Fiction: Retro gaming novel battle demo!

 

It's Thursday of an off-week, and I've been trying to do a week of posts while trying to finish my Nintendo fan/ parody novel (see Demos 1 and 2) in an insane amount of time. As part of this, I went ahead and let out some very spoiler-ish material for what I wrote as the "final battle" part (as a "song fic"...), so I made the further decision to post that and a little more here, plus some autoshape sketches of what the setting is supposed to look like, the version that looks good above and the one that's more accurate further down. Long story short, it's a star fort on a floating Sky Island, and this is still my Metroid-parody heroine. Also a reminder, I used to write a series called Exotroopers, and I started this blog with a story where the protagonist cuts off his own leg...

Meliboia opened fire on two advancing Myrmidons with her 7.5mm rifle from what cover the caryatid on the left side provided. One of the attackers fell with a shattered visor. She activated her shoulder pods, and promptly launched an anti-armor rocket from the righthand pod at the pair who operated their own launcher from cover. The blast blew out a gout of rock and rubble. The Hoplite reloading the launcher staggered, either stunned or blinded, and then fell with a cry. The one with the launcher popped up again, only to find himself exposed. A three-shot burst shattered his helmet. Mel pivoted, just as a fighter came out of the clouds. From her left pod, she launched a single anti-aircraft missile. An engine burst into flames with the blast, and the left wing twisted off at the rear as the craft pitched and rolled out of sight, its weapons still blazing. A single bolt obliterated a section of the upper balcony, leaving the right caryatid supporting only crumbling entablature. Then another, much larger craft rose up from below. “Euphonia,” she said. She retreated as the chorus played…

 “It is the end of the day

There is only the bill left to pay

Let the Fool rise

When Amphion falls!”

 

The bolts of the Euphonia’s starboard medium plasma cannon sailed through the Keep, occasionally detonating with the force of concussion grenades against the columns and walls. As often as not, they sailed straight out the other side of the deceptively porous fortification. An incendiary rocket detonated against the hull next to the gun, only briefly fouling the alignment of the gun. “All Hells!” Mel shrieked from behind a column. “Fire a missile already!” Then she glimpsed the incoming parasite craft. She hefted a translucent ammunition cannister over her shoulder, racking five rockets directly into the conjoined muzzles of the launcher. Already, the transport was shifting, giving the unseen gunner a more favorable angle. Before the next shot could come, the transport banked and swerved, too late. Its portside wing was struck by the bottom wing of the out-of-control fighter, catastrophically damaging both craft. As the parent craft reeled, the loops on the far side flickered with the silhouette of the approaching parasite. She fired the full load of rockets through a sally port and ran up the stairs to the upper balcony. The craft disintegrated as the chorus replayed…

 

“It is the end of the day

There is only the Boatman to pay

Let the Fool rise

When Amphion falls!”

Mel emerged outside the door of the uppermost structure where she and Ajax had spent what she counted as their true honeymoon. She came almost immediately under fire. She activated the shoulder pods for suppressing fire. On the right, her reconfigured 6mm rifle raked the balcony with bursts of fire, felling one of the two Hoplites who came vaulting over. On the left, her grenade launcher fired down at another who had topped the corner battlement. She raised the 7.5mm for what she was sure would be an attack from the center. She still froze as a final parasite craft rose into view, with two Hoplites clinging to the weapons racks. She leaped backward through a window behind the bed, just before they opened fire.

Meliboia crashed down on top of the nuptial bed, propelled by the blasts behind her. Her rifle flew from her hands. She kept rolling, crushing already splintered wood. The sheet and blankets wound around her, tearing where they met rough edges. She frantically tried to deploy the pods, producing only urgent warnings to withdraw for repairs. The final verse of her challenge was all she could hear over the ringing in her ears…

“Behold the old gods have fallen,
Their idols are cast to the flames!
Now let us worship
The Fool, our new God,
He is better than no God at all!”

