that aren’t really explained, or easily reconciled with what we do learn, yet it is one with a payoff that outweighs the problems.

In conclusion, after going through this review, I can see why this movie has retained a following, but I also remain quite satisfied with my decision not to cover it previously. It is above all a transitional film, bridging the gap between low-tech parables of the 1970s and the conceptual high strangeness of the 1980s. Considered on its own merits, it remains impressive yet frustrating. It is by all means a well-made film that deserved more recognition. Still, it could surely have been a good deal better, especially considering the talent that was brought to bear. To me, it remains indelibly lower tier, at least as good as many films without being any more memorable or entertaining than quite a few that are otherwise inferior. Reviewing it as an “extra” was truly the most fitting thing I could have done, and more fitting still as the one to wrap this up. With that, I am finally calling this done. “You never know…”

Space 1979 Random Pile 3: The one where babies are illegal

 

Title: Z.P.G. aka Z.P.G. Zero Population Growth

What Year?: 1972

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/5)

 

As I write this, I’m at the point where I’m very seriously considering wrapping up this feature for good. I have also been putting thought into the “random” lineup (really begun with Mighty Peking Man), which very quickly brought me to one I have had in mind on and off for a very long time. As I pretty much expected, it’s from the 1970s. More specifically, it’s part of a minor wave of movies spawned by the most notorious panic of the 1960s and early 1970s, the overpopulation scare. It’s a field with several infamous cult classics, but the one I find representative of the whole is the one that has remained relatively obscure. Here is Z.P.G., a movie where the government has banned having kids, and the filmmakers can’t quite bring themselves to say it’s a bad idea.

Our story begins with scenes of a city shrouded in pollution, where ordinary citizens must wear face masks to go outside without ill effects. We then get a series of narrations revealing that the world government has decided that the cause of it all is too many people, and the only solution is to prohibit anyone from having children for a period of 30 years. If you’re asking how they could possibly enforce this, we then see a representative family of offenders chased down and surrounded by a mob who apparently buy the state propaganda line, before being put to death with an airtight dome dropped on them from above. We then meet a completely uninteresting couple who consider adopting what we can safely assume to be a homicidal murder bot as an alternative to actual children. After justifiably refusing, the woman finally defies the state by literally not pushing a button, and the pair get by undetected. Things get riskier, however, as the mother-to-be approaches term and the state becomes suspicious. But the greatest danger may come from a neighboring couple who want the baby for their own!

Z.P.G., sometimes spelled out Zero Population Growth, was a Danish-American production directed by Michael Campus from a script by Frank De Felitta and Max Ehrlich. It was part of a wave of science fiction influenced to various degrees by The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich (evidently unrelated to the screenwriter), which predicted that overpopulation would cause global famine by the end of the 20^th century. The film starred English stage actor Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin, a child of the silent actor, with Diane Cliento as the neurotic neighbor Edna. Robotic child substitutes shown in the film were provided by Derek Meddings, who previously created the marionettes for Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds among other productions. Max Ehrlich adapted the script into a novel, The Edict, ultimately published a year before the movie’s release. The actual organization Zero Population Growth (now known as Population Connection) took significant steps to either condemn the film or deny any association with it. The movie is currently available for  digital purchase on multiple platforms, but is not offered for rental.

For my personal experiences, the overpopulation craze has long been my major beef with 1970s sci fi in general. What made this movie stand out as soon as I first heard of it was the total lack of nuance. Forget the comical failure of laws against birth control, or the pointless atrocities of eugenics. Forget admittedly desirable limits on family size, like China eventually tried to implement. Forget using genetic tests to identify defects or potentially “superior” traits. Forget even artificial environments where space and resources might be limited, like Logan’s Run or Silent Running. This movie posits no babies, period, for a completely arbitrary period.  I knew this one was worth special attention, once I could find a way to view it without actually paying anything. When I started this lineup, I ran it down and viewed it even before another movie I reviewed, and it was even more irritating than I might have expected.

