Crypto Corner: The Pizzagate Triangle

 

I’m back with another installment of Forteana, and covering one of the things that first brought me back from the dark years of silence. At the end of 2016, I became aware of something different from the usual election propaganda. It was being said that there was an organized movement of criminals and deviants engaged in kidnapping and abuse that supposedly centered on a Washington, DC area pizza joint. It was further claimed that members were identifying themselves with certain symbols, particularly a sort of triangle/ spiral hybrid symbol that was actually featured in the logo of another pizzeria in the same area. The chief further evidence offered was that the symbol was previously reported in use by child abusers and traffickers in a report apparently issued by the FBI. It was this oddity that developed my interest, and to me remains far more interesting than anything else to emerge from the affair.

Now, one may ask at the start what this has to do with Forteana. In fact, the use and distribution of symbols has figured prominently in anomalist research, including otherwise orthodox anthropology. A notable example is the swastika, used in many cultures including native American tribes that apparently used it well before Columbus. In this case, it’s relatively easy to discern a range of prosaic explanations, beyond the simplistic one of misdating and forgery. The symbol may have already existed among the Paleolithic common ancestors of the American and Asiatic peoples, or the two groups may have been in contact with each other more recently than is known or believed. (The tragic story of the native Siberians will make it clear just how little chance we have of sorting this out.)  Barring these scenarios we can still allow the possibility that multiple peoples independently developed this and other symbols. On this vein, one might further apply Jung’s model of archetypes, or his more problematic concept of synchronicity. Or, there is always the purely pragmatic explanation that there are so many symbols in existence that it is easier to reproduce one by “coincidence” than to create a new one.

Meanwhile, the conspiracy theorists’ bubble burst relatively quickly. Evidence quickly piled up that the symbol was in use well before and after any allegation of criminal associations.  I personally discovered it in a native artifact shown here, reportedly pre-Columbian (again!), that must have been on display for years at a local museum without attracting attention. The more fundamental problem, which anyone familiar with advertising could have anticipated in advance, was that those actually responsible for the offending designs were invariably small graphic design firms and independent artists, by definition among the fringes rather than among the “elites” of business and media. Those with a minimum knowledge of profiling will have no trouble recognizing further parallels to art forgers, who are stereotypically driven by resentment of the art community and a deeper inability to create truly original work. It can easily be allowed that one or a few such individuals might use a provocative icon just to make trouble for their employers and patrons. On the other hand, it would be equally in character for those without ethics or creativity to copy a symbol blindly without knowing or caring where it came from.

That still left that report, however, and that was a doozy. (You can learn enough from a Snopes article predating Pizzagate itself.) To begin with, no evidence emerged that the FBI had approved it for release to the public, though the agency would clearly have intervened if it had not been authentic. What was just as curious is that it was dated very early 2007 and known to the public not long after. It was clear from this alone that the symbol was not in serious use at any recent date, and may have been in decline even when the report was published. As for the information, the document did little more than state that the “hybrid” symbol might be used by human traffickers and pornographers to identify each other. Tellingly, the examples given of the symbol in use consisted mainly of  jewelry that could have been made by commercial and semi-professional sources with no involvement in their activities. The two more specific examples given were a coin engraved with the icon and an offensive caption and a website that appeared to represent a group on the infamous but generally legal lines of NAMBLA. Most noteworthy was a further attempt to interpret the symbol as representing relationships between adults and teens or children, which for the wary scholar is exactly the kind of “explanation” that is usually tacked on after the fact.

At this point, we can again consider how this compares with what can be known of criminal subcultures. First and foremost, criminals and deviants are going to be even more intellectually shallow than ad men. They have no incentive to create visual symbols new or unique to themselves, nor would the vast majority have the intelligence and creativity to do so if they wanted to. Second, identifying symbols are quite different from “codes” conveying actual information. As seen with gang signs, the former serve mainly to avoid “friendly fire” as well as confusion with casual civilians. By comparison, coded communications are invariably  rudimentary and temporary, typically on the lines of an “idiot’s code”.  Third and finally, any collective “lore” among these groups will have the shallowest of roots. In hard reality, most of those who get involved will be gone within a few years at most, leaving little more than a thin layer of hearsay for the next, equally short-lived generation. At this point, we reach a paradox: Most of the time, the iconography of a group will be of recent origin, regardless of what they say or believe, but once in a while, there will be something much older than they would know.

