Movie Mania: Top 10/ 20 best movies reviewed!

 

As I write this, I’m just about to his 200 movie reviews, without doing anything to monetize my work, and I decided to do something different, that is, what everybody else who does what I do does sooner or later: Assemble a list of the best movies I’ve reviewed.  This might seem either Herculean or moot, given the quality of the movies I usually review. In fact, a good part of the list that’s been emerging in my mind are ones I knew would be here as soon as I reviewed them, usually because I normally wouldn’t have reviewed them. The rest have tended to follow naturally by reputation as much as quality, though parts of this are still fuzzy. So, here comes the top 10 list, not necessarily in order but definitely by tier.

 

1.     They Live- A movie so good and successful I reviewed it on the technicality that there was a comic book. Two guys discover that aliens have secretly conquered the world and fight back. It’s a bona fide cult classic that’s become a mainstream success. Top of the line.

2.     Galaxy Quest- Another cult movie that went mainstream. The washed-up cast of a science fiction show are recruited for a real war by aliens who think their adventures are history. High-level snark turns into an effective tribute to Trek and the serials and B-movies that influenced it. Good fun, with lots of laughs and real heart.

3.     Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger- An old personal favorite, the swansong of the great Ray Harryhausen. The titular sailor goes on a voyage to a polar lost world to cure a prince transformed into a baboon. It’s Harryhausen at the top of his game with the baboon prince, a troglodyte and an assortment of monsters. A good and beautiful thing.

4.     Deep Rising- Really tied for three, another all-time favorite of mine. Mercenaries hired by a mysterious employer must fight their way out of a cruise ship infested by swarms of man-eating tentacle-worms. It’s a perfect blend of monster movie, action and comedy, with ILM-assisted CGI monsters and a Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack so awesome it got its own review first.

5.     Flash Gordon- My only top 5 substitution, one of the movies that got me doing this in the first place. Flash Gordon must save the Earth and Dale Arden from the over-the-top villainy of Ming the Merciless… actually, everything is over the top, including the theme song by Queen. It’s a genuinely clever tribute/ send-up and the most egregiously ‘70s thing on this list, though it happened to come out in 1980. “Flash…”

6.     Sole Survivor- One more favorite, a criminally neglected zombie movie from the director of Night of the Comet. The only survivor of a plane crash is stalked by undead assassins so stealthy only a nosey coroner notices them. It’s a polarizing movie among those who have seen it at all, worth a look wherever you can get it.

7.     The Hidden- Another bona fide cult movie. A mind-controlling alien goes on a crime spree in a series of hosts, just ahead of a cop and a federal agent with his own secret. It’s half sci fi, half police procedural, all action, with a surprising satirical bite.

8.     Krull- One more “favorite” that I spent years finding. When world of swords and sorcery is invaded by the sentient fortress of the Beast and his biomechanoid warriors, a prince leads a motley band on a quest to rescue his bride. It’s a fine piece of 1980s fantasy, with another awesome soundtrack.

9.     Terrorvision- My only other substitution on this list, a classic from the Band Crew. A kid fights an alien that climbed out of a satellite TV box, while his parents are more concerned with their swinger party. It’s dumb but fun with an edge, greatly improved by a very creepy monster, tongue-in-cheek performances from Mary Woronov and Gerrit Graham, and a bonkers theme song. Whoop, whoop…

10.  The Last Starfighter- Maybe the most iconic movie I’ve reviewed. A teenage guy discovers that his favorite video game is really a test for an interstellar Federation analog, and ends up flying their prototype fighter in the counterattack. It’s the definitive ‘80s movie, spiced up by Daniel O’Herlihy and Robert Preston.

 

An immediate word in order on this list is that there are certain movies I’ve excluded. First, I’ve chosen to look only at live-action theatrical films, so there’s no animation and no TV movies. Second, I haven’t adjusted the list for my most recent reviews, so I passed over Dragonslayer and a few others. Third, I set aside several films that I reviewed under very special circumstances, several of which I declined to give a rating. With all these adjustments, it still came out with the lineup I would have expected. 

