Featured Creature: The one with the Jurassic Park guy and invisible Chevy Chase

 

Title: Memoirs Of An Invisible Man

What Year?: 1986 (optioning and development)/ 1992 (theatrical release)

Classification: Improbable Experiment/ Runnerup/ Mashup

Rating: Pretty Good! (5/5)

 

With this review, I’m starting yet another review feature, one which I have thought about on and off for a very long time, specifically for films which didn’t “fit” with my other features. The backstory is that when I started reviewing with Space 1979, the focus was on 1970s and ‘80s movies, with earlier and later films largely excluded. I opened up the field a lot more with the Revenant Review and Super Movies, but there were still entries piling up that I wasn’t covering, and the common denominator was 1990s films broadly in the “monster movie” genre. For a very long time, I simply planned to cover them later, ideally as another October/ Halloween run. But over the weekend, I finally got a movie that I felt forced my hand, in part because I would probably just buy it if/ when I’m ready to buy it again. In the process, I’m carrying over the Space 1979 rating scale with an “unrated” option, because what I have in mind is really all over the map. Here is Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, a team-up of John Carpenter, Sam Neill and… Chevy Chase?

Our story begins with a voice giving a monologue that hints at a longer story. As the angry narration goes on, the camera focuses on what looks like an empty chair, until a piece of gum is chewed and blown into a bubble in mid-air. We learn that our main character is Nick Halloway, a businessman who gets left behind when a vaguely described experiment that would normally done as far from civilization as possible goes awry. The end result is that Nick is left invisible, but is still detected by a group of government agents as he tries to leave the scene. Soon, he is the focus of a covert manhunt led by an agent named Jenkins. He manages to stay ahead of the agents while trying to salvage the remnants of his former life, including a romance with a lovely documentary filmmaker. But when Jenkins zeroes in on his lady love, Nick must go on the offensive to save her. Will he prevail, or has his luck run out?

Memoirs Of An Invisible Man was a Warner Bros production, officially adapted from a novel by Harry F. Saint. Its development was initiated by star Chevy Chase prior to the publication of the book, as a further effort to transition from comedy to dramatic roles; a number of further delays and departures were reportedly caused by disagreements over the tone of the film. The film was ultimately placed under the director John Carpenter, with Chase as the lead, Sam Neill as Jenkins, one year before his starring role in Jurassic Park, and Daryl Hannah of Blade Runner as the love interest Alice. Many of the film’s effects were created with CGI from Industrial Light and Magic, building on earlier work for The Abyss and Terminator 2, contributing to a final budget of up to $40 million. The movie was a commercial failure with a US box office of only $14.4M, and received many negative reviews for its handling of science fictional, dramatic and comedic elements.

For my experiences, this was a movie I was aware of when it came out, which is really looking like a bad sign. As with many things, I finally saw it on TV, and was reasonably impressed, particularly with Chase and Neill. What has interested me most is the number of genres and films it seems to reference, including a disconcerting number that came out at the same time or later. It’s clearly indebted to the Universal “Monsters” franchise, to the point of copying certain sequences and shots, and less directly to H.G. Wells, which put it on my radar during Wells-A-Thon. (I had also thought of giving this feature a head start for the ‘90s Island of Dr. Moreau.) If anything, it has an even stronger affinity with The Fugitive, actually from the following year, and the “chase” genre it inspired. The most random yet striking association that comes to my mind is InnerSpace, quite possibly the only movie to try something like this blend of elements and influences with inarguable success at the box office as well as other fronts. I find it all the more significant that this one started its difficult development about the time that film was in production.

The central reality of this movie is that, whatever Chase’s intentions, it is a comedy, albeit a fairly “dark” one. What it does show is that his obvious gifts for comedy include a command of timing, body language and situational awareness. This comes through especially in the rather odd decision to show Nick visible for most of his screen time, notwithstanding the amount of money plowed into the effects needed to make him invisible. Due credit must be given to Chase and his costars (especially Neill) that this generally works. His posture and expressions are always in character with someone who is undetected but still wary, while the rest of the cast advances the conceit by acting around him without simply looking oblivious or stupid. As the movie continues, the invisibility conceit opens up more complex and tense scenarios, as he evades the agents, eavesdrops on acquaintances, and another man’s sketchy behavior toward Alice. This is as good a point as any to mention the effects just for comparison. The transitional-period CGI easily hold up at least as well as significantly later CGI, conspicuously Hollow Man, in no small part because they don’t look that different from ‘80s practical/ optical effects. However, while the effects led to some good moment, especially a shot of Nick inhaling cigarette smoke, they are never as flat-out effective as Chevy Chase is in full view.

The natural counterpoint to chase is Neill as Jenkins. In many ways, he is the best thing about this movie, but n another level, he is the one thing that doesn’t “fit”. The impression I get on critical viewing is that the character seems written one way and played another. With Neill’s invested performance, he falls comfortably into the mold of Deputy Gerard (who was after all a character on TV first) as a “good” guy on the wrong side. But the story keeps painting him as a full-blown “black ops” agent, with a generous helping of fanaticism under the surface. On consideration, I wonder further if the filmmakers didn’t quite know what to do with him. I find this especially in their two most direct confrontations, a middle-act scene when Nick infiltrates Jenkins’ office and the finale at a construction site, The first is easily the high point of the film and for both actors (indeed very close to a choice for the “one scene”), with both stars staying fully invested in their characters and the premise. The second, in contrast, becomes a series of increasingly questionable decisions that are unnatural for either character, culminating in a conclusion so unsatisfactory I literally forgot about it until looking up the movie on disc. To me, the best reaction I can muster is my usual tendency to think of a better way to do it, but beyond writing in some common enemy to unite against, I just draw a blank.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I was considering at least two or three well after I had returned the disc I used for this viewing. My final and difficult choice is a sequence I will admit I had forgotten, portraying the aftermath of the accident which has turned not only Nick but a good part of a building invisible. The individual moments may not stand out in casual recollection, but the surreal whole gives its own impression. It is easily the most compelling effects sequence in a film that often works at least as well without them. The structure looks like it is in ruins yet still standing, with furniture, walls, rooms and whole sections seemingly suspended in mid-air. As Nick and the investigating agents try to make their way through the building, they repeatedly run into walls and obstacles that are now invisible. In the process, the invisible man disturbs enough still-visible objects for the agents to realize his existence for the first time. (The state of his clothes will be a matter of recurring inconsistencies.) The tension rises as they close in, but the true culmination is when the structure finally disappears in full, either wholly disintegrated or else transmuted to another plane of existence.