Two Hoplites burst in the door to the left of the bed, melee blades drawn. An apparition came rushing to meet them, trailing streamers of cloth like an unwinding shroud. The first had only a glimpse of the shape before a leaf-shaped blade drove under his breastplate. The second parried over the body of the fallen companion, then delivered a stroke that was parried in turn by a blade that sprang from Meliboia’s left wrist. Then a bedsheet fell over the adversary’s head and torso, to be wound tight enough to haul him off his feet as the apparition circled behind. Her sword drove into his lower back, and her wrist blade laid open his throat. The apparition rose, now crimson, at a pounding at the door. Just before it smashed to pieces, a grenade plowed through, catching her in the chest.

The force of the concussion grenade threw Meliboia back to the wall. She rose to hands and knees, to look through a spiderwebbed visor. “Autolycos,” she said. “You’re an ass, but you are my brother. Walk away.”

“Oh, all Hells, Mel!” he exclaimed. “You think you can tell me that? I’ll tell you one last time, baby girl, just because Aeacus makes us play nice with you doesn’t mean you’re one of us.”
“No,” she said, “I suppose not.” As she spoke, she completed an emergency override, just before she realized exactly what she was activating.

Her second anti-aircraft missile launched. It did not go even five times its length before it hit Autolycos in either the belly or the groin. It blasted him straight off the balcony, past the corner of the bastion, before its overstrained mechanisms exploded at a fraction of its intended minimum range. She had a brief, searing glimpse of his upper body flung upward as his legs dropped to either side.

Really Good Movies! The one with the fakest fake tanks

 

 

Title: The Battle of the Bulge

What Year?: 1965

Classification: Prototype/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Underrated (1/3)

 

As I write this, I have just finished a week off, which gave me time to think over things I want to do, new and old. As usual, that led to two colliding trains of thought. On one hand, I have once again been thinking of dusting off this particularly infrequent feature, dedicated to actual good movies. On the other, I have been doing a whole lot of research on World War 2. That led me to consider a few movies that I had grown up with, and that finally brought me to the one I saw trashed the most. Of course, that was enough to convince me it was worth a review, so I present The Battle of the Bulge, a war movie that really tried.

Our story begins after a very dramatic tank-themed credits roll with an introduction to the actual Nazis preparing for their last great offensive, against the American forces gathered at the borders of Belgium and France. (Too bad about Operation Bagration…) The dastardly Krauts have a two-fold plan. One is to send English-speaking troops in American uniforms to engage in sabotage and general mayhem behind Allied lines. The other is to crush the forces of democracy with their new King Tiger tanks, commanded by a morally complex Teutonic officer. (Guess which one actually worked…) We then meet a grizzled tanker, a young officer, a charming local damsel and an assortment of other colorful characters who must roll with the tide as German might throws the allies into disorder and retreat. But the looming final battle will be for a prominent oil depot, and the ubermenschen must triumph or run out of gas!

The Battle of the Bulge was a 1965 war drama by Warner Bros, based on the Ardennes Countoffensive of December 1944 and the related Operation Greif. The film was regarded as an answer to 1962 Fox film The Longest Day. Robert Shaw was cast as the German commander Col. Hessler, following his appearance as Grant in From Russia With Love. His character was considered a fictionalized version of accused war criminal Joachim Piper, the only role to closely correspond to an identifiable historical person. Others in the ensemble cast included Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas (see… Horror Express? And the Gobots movie???) as the tanker Guffy. The film was criticized at the time of release for historical inaccuracies by a number of participants in the battle, including Dwight Eisenhower. It later attracted controversy for its use of post-war armored vehicles, including American Pattons identified onscreen as German Tiger 2 tanks, and filming at locations in Spain that did not resemble the terrain or conditions of the battle. It was a possible commercial failure, earning a North American box office of $4.5 million against a $6.5M budget. It would benefit from frequent airings on television. As of April 2023, it is available for free streaming on Youtube.

For my experiences, this might well be the first major World War 2 movie I ever saw thanks to 1990s TV. Long after, still long ago, I had my rematch and definitely found it poorly aged. What really stood out in the research and ponderings that led to this review is how far it already was from the war. In the culminating irony, it’s still earlier than the biggest and possibly last “modern” wave of war films in the 1970s (see Cross Of Iron), which I now know accounts for most of the ones that I can remember encountering in the wild back when. That finally brought me very cautiously back to this one. I am now prepared to say, it held up a lot better than it is given credit for.