 

The depressing lesson from this list is that my first and most extensive feature, Space 1979, barely got into the top 5, though I had no trouble filling out the rest of the list with these entries. There also aren’t any movies that are that obscure. What intrigued me more was that there weren’t that many that I gave the highest rating, either 4 or 5 depending on the feature. I suppose this is because I’m more critical of higher-profile of movies. It also reflects that these are movies that took more real risks, which in turn meant flaws in both concept and execution. The lesson is that ambition matters.

 

Now, because I really don’t know when to quit, here’s more to make this a top 20 list.

 

11.  Hancock- Possibly the only movie that I made a feature for. A disgruntled superhero prone to doing more damage than the bad guys saves a PR agent who teaches him to relate to ordinary humanity. It’s an underrated satire that still came out ahead of much of the modern superhero movie wave.

12.  Highway To Hell- The most egregious cult movie to come on my radar. A pizza deliveryman must rescue his fiancée from the devil in a post-apocalyptic Hellscape. It’s a surrealist fantasy that didn’t have an audience in its own time, very cool and it knows it.

13.  Duel- Narrowly removed for the top 10, the greatest TV movie ever. An unseen trucker chases everyman David Mann in the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg. It’s pure adrenaline with a side of social commentary, and that’s all it needs to be.

14.  Night of the Creeps- Classic 1980s zombie movie. Brain slugs reanimate the dead to wreak havoc on a college campus. Another action/ sci fi/ police procedural mashup, with Tom Atkins taking charge and stomping scenery.

15.  Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)- Absolutely serious. A shipwrecked UN negotiator discovers an island where animals have been uplifted into intelligent humanoids. It’s the best adaptation of a classic science fiction novel, with superb effects from Stan Winston and the embarrassingly high entertainment value of Val Kilmer being a jerk, i.e. by all indications Val Kilmer.

16.  Two Evil Eyes- Another zombie entry, the most actually obscure movie I’ve reviewed. A trophy wife and her lover hypnotize her husband to change his will and then hide his body in the freezer, but he still talks to them; followed by another tale of madness and murder allegedly based on Edgar Allen Poe. It’s included as a stand-in for several otherwise worthier works of the late, great George Romero, which is more than fair given its inexplicably overlooked status.

17.  The Wild, Wild Planet- A substitution for a well-known mainstream film, included as a twofer for films before 1970 and Italian movies. An international lawman and sexist idiot  faces a madder-than-usual scientist whose plan to perfect the human race includes fusing himself with a feisty damsel. It’s a very, very odd film I was definitely too hard on the first time around, entertaining enough for “so bad it’s good” viewing with moments that are surreal or completely unsettling.

18.  Splinter- Another very good zombie movie, and best non-animated entry from the current millennium. Carjackers and their victims are trapped in a gas station by a parasitic lifeform that reanimates humans, animals and pieces thereof. It’s body horror at its most brutal, with top-notch effects and a good cast.

19.  The Dungeonmaster- Another representative offense from the Band crew, barely bumped for Terrorvision. A hotshot computer programmer is challenged by a sorcerer, leading to a series of barely connected episodes that span time, space and genres. It’s one big pile of random from seven different directors, yet better than the sum of its parts.

20.  The Phantom Tollbooth- One from the animation category. A boy travels through a fantasy land divided between the kingdoms of numbers and words, on a quest to save the princesses of Rhyme and Reason from the demons of ignorance. It’s egregious psychedelic Sixties animation allegedly for kids, and the final effort from MGM animation.

 

With that, I’m wrapping this up. I haven’t gotten in everything I hoped, and I’m already pleading with myself to get in just one more really significant film, but I know if I keep at this, the list is going to be 200. So, I’m going to wrap this up, call it a night, and figure out what I’m going to do for my actual 200^th review. That’s all for now, more to come!

Animation Defenestration: The one that was supposed to be the worst Disney movie

 

Title: Chicken Little

What Year?: 2005

Classification: Mashup

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

 

As I write this, I’m closing on my 200^th movie review, and I reminded myself that I not only haven’t done an installment of this feature in almost 2 months (see, dear Logos, Lord of the Rings) but still haven’t cracked double digits. The latter fact is in part because the load has been split between this and my “worst” movies feature, and I’ve already had some doozies on both sides. In the process, I’ve ended up with some loose ends and paths I declined over others. With this review, I’m coming back to the biggest of these, a notorious film that didn’t interest me as much as others that were entirely obscure. While I have never questioned the resulting decisions, I knew a rematch was do sooner or later. Once I did get a look at the material in question, I never doubted a review was in order. With that, I present Chicken Little, the one people say is the worst Disney movie ever.