In conclusion, I will acknowledge that this is a movie I have rated higher than it deserves (about on par with Dr. Moreau). There’s enough problems that I could have taken it down a rating. But when these issues are balanced against the effort and talent clearly invested, not to mention the disastrous misfortunes that afflicted the project, these are minor complaints at most. This is a movie that’s overdue for recognition as what it is: A clever, creative adventure that took moviemaking in new directions. It might not be “great”, then or now, but it gets a pass from me.

Rogues' Roundup: From Space Guys to Astronauts

 

With this post, I'm starting another "short" week. I decided it was time to catch up on some backlogged material, and that in turn offered me a chance to expand on some ideas and terminology. In writing about Marx figures, I've referred to certain figures as "space guys". What that has meant to me is the 1950s style of space figures, characterized by leathery flight suits and removable helmets that looked like either fish bowls or water tanks. (See my 3 inch space guys revisit.) In using this term, there's never been a question in my mind that this would not apply to the Marx "Apollo" figure set, nor to the later Galaxy Laser Team astronauts (though I realized I have used it offhandedly). What I never settled in my own mind is when the transition occurred. To begin with, here's a recent acquisition that was literally handed to me, an Archer space figure, and boy is he a "space guy". Here he is with the Mexican evil space guys for comparison.

This figure stood out as my first hard plastic space figure, which puts him squarely in the 1950s. He's about 3 inches tall, comparable to the 3 in/ 70mm Marx figures but a lot more robust. There's a quite distinct sound when tapped, almost like porcelain. He is intact apart from a missing water-tank helmet, despite the appearance of the weird gadget. However, there's a hairline fracture in the hose, which is very often missing in figures for sale. Exactly what he's doing isn't clear, maybe surrendering to the space police while holding a blow dryer? The main thing to be learned is that even in the "space guy" era, Marx was far ahead of the competition.

Meanwhile, what was clear was that the transition from space guy to astronaut happened in the 1960s. Over a few different online orders, I built up a modest sample of the line that did the most to bridge the gap, the MPC astronauts. The MPC spacemen are most noteworthy as the longest-lived of "vintage" figures to originate from an American manufacturer. They were first made in the early to mid-1960s, and remained in production until as late as the 1980s, long after Marx and Timmee had moved on or gone belly up. They were notable for combining the "space guy" suits with more modern helmets, and also for retaining weapons for a good part of their run.  Here's a lineup of the lot, I'm sure spanning a wide period of time.

Unfortunately, what really stood out to me once I had a good sample is that they are absolutely terrible, in ways I couldn't appreciate until I had some in my hands. The sampling I gathered are highly varied in condition and evident composition, but every one of them looks and feels cheap. Here's a closeup of the best one, featured in the center above, and another of the same sculpt, sometimes called "pistol and lunchbox". I'm sure the former figure is a little larger than the others, but it was hart to prove that photographically. 

Looking ahead, the figures that set the standard for "realistic" astronauts were certainly Marx's astronauts, dated 1970 and available in both 60mm and nominal 6-inch scale. I continue to see debate about the exact timing of the release of the small figures, with a number of sources persistently reporting that they were not available until the late '70s. What I find noteworthy is that they are in what I consider "pseudorealistic" style, highly detailed but not that close to the suits that were actually used. Here's a lineup of a group I acquired some time ago, representing 9 out of 12 sculpts. Note Scooper, the Commander and the Stepping Guy in the center.

All of this inevitably brought me back to the Timmee astronauts. For completeness, I decided to do a comparison shot of the large GLT commander and the 6-inch version of his Marx counterpart. The differences in style, as well as certain similarities, should be especially apparent at this scale.

As previously recounted, the GLT astronauts originated as miniature figures included with Timmee/ Processed Plastic rockets. Having done some further research and correspondence, I'm now satisfied that these date no earlier or later than the 1970s. (See Steve Nyland's channel for the latest and most complete analysis.) What has intrigued me is that the GLT helmets are evidently based on the Gemini space suit, retired by 1968. I have long noted a tendency for toys to retain dated or anachronistic features, especially knockoffs/ bootlegs (witness the whole convoluted history of the patchisaurs), but this seemed a bit different. In fact, the more I thought about it, they seemed familiar, and that was my "eureka" moment.

Here is a foreign poster for The Green Slime, one of the first and still among the earliest films I roasted for Space 1979. Here, you can see a very accurate depiction of the costumes and props from the film, and they are clearly Gemini-style space suits. While I won't go so far as to suggest that this particular movie was the source for the Timmee design (particularly considering how egregiously it ripped off other films), it certainly establishes science fiction cinema as a possible and even likely influence. More importantly, it presents a clear "trickledown" point, where even low-budget films aimed at (horrifyingly) young audiences were trading in leather suits and fishbowls for "real" spacesuits.