With this in mind, the document becomes more inscrutable than the symbol itself. Of course, the FBI would have known that anything they revealed would be as good as obsolete. Therefore, they most likely suspected the report was outdated, at best, even before it was released. Even so, the question remains, where did their information come from, and was it ever any good? To address that, we need only look back to the considerations already outlined. It would undoubtedly gratify any persecuted or marginalized group to make believe that anyone using a semi-random symbol was really on “their” side. In practice, however, they would presumably be just as satisfied to let the “civilian” population go into panic and false accusations over a minor or wholly fabricated bit of lore.  They would also most certainly have any number of nuances and tricks to sort out infiltrators, curiosity seekers and the odd casual sympathizer from the legitimately informed. In theory and in known reality, outsiders who casually flash a marginalized group’s icons will usually be ridiculed or ignored by actual members.

This is where we get back to Jung. Many of his ideas have become shrouded in borderline mysticism, and Jung himself bears much of the blame. To clear the air, we must step back. The model of archetypes clearly has merit, while synchronicity is at least grounded enough to describe common experience. We might get somewhere if we accept the premise of universal appeal, independent of any theory or model of origin. Finally, the “pragmatic” approach has room to breath without invoking the tautology of the “random”.  Perhaps, on a certain level, symbols look like other symbols for the same reason hammers look like other hammers: In any time and place, people create and use what other people like and respond to.

At this point, I will leave you and wind this down. In the end, the one surprising development here was that the conspiracy theorists actually let it go. That, in turn, was part of the transition to “Qanon”, which replaced the search for esoteric clues with vague and contradictory pronouncements of an online personality. But I would not be the least bit surprised if the same symbol causes an identical panic even further down the line. Symbols never die, and neither does fear.

Space 1979: The one where an alien goes to McDonald's

 

Title: Mac And Me

What Year?: 1988

Classification: Ripoff

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

 

Something I’ve been talking about nearly from the beginning of this feature is my fairly uncanny ability to remember movies (also books, TV, toys, etc.) and just how much pure Hell I have gone through just to figure out what I saw (see Krull). The paradox is that there’s plenty of things I’ve seen that seemed unremarkable at the time that have long since dropped into the realm of old tapes, bootleg disks, sketchy internet videos or quite possibly the circle of Dante’s Hell that literally froze over. It's like the difference between catching Bigfoot after a lifetime of searching and finding out he was living in your garden shed. I watched the Battletoads pilot when it aired. I saw Meteor Man in a theater. I still have an authorized VHS tape of one of the Ewoks movie. This review is for a movie that was like that, at least for quite a while, and I would have rather gone ice skating in Cocytus than look it up again.

Our story begins with a space probe landing on an alien planet that’s never identified. When family of strange-looking humanoids investigate, the probe’s vacuum sucks them all up. Then the probe returns to what proves to be present-day Earth (which would be a trip of several thousand years if it’s not one of our solar system’s rocky planets). The aliens escape, but are separated from one of their children, who stows away with the family of Eric, a supposedly sympathetic kid in a wheelchair. The kid notices little things that lead him to suspect the family is no longer alone, especially missing soda (and also a misadventure when the alien discovers power tools). The pair soon make contact, and a supposedly heartwarming friendship blossoms between them. But the young alien’s parents are still lost, and government agents out to find them are closing in. To keep the aliens free, the kid must go on the run, but not before stopping at McDonald’s.