Our story begins with a town full of anthropomorphic animals where our title character causes a panic when he insists that an object he can’t locate fell from the sky. The townsfolk laugh it off, even though they reacted more disproportionately than the kid ever does, and he goes back to being bullied by his classmates. Things take a positive turn as he gets closer to his friends, then wins the approval of his borderline-neglectful father and his peers by winning a baseball game. But then he gets clonked by another mysterious artifact from the sky, a piece of superscience material that can turn invisible. The band of friends soon realize that a cloaked alien ship is overhead, and get followed by a small little alien. However, Chicken Little is unable to convince the townspeople, despite being backed up by his friends, until the aliens begin an attack. It turns out that the commander is trying to find his own son, and ready to obliterate the town in retaliation. Can Chicken Little save the day, or is our hero deep fried?

Chicken Little was a 2005 CGI animated film by Disney, the first such feature created without the involvement of Pixar. The film had the same title as a World War 2 propaganda short film, which was unrelated except for a shared folk tale source. Development was reportedly prolonged by repeated rewrites, including a change of the main character’s gender. The film starred Zach Braff as Chicken Little and Joan Cusack as friend/ love interest Abby, with Garry Marshall as the father Buck. A high-profile supporting cast included Patrick Stewart, Adam West (see Batman), and Don Knotts in his final role as mayor Turkey Lurky. The film was a commercial success, earning a worldwide gross of $314 million against an estimated $150M budget. However, it received negative contemporary reviews and acquired a further reputation as a “worst” Disney movie in online lists and reviews. It remains available on Disney Plus.

For my usual experiences, I really only considered watching this film as part of my project to find a representative “worst” Disney movie, which led to my reviews of The Black Cauldron here and The Wild under Very Bad Movies. What I dragged to the table was the certain knowledge that the actual “worsts” weren’t really on the radar. Any seasoned animation scholar or fan could tell you that the most objectively and genuinely awful things Disney ever made were from long, long ago, when much of their output still amounted to shorts. (I have a certain entry in mind, but I can wait till I am very prepared.) For inexcusable low quality in the feature-length category, it’s quite fair to start a lot closer to home, and the mid-2000s movies, especially those made “in-house”, are definitely a perfect storm. It was a transitional period of full of throwbacks, experiments, and direct-to-video sequels and other quickies that weren’t intended to compete on the general market. The end result was a few immediate hits, a handful of eventually accepted “classics” that struggled or failed in their own time, and a bumper crop of entries that would be either notorious or forgotten. Even sight unseen, it’s hard to take it as anything but blind bad luck that Chicken Little became the most maligned of them all.

Moving forward, the central reality of the film is that it feels made for kids first, with very little of the usual “Disney Renaissance” nudging toward teens and adults. If this is taken as an honest choice rather than suicide by focus group, many of its arguable flaws become excusable or at least understandable. The story is episodic and simple. The animated characters (especially the aliens and the Fish Out Of Water) are boldly rendered and vaguely stylized. Multiple scenes focus on preteen nightmares and wish fulfillment, complete with dodgeball and missing pants. (Must… suppress… Donald Duck rant…) The adult authority figures, to some extent including Buck, are exaggerated or caricatured, with little if any further explanation of their reasoning and motivations. Finally, the resolution is brought about by non-violent negotiation that happens to coincide with the main characters’ reconciliation. All of which is to say that this isn’t great, but realistic enough to stay within its limitations.

