The Rerun Review: The one with George C. Scott

 

Title: A Christmas Carol

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: Pretty Good! (5/5)

 

As I write this, I’m going into the final week of my second year with this blog, and confronted with the fact that I still haven’t turned any of this into things that would either reach a wider audience or earn actual money. Still, because OCD tendencies are the only reason I get anything done, I want to get in one more full week before I withdraw and reevaluate. In the process, I decided it was time to get back to something I had previously considered as a feature, with a name that actually made sense. Here is the reboot of Space 1999, which in turn was the abortive spinoff to Space 1979, and the first up is my favorite version of the most overadapted work in the history of modern media. I present A Christmas Carol, the George C. Scott edition, which a lot of people seem to forget was originally a TV movie.

Our story begins with the familiar figure of Scrooge, meaner and more rightwing than usual as he abuses his employees and refuses charity to his fellow man. Things take a turn for the odd when his former partner Jacob Marley appears, and as the introduction reminds us, Marley is dead (though he still uses the door). Marley warns Scrooge that his miserly ways have earned the sentence of existentialist damnation, wandering the Earth burdened by the chains of his ill-used wealth. Yet the unspecified forces of the universe have given him one chance for redemption; he is to be visited by three spirits that will show him the past, present and a bleak possible future. We all know the ending, but it’s all in the journey as Scrooge learns the price of greed and the power of Christmas!

A Christmas Carol was a 1984 film directed by Clive Donner, a veteran British filmmaker who had previously worked on the 1951 Alistair Sims adaptation Scrooge. The production was made by Entertainment Partners Limited and aired by CBS, with sponsorship from IBM; Fox subsidiary 20^th Century Studios was credited as distributor. The film starred the late George C. Scott as Scrooge and Time Bandits’ David Warner as Bob Cratchit, with Nigel Davenport (see… Phase IV?) as Scrooge’s father and Edward Woodward (d. 2009) as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Much of the filming took place on location in the English town of Shrewsbury. The film aired to very positive reviews, and received numerous further TV airings as well as VHS and later DVD releases. The rights to the film were retained by George C. Scott and later his estate, which reportedly limited its TV distribution to syndication on local stations prior to its first airing by AMC in 2009. The rights are believed to be currently held by Disney (make your own joke). The movie is currently available on Blu Ray and in digital format.

For my experiences, my strongest memory is that even as a kid, I was getting tired of Christmas Carol. I had been exposed to the original Dickens text, and loved it. I had seen what was then the “classic” treatment starring Sims, and had no complaints. I was already starting to be influenced by it in my interests and my own fiction. But there were so many other mediocre and flat-out bad treatments, especially in media supposedly for kids, that I found the tale as much of a humbug as Scrooge did Christmas. As far as I can further recall, I encountered the present version at a fairly late date in the middling 1990s, and in hindsight, I think this was what redeemed the story for me. As I have seen its stature grow greatly in the years since, I’ve come to suspect that the viewing public went through the same cycle. The current generation may not remember just how oversaturated the market was by my time (and I’ll give further credit to the Muppets adaptation as a “kids’” version that doesn’t insult the source material or the kids’ intelligence), but this movie still remains as one that stood the test of time better than many lesser and some equal treatments of the same story.

Moving forward, one thing more I will say is that I got in the viewing for this one as a Christmas Eve “tradition” with an old tape, so I was adapting to kaka off the bat. What really stands out from the start is that this by all means “looks” like a TV movie, though the shots and production values are certainly well above average. I have to say, if one were to judge by the opening sequence, one would easily expect a very mediocre treatment among many. The music in particular is solidly in sentimental, second-hand nostalgia territory, and it will not get better. What merit there is comes from the genuine English town and the impressively somber weather. This will remain representative of the movie’s relative strengths and weaknesses, most noticeably in the visions of Christmas Past. There is power and authenticity here, straining against the familiarity of nostalgia several generations removed.

Meanwhile, the obvious driving force is Scrooge, suitably matched by the ghosts. Scott’s performance is so fierce as not to need further comment, beyond the particular emphasis on the deliberate references to Malthus and Spencer, truly the fascists and pseudoprogressives of Dickens’ day (see ZPG for my representative rant). What gets the story in gear and keeps it strong is the spirits. We get an early highlight with Marley, played to the hilt by Albert Finlay; I find it particularly amusing to compare his entrance with the very odd revenants of An American Werewolf In London. The Ghost of Christmas Present (played by Angela Pleasance, the daughter of Donald) remains strong through a sequence that otherwise slows things down a bit, while Woodward fully holds his own as the middle ghost. The finale reaches a point where many adaptations either excel or start to grind the gears, with the almost science-fictional/ dystopian vision of the future.  (Am I the only person to think the Ghost of Christmas Future and the Terminator are kind of the same thing?) Here, in my assessment, the story just holds its momentum, which is more than good enough. The ghost itself is vaguely cliched, though the counterpart that stands out the most to me is the obviously far later Witch King of Lord of the Rings (see my review/ rant on the cartoon). What keeps things moving is Scott, acting surely far more oblivious than the character really is as he is brought face to face with his fate.