Mac and Me was a 1988 Orion Pictures release co-produced by R.J. Louis and funded in part by Golden State Foods, a distributor for the McDonald’s restaurant chain. This and Louis’s previous associations with Ronald McDonald house contributed to the perception that it was either paid for by McDonald’s or deliberately used as product placement, as well as criticism for similarities to E.T The Extra-Terrestrial. The leading role of Eric was given to Jade Calegory, who was in fact wheelchair-bound due to spina bifida. The score was written by Alan Silvestri, whose previous work included Back to the Future and Predator. A scene where Eric is wounded by gunfire was partially censored from the theatrical release. The film cost an estimated $13 million dollars and made an estimated $6M US box office. After initial VHS releases, it remained generally unavailable on disk or digital distribution until as recently as 2019, when a Blu Ray was released by Shout. Like Terrorvision, it has 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

My own experience with this one has to be from the middling 1990s, when I was in high school, and it’s one of my more specific recollections. I was spending a night with family friends I sometimes stayed with, and they had their young granddaughter over. We went to a video store, and someone thought it was a good idea to pick up one about a kid and an alien. I followed it well enough to remember the bare outline of the movie, including the McDonald’s scene and the finale. As far as I remember, I thought it was terrible and had little doubt the one or two other adults felt the same way, but the girl loved it. Moving forward, this was the one I knew I had to do for this feature, and there was at least once I was prepared to review it but did something else. I continued putting this off even after I watched it, long enough to cover Duel first, because it really is that bad.

Something else I must say up front is that I never got into E.T. It came out when I was very young, but my first definite memory of seeing it was when I was at least 8 and maybe 10 or more, and I think I only ever watched it one or twice after that. That limited exposure was enough to leave me unimpressed. In the end, E.T. was more naïve than wise, with little sign of either physical or moral strength to back a pacifist philosophy; in that respect, the aliens of The Abyss or The Day The Earth Stood Still were far more interesting. With that already in mind, I take no offense at Mac And Me for following E.T.’s lead, especially with the earlier film already 6 years past. If anything, it came out at just the right time for a knockoff to give a fresh or even improved take on the source material.

That, of course, is the rub. The chief distinction Mac And Me offers is a family of aliens rather than only one, but all that leads to for most of its length is to focus on a literal child. Even so, there are good moments, especially when we see the rest of the family. Scenes of the group wandering in the desert are well-shot and utterly forlorn. At the same time, we get a sense of spirituality and moral values that is refreshing for a genre more typically influenced by secular materialism. It builds up to a genuine payoff when they try to help Eric in the finale, even if it is predictable. The one drawback with the aliens is the uneven effects. The creature design is strange if not unpleasant, while the execution is clearly inferior even to movies with far lower budgets (notably Killer Klowns FromOuter Space the same year). What really pushes things off the rails are multiple scenes when “Mac” and the others are stretched or even flattened with no further effect. It is these literally cartoonish sequences that push things into the realm of “cute” for its own sake, without actually achieving a genuine sense of slapstick.

All the real problems come from everything else in the movie. This is where the perception of the movie as an E.T. knockoff is misleading, but the truth is even bleaker: This movie is not just trying to imitate one movie, but virtually every ‘80s movie. Cute kids, check. Soft-rock music, check. Dancing, check. A building that goes up like an oil rig blown with several tons of thermite, check. It is this that spoils any chance this movie has of being “so bad it’s good” in my book; apart from the aliens, nothing about this is even unintentionally funny. In fact, the movie drags this out so long that even its most infamous scene at the McDonald’s is a comparatively brief diversion, started at the hour mark and finished well within 5 minutes. What it really makes me think of is the work of a forger, perfect in technique but lacking any sense of originality or spirit.

For the “one scene”, there’s just one choice that offers something to work with, and it is the sequence that leads up to the finale. The reunited alien family wander into a grocery store, in full view of the staff and patrons. The bystanders stare, but none of them are disgusted or terrified. A more poignant moment when a toddler makes eye contact with Mac’s younger sibling. One can argue the realism of the scene, but there is at least a sense of understatement. Then the manager confronts the adults and calls for security. When the guard arrives, the father alien is merely curious, finally grabbing for the gun. The rest is far more predictable, but still effective, which is far more than can be said for almost anything that has come before.

This movie is another knockoff/ ripoff that I judge more harshly by comparison than on its own merits. There’s nothing innately “wrong” about copying a more successful movie, but it’s quite another thing to do it badly, and far worse to offer it with the promise of something it could never be. With that, I wash my hands of this one. Take it or leave it, I’m not going back.