On a deeper level, what the film has going for it are a genuinely likable main character and a quite strong story. The real problem is that the film repeatedly squanders its potential, to the point that even its good moments become frustrating long before the end. The obvious recurring problem is that Chicken Little’s dilemmas depend consistently on others being irrational and/ or actively mean, which by all means works for the bullies at his school, but not for the adults. Unless what we see is distorted by the protagonist’s viewpoint (the kind of ambiguity a typical Disney Afternoon episode would have set up), the adults are entirely to blame at almost every turn. They know he’s a kid; they clearly believe he is overimaginative; so there’s absolutely no reason for them to charge about in a mob based only on what he says. The deeper and especially irritating difficulty is that Chicken Little is really no better in comparison. When he finds obviously advanced alien technology, he doesn’t mention it to an adult until after he loses it. He doesn’t appeal to his friends to confirm his story until the adults are already suspicious. And in the finale, when the townsfolk are by all appearances being massacred in front of him, he could literally wave his little alien friend in front of any of the combat mechs at any time. Instead, he rushes around a literal battlefield to get the fuzzball to a completely arbitrary point. The fundamental problem isn’t that this is entirely unbelievable; it’s that nobody except Buck ever admits a mistake, much less learns from it.

That leaves the “one scene”, and the one that stood out to me is the baseball game. As Chicken Little takes the plate, there’s a familiar, perhaps jarring voice from the very adult announcer. That would be Harry Shearer of The Simpsons using the voice of Kent Brockman, in a pleasant touch if you can adjust to it. There’s an intended comical moment as our protagonist tries to raise a bat literally bigger than he does, which really emphasizes how little of this assumed world makes any sense, internally or otherwise. If this was a properly worked out multispecies society, there would be some kind of handicapping system here, or else the other team would be switching out their pitcher for one closer to the batter’s size. As it is, it’s obvious that Chicken Little can get a walk just by standing there, something that others loudly and repeatedly say to him. The announcer narrates as he swings nevertheless, and gets completely undeserved credit for what follows.

In closing, what I find myself coming back to is who on Earth the usually savvy Disney marketing engine thought they were making this movie for. In objective quality, it isn’t nearly as bad as The Wild (except Disney can’t deny technically making it), nor is it quite as muddled and willfully mediocre as The Black Cauldron was. The fact remains that Disney clearly miscalculated, far more badly and fundamentally than they did with immediate box office failures and disappointments like Treasure Planet and Meet The Robinsons (I’m thinking, I’m thinking…). In the proverbial light of day, this was a movie that tried to be “middle of the road” on a 5-lane freeway, too dumb for adults, too scary and cynical for kids, and too strange for any part of the mainstream. If there was a “right” move for Disney, it was to cut their losses and turn this one out to pasture on the direct-to-video market, where the shell-shocked parents and animation fans would probably have been grateful for anything that reached a high standard of mediocrity. But that, of course, would have meant putting their reputation ahead of making actual money. So, touche, Mouse. And with that, I am done.

Futures Past: Fisher Price sci fi franchise?

 

In the course of this blog, I've created quite a few "features". The common denominator is that usually, I have decided at the outset whether a feature will be a regular thing or just a few installments. This feature has been a major exception, in no small part because I had never decided just where it would go. I started it fora post on World's Fair architecture, and got in one more for a terrible 1980s comic. But most of the other things I might have considered ended up in other new and old features, most recently the Anthology Anthology. What has brought me back is an acquisition that would have been easy to cover in a toy blog. However, I felt that this time, I had something more, and this was the place to cover it. To get things going, here's the figure that started everything.

The backstory is that this is a figure from the famous/ notorious Fisher Price Adventure People line, previously sighted way back in my Dropped Pilots post. This figure was evidently made and released specifically for a vehicle called Alpha Probe, Fisher Price's 1980 Star Wars cash-in. I personally can't say for sure if I ever even saw this damn thing, but it's easy to see why many people remember it fondly. At face value, it's a space shuttle with a little more flare than average. On a deeper level, however, it has a quite unique aesthetic, especially for the knockoff-heavy environment, in many ways closer to The Black Hole than anything else. Here's links for posts on the ship at This Old Toy, Flashbak and Plaid Stallions. Also, here's a vintage ad from Flashbak.

Needless to say, I ordered this figure as an alternative to getting the ship. From my research, the ship was consistently sold with a man and a woman astronaut, in itself an intriguing dynamic for vintage action figures (see the No Girls post). The woman is known in two variants, one blonde and the other usually described as brown-haired, I would say reddish. What very quickly stood out was that this is far below my expectations. The detailing is low, and several points are strange, particularly the lower legs and the collar piece. Presumably, they were cutting corners to get the ship to the market, yet there are clearly far better FP figures from the same time. Here's the lady with Husky and the Adventure People diver, note especially the detail on the diver.