Moving on to the movie, the core irony is that from the very beginning, the Earth of this movie’s future is even more hopeless than the voices of authority admit, a common denominator with Silent Running. The atmosphere is nearly unbreathable, free-living animal life is apparently extinct, and food production is dependent on synthetics. Given this scenario, the surviving populace might well be seriously overcrowded, but that could be no more than a symptom of much bigger problems. What quickly gets stranger is that the movie ignores actual reproductive medicine. Nothing is said of pharmaceutical contraceptives or implants, of which the latter could easily head off situations like the movie portrays. Even more problematically, there is no recognition whatsoever of cloning, fertility treatments, artificial insemination or egg freezing, any combination of which could allow those with means and patience to wait out the “edict”. And, as in Logan’s Run, there’s a clear risk of a flat backfire. 30 years without new births might buy enough time to do something about other issues, but what are you going to do when billions of women on the brink of menopause all demand their undisputed right to have a baby now?

Something further I’m going long to add here is that movies like this are singularly bad at actually portraying starvation, poverty or even overcrowding. That in itself should be an editorial enough on the extent to which the overpopulation “crisis” was an uninformed projection of the wealthy onto the poor. By the standards of the actual “developing” world, just having no more than two people in one bedroom is a relative luxury (a point I’ve been annoyed enough to bring up when multigenerational households are discussed). Yet, nobody here thought it was odd for an attractive, healthy-looking couple to have an entire apartment to themselves. I bring this up at this length because there’s plenty more evidence that poverty and malnutrition harm fertility in every measurable way, to the point that knowledgeable authorities are worried about “premature” puberty in the western/ industrial world (something I covered when I wrote about leuprolide- once). The fact that there are still starving children elsewhere simply proves that this has far more to do with politics than it ever did with population.

The still deeper problem is that this level of overanalysis is only sustainable because the movie simply cannot make the viewer care about anyone onscreen. For all its problems, Logan’s Run at least made its characters and their society interesting, complete with an atmosphere of decadent grandeur and ephemeral beauty. Here, everyone from the stars to the extras are uniformly bland in personality and appearance, compounded by the plain and nearly asexual costumes that add an especially uncomfortable Puritanical subtext to the proceedings. By the time the deus ex machina ending rolls through, one could second-guess whether it is “really” happening or just a last hallucination of the dying, but you still will be hard-pressed to care. The one character who is at least a little interesting is Edna, alternately entranced by the baby and coldly threatening to anyone else who gets in the way. It’s easy to pity her as both a victim and creation of the alleged World Government’s policies. Then again, it’s way too easy to envision her as the kind of mother who wouldn’t let her own  kid go to the little boys’ room without fretting that a human trafficker climbed out of the toilet and pulled him in.

For the one “scene”, I’m going with literally the only sequence I didn’t find predictable (and inexplicably, it doesn’t include the uncanny-valley robot babies). It happens to have come right at the transition between two online videos I had to use for the viewing, which made the impression stronger. At a bit past the midpoint, the expectant father does a search for information on childbirth at a sort of library terminal that seems to approximate the internet. As he reads the entry that appears, which for some reason begins by quoting Augustine, his chair is literally pulled through the wall into a forbidding side chamber. A voice that could be broadcast, recorded or a form of AI firmly demands an explanation why he looked up the page. He manages to spin a story that he meant to search another term, at which point the interrogator presses him why he didn’t redo the search. He counters with moral indignation, questioning why the state would archive such “filth”. It’s enough to be released, but someone is clearly suspicious. It’s a chilling preview of the problems of online privacy and the combined threats of authoritarian governments and corporate Big Tech. In this movie, however, it’s like a fly in amber, trapped by self-dated production values and even more outdated political talking points.

In closing, I am going with a rant I started to go into earlier in this review. The final verdict on this movie is that it feels like something that should have been a joke. Indeed, it would have been a promising satire, especially if it had made the comparison between the plight of the protagonists and the obstacles that advocates of contraceptives and abortion had faced. Instead, we have a movie that approaches reproductive rights with the same shallowness and breathless hypocrisy that as a bad slasher movie would bring to sex.  Ultimately, it pretends to side with the underdog, but still won’t say that what they’re put through is not only wrong but probably irrational even on the story’s terms. My diagnosis is that this is because a certain segment of alarmists refused to fall out of love with the vile daydream that was eugenics. If there’s one thing worse than a bad movie that wastes a good premise, it’s a bad movie with worse politics. By that standard, this movie is truly the bottom of the barrel. While it’s too late to wish it didn’t exist, I’m happy enough to warn anyone else away from it.