Moving forward, the obvious things to get out of the way are almost all things that were almost entirely beyond anyone’s control. In particular, there was simply no way to portray tanks in the numbers this film required without using the real thing. There was even less that could be done to film significant numbers of functioning armored vehicles effectively and safely, except under conditions far more ideal than those of a “real” battlefield. I must further emphasize that the vast majority of the movie’s scenes at least show snow and forests rather than the sunny plains (in Spain???) that everyone complains about. I will further admit, the wonky tanks definitely threw me off more than anything else the last time I came back to this one. Even then, what really bothered me was that I had no trouble envisioning solutions to a number of problems. The actual King Tiger in particular was already advanced enough that any number of later tanks could have substituted tolerably for it with no modification beyond a big enough mockup of the turret. Hell, if they had just called them Panzer IVs, a mockup of the gnarly late-war versions would already have so much extra plating we wouldn’t even see the wheels and suspension that give the most trouble.

That leaves the characters and story, which admittedly don’t hold up as well as they could have. The usual problem with ensemble casts is that the time for real character development has to be divided between them, and this suffers a little more than usual. In certain lights, Shaw’s character does as much harm as good. On the balance, he does at least deliver on his outsized screen time, actually pulling off the cold-blooded, hyper-analytical Prussian military man. The only thing really debatable is the effort to show his disapproval of the conduct of his men, which is uniquely framed in the same functional terms as his tactics. On the Allied side, we do get a relatable and genuinely entertaining everyman in Savalas, who might just as well have been elevated to the lead. The rest of the cast is either too undeveloped or cliches (both in the case of the doomed love interest). What again sets this apart is that the story actually works in many of the issues that truly decided the battle and the war. The chronic oil shortages of Nazi Germany are a recurring plot point that takes a brutal twist in the finale, while the vastly exaggerated effectiveness of the Greif masquerade indirectly highlights the extent to which it was founded in pulp adventures over sound tactics. (It’s worth further note that participants who survived to be brought to trial emphatically denied that they had fired on Allied troops while posing as same.) An extra highlight that came close to “one scene” status is the discovery by the baffled Nazis of a fresh chocolate cake, with all that it implies about the logistics that the US brought to bear.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with one that I realized I remembered from way back when, which I probably wouldn’t have placed in this movie without actually seeing it. Toward the end, Shaw/ Hessler is talking to his subordinate Conrad, portrayed by Christian Blech, who was not only German but an actual Wehrmacht veteran. When his commander reports that they have advanced further than any other unit, the subordinate exclaims, “We have won the war!” That draws a monologue from Hessler, who admits that conventional victory was already beyond the Nazis’ reach in 1941. Instead, he maintains that their war will simply go on indefinitely. When Conrad asks what will become of their families, the commandant says chillingly, “They will become German soldiers, and you will be proud of them.” It’s as warped a view of reality as Conrad’s laughable optimism, yet it captures both the outlook of the Nazis by the end of the war and the eventual realities of the Cold War. Given the fate of his real-life counterpart, it’s all the more unsettling to consider Shaw’s quite casual remark in the midst of this: “The world is not going to get rid of us after all…”

In closing, what I come to is an idea I initially developed earlier in this review, on what I consider the fundamental tiers of war films. The truly and fully “Historical” films are the ones that are or claim to be effectively documentaries or biographies, like The Longest Day, based entirely on “real” events and the experiences of those involved. At the other end are what I count as Allegories, especially in the “anti-war” subgenre, which openly use the events and setting as the backdrop for a broader message. (Separate rant, the latter category is where Enemy At The Gates should have been placed all along.) The actual “average” is the War Drama, a fictional narrative set within the historical setting. These films don’t have to be as meticulous as the first or as thematically ambitious as the second, just functional enough not to be at odds with reality beyond what narrative conventions and available technology already impose. In those terms, the present film is no more a “failure” than Saving Private Ryan. By my usual refrain, it did its duty. After all this time, that’s enough to earn my respect.

The Classics File 3: The one Hollywood wants to unmovie

 

 

Title: Gone With The Wind

What Year?: 1939

Classification: Mashup

Rating: Disqualified!