That already brings me to the “one scene”, and I’m going to go with the savage high point of the vision of Christmas Present. We’re already well into the fine and forceful performance by Woodward, evidently a stage and actor and musician who extended his talents to a career as a TV/ character actor. His contribution is aided throughout by a strong physical presence, which gets unsettling if you try to figure out of there’s some practical effect trick to his height. (Apparently, he and Scott were about the same height.) In the midst of the Cratchits’ merry Christmas dinner, Scrooge asks the spirit if Tiny Tim will live. When the spirit matter-of-factly prophecies that Tim will not live to see another Christmas, Scrooge is clearly moved and distressed, incidentally showing that he isn’t entirely without emotion or empathy. The Ghost counters with his own Malthusian line about surplus population. Then he gets as in-your-face as a political comedian as he warns the rich man about judging who is “surplus”, with a line I can picture coming straight from the Evil Possum: “It may be that in the sight of heaven, you are more worthless and less deserving of life than millions like this poor man’s child!”

In closing, what I really come back to is the impact of the story on my own writings, and whether I’ve been in the camp that Scrooge represents. A major part of the story’s “point” is that even before his redemption, Scrooge is not so monstrous as to let his social-Darwinist leanings suppress empathy for humanity. But then the flipside is that short-term charity and half-hearted liberalism are as destructive as any philosophy that would oppose them; in short, it is a polemic against hypocrisy. For myself, I conceived the tales of the Evil Possum and the exotroopers as anti-war and anti-eugenics, whether or not they succeeded as such. (I don’t know if I could recreate or even reconstruct how sadistic, banal and utterly terrible the Possum’s original enemies were.) But then, I did all of it while voting straight Republican right up to relatively recent developments. Maybe I’ve changed, maybe I’ve just gotten less apologetic about being complicated, and my further self-defense is that the old-time eugenicists and modern-day reactionaries both hardly cared about consistency or coherence in their ideas or actions. At least it can be said that people do indeed change, for better or for worse, even if few if any do so as totally as Scrooge. And with that, I’m done for another day.

Image credit Countdown Until Christmas.

Rogues' Roundup: Christmas robot toys!

 

It's time for yet another Christmas post, and as you might guess, I have a big backlog of junk I could use. The big surprise is that a lot of this is stuff people just give to me, or at least things I got in "white elephant" exchanges. For this post, I also did some maintenance and even took a bit of video. To kick things off, here's the central exhibit and I believe the first one I got, a jazz reindeer!

Legalize it! Mistletoe, that is...

For the history, I think I got this in 2016 or so. When I got him, he would play "Jingle Bells" and do a sort of dance. The tag that would give the usual date and manufacturer's info appears to have been deliberately removed. To my further recollection, there was some extra stuff tacked on that I removed. However, I never seriously doubted that the saxophone came with the figure, though at this point, it's only securely attached to his mouth, which makes it look like an oversized pipe. He proved to pose the most issues when I tried to get him to work, something I'll get to further in. For now, here's one more pic with generic Godzilla. The big guy's taller, but not by a lot.

"Oh yeah, I was tripping every frame of Godzilla vs. Hedorah..."

Next up, we have the most elaborate gimmick of the group. It's a regular dancing reindeer, except it also has a light-up fan that spells out a holiday message. I got it in a box I lost track of. A tag says "Newtoys", but doesn't give a date. Here's the toy.

And here's the other two. The first is a more or less realistic dog that "sings" and rolls around. A tag gives the company name Kids For America and the date 2007. The other is a more cartoony character that swings his head around to the tune. A tag on one ear gives the product name Puppy Precious, and advertises that it plays 10 songs, but I can find no other info. Both make a barking sound tuned to the music. Another common denominator is that they are very overpowered, which I will get to. Here's a couple pics, with a Marx Soviet soldier for reference, because we haven't had giant Marx lately.

"Gaahh! Capitalist consumerist killer robot attack dog!"

With this lineup in places the real question was if I could get them to work. I set up a work area on the Couch Mark 2, got out a bunch of batteries, and set things up to upload to my misbegotten Youtube channel. As alluded above, the big reindeer required the most work. At the start, he would play a few notes of music without doing anything else. With a change of batteries, he would play music again, but didn't move. I turned the neck and joints, and gave it a few more tries, and eventually he did start dancing again. Unfortunately, he's very prone to falling over, an issue I had noted previously. Here's the before and after.