And to wind things down, here's a lineup of my odds and ends. Front and center are a couple "Hing Fat" astronauts in 2 different sizes, which have long since made MPC look like quitters. I have had a set of them since before I started this blog, but I definitely won't be taking the time to look at them here and now. There's also two copies of a guy that came with some of the MPC astronauts and a Marx stego. I thought might be a "ground control" figure from the "space guy" era. I'm now satisfied it's an MPC police figure, but the similarity remains unmistakable. Then there's two girl/ lady "civilian" figures I ended up with, because why not?

Finally, as a bonus, here's a copy/ possible bootleg of the Marx 35mm alien that came in one of these literal mixed bags. He's a bit bigger and of a different material, with a stand that's definitely not part of the original. But who can say no to shiny?

With that, I'm wrapping this up. I had a bit more that will need to wait for another day, but at least I have a good part of my backlog out of the way. That's all, more to come!

Space 1999! The one that's NOT a ripoff of Groundhog Day

 

Title: 12:01

What Year?: 1993

Classification: Runnerup/ Mashup

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

In earlier reviews for this feature, I have commented that the 1970s were the inarguable golden age of TV movies, as evidenced by Duel and Trapped. With this review, we’re jumping forward to their last hurrah, the early to mid-1990s. At this stage, network TV movies remained inarguably a “thing”, with some of the very best examples still coming out. However, the networks were no longer in a position to challenge Hollywood, nor hold off further challenges from cable television and direct-to-video releases (see Deep Space). With the present entry, we will be looking at the arguable last hurrah, a TV movie that brought in Hollywood talent and production values. In the process, it also entangled itself with a major theatrical movie, without anyone ever quite sorting out their actual relationship to each other.

Our story begins with a guy named Barry living a mundane life in a demeaning office job. Things continue to go downhill when he crashes and burns with his office crush and then witnesses her murder. When he wakes up, however, the lady is alive and well, and nobody remembers anything amiss. He soon realizes that he is reliving the same day, as the same events continue to repeat. After a few repeats, he begins to learn that his employers are working on a project to develop a new source of energy based on time itself, which a critical expert warns could create a “time bounce”. He also continues to try to do better with the lady, who turns out to be a scientist on the project and a whistleblower who suspects one of her two bosses of unauthorized use of their prototype machine. The loop finally breaks when he saves her, but the day will soon start over again, and they still don’t know who has triggered the time bounce. Can any amount of tries stop what already happened?

12:01 was a feature-length production made by New Line Cinema and originally aired by Fox. The feature was based on a 1973 story “12:01 PM” by Richard Lupoff (d. 2020), and also an expansion of a 1990 short film based on the same story starring Kurtwood Smith, fresh out of his type-breaking turn as Clarence Bodicker in Robocop. The full-length treatment took a much more upbeat tone than the short story or the earlier film; the original story notably features an attempt by the main character to stop the time loop, but does not resolve if he succeeds or has any chance of doing so. The feature starred Jonathan Silverman as Barry and Helen Slater of Supergirl as the romantic interest Lisa, with veteran Martin Landau as the enigmatic inventor Thadius Moxley. The movie aired in July 1993, five months after the very similar Groundhog Day, making it at face value a “runnerup” to the theatrical film. Lupoff directly accused the creators of that film of plagiarism, while the latter appear to have made no statement. Unusually, 12:01 received an MPAA rating, of PG-13. It was released on VHS and later on DVD, but has been “out of print” and costly to obtain in recent years.

For my experiences, I distinctly remember hearing of this film when it aired, and was immediately interested. However, I didn’t see it until a good while after when it aired again, possibly 2000 or even later. (I think I might have recorded it, and dammit, I have no idea where the tape could be.) I managed to watch it at least once or twice more through Netflix, most recently around 2016, before it finally disappeared from their disc catalog. Ironically, it took much longer to get hold of the original story, which is easily among the bleakest I have encountered, then a few years later took a look at the short film, which if anything is actually darker. Once I started doing reviews for this blog, I thought of reviewing this film on and off, but in usual form, I put it off. When I decided to open up to TV movies, I had this one lined up even earlier than the others. Still, I got to it a little later than normal, courtesy of a “bootleg” online video. In further keeping with experience, I quickly found a lot more issues than I would have expected from a film I had viewed not too long ago.

The first thing to be said about this movie is that it is genuinely charming and reasonably funny, and that in itself might be too much for anyone coming to it as a fan of Lupoff’s story. However, this is one case where the liberties taken are all but necessary. The scenario worked for a short story, and remained sustainable as a short film, but taking it to feature length without introducing some hope of resolution would have been as grueling and tedious for the audience as it was for the main character. In a striking further revision, the time loop is drawn out from one hour to a full day. On this point, the easily distracting similarities with Groundhog Day (which I have actively declined to watch) start to look more like convergent evolution than plagiarism in either direction. The further parallel choice to focus on comedy is greatly helped by the casting of Silverman, best known for roles like Weekend At Bernie’s, and perhaps more so by Slater, who on top of her obvious charms is convincing enough as a “brainy” type to fill in a lot of the scientific rationale herself. Extra credit is in order for Jeremy Piven and Robin Bartlett, who fill out the office-satire element as Barry’s buddy and his harassing manager respectively.