 

With this review, I am at the end of the last lineup I had planned for my No Good Very Bad Movies feature. That brought me to the reason I did this at all, a movie that I have meant to take on for a very long time. It’s a film that has itself gone through a complicated arc, from a blockbuster to unquestioned classic to a problematic “product of its time” to an artifact the mainstream would rather bury in the memory sandbox. I for one have been looking forward to giving it what it deserves. I speak, of course, of Gone With The Wind, and oh dear Logos (which is an actual name of God in the actual Bible), this damn thing is 233 minutes??!!

Our story begins with a text crawl and a lovely montage praising the Antebellum South, minus the slave auctions, whippings and rampant poverty. We then meet seemingly the most hopelessly degenerate specimen of an impressive bunch of hypocrites, inbreds and general-purpose idiots, a tart named Scarlett O’Hara whose ambitions begin and end with marrying a guy named Ashley who has clearly declared his intent to marry another woman. Meanwhile, the inconvenient Civil War starts, occasionally distracting from her antics as she goes through a marriage to a promptly killed soldier and a series of encounters with a smuggler named Rhett Butler. With the help of her servant Mammy, Scarlett keeps control of her family plantation, while Rhett inexplicably works away at her resistance. Soon enough, the pair are married with a kid, but tragedy strikes. It all comes down to a choice between the man she wanted and the man she got- and 83-year-old spoiler, they both throw her overboard!

Gone With The Wind was a 1939 drama/ historical romance from MGM, based on the 1936 novel of the same name by Margaret Mitchell. The film was produced by David O. Selznick, known for RKO’s King Kong, who reportedly acquired the rights to the novel a month after its publication. The eventual film was directed by Victor Fleming from a script by Sydney Howard. Clark Gable and Vivian Lee were cast as Rhett and Scarlett, when the former was 40 and the latter was 26. Other cast included Leslie Howard (see Petrified Forest) as Ashley, Olivia De Havilland as Melanie, and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy. A score was composed by Max Steiner, returning from Kong. The film was an immediate success, earning a box office estimated at over $390 million against a $3.85M budget. McDaniel won an Oscar for Supporting Actress, the first Academy Award given to an African-American. Gable continued to act until his death in 1960, prior to the release of his final film The Misfits. Leigh became otherwise best known for stage and screen appearances with her spouse Laurence Olivier. Mitchell died in a traffic fatality in 1949, without publishing another major work of fiction. She became posthumously known as a collector and proponent of erotica. The film remains available on digital platforms including HBO Max.

For my experiences, what I feel a need to comment on is the Disqualified category, which I created for this feature specifically for films I would not or could not watch in full. It might sound like this means a film so bad I literally quit, but that’s really not how these things work. For me, actually bailing on a movie is usually an early and potentially respectful decision (see The Plague Dogs). The ones to figure in this feature have been the ones I knew I was not going to get through, and even then, I have usually gotten through far more than I expected. With this movie in particular, there was simply no way I was even going to try to watch the whole thing in one go. I settled for watching it in two parts on consecutive days, with the intention of liberal fast-forwards. In the end, I probably only shaved a few minutes off its mindboggling running time. My final verdict is that it only belongs here because it’s the only feature where I have given myself the right parameters to comment.

Moving forward, I went into this with some fairly distinct memories of watching it on VHS, and many more of seeing it referenced and parodied. What has kept me vaguely and morbidly fascinated is that its reputation is completely belied by any recounting in cold blood. If the “point” of this story was to show that Rhett and Scarlett were not just evil racists but immoral, contemptible, irredeemable, completely horrible yet utterly banal human beings, there isn’t a single story point that would change. What is even more baffling is that for all the glowing revisionism of the text crawls, the Confederacy is put in an even less favorable light. It’s genuinely moving to see the devastation of war, which makes the later first act far more engaging than anything before or sense. But to the truly neutral eye, it remains quite clear from the film’s own accounts that virtually all responsibility lies on the slave owners, specifically portrayed to be as stupid and absent-mindedly cruel as the Abolitionists could have imagined. One more rant this sets off, it is also clear on impartial analysis that the plight of the poor white conscripts who made up the bulk of the Confederate Army was even more immaterial to the Lost Cause mythology than that of the slaves.