Retrobots Revisited: Gobots shuttle and sub

 

I needed to keep things short today, and I decided to cove a new acquisition and one very old one.  This week, I got an online order of a Gobot, and not a cheap Arco bot with the name slapped on. This also means I finally have to put my money where my mouth is with the usual trash talk about Transformers. I will freely admit that, while I am and remain critical of the mystique attached to Transformers in particular, the Gobots certainly have their own problems. Here's pics of my guys with a few more bots, including the knockoff croc bot and mystery red guy, plus the Marx Evil Space Guy.

For the featured bots, there are two Gobots more or less intact. The first is a space shuttle I picked up as a kid, and don't recall ever playing with; he has a terrible name I won't repeat. The second is a submarine called Dive Dive, which I received just this week. I don't believe I ever owned this guy, but I'm sure I saw him at least once. Also in the lineup are the Transformers hovercraft bot and a Convertors peacock. I was ready to include the bird in the lineup, but very quickly concluded he simply isn't functional. As we shall see that's saying something. Here's some pics of the alt modes.

Unfortunately, both bots are in bad shape. The shuttle guy is so loose he can't really stand fully upright on his own. For most of the pics, I finally stuck a Lego piece (okay capsule toy generic Lego) through a pair of open slots to keep the upper legs from sliding back down. It should be all too clear that he was all kinds of not great to begin with. If you ever had to sort out Gobots from their Transformers counterparts, the best rule of thumb is that the former look subtly undynamic, almost stoic. In many ways, this guy is a Gobot's Gobot, with all their relative good points, especially a simple, sturdy design, plus all the weird and awkward in spades. Here's one more pic of him pre-intervention.

With all that in mind, I'm at a loss to explain the sub bot. He looks good from the waist up, complete with a cool anthropomorphic head, but the lower half is absolutely horrible. The legs are supposed to slide out and swivel, but the right leg repeatedly slipped right off its track, while the left has an equal and opposite tendency to get stuck. On top of that, I actually broke off a piece on the right hip. It will more or less stay on, and I'm sure I will be able to glue it back, but it's still a very bad sign. Clearly, this was unusually complicated for a Gobot, but there's no payoff in improved articulation; in fact, the legs of bot bots are immobile apart from the transformation. By comparison, even the Arco pistol bot can do a decent kick. I quickly decided it was better to keep the lower half untransformed, which gives him sort of a "merman" look. Here's a couple closeups.

Despite all these problems, I still must point out that the bots still aren't that bad. Note especially how they compare with the Transformer, which is even simpler and less articulated, and a bit shorter to boot. One more thing worth attention is that, while these are all fairly small, the choice of alt modes implies a much larger scale. The hover craft would not be less than 30 feet, certainly taller than Optimus Prime. The space shuttle would be over a hundred feet long, though the proportions are shot to hell already. Then the submarine would be truly colossal, easily 200 to 300 feet, big enough to kick Optimus into orbit. But these aren't things kids would ever be bothered by, even if we had thought about it. Imagination was its own scale, and that's why we loved them.

Space 1979: The one Steven Spielberg made about a guy and a truck

 

Title: Duel

What Year?: 1971 (original broadcast version)/ 1972 (theatrical release)

Classification: Prototype/ Mashup/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Pretty Good! (4/5)

 

Back when I wrote out my Introduction for this feature, one of my harder decisions was to set aside movies made for television. I knew this would mean excluding some very good material, like Trilogy of Terror, Gargoyles, and for that matter Space: 1999. However, this is one decision I have so far honored. At the same time, there was one I always meant to be an exception, and fortunately the groundwork was laid out for me as it was successful enough to get a theatrical release. Without further ado, I introduce Duel.

Our story begins with an individual identified  as Mr. David Mann on a road trip that takes him from the city into the desert. As the credit titles wrap up, he finds himself behind a semi pulling a tanker trailer. He becomes impatient and passes the truck, only to have the unseen driver roar in from behind to cut him off. When the driver finally signals for him to pass, he barely avoids a head-on collision with a third vehicle the trucker clearly knew was coming. It’s the beginning of a battle of wits and nerves that quickly pushes Mr. Mann to the edge. As the final confrontation ensues, he must face the mammoth truck head on, with no certainty that either combatant will survive.