On the downside, this is a movie that simply feels like “too much and not enough”. This shows most blatantly with the action sequences, which outside of a chase scene when Barry first rescues Lisa feel as self-restrained as a kiddie ride. Matters aren’t helped by the music, which often feels like it’s either trying too hard or has already given up and descended into self parody. Then things really go awry with the romance arc, exactly where far higher profile productions than this routinely end up in solid “cringe” territory. Factoring in the usual unintentional horror of ‘80s-‘90s “romances” (if anything exacerbated in the latter decade), this one is at least self-aware. Barry starts generally likable, and when he does something that could be considered “creepy”, he usually learns enough not to do it again. It can also be allowed somewhat generously that there is a measure of chemistry with Lisa/ Slater, aided by the fact that her character is established to be aware of the possibility of a time loop. All in all, it would work perfectly well if it all built up to the pair going out on a date. But the storyline keeps pushing that they must get “together” in the space of a day, and eventually relies on the fact that Lisa must rely on what Barry tells her about their previous encounters. (This was all a further reminder of what I have been making fun of with the Sidekick Carl adventure.) It crosses my mind that this might have been mitigated if she started to “remember” the preceding days herself, except that would probably have been beaten into one more “love conquers time” cliché.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with the first and most clever iteration of the time loop. Before realizing that the day is being repeated, Barry has called the police before Lisa’s murder actually happened. Rather than preventing her death, he ends up in jail as a suspect. He ends up in a cell with another prisoner doing exercises, who will make you think, “That guy looks like Danny Trejo,” and then forget about it until you find out it’s Danny Trejo. There’s a tense buildup as midnight approaches. Barry predicts that the day is about to repeat, to which the other inmate responds that the days are all the same. Then he muses that the time loop might not repeat, and calls out, “I want another chance!” Trejo answers more irritably, “No more chances, you’re doing time now!” The camera focuses on the clock, which distorts and blurs as time reverses, and the next shot finds Barry back in his own bed.

In closing, the best thing I can say is that 12:01 is a movie that feels like the “last” of its kind even if you know full well that it really isn’t. There would be plenty more TV movies through the coming decade, some of them at least as good. (Back when I first tried my hand at this, I did a review of the Ted Danson Gulliver’s Travels that might still out there somewhere in the ether.) Yet, none of them would be the same, especially in terms of challenging the big-budget Hollywood system. Under further scrutiny, it shows that even at its relatively early date, network productions were selling out to TV conventions, to the point that I docked it a full rating compared to what I expected going in. What remains impressive is that enough of the premise and further execution got through, and above all that it continues to challenge you to think. Once again, not bad for a movie of the week.

Planet Puzzle: Retro ray guns and other vintage key chain puzzles

 

I'm back with I feature I would have expected to do a lot more with by now. In fact, the lot here is material I had already gotten last time, but ended up sitting on while my format and posting frequency was in flux. I got these in the course of a minor binge of online shopping for keychain puzzles, the ancient ancestors of the party favor puzzles I grew up with. In the end, I ended up with a lot of lost bids for big lots that sold for a lot more than I would have paid, and all of three purchases I paid relatively high prices for. To kick off the lineup, here are my prize acquisitions, two copies of a puzzle first made in the 1950s, obviously modelled on a Flash Gordon/ Buck Rogers style ray gun.

I got these separately, one advertised as a "vintage" puzzle and the other as a packaged specimen of unspecified age. It should already be apparent that the one in close-up above is the vintage one. I believe it dates from the 1950s (the awe-inspiring Rob's Puzzle Page gives a date of 1954 for the design), while I'm sure the other one is at least a decade more recent. The older specimen is hard plastic with a solid feel and primary colors that are still bright. The copy, on the other hand, is mostly made of almost translucent plastic with a singularly flimsy and unpleasant feel that makes me think of handling very old paper. (The "packaging" was a tiny bag with instructions printed on it.) Ironically, it was the copy that I was able to disassemble, mostly because it's rickety enough that it is close to coming apart to begin with. By comparison, the original is solid enough that I spent days twisting the key piece before I gave up. When I was preparing for this post, I finally managed to take it apart. Here's some shots with my phone camera of the ensuing disassembly. Again, it should be quite obvious which parts are from which version.

Here's a few close-ups of the piece that caused all the trouble, a sort of nose cone. The "trick" is to line up a notch on the inside with a protrusion on the grip piece; the totally unfair part is that there's no external indication whatsoever where it is. I finally tried turning the piece and tugging a few degrees at a time. It turned out that the notch on the original was just a nudge counterlockwise from a minor imperfection I had been looking at all along. On further examination, I found a visible white residue on both specimens, I'm sure from wear, as further indicated by a rough edge on the central piece which I have also photographed.

One more thing I found on close inspection is that the geometry and proportions of the two specimens are subtly different. The copy is narrower in the two main pieces, no doubt to slightly reduce the amount of plastic used, while the nose is less rounded and closer to a true cone, which may have simplified manufacturing but has no obvious further benefit. There's also visible differences in the supports for the sight on the center/ grip piece, which was already strangely proportioned on the original. It's clear from these differences that the copy was made without access to the original molds. Again, the original is better and flat-out more pleasant. Here's a few more close-ups.

Meanwhile, I had two more puzzles that I got in one lot. The first was a readily identifiable Steinhardt cube, which I previously featured in the prize puzzle box. It was interesting mainly as a demonstration how closely the pattern has been copied. Here's a couple comparison pics.

Finally, there's perhaps the most interesting piece, a bowling pin. The big gimmick here is that it has a compartment for a ball in the middle for a ball, which was still with the puzzle. The cover has a notch that makes it easy to remove with the piece on top. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the two pieces of the body, which I simply can't budge. I'm convinced this is because the plastic is either warped or decayed into gunk that fused it all together. At least it still looks nice. Here's a couple pics.