With that out of the way, I have more than enough to proceed just on how intolerable I find Scarlett/ Leigh in particular. This is a chicken/ egg paradox that vexes me enough that I really couldn’t claim to give this film a proper rating if I had intended to. The character as written feels permanently arrested as a spoiled 15-year-old, repeatedly proven unwilling and unable to learn from any of her adversities. As the hours pass, the clearly capable Leigh somehow transforms this creature into something even more transcendently uncharismatic and unlikeable than she was before. To give just one example, when she is weeping at becoming a widow, Leigh’s delivery seems to emphasize that she really is in all likelihood more upset by “wearing black” than anything else. Where Gable gives enough depth to wish his character a better fate and a better cause, his counterpart seems to dig for ways to make the viewer want her to die. And I know it’s a subjective judgment, but I find Leigh to be one of the most unaccountably irritating screen presences I have encountered, to the point that I’m sure I used at least half my allotted skip time when I got tired of her voice. To give some frame of reference, I find her worse than the rich girls we were supposed to hate in Heathers (which I regularly considered for this feature). Indeed, the one character/ actor combination I can think of that I could compare is Ken Marshall in Krull, and I actually like that one.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s quite early. Right after Scarlett receives news of secession, we find Rhett and Ashley among a gathering of Southern gentlemen enthusiastically declaring their prowess. When Ashley proves less than enthusiastic, the rest appeal to Rhett. He matter-of-factly points out that the Union has more weapons, factories and ships than the Confederacy ever will. He finishes by commenting, “All we’ve got is cotton, slaves… and arrogance.” Of course, the gentlemen are outraged, without offering any comment to foreshadow that these were indeed the foremost among many reasons the South foreseeably would not and could not win the war. As commendable as it would seem, this is the part that leaves me actually angry. The Lost Cause fairy tale was not just biased historiography but toxic nonsense that did real and ongoing harm, and the people who willingly cast Noble Johnson in King Kong should have known that better than anyone. I have said as long as I have been writing reviews that there is such a thing as immorally bad. In those terms, the only thing worse than propaganda for an evil cause is propaganda from those who don’t even believe in it.

In closing, I find I come back to Ingagi, an actually censored film that by any standard deserved it. I have deemed it unnecessary to comment that this film has grown controversial enough to draw arguments over censorship. In reality, the strongest efforts of the film’s detractors aren’t remotely comparable to the general unmovie-ing of Ingagi, yet I find a common denominator in the implicit embarrassment of the “mainstream” media, first and foremost at the simple fact that they were successful. To me, taking on this film wasn’t about its politics or its history. It’s about calling the powers that have always been to account for every bloated blockbuster that has been promoted, praised and then conveniently forgotten by seemingly everyone but me. You can forget your mistakes, or pretend you have, but I won’t. With that, I can say that this feature has brought me closure. Who’s next?

No Good Very Bad Movies Countdown 7: The one with imaginary Hitler

 

Title: Jojo Rabbit

What Year?: 2019

Classification: Mashup/ Improbable Experiment

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

 

In the course of my reviews and especially this feature, I have become increasingly aware of a paradox when it comes to bad/ “worst” movies: When it comes to actual trends, at a certain point, the label kind of mitigates itself. Whether it’s broad genres like ‘50s B-movies (Robot Monster) or niche categories like Stephen King movies (Sleepwalkers), if you can talk about a movie as the “worst” of something, there is an implied acknowledgement that there are many more that are not fundamentally different. And when you have dozens if not hundreds of creators chasing the same gravy train, many of the mistakes and excesses of individual films start to look excusable or at least comprehensible. My refrain is that the true worst of the worst are the ones that go their own way and get everything completely and uniquely wrong. That brings me right to the present film, a quite recent and outwardly innocuous movie that annoyed me enough to take another look. Here is Jojo Rabbit, a movie about a kid whose imaginary friend is Adolph Hitler, and that doesn’t begin to explain why I find it intolerable.

Our story begins at the tail end of World War 2, in a charming, picturesque German town that miraculously hasn’t been bombed, shelled or tanked into rubble already. Here, we meet Jojo, a 10-year-old boy training to be part of the war effort. He looks completely ineffectual, but he has a secret: His best friend is Adolph Hitler, though he knows nobody else can see the dictator. Adolph encourages him through his trials and tribulation, including his fateful refusal to kill a bunny that gets him the unwanted titular nickname. Things take a turn for the worse when he is crippled by a hand grenade, leaving him at home with his mother. In the spare time, he realizes someone else is in the house. Soon, he discovers that it’s one of the Jews he’s been raised to hate, but on the other hand, it’s an attractive teenage girl who doesn’t look diseased or starving. As the Red Army and the Americans close in, Jojo must make his choice, join his friends in the final battle or keep his new friend safe!