Duel is considered the first feature-length film by director Steven Spielberg, from a script by Richard Matheson based on his own short story of the same title. The film starred Dennis Weaver, an accomplished movie and TV actor with a career going back to the early 1950s. A score was provided by Barry Goldenberg, who had previously worked with Spielberg on a segment for Night Gallery. It was originally filmed as a 74-minute TV movie for ABC, reportedly in 13 days. Spielberg received further funding to expand the film into a 90-minute version for theatrical release by Universal. The expanded version notably added a sequence where Mann helps a school bus, while about 1 minute of footage used in the broadcast version is estimated to have been cut from the theatrical version and later home video releases, mainly consisting of additional comments from Mann.

The main thing I can say about this movie is that I read the story before I saw it, but well after I first heard of it. I can further attest that I never saw much debate about whether it should be considered science fiction. This is undoubtedly in large part because of Spielberg’s later contributions to the genre, but I am sure that is not the only factor. For a frame of reference, the very first place I heard of it was almost certainly the 1975 book Science Fiction Movies by Phillip Strick (which also figured in my experience with Dark Star), published around the time Jaws came out. Just how to classify it remains difficult. It has elements of science fiction, horror and action/ adventure, with arguable post-apocalyptic subtexts on the side. What stands out most of all is the disconcertingly forward-thinking treatment of “road rage” and the general breakdown of etiquette and civility. If it is considered in post-apocalyptic terms, it could be compared to Night of the Living Dead or Phase IV, not the fall of human civilization per se, but the first tremors of an upheaval that might bring about its end.

The overriding and indeed overwhelming focus of the movie is the truck. It’s huge, dilapidated, and ironically archaic, yet still a fitting embodiment of technology and “progress”. There are so many head-on closeups of the machine that it feels like the movie should be retroactively titled “Grills”, except of course we see far more of the truck than of Jaws. The chrome, the grime, the infamously ambiguous row of license plates, all build a sense of character as strong as any “killer robot” (Maximillian of The Black Hole comes to mind). The driver, on the other hand, is as elusive as the Bruce the Shark. The story gives several opportunities to hint at his identity and motives, conspicuously a tense scene at a truck stop, but they are all either red herrings or unresolved ambiguities. For all intents and purposes, the villain is the truck itself. Incidentally, this marks the biggest departure from the short story, which very specifically describes Mann’s reactions on seeing the trucker’s face, though Matheson’s own script apparently reflected the decision to leave him unseen.

On the other side of the equation, the problems with the hero are closely tied with those of the story’s premise. Just as everyone in Jaws would be safe if they stayed out of the water, Mr. Mann could clearly be safe if he pulled over and waited out the villain. To the credit of the filmmakers and the character, there are several points where he tries to do just that, in the process developing a little bit beyond the nondescript cipher he is at the start. It must be further allowed that there are also points where the trucker could presumably come after him on foot, so it all balances out within the “man vs. machine” conceit. What makes it work overall is Mann’s frequent monologues, which make him relatable if not necessarily more likeable. Unfortunately, this is where the theatrical version seems to undermine the original point, prominently in the contrived school bus scene. The clear expectation is that this will make us root for him, but to me, the resulting changes in the story and pacing are too disruptive for a rewarding payoff. It’s like if a pizzaman knocked at the door during the final act of a slasher movie.

For the “one scene”, it’s the opening of the movie that I find most intriguing. At face value, it’s little more than a transition from the city to the wilderness, drawn out to the length of the credits. In fact, this is one of the points where the theatrical version added to the original, and the results are deceptively effective. The big payoff here is the steady accompaniment of the car radio. Here, the story ties into the wider world, and it works. Most of it is inane banter, punctuated by unflattering reactions from man. But squarely in the middle of it, we hear a caller who turns a question about a census form into an extended complaint about his marriage and his resentment of his obviously more successful spouse (not far from the backstory the story suggests for the trucker). It is here that we see most clearly that something is not right with the world of the film, even if it is by all indications the same one we already know all too well.