And here's Sidekick Carl while we're at it!

One more detail that only clicked after I ordered the figure is that the helmet has to be a copy of what I call the tank helmet, common to the Marx "Space Guys". It's a very odd "retro" touch that I suspect was intended to appeal to adult nostalgia. Here's a lineup to show what I mean.

Inevitably, the success of Alpha Probe led to more space toys, and things soon went downhill. The next in line were Alpha Star 1 and Alpha Recon, a sort of mini rig fighter and moon buggy that fit in with the retro-hard sci fi look established by the ship. Things stayed in the gray area with the Alpha Star buggy set (see here for one of the better posts I've found on the whole subline), despite the addition of an alien dino creature and a clunky robot. The one I can't figure out is the Alpha Interceptor, which looks like the chassis of a construction crane with the mini rig fuselage bolted on. In the process, we also got the previously sighted "second wave" astronaut figures, which I got one more of in the bargain with the lady astronauts. Here's a pic of the pair.

The very odd thing about this is the design, which looks less like a suit than a miniature space capsule. The latter interpretation would make a fair amount of sense, especially if any of the hardware in back is taken as a propulsion system. The annoying part is that these are things I would have thought of as a kid, but the designers clearly weren't looking that far ahead. Something else I quickly realized is that the figure I had featured in Dropped Pilots is in immaculate condition, a point that got driven home when I accidentally scratched one of the useless shapes in the back. Here's a detail shot.

And here's an unnecessary-detail shot...

Something I'm going back just to add is the implied dynamics for the space exploration set. The easy, fan fic-style solution is that this is a husband-and-wife team. We know even better now that this would really create at least as many problems as it would solve. But if this is a long-haul expedition, lasting years or even decades, how else would you deal with the psychological and biological stresses and needs of the crew? It's a random train of thought, yet it's the kind of question precocious kids would ask that adults still struggle to answer.

Meanwhile, things really got weird when FP tried turning out individually sold figures. These are egregiously Eighties, either psychedelic or nightmare fuel. I won't really be going far into these, because they're well-covered elsewhere. Here's some card art to give you a feel for the tone.

Then there's a couple I can't resist. First, there's Clawtron. I've joked about the origin of Sidekick Carl, whom I decided would be an unkillable cyborg because I had no other way to resolve the real hero's plight. That made me all the more amused to see this, an undisputed recolor of a biker figure with some extra robot parts slapped on. Sure, I was incredibly lazy... but Fisher Price did it first. Here's the pic, credit to the page at This Old Toy already linked to.

Second is the X-ray woman, supposedly an android. They came as both male and female, and the lady is even more freaky. It hasn't exactly been confirmed, but I'm convinced their heads are recycled from the astronauts. (Edit: From further research, it looks like both were based on a sculpt from an earlier figure, probably a common denominator with the space figures.) Here's a pic from Battlegrip.

With that to give you nightmares, I'm ready to wrap this up. In hindsight, this little line is an egregious example of a property caught in the middle, on one hand drawing on the Star Wars boom and on the other trying to revive the older toys and media that undoubtedly laid the way for it. The predictable result was an especially strange evolutionary dead end, only really comparable to Galaxy Laser Team. The darker flipside is that it marked the final slide of a groundbreaking manufacturer, from making innovative products that provided the groundwork of an industry to throwing out knockoffs of a toy line that had copied its own success. It was a sad end, but probably an inevitable one. Now, I'm calling it a day. That's all for now, more to come!

Super Movies! The first one with Batman

 

Title: Batman

What Year?: 1966

Classification: Prototype

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

 

Back when I started movie reviews, something I acknowledged up front is that my pop culture experience as an Eighties kid had little to do with the 1980s. I didn’t have a TV until the end of the decade, I didn’t go to the movies often, and what I did get exposure to tended to be older media the adults weren’t paying attention to. The end result was that my bedrock for TV in particular became the 1960s: The Twilight Zone, Get Smart, and for that matter the original Star Trek. Despite this footprint, I have only made a few forays into the period as a reviewer, and then usually into things I knew little or nothing about at the time. With this review, I am coming back to the period, for what was possibly my most meaningful ‘60s experience after Trek, and it’s all the more fitting that I’m doing it for my longest-running and least prolific feature. I present Batman, the original, and it is… odd.