Jojo Rabbit was a 2019 film written and directed by Taika Waititi, a New Zealand filmmaker of Maori descent. The project was reportedly conceived in 2011, based loosely on the 2008 book Caging Skies by Christine Leunens. Filming took place mainly in the Czech Republic, including Prague and the town of Zatec. While the setting was not specified in the film, the events correspond broadly to Erfurt, a town temporarily occupied by US forces before being ceded to the Soviets and the eventual state of East Germany. The film starred Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo and Scarlet Johansson (wait, have I not reviewed Eight Legged Freaks?) as his mother Rosie, with Waititi as Hitler. Other cast included Sam Rockwell (see Galaxy Quest) and Rebel Wilson as the Jungvolk leaders. The movie was commercially and critically successful, earning $90 million against a $14M budget and an Oscar nomination. It is available in digital formats, but has not appeared for free streaming.

For my experiences, my baseline for this movie is that I seem to be one of the very, very few Americans who knows more about the Ostfront than any theater the US was involved in. Needless to say, American films on the subject that are convincing to me are few and far between. The two films of comparative substance to come from the studio system are still Cross of Iron and Enemy At The Gates, both of which put anti-war allegory ahead of history. Other treatments (including some from Russia) have tended to be adventures and sci fi/ horror genre entries that use the front as a background more than a world to explore. The frustrating part is that even the lesser efforts can offer moments of authenticity and depth that have been missing from glossy and sentimental Hollywood offerings. When the present film came out, its overtly surrealist fantasy and mainstream backing offered the clear potential to bridge the gap. When I finally got to it, however, just a few months before the present review, was a film whose history makes Frankenstein’s Army look good.

Moving forward, what I feel the need to clarify is that getting the history “wrong” didn’t have to be a problem. This shows especially with Waititi’s role as Hitler, which could easily have devolved into the director trying to steal his own movie. Instead, we get a surprisingly nuanced performance that creates just a hint of Calvin And Hobbes ambiguity. This isn’t supposed to be the “real” Hitler, or necessarily what Jojo really believes he would be like, but there’s plenty of points where the “make believe” version says things that don’t fit what Jojo knows or believes either. The problem is that the movie keeps departing from reality at its own expense. If this is a child’s view of the war, then the absolute devastation of Germany by its final days should “look” even more complete than it would to a neutral adult. Moreover, we should be seeing the propagandistic view of the Soviets and Slavs in general, which might appear justified if any of the characters have seen the Red Army firsthand. It should be the hard questions that force the indoctrinated youth to consider if his side is in the right, and that’s not what we see.

And that brings me to what I find to be a still bigger problem. For all the talent thrown at the movie, the story centers on the interactions of Jojo with the refugee Elsa, played by Thomasin McKenzie. In my judgment, neither actor was up to material this complex, while the story and script continually undermine them. Among other things, Elsa at face value is an ultra-Zionist as stereotyped as Jojo’s fantasies and even more ahistorical. The more likely reality is that she started out among secularized Jews whose ethnic identity was eroding long before the Nazis set out to annihilate them, which again would have been a far more intriguing angle than what we get. Then, at the core, we have a posited conflict where the story has already copped out. If Jojo was the kind of person who would hand her over to the Nazis, he would have killed the damn rabbit at the beginning. Without that doubt, we’re left with a movie that’s checking off its shopping list of ironies and tragedies before its happy ending, minus the actual fate of the East Germans.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and I really had to go with Taiti as Hitler. In a still-early scene, Jojo is sitting in the woods after his perceived failure to kill the rabbit. Hitler appears, and makes a comically indifferent effort to comfort him. In my favorite line of the movie, he remarks on how others have insulted him, in the process giving an unsettlingly accurate account of the war: “`This guy’s a lunatic; look at that psycho, he’s gonna get us all killed…’” He then goes into a far more interesting speech praising rabbits, which kind of fits with Hitler’s genuine interest in vegetarianism and animal rights. There’s a fair account of the perilous lives of small mammals, which makes me think of the creation myth of Watership Down. (I’m thinking about it, plus I already reviewed The Plague Dogs.) It culminates in a surreal vision of a world for all animals, including “the mighty rabbit”. It’s all vaguely charming, still not outside the tendencies of Naziism… except, of course, nothing is said about how much of the human population can stay in this multi-species paradise.