The reindeer with the fan posed a different kind of problem. A change of batteries got it to play and light up. The real difficulty is that the head isn't clear of the fan. To get a good recording, I had to adjust the head to keep the fan from snagging. Here's the Youtube clip.

Singing Reindeer with LED fan! - YouTube

The kaiju dog proved to be the easiest to deal with. The Dogzilla is billed as singing and dancing, but he really just swings the giant head back and forth like he's shaking a rat. Here is his big moment.

Then for the finale, I had the rolling dog. I had him working before the others, with just a change of batteries. Most if not all the action is from the massive tail and what must be a very powerful motor. I quickly learned not to hold onto the toy during a demonstration, because getting your hand in the way borders on painful and certainly can't be good for the toy. For this post, I set up a squad of the giant Marx figures for a little fun. The humanity...

Vintage Marx figures vs. Christmas robot dog! - YouTube

And with that, I'm done for today. Merry Christmas; life and light; and praise to the Logos made flesh. That's all for now, more to come!

Animation Defenestration: The one that rotoscoped Tolkien

 

Title: The Lord Of The Rings

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

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

 

In the course of my reviews, I have mentioned occasionally my one actual “rule”: Every film I review gets one viewing within 3 days of when I write the review. This has in fact had a significant impact on the lineup of my reviews, as there have been more times that I finally punted on a movie because the alternative was watching the whole damn thing again. What might seem counterintuitive is that I haven’t pushed the limits that often, especially with movies I planned to review in advance. By the time I get to the point where I’m outright fudging, I usually find even my recollections start to get hazy around the edges. Once in a while, however, a little time is just enough to give me some distance to reflect. With the present review, I have a case and point, a movie I had long been familiar with but didn’t expect to get hold of as soon as I did. I present The Lord of the Rings, the animated version, from none other than my arch enemy Ralph Bakshi. Or, BAAAKSHIII!!!

Our story begins with an introduction with what will be for anyone in this blog’s demographic the familiar story of Middle Earth, the war of elves and men with the evil Sauron, and the adventure of Bilbo Baggins. As the story gets in gear, Gandalf reveals that the overpowered plot device of The Hobbit is really the One Ring, an artifact that concentrates the evil powers of Sauron in one package. It falls to Bilbo’s nephew Frodo to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, and the dawning realization for the viewer will be that they’re really going to try to tell a good chunk of the trilogy. In the process, we will see the invincible Ring Wraiths, various orcs, the Balrog, the Ents (or one of them), and the Riders of Rohan, all brought to life with Bakshi’s trademark blend of odd character animation and freaked-out rotoscoping. But all you really need to know is that even though this ends with a whole book still to go, it does not tease a sequel!

The Lord of the Rings was the fifth film by Ralph Bakshi, based on the first two books of the series by J.R.R. Tolkien, from a script by fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle. The film was released a year after the fantasy film Wizards, though both films would have been in production by 1976. It was not related to The Hobbit and Return of the King, both made for television by Rankin Bass. Like Wizards, Lord of the Rings was made with a combination of animation, live-action and rotoscoping. It was one of the most expensive animated films, with a budget estimated at up to or over $8 million. The voice cast included Christopher Guard as Frodo, John Hurt (see The Plague Dogs) as Aragorn and  Anthony Daniels as Legolas. The film was undisputedly profitable, but was controversial among critics and fans. Plans for one or more additional films were cancelled, and specifically left unmentioned in the film and contemporary advertising. An action figure line was produced by Knickerbocker, with only 8 figures; the line suffered from limited distribution among other issues, with a significant part of their distribution apparently coming from mail order offers in comic books. The film has remained available on home video.

For my experiences, I grew up with Tolkien long before the Jackson trilogy came out (enough to model Zaratustra on the Witch King), and in hindsight, the art from sources like A Tolkien Bestiary had a greater impact on me than the books themselves. In my further recollections, I indelibly visualized the books as paintings and animation rather than flesh-and-blood “live action”, right up to reading the trilogy in college shortly before the first Jackson movie (see… Dead Alive???) came out. What’s striking as I think about it now is that the present movie had little if anything to do with it, though I’m sure I saw at least a small part of it at a very early age. What this further cements in my mind is that Bakshi was simply the wrong person for the job, for reasons that go far beyond my issues with his work. It’s the same problem I have considered regarding Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (especially after the Narnia movies came out); you don’t have to argue which one is “better” to see that asking either one continuing the other’s work would be an obviously and epically disastrous idea. (I’ll say this once: Lewis did not do “epic”.)