All in all, I have to say these acquisitions were a letdown, especially for the prices I paid for them, to the point that I called off or held up other purchases I had been considering. I suppose this is a non-trivial reason I haven't done more installments a lot sooner. All in all, they look good, but no great shakes compared to the large and decorative puzzles of  the 1970s-'80s (see the last post), and even compared to the prize puzzles, they lose out in durability and ease of use. One can be glad they existed and still exist, but time has moved on and we have done better. With that, I wrap this up. As always, more to come.

Space 1999! The one George Lucas decanonized

 

Title: Ewoks: The Battle For Endor

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)

 

For the next installment of this feature, I’m up to a major reason I’m doing this now. Three years back, it was May the 4^th, and I had only recently bought the Star Wars Special Edition on Blu Ray after years swearing I wouldn’t get it unless George Lucas pushed it into my cold, dead hands. I was just aware that fans had been making it a tradition to watch the franchise in a marathon on that date, plus a young family member was visiting. I considered watching the original trilogy, either on Blu Ray or the massively overplayed VHS tapes I had been watching since junior high. Instead, I did the most subversive thing I could: I threw on the Ewoks TV movies. This year, on the day I’m starting this review, I did it again, and now I’m recounting the experience just in case you’re still fond of them.

Our story begins with a girl Cindel and her family, living as happy castaways on the Forest Moon of Endor with the Ewoks. Things go downhill when reptilian marauders capture many more of the Ewoks for slaves (actually the “soft” interpretation) and kill her brother and parents. The girl narrowly escapes the leader of the raiders, who is obsessed with finding a power source for their decaying technology, and teams up with her best Ewok friend, Wicket. Together, they survive a dragon-like predator and other hazards of the alien world long enough to meet a stranded old space traveler and a creature called a Yuzzum that can move at superhuman speed. With their new allies, they set out to infiltrate the marauders’ fortress and free the Ewoks, but they must overcome their leader and a powerful witch with her own plans. Will the Ewoks triumph? Will the girl and the old guy build a working ship? Were you expecting ambiguity from a Star Wars spinoff???

Ewoks: The Battle of Endor was the second of two made-for-TV movies based on the Ewok characters from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, following Caravan of Courage the previous year. The live-action TV movie coincided with the Ewoks and Droids animated series, as well as increasingly desperate efforts by Kenner to revive the original Star Wars action figure line. The cast included Warrick Davis reprising his role as Wicket and the late Wilford Brimley of The Thing as the old man. The production was also joined by Joe Johnson and others in the ILM crew, who provided extensive stop-motion creature sequences among other effects. Unlike the “Star Wars Holiday Special”, the Ewoks TV movies received authorized release on VHS, and were referenced in books such as The Illustrated Star Wars Universe. However, George Lucas specified that they were not “canon” during the production of the prequel trilogy, and the spinoff fell into out of print/ bootleg status in the following decade. In 2019, the movies received their first streaming release on Amazon, and in early 2021, they were made available on Disney Plus following an online petition.

For my personal experiences, the two Ewok movies are part and parcel with my conflicted feelings about the Star Wars franchise. To me, the most fascinating thing about the original movies is that they were based on mythology, and it always followed that there doesn’t have to be, shouldn’t be, and perhaps cannot be a “canon”. My own further ideas on this vein materialized as what I have (at least in my own head) termed “assumed mythology”, broadly the kind of stories people might believe and tell within a posited world rather than its literal “history”. (Then that led to my Exotroopers series, so I’m not exactly in a position to criticize.) I have increasingly felt that it was this spirit that drove the franchise’s 1990’s renaissance, which is where its footprint in my memory really centers, and that almost everything since has been pushing in exactly the opposite direction. That was how I came upon this strange broken branch of the saga on second-hand VHS, when I was in college and already tiring of the later “expanded universe”, and I choose the second of the pair in no small part because it’s the one I still own an tape of. I feel like I need to emphasize, it’s an authorized copy! And I have a picture of it! With the Truckstop Queen!!!

The foremost thing to be said is that, if anything, the second movie is an improvement over the first (in form for the franchise). Where the original movie followed the form of a wilderness-survival story, here we have a more complex plot and a conflict with antagonists who are willful villains rather than creatures doing what is evidently natural in their own habitat. It is also impressively grim, with violence that doesn’t feel toned down either for TV or the expected younger audience. The sequel also deserves some credit for the raiders, who feel uniquely suited to the Star Wars universe. It’s clear that they landed on the planet at some point, and they still have remnants of technology, albeit in a condition that makes the Millennium Falcon look like an A-Wing fighter. The leader himself is subtly terrifying, closer to the dark Jedi C’Baoth than any other character in the mythos (also more than a little like Megavolt!). He has clearly long since sunk into some combination of psychosis and/ or senility, with a further fixation on technology he has either forgotten how to use or never understood in the first place. Many of his misapprehensions seem to rise not from simple ignorance but an effectively animistic view of machines as sentient entities to be commanded rather than used or fixed, an attitude the rest either share or have learned not to challenge. He would be either pathetic or comical, if he didn’t torture, kill and even tear apart potentially useable spacecraft to get what he thinks he needs.