In closing, the real question that remains is, why is this the film I’ve given the lowest rating to? I’ve used the countdown so far to cover some of the worst kaka to come out in the last decade, yet I’ve shown enough mercy to let the likes of The Space Between Us and The Happytime Murders get by on a 2. As usual, the difference comes down to simple, subjective hate. By comparison, those egregious offenses amounted to one movie that willfully stayed within mainstream sensibilities, and another that deliberately crossed the line without knowing where to go from there. This is a movie that is far more frustrating, not only because it shows more objective talent but because its failures are far more difficult to explain. I freely admit that I am all the more irritated by the fact that this movie was praised and accepted in the same circles where their failings were dissected to death. The one common denominator to them all is loyalty to the Hollywood happy ending, which from a film as otherwise ambitious as this feels like the unkindest cut of all. With that, I can call it a day.

Image credit EclairPlay.

Animation Defenestration: The one that put Tolkien on TV

 

 

Title: Return of the King

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

Classification: Runnerup/ Weird Sequel

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Good Very Bad Movies 25: The one by Sam Peckinpah

 

Title: Cross of Iron

What Year?: 1977

Classification: Improbable Experiment

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

If there’s one thing the “worst” movies feature has been good for, it has been covering films that interest me which fall outside the sci fi/ fantasy genre boundaries of my other features. This has been all the more true for my current survey of unusual films from noted directors. This time around, I have a movie I first looked into around the time I started blogging, from a filmmaker whom I still otherwise know only by his reputation. It remains one of the stranger films to come to my attention, and one that’s discomforting enough that I had already postponed viewing it again. After a fresh viewing, I am certainly satisfied it belongs here, not because it is “bad” but because of its oddity. I present Cross of Iron, a World War 2 movie by Sam Peckinpah, the guy otherwise known for ultra-violent Westerns.

Our story begins, after a German children’s song set to images of warfare and mayhem, with a grim and wearying battle between Nazis and their Soviet enemies. In short order, we meet our protagonist, a surprisingly old or else prematurely aged corporal named Steiner, and his commanders, a colonel named Brandt and a newcomer, Stransky. The new captain proves to be a proud Prussian aristocrat out to win glory and the prized Iron Cross. He also isn’t above ordering casual atrocities, including the execution of a teenage prisoner whom Steiner protects and releases. The misadventure becomes the opening of a new onslaught from Russian forces who disregard their own losses and collateral damage to their country’s civilians. When the proverbial dust settles, Steiner is wounded and Stransky is up for the Iron Cross, but they both know the real hero of the day was killed in action. The tension grows with Steiner’s return to a losing battle with rampaging T34s and an all-female Soviet platoon. When the battle finds Steiner and the survivors of his platoon behind enemy lines, the captain recognizes a chance to remove the one obstacle to his award. But will he or anyone else make it home?

Cross of Iron was a 1977 war drama directed by Sam Peckinpah, based on the 1955 novel The Willing Flesh by Willi Heinrich, a veteran of the Ostfront. The production was backed by the English companies EMI an ITC Entertainment and the German concern Rapid Film. The cast was led by James Coburn as Steiner and Maximillian Schell (see The Black Hole) as Stransky, with James Mason of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea as Oberst Brandt and David Warner of Time Bandits (and Christmas Carol?) as Kiesel. The film was shot in Slovenia and Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, reportedly using T34s and other weapons and equipment provided by the Yugoslav military. The total $6 million budget of the production reportedly failed to cover a planned final battle sequence, resulting in a hastily filmed ending with possible input from Coburn. The film was poorly received by US critics and audiences, though it was well-received in Germany. It gained popularity with current and later filmmakers and critics, including Orson Welles and Quentin Tarantino. It remains available on disc and digital platforms.