This is a movie that took me a long time to get to, and it is in no small part because I needed time to think it over. In any history of science fiction, this one would feature prominently just for its historical significance. Considered on its cinematic merits, it is if anything even more impressive. However, even with my very early interest in the film, it took a long time to decide how or even if to fit it in here. What kept my interest is the transition that the movie went through, from story to TV movie to a theatrical release, and in far too many ways it is a cautionary tale. What I hope to do is show what they did right, especially within the constraints and occasionally surprising freedom of 1970s broadcast television. I especially hope that, with continued and potentially greater appreciation, there will be more access to the original version, which I will admit I have yet to view myself.  For now, appreciate it for what it is, and what it laid the way for.

For links, I commend movie-censorship.com for an especially comprehensive analysis of different versions of the film.  A video review from Cinemassacre is also recommended.

Retrobots Revisited: The rest of Rogun Robots, Part 2

 

It's actually my day off, and I decided to go ahead and finish what I started over the weekend. Way back in June, I introduced the Rogun Robots army man-scale figures. Then I presented the transforming ray gun/ robots they were nominally based on. Now, I'm back with the ultimate knockoff bot, a Rogun literally as big as (generic) Godzilla. As seen in the "title" pic, this guy is enormous, about as tall as Genericzilla and just a little shorter than the giant Iron Giant. Here's some more pics of this big guy, with the pistol bot and the Truckstop Queen thrown in.

As seen above, this bot was intended to transform between a robot and a cap rifle, one of two such designs to appear in the Rogun line. This is clearly an instance where the "alt mode" came first, as the bot form has even less articulation than the pistol version. Basically,  the arms swing up and down a little, and the barrels/ hands extend, or would if they pointed in any direction but down. Since the gun mode is built for actual human hands, the scale is necessarily larger than usual for a vintage transforming bot. Here's another pic of the Roguns with a line-up of bots, this time including the bird knight, the grocery store dinobot and the big red Robotech guy, plus the Gas Station Duchess.

Meanwhile, we haven't yet considered the gun mode. The transformation consists of pushing the legs together to form a stock, extending it, and swinging the arms upright. The extending bit could be used to make the bot mode even taller, but the bot's a bit wobbly already. The obviously awkward part is that the head has to be moved out of the way. This is rationalized by making it a sight, though that begs the question where his brain is supposed to be. As with the pistol, the final product is much more balanced and functional than it looks. This and the size of the thing has made me wonder if the idea was to market these to older kids. Here's some more pics of the gun mode.

Gun sight, robot head or TIE fighter cockpit? Yes to all!

Finally, you might have noticed there's one more little problem. Okay, not so little.

I know it's a joke, but get down from there!

Still one of the less dirty poses I ended up with.

With that, I'm done for today. More to come!

Space 1979: The one with 0% on Rotten Tomatoes

 

Title: Terrorvision

What Year?: 1986

Classification: Parody/ mashup

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

As I write this, it’s just past Halloween, and I came very close to doing the present review as a holiday special. I didn’t quite get to it in time but still definitely wanted to get this one in. It’s another movie I considered very, very early (see the Critters review), though I debated for a very long time whether it was “right” for this feature.  On that vein, I even debated using this one as a final entry. I definitely won’t be getting to that point for a while yet, but I decided the time was right for this one.

Our story  begins with a quick introduction to the Putteman family, consisting of a mother and father, their teenage daughter Suzy, a kid named Sherman and Grampa, who is obsessed with weapons and the military but never actually mentions being in a war. Through their introductions, Mr. Putterman ties to fix their satellite dish himself. Things go awry when the dish receives a signal from a briefly seen interstellar civilization that is discharged as a bizarre creature. The monster begins eating members of the household, included a visiting pair of swingers, while Sherman and Grampa continue watching 1950s monster movies hosted by a personality named Medusa. When Sherman tries to warn others, the creature deflects suspicion with a further ability to recreate the faces of its victims (or save them for later…) When all seems lost, the kids manage to calm the monster long enough to befriend it, with help from Suzy’s boyfriend OD, and begin sharing the wonders of Earth and TV.