With that out of the way off the bat, I will be the first to admit that Bakshi handles this far better than he had any right to. To begin with, it’s astonishing how much of the books gets in here, and not just by passing mention. It clearly would have been better if he had been allowed to spread it out over two or three movies to flesh things out. As it stands, at the pace Bakshi manages (presumably with Beagle’s help), we could conceivably have gotten the whole damn thing done in the running time of a Peter Jackson extended edition. What’s downright unsettling is how well his style works, especially for the battles. The part that’s counterintuitive is that the rotoscoping and shadow-play silhouettes fall even further short of “realism” than conventional animation would have. What it provides instead, to very good effect, is an especially grim sort of stylization that would be almost inconceivable with more “modern” methods (the same rant I made in my Conan reviews). What was vaguely psychedelic in Wizards is a somber nightmare here, with bestial orcs shown nearly in monochrome except for their red eyes and purplish blood. (Honorable mention goes to the troll, seen only as a gnarly limb.) The high point is the Balrog, which I’m sure I remember from back when somehow. In cold blood, it’s underwhelming at best, but the presentation, the setting, and the buildup are every bit as valid as Jackson’s CGI monster.

You’ll already have guessed that there’s a big “con” coming, and it is simply this: The conventionally animated characters are awful and ugly, to a degree I neither expected nor can easily account for. The easy targets are the ones that don’t even look like the  books, egregiously Saruman, who goes through his one real scene in what looks like a Santa Claus suit. But there are many more that don’t depart from the books yet still look hideous, including virtually all the hobbits. Possibly worse are Aragorn, who just looks lumpish and seedy, and Gollum, who doesn’t get any favors from an excessively English voice performance. The absolute low point, however, are the Ring Wraiths, and this is where things get mindboggling. The Nazgul as described in the books could be animated with South Park construction paper cutouts and still be terrifying. These look as threatening as deliverymen and move like boys trying to sneak into a naughty movie (Fritz the Cat?). Things only get more frustrating when the rotoscoping is applied; it’s predictably and vastly better, yet still heavy on overcomplicated helmets and other details that are distractingly odd rather than threatening.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and even at the outer limit of the time I allow myself, there was one moment that stood out and still stays with me. In turn, it goes along with a deeper long-running vent. To me, the orcs of Tolkien are possibly the greatest “goons” in all media, rivaled only by the devils of Inferno and the gangsters of Robocop. What I find other adaptations and even casual synopses get wrong is that they are really very smart, often too much for their own good. At any rate, in the midst of a battle between the orcs and the Riders of Rohan, we get one good moment that captures this. While the orcs are being handily routed, one of the more clever specimens drags away their two hobbit captives. Only then, because there is never a situation that the orcs can’t actually make worse by thinking for themselves, does he finally try to figure out if they actually have the One Ring. The hobbits play this up by imitating Gollum (who they haven’t actually met) and muttering about the Precious. It’s enough to get the orc interested, but after just a few moments of this, the orc gets suspicious or irritated enough that he (?) justifiably decides to just kill them. It’s a good moment more faithful to the books than many more acclaimed scenes, but it’s already too little, too late.

In closing, what I come back to is a question I was pondering long ago, was there ever a time or a crew that could have made a “good” animated treatment of Lord of the Rings? I have already nominated Nepenthe, the crew behind Watership Down and Plague Dogs. Bill Tytla, the animator behind “Night On Bald Mountain” in Fantasia, might have done it if Disney could have brought him back from the grave. Other prospects would be into continental or eastern Europe, perhaps a freaky Czech like Svankmajer. (A stop-motion Gollum, possibly made from taxidermied remains? Don’t bother to run, you’ll just look like food…) In the end, the honest answer is that even in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the era of animation that could tell an epic tale like Tolkien’s was passing, as demonstrated by the mess that was The Black Cauldron. To try it again now would mean a fresh start, perhaps in the style of Secret of Kells or The Red Turtle, ideally with a few more years of distance from Peter Jackson’s series. It still might happen, but then, we’re already in an oversaturated reboot market. The best tribute now would be something original yet in the spirit of Tolkien, which is what we kind of got with Willow. (I will definitely get to it.) The positive takeaway is that anyone can dream, and some will always find a way to make it reality. And with that, I’m done with this damn movie, and boy, am I glad.

Fiction: The Evil Possum prologue/ demo and adventure index

 Because I'm really bad at followup, I've just been getting around to editing the Evil Possum adventure that started this blog. In the process, I decided to write out something I had thought of before, a quick prologue to introduce the character, setting, and plot point or two I cut from my first draft because I didn't want to take extra space explaining them. (I had trouble enough already...) Here's the vignette that resulted, in case it wasn't clear enough this was supposed to be a spaghetti western. While I'm at it, there's links at the end.