For my experiences, I saw this one on a passing recommendation from a correspondent. It popped up early on my blog when I saw fit to mention it in one of my posts on Marx figures as an example of growing awareness of Russia’s role in World War 2 in the 1960s and 1970s. Even then, I was equivocal about watching the film or reviewing it. It ended up harder to get the second time, so I put it on hold while I lined up other material. When I finally went in, I was honestly prepared for the contingency of disqualifying it (something I haven’t done since Creepers) because of just how uncomfortable it gets. In the end, I got through it with my usual strategy of not really paying attention, which quickly proved more justified than usual.

Moving forward, the thing to get out of the way is the almost distracting star power. Coburn, who would have been about 48 when the movie was filmed, is as dominating as he should be. Schell matches him after a fashion, quickly going into full scenery-chomping mode; if you’re ever not sure if he’s on the screen, which is a recurring issue with a number of characters, you will definitely know him by his voice. Things take an odd, unintentionally on-the-nose turn with the casting of Mason, whose iconic turn as Captain Nemo was widely regarded as the basis of Schell’s Dr. Rheinhart in The Black Hole. The one you would really want to watch for is Warner, cast as a de facto administrative assistant to the colonel. His character here is the antithesis to his over-the-top villainy in Time Bandits, and all the more fascinating for it. He doesn’t do much and says even less, yet he maintains a compelling screen presence even if you aren’t looking for him. In many ways, he’s the most convincingly authentic figure, practically hiding in plain sight while history unfolds around him, undoubtedly well aware of the likelihood that he’s on the losing side.

The other side of the equation is the combat sequences, and this is as good a point as any to note there are at least three different running times listed for the movie, presumably from alternate cuts or outright censorship. I watched the longest one, at 132 minutes, and it definitely shows. The odd part is that there is very little that is graphic or extreme then or now. The cumulative effect comes from the sheer length, which is one thing the hostile critics pointed out repeatedly and fairly. It’s all well and good that Peckinpah literally wears away the glory and glamor of battle (not to mention the Nazis’ own propaganda and later revisionism), with the only glorious “last stand” moments being an indoor T34 engagement and the surreal spectacle of Mason emptying an MP40. But there’s nothing here that couldn’t have been done as well or better in a much shorter time. The most obvious choice for the chopping block would be the whole uncomfortable and unrewarding episode with the Russian women, which I was personally prepared to skip right over. The only reason I got through it is that it’s too fast-paced to see nearly as much as one might remember after the fact, but this is definitely a case where what isn’t shown is 90% of the horror and the “cringe”.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I was definitely going with the T34 rumpus, which is as exponentially more terrifying as the velociraptors in the kitchen, so that’s honorable mention. (And why put the cannon through the wall without firing?) And if I’m not talking about T34s, you know there’s a doozy coming. The part that’s stuck in my mind is Steiner’s trip back home, specifically a meeting with the higher-ups of the Reich. It turned out I couldn’t find a full video of this part, but I think I have it reconstructed. It starts with Steiner in  a garden party of the wounded and disfigured, including a band that plays as a band of higher-ups pay a visit. They speak to or at least at Steiner and his nurse, who puts a jacket with his medals over his shoulders. Then there’s a nice touch I forgot about as one of them extends a hand to the next veteran, only to be offered a stump, and another, and finally a foot. The brass regroup and go straight to a prepared banquet. It’s all too much for Steiner, to the point that reality itself convincingly bends as he rises (or does he???...) for a blowup. This is surrealism done right, tellingly from a filmmaker who specialized in graphic hyperrealism, and the best testimony I can give is that I still haven’t worked out how much of what follows is supposed to be real.

In closing, I’m back to form with the rating. On a certain level, I admit that this is one movie that didn’t really belong here, outside of the fact that I long since dedicated this feature to the weird and random more than actual “worsts”. By my honest assessment, this is a film that is overrated as much as it is underrated. It’s a quality movie that deserved better in its own time and since, but it’s still a stretch to call it the “classic” some make it out to be. With the rating scale at hand, it gets the top rating simply because I have nothing better to address its strengths and its flaws. For me, the final verdict is that there are still better movies, and plenty of those that it could have equaled or exceeded with more focus and restraint, especially from its director. And with that, I am bidding it farewell a second time. Onward and upward…