On the other hand, the problems very much carry across both movies. The costumes, sets and especially the effects look painfully cheap compared to the actual trilogy. Far worse is the inexplicable slow pacing of many of the action sequences, including the final battle, which in many ways magnifies the issues with the violent content. Then there is the acting, which somehow actually seems to get worse from the cast members who should know what they’re doing. Davis in the main Ewok suit moves more like he’s playing hopscotch than navigating a forest full of creatures ready to kill him, while Brimley seems to have been instructed solely to act grumpy and cute at the same time. The deeper waste is that we rarely if ever get a balance between the controversial “cuteness” of the Ewoks and the poise and dignity they were clearly meant to have had all along. With almost 3 and a half hours of screen time to answer their detractors and satisfy their true fans, all we get is shot after shot of Ewoks looking cuddlier than ever.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I would have gone with a sequence I knew of before I had any idea what it was from. As the finale approaches, the old man and the Yuzzum have infiltrated the marauders’ actual castle to rescue Cindel. It’s easily the most well-realized setting we see in either movie, and in itself is the best indication we get just how long the marauders have been around; either they built the fortress themselves, or they have had enough time to refit or rebuild it to their own needs. (Who else could have constructed it if they didn’t is one more question that’s more interesting without an answer.) They find two guards who are more concerned with playing cards. We get several closeups of both, and the makeup/ effects actually are on par with the original trilogy, enough so that I first sighted one of them in a cherished Lucasfilm art book without further explanation. The Yuzzum moves in to steal the keys. Cindel calls out impulsively, and a guard responds only with a bellow to silence her. We also get a shot of the witch, currently locked up after displeasing the leader, who only watches silently. After several missteps, the creature finally puts one of the metallic cards in the sleeve of one of the guards. Naturally, it falls out, just as he is gathering his winnings, and the loser draws both of his guns. It’s a tense, atmospheric scene we could have used more of in the trilogy, never mind a spinoff like this.

In closing, I can only return to the question of “canon”. For a long time, the Ewok movies have been a leading exhibit for unfavorable comparisons with the prequels and sequels of more recent years. On that front, I must call for a return to sanity. Whatever else you say about the newer movies, it’s literal light years ahead of this. The real counterpoint is that defining “canon” isn’t a license to tell people what to like. The would-be Star Wars TV universe was a disaster of Death Star magnitude, but plenty of people have enjoyed it and still do. That should be the real test of time, and it’s why the best of the franchise holds up, whether it’s currently “canon” or not. And if you still like it, let that be your expanded universe!

Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, part 6

 I didn't quite have time to get anything new ready today, so here's another installment of Sidekick Carl that was taking longer to get together. While I'm at it, here's a link for the last installment.

Carl found himself in the midst of a haze; that much was always the same. From out of the fog, a shape appeared and then emerged. It was a figure, seemingly human, all in black, except that the face was hidden by a mask with a long bill. Then the figure raised a hand, revealing a four-fingered talon. The attacker slashed once, then suddenly shot into the air on a pair of wings that unfolded from its back. Even as it vanished, two more figures appeared. One was Basiliskus, his scales glimmering with a certain sheen that had been fading at the time of his final defeat. Carl instantly knew the other as Dr. Hydro. His upper torso was encased in a cylindrical breast plate, while his limbs were encased in a combination of armored plating and pleated plastic. He could just see the outline of a head behind the tinted dome that covered his head.

It was Basiliskus who struck first, with a blow that tore Carl in half. His upper body thudded to the ground ten feet from his pelvis and legs, which teetered a moment before collapsing. Between the two halves was a trail of tubing and strange, vaguely machine-like organs that visibly writhed in an effort to repair and reunite. Dr. Hydro advanced. “I created you,” his oddly rasping voice intoned. “I gave you your life, to advance my work. But you are a stepping stone, not the final product. Now my work is cut short, and you are just a remnant of what might have been. It is time for the experiment to end.” As he spoke, an enormous blade extended from his forearm.

“No,” Carl said. “Whatever you meant to do, you built me to survive, well enough that I outlived you.” He struggled to crawl away, only to be dragged back by the trail of tubes that still held him together.

“Listen to him,” Basiliskus said. “It is the end. The end of all things.” Carl struggled to crawl further, and got just far enough to touch the foot of a newcomer. He craned his neck to behold one figure ant then another, both clad in yellow with gas masks over their faces. Behind the eyepieces of the mask was only a deep, throbbing red glow. The glow flared brighter, until everything but the bare outlines of the figures faded into a field of pure red. Then there was a swish as blade swung, and Carl’s view became a whirling blur as his head went tumbling away from his body.

He seemed to awake surrounded in pure light. He tried to see if he was whole, but could not move. At last, he called out, “Are you God?” The answer came in far more than words: No, just us…

 

***

Carl sat up as he came awake. He was on a cot that flexed under his weight. A quick touch confirmed his helmet was back on. It took only another moment to reconstruct his surroundings as an upper berth of the Nine Foot Woman’s motorhome, part of a superstructure that had once been the upper part of a whole camper van. His bunk was part of a popup tent that deployed from the hinged van roof, with an unzipped flap above serving as a privacy curtain. Only then did he belatedly see the woman herself, looking up at him from just below the level of the bunk.

“You were making some noise in your sleep,” Dana said. It was only then that he saw that she was clothed only in a bathrobe that reached about halfway down her hips. From his viewpoint almost directly above, it hid even less of her figure. She smiled and made a small but decisive adjustment. “You weren’t too loud, and I was going in and out anyway.” She sat back down on a dinette on the far side of the motorhome. Carl climbed down from overhead using a ladder affixed to one of the overhead bins clustered where the van shell met the cab of the bus, originally the rear rather than the front of the van.

“Thanks for staying,” she said. “I know I laid a lot on you. I just hope that wasn’t what was giving you a hard time.”

Carl shook his head. “It was a dream I’ve had for a long time. It doesn’t really happen often.”

“Well, you can sit here with me if it helps,” she said. He sat down beside her, and removed his helmet. He did not withdraw when she put an arm around him.

“I just need to know something,” he said. “Did you really mean what you said about… getting married?” It was the same question he had asked over several hours before they went to sleep.

“Engaged,” she said. “Or on that track, anyway. We’d still take our time, of course. Do things, get to know each other. It’s really just a matter of being intentional about it. I’m that kind of girl. A little old fashioned, but I’m willing to go for what I want.”