Terrorvision was a production of Charles Band and his studio Empire, which has been turning up here a lot more often recently. The film was directed by Ted Nicolaou, also credited with Empire’s Dungeonmaster the previous year, and starred a range of low budget/ cult movie talent including Mary Woronov of Night of the Comet and Gerritt Graham of the rock musical Phantom of the Paradise as the parents. The film received a limited US release in early 1986, with an estimated gross of $320,000. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie 0% based on 9 reviews. The music was provided by Richard Band and The Fibonaccis, with the latter writing and performing the movie’s theme song. Like The Day Time Ended, the soundtrack received a release on vinyl, but unlike the former film, it is not available in digital format and remains expensive in its original format. The movie was released on Blu Ray with The Video Dead in 2013, though the latter film was not an Empire release. A short-lived television series of the same name appeared in 1988, but was likewise unrelated.

This is another movie I first saw on Netflix in the early 2010’s. It stands out first and foremost as a movie that never pretended to be taken seriously. All the characters are cliches, albeit well-rendered ones, every twist in the story is predictable, and almost every joke is at the movie’s own expense. It also further demonstrates the usual inexplicably good Empire production values. It’s quite clear that the movie cost far more than it ever earned in theaters, though no tale tells of its budget, and it still looks way too good for an operation on Empire’s level to pay for. The monster and related effects are excellent, and undoubtedly took up much of whatever money they had. The cost of the sets would also have run up a very tidy sum, unless (as I think very likely) they filmed the whole thing in somebody’s upper-class home.

Meanwhile, the thing that keeps the movie going is the surreal interactions among the characters. In contrast to Band’s early venture Laserblast, this movie succeeds in presenting characters who are absolutely terrible but somehow interesting and even endearing. Sherman and Grampa are actually smart, and their wargames are wonderfully horrifying in hindsight. The parents and most of the other adults are simply idiots, not because they are dumb, but because they are too self-centered to notice anything amiss. Mrs. Putterman in particular is so brutally insensitive to Sherman that he would be better off calling CPS on her rather than telling anyone about the monster. Suzy falls in the middle; she is vapid but sensitive in her own way, enough to start paying attention by the time the authority figures have been picked off. Finally, there is Medusa, in a class by herself. Alternating between her on-screen persona and an impatient Bronx accent.

Naturally, the movie’s greatest strength is the monster. It’s a gooey, oozey, asymmetrical creature that does little more than hide and eat, yet still stays ahead of most of the human characters. Just as intriguing are the traces and remains left behind. Its attacks seem to liquefy its prey, very graphically shown with Grampa’s early demise, resulting in numerous pools and piles of slime, clothing and less certain stuff.  A nice extra touch comes with the consumption of OD, resulting in an assortment of metal of more substance than the character. Its further ability to recreate the heads of its victims is truly unsettling; when we finally hear from its creators, it is hinted that the beast retains the essence of its victims in some kind of gestalt. What is most impressive is that the creature manifests a perversely childlike personality, grunting and twirling its eyes in excitement whenever something attracts its interest. It’s revealed to be a renegade house pet, and it does indeed make sense as a puppy that soiled the rug.

For the “one scene”, this is the one thing that tempted me to write this one off. This is a movie that is meant to be appreciated in full; focusing on one segment merely diminishes both the part and the whole. still, there was one reasonably familiar scene that stood out to me on review. Close to halfway, the Puttermans and a visiting pair of swingers are shifting from room to room as various hijinks and revelations unfold, including the discovery that the other guy, Spiro, is bisexual. After making this disclosure, Spiro goes to a room with a hot tub where his partner has been waiting. When he enters, she is submerged at one of the pool, with only her head above the surface. She makes no move, but her expression seems inviting. Spiro climbs in, and is merely intrigued when he realizes there is something on the surface of the water. He approaches eagerly, reaching for the lady. Then a pair of jaws (which don’t match any part of the monster we see before and since) catch him by the throat. It is the creature’s most menacing strike, and the one time it feels like it could be in a “straight” monster movie, however briefly.

As usual, this brings us to the rating. I considered beforehand giving this one the highest rating, while after enduring its weaker moments, I came close to bringing it down a notch. The rating I give it now is about what I figured on all along. It’s not a top-notch movie, but it’s one that accomplishes what the filmmakers clearly set out to do. If it does not aspire to be more than it is, then at least it does not fall short of its ambitions either. Above all, it’s fun, especially with the theme song, possibly the catchiest after Flash Gordon.  Whoop whoop… Dammit, now I have to hear it again.