The scene could be timeless, except for the shape of the participants. Four figures crouch around a table, peering intently at the cards in their hands and the crudely stamped coins on the table. Their whiskers gleam in the sunlight, and their tails twitch behind them. The cards are quite large, bigger than paperback novels in proportion to their clawed hands, and the printing is all black. After a moment, one of them squeaks in triumph. He reveals his hand to the other players, briefly silencing their chittering. But then, as he leans in to scoop up the pot, a card pops out of his vest. Teeth and red eyes flash. In a moment, the table is upended and the other patrons are engulfed in the brawl. When the door opens, the rest turn on the newcomer as a matter of instinct.

It took just a few busy moments for the newcomer to reach the counter, where a pair of the more grizzled patrons still sat on their barstools. The others mostly lay sprawled about the saloon floor. Two had departed through the windows. Another had exited through the door, without opening it in the process. The bartender looked up almost calmly at the figure before him. The newcomer stood a third again his height, topped by saucer-like ears and a slicked back mane that did not quite conceal a very high forehead. His right arm ended in a hook, the other was thickly muscled. The bartender was calm enough to further note that his clothes were made from the hides and pelts of creatures larger than even himself.

“I am looking for a town called Ninguna Parte,” the newcomer said. “Is there anyone here who can give me directions?”

It was one of the patrons at the bar who spoke up first. “Say, I know who you are,” he said. “I ‘eard you were ‘alfway across the Oldlands. They say you’re one of a kind, maybe the only one that ever was.” He started to rise, but his companion restrained him.

The bartender spoke up. “No, that’s not right,” he said, nose twitching. “There were others. Once.” Only then did he address the newcomer. “I know who you are. What you are, too. I’ll help you, any way I can.”

“Very well,” the newcomer said. “Then tell me, is there a town called Ninguna Parte? And if there is, how do I get there?”

It was the second patron who spoke. “’Tisn’t no town,” he said. “But there’s a place by that name, not too far off. If you follow the road that brought you here, if’n you came from the north and not the east, you’ll find an abandoned road. Go east on that, all the way to Hell’n’ gone, you’ll find the way to Ninguna Parte.”

The bartender nodded. “That’s right, as far as I know,” he said. “I’ve never been that way myself, but I’ve served people who were going there. Some of them came back.”

That was when the first patron did rise. “See, there’s something I can’t help thinking,” he said as he rounded the corner of the bar. “They say you’re the only one of your kind, and then they say nobody ever beat you. So it seems to me, whoever takes you down is Number One for all time…”

The next moment, the newcomer lowered a booted foot. The patron had departed, leaving a hole in the wall behind him. The newcomer surveyed the other patrons. “Leave,” he said. It took bare moments for them all to comply, or haul away those who couldn’t. He turned wearily to the bartender. His hook sank abruptly into the countertop. “How often do you open a bottle of poison in the presence of your guests?”

The bartender backed away. Then, belatedly, he held up a very small bottle. “It’s insurance,” he said. “Same as you have. Only if you wouldn’t leave.” His eyes darted to a revolver at the newcomer’s hip.

“Fair enough,” the newcomer said. “Have you used it before?”

“I opened it once before,” the bartender said. “For Long John Raeder. I suppose you know about him. Then you’ll know why I didn’t have to use it.”

The newcomer nodded. “Show me,” he said succinctly. The bartender put a stopper in the bottle and handed it over. “It would not have harmed me,” he said, then amended, “Not in a quantity I could not taste.” He set it on the counter.

“I will go now,” the newcomer said. “I suggest you return to the north. This place does not suit you.”

Within a day, the bar would be sold, for a tidy profit. For the remainder of his career, everyone would say the bartender was the most fearless of all in his line of work. The only time anyone asked, he just said that he had met the Unconquered King, and the questioner never came to his establishment again.

And here's the full link list for the 1st draft of the adventure:

Part 1 The original intro.

Part 2 The overlong exposition, introducing a vehicle I would have cut just to tow something else.

Part 3  The 127 Hours homage, so tasteful you might not figure out on your own.

Part 4 The least read chapter!

Part 5 The most read chapter after the intro, where the Possum crashes a human church!

Part 6 The final showdown, in a drainpipe under a church

Part 7 The twist ending I assumed was obvious, if anyone read it!

And why not the "sequel", the Evil Possum Vs. The Eurypterids, which is kind of a Die Hard knockoff?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6 

Part 7

Finale!