“I can tell,” Carl said. He added neutrally, “By the way, where are we?”

“About an hour’s drive from the convention center,” Dana said. “It’ll be an hour or before you can see what I wanted to show you. We can talk till then, if you want to.”

“I wanted to ask,” Carl said. “You told me you’re under a code of conduct with the Tall People Association. Are you worried what they’ll say about this?”

Dana gave a laugh that literally rattled the fixtures. “They won’t be happy, but this is nothing they could do anything about,” she said. “As for the con crowd, they’d be more scandalized if they knew I proposed to you than if they think I slept with you.” She stretched out full length with a sigh and a more calculated smile. “By the way, if you want to talk about a timetable for that, I’m willing to hear you out.”

Carl shook his head. “It’s… complicated. I… I guess you could say I’m… functional. The doctors say I could probably even have children. I’ll tell you more, when you need to know. Let’s just say it would have to be... different.”

Dana just nodded. “I can live with that,” she said. “I just want to know, what really happened with  Audrey?”

He hesitated, but still answered without further reservation. “There’s a kind of housing,” he said. “When she bit me, she hit it. Then she hit, kind of… a power supply.”

For a moment, Dana was silent. Then her cheeks flushed as a smile spread. Finally, she burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she gasped. “I’m not laughing at you, really, I’m not, I’m just getting a picture…” She started laughing again, louder than before.

 

After a while, Dana put on one of her jumpsuits, and they went to the cab. The front section had been reconfigured more drastically than the rest of the vehicle. The steps that went up from the boarding doors had been removed entirely, allowing the floor to be lowered to within inches of the bottom of the 10-foot-tall main hull. That, in turn, provided room for a stool-like seat where Dana perched more than sat, nearly upright. Carl seated himself on a more conventional seat that unfolded beside it. The light of near-dawn was enough to see a gleaming engine cowling in front of them. Beyond that was the looming darkness of a rock face, split by a slit of light. “I’ve been curious,” he said, “who made this?”

“It was practically made by committee,” Dana said. “I got it… 18 years ago, now. I was 17, and I’d already been doing bike shows for a couple years. I was sleeping in an oversized semi trailer when I was on the road. I finally told my sponsors I needed something I could live in. They wanted it to do the whole junkyard look, but almost everything was new. A bus company gave us the body and chassis, straight from the factory without a roof. A custom RV crew set up the interior, and my crew put in the wheels and suspension. Even the silly van shell, we got that from a salvage yard in Europe, still replaced a lot of it with plexiglass. And see that cowling? It doesn’t do anything. We had an experimental compact diesel engine, natural gas/ electric now, but the advertisers kept saying the audience needed to see something… And I’m talking your ear off, aren’t I?”

Carl just shrugged. “I could tell you care about it,” he said.

They kept talking, and the conversation got more personal. She talked about being 5 foot 6 in elementary school. He talked about things like going through customs in a republic where a mutated creature had installed itself as dictator. Meanwhile, the light grew brighter, until Dana cried out in surprise, “Look!”

Ahead of them, the sun had just started to come into view in the slot canyon ahead. Its light was a reddish orange, nearly the same hue as the rocks. As the sun rose, the light became gold, illuminating one side of the canyon brilliantly white. That was when Dana leaned out  the window and gave a ululating call that echoed back from the canyon. She looked over her shoulder at Carl, and saw a sublime smile on his face.

“Listen,” she said as she slid back into her seat, “I’m sorry I laid things on you like that. It was a feeling, and I won’t say it’s gone, but I can tell now, you weren’t ready to hear it. I just hope it doesn’t change things.”

Carl shrugged. “Honestly, it’s been a long time since I thought of being with someone at all,” he said. “I just need time… Are you okay?”

A pained expression had suddenly come to her face. After a moment, she said, “No.” She began to squirm in place. She turned to meet Carl’s gaze. Tears were already running down her cheeks. “It’s my back. I shouldn’t have done this… Not without Jenny.”

“I’m a physical therapist,” Carl said. “I’m sure I can help.”

Dana just shook her head. “I have syringes and pain killers, in the drawer up there,” she said, burying her face to the steering wheel. “It won’t stop it, but it will make it better. A little.”

Carl nodded, then removed his gloves. He squeezed her hand the smooth flesh of his left hand, then pressed his glassy right hand to her palm. She smiled wanly. Her eyes widened as his fingers lengthened, and then began to hum.

A while later, Dana lay face down on the dinette, unclothed and uncovered except for a sheet draped across her lower body. When she raised her face, she was smiling blissfully. “What do you think,” she said, “about very short engagements?”

Space 1999: The one with Dobermans in a department store

 

Title: Trapped aka The Doberman Patrol

What Year?: 1973

Classification: Prototype/ Mashup

Rating: What the Hell??? (3/5)

 

With this review, I’m finally starting what I consider the successor/ spinoff to my Space 1979 review feature, though I certainly haven’t finished with that one yet. The change in title, in turn, will not reflect a change in the timeframe, but a shift from theatrical films to the small screen (part of the inside joke that led to the name of the original feature). This will be a feature dedicated to TV movies, especially of the “vintage” network variety, and as we will see, this is going to be even more of a mixed bag than my usual standards. Our first entry will be from the arguable golden age of the artform, the 1970s, when TV movies like Duel and Trilogy of Terror were drawing and in some cases establishing Hollywood talent. The present film may well have intended to follow their example, with a big-name star in a storyline that blended drama, horror and science fiction. Here is Trapped, the movie-of-the-week that anticipated Dawn of the Dead and Chopping Mall.