Image credit Discogs. Again, they have everything. While I'm at it, here's the feature Introduction.

Retrobots Revisited: The rest of Rogun Robots, Part 1

 

Just in the last few days, I realized I had gone since September without an '80s/ '90s robot toy post. It also happens I have accumulated a bit of a backlog, with some material that could easily have fallen under the "Giant Robots" feature. After a bit of debate, I decided to put it under this feature, in part because I hadn't done much with it in a while, and in part because it ties into one of my earliest posts on this vein, the Rogun Robots. Without further ado, here's some pics of the first of my new arrivals.

Tremble before the wrath of Stickerface!

As previously reported, the Rogun Robots were a line from Arco, the toy company that also admitted making and/ or distributing the patchisaurs. The original gimmick was that they were bots that transformed into cap guns, and vice versa. Some of the toys were infamously incorporated into the Gobots line, while Arco went on to use the name for a far better set of army man-style bots. I personally had and loved the mini bots, but had no knowledge of the actual transforming bots until many years later. Recently, I decided it was time to look at what started it all, so I ordered one online. Somehow, my package ended up sent to Idaho instead of Arizona, an adventure in all likelihood more interesting than the actual bot. I finally got it a week ago, and used the time to take a closer look.

My first impression of the toy is that he's absolutely huge. In terms of scale, this bot is as big as a toy can be and still be considered within action figure scale. He towers over the Truckstop Queen and even edges out the Big Red Robotech Guy. He's still a bit shorter than the grocery store dinobot, but not by much. Here's a couple more pics with a more complete lineup, including the Gas Station Duchess, the dollar store giant robot,  and the anime robot space jet.

Don't be shy, he's only a robot that's also a gun.

Unfortunately, it's equally clear that bigger is not better. The Rogun bot could embody everything that could be done wrong with a knockoff Transformer. The only points of articulation are those essential to the transformation (a little more about that below), and even there the motion is extremely limited. The arms can hook or scoop, the legs kick after a fashion, and the guy can bend over at the waist. Then there is that face. To start with, it is infamously a sticker, something apologists will point out was done even with some "real" Transformers. What makes matters worse is that there's nothing in the lines of the mold that would be different with or without it. Finally, there are the quite outlandish colors, which are literally clownish.

Of course, I have to say something about the gun transformation, which I've represented with a couple extra pics. In pictures, this might seem like the downfall of the toy, but if anything, it works better than the bot mode. The key step is to sort of pinch the legs together and bend the arms back until they hook over two pegs. There's a knob sticking out that holds the legs in place if you don't miss it. Part of one arm is missing on mine, which doesn't affect things. I had more trouble from a spring mechanism that holds the legs apart in bot mode; it spat rust the first few times I tried the transformation, but that seemed to clear up. Once it's transformed, the thing has a surprisingly decent feel and balance. An extending barrel comes out of the top of the head. That goes noticeably askew when fully extended, less so if you only do it with the black part. The trigger still makes a very loud clicking when pulled, which takes a fair amount of force. There's a revolver magazine inside that still advances when the trigger is pulled. Unfortunately, this and every other specimen I've seen pictured in detail has heavy wear and damage, including a fine powder that I believe to be ground-down plastic. I have no doubt that repeated firing without caps is the primary cause of this, but at this point it's a minor consideration.

In the process of acquiring the item, I learned a little more about the "Rogun" line. Arco actually made the Rogun bots before acquiring a license to sell them as part of the Gobots line. It's reported that those made in 1984 will bear the Rogun name, while those with the Gobots name on stickers and packaging are from 1985 or later. Intriguingly, the Rogun line was either continued or revived by Mattel after the more prestigious company acquired Arco. In the process, their sketchy branch of the Gobots line escaped its effective extinction with the acquisition of Tonka by Hasbro in 1991. From the evidence at hand, these later bots are unlikely to be confused with the originals. Like many post-buyout Arco toys, they are outwardly more polished but lack the kitschy charm that once made the company's products interesting. Here's an image of one in box, with credit to CollectionDX.

Meanwhile, I had one more lead. There were even bigger Roguns made, and I finally found one listed for quite a bit less than the one I bought. I got it just this weekend, and... oh... Hell... no.

To be continued!!!