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Sketchy MPC reissue/ bootlegs?

 

It's the weekend, and since I already did a movie review, it's time for another dino blog! This time, I have a new acquisition that I still had backlogged a little while. About a month ago, I put the only bid on a lot that looked a little too good to be true. What I got for the money was the most suspicious thing since my Zombi/ Dawn of the Dead Blu Ray, yet still unquestionably good. Since we haven't had many Timmee sightings lately, here's a lineup of the lot with the Battle Mountain!

The backstory here is that this was offered as a mixed lot of MPC and Marx dinos, without a lot of specifics about provenance. My order arrived in what proved to be a sealed bag. I quickly confirmed the majority were indeed MPC sculpts (see the Odds and Ends post), many of them based on Marx designs. (The Dinosaur Toys Collectors Guide overview is as good a resource as any.) Here's the largest of the actual dinos, a parasauralophus with a kind of kung fu pose and a clear knockoff of the Marx second-version T. rex.

There's really not a lot to say about these. The hadrosaur is dated yet elegant, and still mostly makes sense. The rex, on the other hand, just looks goofy, like a Cretaceous redneck uncle. But it serves as a further horrifying reminder that the Marx rex was also the basis of the patchi Hideous Abomination, previously sighted (but I just remembered never given my head-canon name) in the original patchisaur post and the Marx clones followup. Here's a lineup of the new guy and my matched Abomination pair. Note the irony that this looks even less realistic than the infamous freaky creatures the patch crew just made up. And... holy kaka... the patchi is bigger???

"Kill... me...." "No, me first!"

Then there's the main group, which also doesn't need a lot of comment. The Dimetrodons are clearly copies of the Marx non-dinosaur dino, which I've said plenty about; note that the plastic and casting still look consistent with a single manufacturer. The prosauropods are equally clearly based on the MPC plateosaur. Then there's the pterosaur, which I regret not having for my dedicated ptero post. It's nice to see a reconstruction of a pterosaur on the ground, and the pose is still plausible. The execution, however... just no.

And here's a hideous closeup.... 

"As a bonus, you can use my head as a pick ax to dig for fossils!"

Meanwhile, the most interesting things to come from this lot are from after the dinosaurs. The most promising are not one but two ground sloths, clearly copied from Marx. The main difference is that the chest is caved in instead of filled out, a cost-cutting measure previously seen with the Galaxy Laser Team turtle alien. There's also more subtle reduction of detail on the inside of the arms. Here's a couple pics with the Marx original.

Oo, the shiny!!!

Then there's one more thing, a sabertooth that apparently really was originally made by MPC. It stood out first and foremost as the only one that really looks like it was made separately from the rest of these. For overall quality, it's a mixed bag. It's big and decently detailed, and certainly an improvement on others (see the Timmee dino post). On the other hand, it's still unaccountably odd, which is really a common denominator with sabertooth reconstructions at all levels. The sabertooths didn't simply look like lions or tigers with bigger teeth (covered when I featured Homotherium in the Sidekick Carl adventures), but it's easy to go too far trying to make them look "different". On that scale, this feels like too much and not enough. Here's a pic with my best MPC acquisition before this, a diatryma, and one more closeup.

"What do you mean, I look like a giant beaver? Have you ever had to kill a giant beaver??!!"

And here's one more pic...

"Just remember the pledge; `I'm bootleg, and that's not bad...'"

That's all for now; more to come!

Super Movies! The one with Grand Moff Tarkin and Joan Collins

 

Title: Tales From The Crypt

What Year?: 1972

Classification: Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

The last time I came to this feature, I was announcing that I was ready to bring it to an end, at least as part of the regular lineup. Because I’m really not very good at this, I’m back with another entry. It all came to this because several other possibilities I considered for my other features fell through, and in the middle of it all, a reviewer I follow posted a review of one I had been considering on and off for a very long time. With that, I present Tales From The Crypt, 1970s edition.

Our story begins after an opening score that seems to have been recorded in the 1930s with a group of visitors in a Medieval catacomb. Five of the group wander down a side passage into a chamber where a creepy man in an old-school monk’s robe. The old guy becomes the narrator of a series of tales of their misdeeds, beginning with a woman who murders her husband on Christmas Eve, only to discover that a lunatic in a Santa suit has paid a visit. The tales get more explicitly supernatural as we move on to a philanderer who finds himself transformed after an accident with his mistress and a wealthy man’s scheme to remove a dotty garbageman from his gentrifying neighborhood. We then meet a proud financier whose wife learns the price of getting what you wish for. Then we’re back to the Earthly plane with a faceoff between the chiseling administrator of a home for the blind and his defiant but patient wards. But at the end of it all, they still must learn just where they are!