Our story begins with a man named Chuck and his daughter in a department store’s toy section. We momentarily meet his ex-wife and the girl’s new stepfather, who are about to move out of the country. To score extra points, Chuck stays behind while the store delivers a doll for his daughter, only to be mugged and left for dead in the bathroom. By the time he regains consciousness, the store is closed, and the staff have deployed their main security measure: a pack of attack dogs that patrol the floors for intruders. While the rest of the fractured family are trying to convince the police that something is amiss, he must evade or fight off the dogs. With a worsening wound and only a bow and arrow for a weapon, he must face the most persistent of the pack. Will he survive, or be literal dog food?

Trapped was a TV movie originally broadcast by ABC in late 1973. The film was written and directed by the late Frank De Felitta, also responsible for 1981’s Dark Night Of the Scarecrow as well as many screenwriter credits. James Brolin starred as Chuck, with Susan Clark as his ex-wife Elaine and character actor Robert Hooks (see… Star Trek 3?) as a detective who grudgingly joins a search for him. Like Duel, the movie was later released theatrically, though only in the UK and possibly other foreign markets, mainly under the alternate title The Doberman Patrol. There is further evidence of foreign distribution on VHS, which if not strictly “bootlegged” would be the only known authorized home video release of the film. The movie has received attention for similarities with the 1986 film Chopping Mall among other science fiction and horror films; the creators of the latter film have denied any direct or knowing influence. The movie was apparently referenced in the 1993 Perfect Strangers episode “After Hours”.

For my personal experiences, this was a movie I first heard of second-hand long before I had any way to figure out if it really existed, mainly from a family member who seems to share my own uncanny memory for pop culture. I might have started to question if it was real if I hadn’t occasionally run across hints of its influence, including an above-mentioned ‘90s sitcom episode that by now might prove more elusive than the actual movie. I also became aware of a modest body of older fantasy and horror centered on department stores, like the Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours” and Thomas Disch’s story “Descending”. Not too long ago, I did enough research to figure out that this was the movie I had heard of. After starting Space 1979, I thought of it early and occasionally thereafter. It easily got to the top as I considered the possibilities for TV movies, all well before I watched the movie itself. I finally watched it for the present review, after I already had planned a lineup of several other entries I had been putting off. For all intents and purposes, I was going in with several decades of heightened expectations, and the real surprise was that I wasn’t a lot more disappointed than I was.

The thing that really stands out with this movie from the start is how much it screams to be “relevant” for its time. In these terms alone, it really does better than it has a right to. Right out of the exposition, we get the still-relevant issues of divorce and child custody, without any obvious moralizing angle. In further contrast to the cipher of David Mann in Duel, we get a good sense of our protagonist in the process: He’s a clearly flawed hero, perhaps disreputable by the 1970s framework, but someone we can want to like and certainly hope to get out alive. As the story proceeds, he doesn’t exactly grow to meet the challenge, yet he does at least muster a determination to survive that is augmented by Brolin’s screen presence. What’s absolutely striking is that there’s never a point where he crosses over into adrenaline-fueled heroics. Instead, he runs, climbs or crawls his way along about as slowly and clumsily as anyone in the audience probably would. This especially evident when he manages to get hold of a weapon, a story point I knew about from when it was recounted to me. With further hindsight, it conjures up pictures of The Hunger Games, except with the bow in hand, the best he seems to do is scare or annoy the dogs. It’s an anticlimactic moment that fritters away a good deal of buildup. At the same time, it drives home the sense of realism driving the story and the character.

On the “con” side, critics of the movie will usually start tearing down the plot holes and disregarded realities needed to set up the story. On most of these points, the real question is how much is meant to be comedy, something which the story admittedly does a far spottier job at advertising than satires like Dawn of the Dead. What needs to be acknowledged in fairness is that the prominent misjudgments of the main character are outweighed by the oversights and incompetence of the store staff who get him into the situation in the first place. The egregious example is a clerk who eventually admits that he never collected change on a $50 bill (in 1970s dollars!), and she then did nothing more than take the money to lost and found. The other major area of criticism is the whole subplot of the ex and her new husband looking for him. It’s certainly much longer than it needs to be, with several further moments of irrelevance and inanity. In the balance, however, it provides an unsettlingly believable picture of what missing-person cases are really like. There’s some extra dark humor, especially when the ex views a body; her reaction is stereotyped, but my guess is it was a substitute for actual vomiting.

Now for the “one scene”, and it’s going to be short. About half an hour in, Chuck find himself in a store display (shortly after leaving a secure office…) that’s a mockup of an actual home. He looks around, and there is a sense of reflection on former dreams of domestic bliss or at least stability. He examines an iron, seemingly assessing it as a weapon. He then wanders through a selection of stacked dishes. He starts when a dog barks at him over a partition, but he is still secure. He then wanders into a living room area, where he finally stops at a picture window. There’s a well-framed shot from the other side as he gazes through the window, with at least a hint of the humor and dark irony of Romero. After the moment’s pause, he knocks the whole thing down. That’s when more of the dogs start barking, and he quickly beats a retreat.

In closing, the one thing I would still have to comment on is the genre. This is ultimately a major reason I am treating this as the start of a new feature. To resume the comparison with Duel, this is a movie that verges toward horror the way the preceding film did toward science fiction. However, it doesn’t do so nearly as much, leaving little if any need to redraw our concept of genre lines. Still, it remains an interesting and genuinely impressive entry in the annals of televised features, all the more so given that its kind had little hope of lasting past a single airing. The best testament of its effectiveness is that it is still remembered well enough that even people who never saw it still talk about it. Not bad, for a movie of the week.

Image credit Cult Trailers.