Tales From The Crypt was a 1972 horror film by Amicus (see The People That Time Forgot) and AIP based on stories from the comic of the same name and from two other EC titles, Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear. The film was directed by Freddie Francis from a script by Amicus cofounder Milton Subotsky. The top-billed star was Peter Cushing (see The Horror Express and Shock Waves) as the dustman Grimsdyke, a role he reportedly chose over the businessman Jason in the segment “Wish You Were Here”, ultimately played by Richard Greene. Other cast included Joan Collins (see Empire of the Ants) as the murderess in “All Through the House”, Patrick Magee as the leader of the blind men, and the late Sir Ralph Richardson (see… Time Bandits?) as the Cryptkeeper. The theme from the film was Bach’s “Toccata And Fugue”,  previously used for horror/ genre films such as the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. The film was an immediate if modest success, earning a box office of over $3 million against a budget of 170,000 pounds. It was followed by a sequel, The Vault of Horror, released as a Shout 2-pack Blu Ray with the original in 2014. Several segments of the film were later remade for the Tales From The Crypt TV series. The film is currently available for streaming on the Tubi platform.

For my experiences, I knew of Tales From The Crypt vaguely thanks to the TV show, but never got much further into it than the present film, which I looked up sometime in the 2000s. When I first encountered it, I freely accepted it as a “classic”. In the years since, I have never felt that its reputation diminished. What I did see was major fluctuations in the availability of the film, to the point that I was for a time seriously concerned that this would be yet another movie in Copyright Hell. I suspect that this, in turn, allowed a more subtle shift among audiences and critics, especially new and old fans of the TV series and the original comics. I myself have come to the point of debating between this film, Vault of Horror and Creepshow as the best vintage EC-based film. The original film is no longer the centerpiece of the franchise, if it ever was, yet it hasn’t fallen into obscurity or disrepute either. And that offers a pretty good point for a relatively neutral reviewer like me to come in for another look.

Turning to the film, what stands out in my usual sensitivities is that this is an egregious example of a film that feels both ahead of its time and willfully “retro”, the epitome of what I call the Anachronistic Outlier. The music, the shooting style and even the casting all deliberately harken back to the 1950s period of the comics and in some cases to their earlier sources. In the process, the movie unintentionally highlights the morality-play format that tamped down horror in the pulp era. Yet, there is still a nihilistic “edge” that anticipates or exceeds movies far ahead of its own time, undoubtedly in no small part because “mainstream” American genre films had fallen so far behind as to be actively regressing. This isn’t slasher-movie pseudo-moralizing about premarital sex and found-object homicide, but a Serlingesque panorama of terrible people who knowingly bring trouble on others as well as themselves. It’s aided greatly by the distinguished cast. Cushing and Richardson are the easy standouts, with Magee pulling up from behind. My picks for the most impressive performances, however, are Collins, who spends much of her time looking anxious or bored as she considers the logistics of body disposal, and Greene, pushed to supporting cast in his own story yet perhaps even better than Cushing might have been as a rogue who unquestionably suffers far more than he deserves.

On the “con” side, most of the obvious problems come simply from the anthology format, previously considered with Two Evil Eyes and Allegro Non Troppo. The ones that certainly rate weakest and strongest are the opening and the finale, which most seem to agree on, so I won’t say more than I have. Of the rest, however, I find even the segments that usually get the praise don’t quite meet their potential. “Wish You Were Here”, for instance, relies on altogether contrived references to “The Monkey’s Paw” for its exposition. By comparison, “Poetic Justice” is at least ahead of its time with a vision of “stranger danger” and homeowners’ association intrigues, though to me Cushing just kind of breaks even. For me, the absolute standout is “Reflections of Death”. Sure, it’s predictable even for the 1950s, but the execution far exceeds an already satisfactory premise, with the key scenes shot from the revenant’s perspective. There’s still a decent twist with the reappearance of Susan (played by Angela Grant), as eerily poised as Magee and the blind men in the final segment. Then the problem throughout is that it just looks and feels cheap if not rushed. To me, this shows especially in the opening and closing music. It’s one thing to rely on an arguably overused piece; it’s another to use a hopelessly tinny recording that sounds like 20 generations of transfer static. I can’t believe they even saved real money; it’s more like they gave the job to someone who never bothered to listen to more than one recording.

That leaves us with the “one scene”. I’ve already gone through multiple shots and segments that would be worthy of the honor. The one thing I haven’t covered in depth is Richardson, familiar to me from his late turn as Ulrich in Dragonslayer. He gives a superbly ghoulish performance, necessarily fragmented across the film. I debated whether it would be possible to isolate just one piece in the usual fashion. Once I had the idea, however, I quickly noted one particular point, bridging the first segment with “Reflections”. After narrating the fate of Collins’ character, we find her counterpart among the visitors vaguely protesting, even as she rubs her throat uncomfortably. The Cryptkeeper then turns to the next sinner, played by TV/ character actor Ian Hendry (d. 1984). It’s here that the monk first questions whether any of our antiheros really remember how they ended up in the catacombs. When called out, the man reflexively answers, “I’m on my way home to my wife and children.” The monk challenges him, almost bemused: “And then?... And then?” It’s a matter of a minute or less, even with the framing factored in, but these few words are a high point if not the finest moment of a cracking performance from a fine actor.

In closing, what I come to isn’t so much the rating, but how the film compares with others I have mentioned, which has ultimately been as big a consideration as any in my final rating. Of all the official, informal and arguable EC films, there never was any doubt that Creepshow is the “best” by any objective appraisal. However, I could have rated this one as highly with my usual handicapping in effect. What really put Creepshow ahead are its budget and improved technology, plus the participation of Stephen King, which obviously can’t be held against any other film. But on consideration, there is one movie I would definitely rank ahead, and it’s this movie’s own sequel, Vault of Horror. Of course, I can’t give my reasons in full without another review I’m not yet prepared to do. It will suffice to say that, where the second film has segments that don’t hold up on their own or by comparison, it also has several that are at least as good as anything in Tales or even Creepshow. (I will name-drop the segments featuring Terry Thomas and Tom Baker.) The further fact that Vault was released only a year later is to me the surest proof that the present film could have been better. It may remain the original and the “classic”, but its real accomplishment was laying the way for better things. In the proverbial light of day, that’s credit enough, and with that, I can count this done.

Image credit Movies And Mania.

Movie Mania: Star Wars vinyl

 

I'm continuing with my disastrous efforts to get a full five posts this week, and this time I had no idea what to do. As necessity begets invention, I finally decided to follow up on a loose end from my non-depressing Christmas playlist. In the course of that post, I mentioned having one of the infamous Meco Star Wars albums at the family estate. Since I had absolutely no better idea, I dug through a cache of records that there hasn't been a player for in about a decade. Here's the first of two specimens I unearthed, photographed with my phone on the Couch Mark 2.

This is the original Star Wars soundtrack album, released in 1977. It's obviously not much to look at, but things are better in the back, which is the pic I opened with above. It's a two-record set that runs about 80 minutes total. You might think I ran this into the ground as a kid, which isn't wrong. The wrinkle is that I literally couldn't operate the record player when we did have one, so my family recorded the whole thing onto a 90-minute cassette that I played for the next few decades until I lost track of it. At any rate, the format meant there's an interior that they filled out with photos. Here they are in full glory.

This artifact is a perfect snapshot of why the audiophile trend/ craze left me behind. As alluded, my choices of media formats were dictated by my terrible eye-hand coordination, so it was cassettes all the way through high school. I can still muster some nostalgia for the days when you could record music directly off the radio and pass it along on a mix tape, but I have absolutely no fondness for the tech itself. What really was good about an album like this is that it's polished enough to sound like a concert performance instead of being broken into a bunch of short sound clips. If I could get it back on a playable format, I would definitely prefer it over the Star Wars digital album I got a while ago, but it just doesn't matter quite enough to go out of my way. And with that, here's the real main exhibit...

Here is the Star Wars Christmas album, which incidentally has nothing to do with the Star Wars Christmas special. It was released in November 1980, which I got wrong when I listed a track from it as from 1979. That means that it technically came out after Empire, released in May of that year, but I strongly suspect the new movie had little if any effect on the final form of the album. I can kind of remember hearing it as a kid. However, it was the album cover that made by far the strongest impression, in fact a painting by concept artist Ralph McQuarrie. Here's a couple closeups. R2D2 looks... chunky.

When I started this post, I finally listened to the majority of the album. I can say without hesitation that it doesn't come close to living up to the McQuarrie art. Its most redeeming quality is a certain informality that was already seeping out of the franchise. In and of itself, however, it barely holds its ground between tolerable and intermittently amusing. To spare you the trouble, here's the most worthwhile track besides the one with Jon Bon Jovi, "The Odds Against Christmas", which seems to reference the asteroid segment in Empire. It actually raises an intriguing angle on just how much of an accident our celebration of Christmas really is, which of course isn't explored. And yes, these are absolutely the high points.

With that, I'm wrapping this up. For once, I've made pretty good time and still covered what I want to do. It still leaves plenty I might come back to sooner or later. That's all for now, more to come!