Our story begins with a quick introduction to our heroes, Batman and Robin, and incarnations of four somewhat randomized villains, the Joker, the Penguin, Cat Woman and the Riddler. Our villains have teemed up, with the Penguin as the leader if only because he commands a submarine that serves as their hideout. They proceed with a series of loosely connected schemes, including a trap or two for Batman and the Boy Wonder. But the plot gets in gear as Cat Woman romances Bruce Wayne under the guise of a Russian reporter. When the villains use the romance to blackmail the billionaire, our hero must choose between his dual identities. And in case this is sounding philosophical, there’s also a rubber shark, a gaggle of dehydrated UN representatives, and a marching band that doesn’t notice a guy with a bomb!

Batman was a 1966 superhero film by director Leslie H. Martinson, distributed by 20^th Century Fox. The film became the first feature-length DC superhero movie, and the first live-action Batman adaptation since 1940s serials. While it was remembered as a cinematic adaptation of the contemporary TV series, the film was developed and filmed during the first season of the show, before the success of either was certain. The film starred Adam West and Burt Ward in their roles as Batman and Robin, with Burgess Meredith (see... The Manitou?) as the Penguin. Cesar Romero and Frank Gorshin also reprised their TV roles as the Joker and the Riddler, while Lee Meriwether appeared as Cat Woman in place of Julie Newmar. The film was judged a moderate box office success, earning $3.9 million against a budget of up to $1.5M. The series continued until 1968, after which it continued to air in syndication. The movie was first released on home video in 1985 and remains available in digital formats. Adam West died in 2016, shortly before the release of his final film, the direct-to-video animated film Batman Vs. Two Face.

For my experiences, I can remember growing up aware of Batman and Superman, mainly through story books and other media at witsome remove from the source material. Of course, that all changed with the release of the Tim Burton movie, which seemed to coincide with a local revival of the ‘60s show. I can recall seeing it shortly after it would have come out, but it was the show that had the greatest impact, up to the 1990s animated series. What stands out in hindsight is that the show offered the most balanced portrayal of the mythos. There was a good rotation in the major villains, with Burgess Meredith being the most impressive. Then there were very good portrayals of the (then) relatively obscure villains, including what must have been Otto Preminger’s incarnation of Mr. Freeze. Unfortunately, I could see even as a kid that there were things that badly dated the series, particularly a wildly sexist plot I might have doubted existed if I wasn't me. (See here and here, or better yet, don't.) As I matured, the show quickly became a good memory better left in the past. I was even less interested in the movie, which even series fans are critical of. The viewing that led to this review finally came because a friend wanted to see it. Once I saw it, I knew I had to cover it, simply because I couldn’t see coming back to it anytime soon.

What really stands out watching the movie is that it is quite different from the show, though it’s subtle enough to make things hard to pin down. The most obvious departure is that there’s no close counterpart to the usual death trap/ execution machine sequences that always set up the cliffhangers. It could also seem disorienting to have the Joker treated as a supporting character, which is really an indicator of how much the mythos has evolved. The shift further reflects the levels of talent involved. Merriwether is superb as Cat Woman, while Meredith is simply the best actor the show ever had, at least after George Sanders’ one-time appearance as Freeze. There’s also a bit more “edge”, not just innuendo but genuinely dark moments, plus a political note; this comes out most blatantly with the useless UN delegates, who keep arguing even as the Joker picks them off one by one. An extra surreal bit is a shark attack a full decade before Jaws, all the more jarring for the comically bad effects which feel like they should be in a parody.

The most interesting aspects of the movie are the surprising moments of emotional depth. This is most obvious in the romance of Wayne and Cat Woman, which pushes the much-ridiculed West to surprising heights. Of course, the credibility gets stretched by the hero’s failure to recognize her identity, though Cat Woman is equally at fault unless she is holding out on her cohorts. What’s even more intriguing are Batman’s lectures to Robin, which get as far as emphasizing the value of human life after several of the Penguin’s goons possibly die in a science experiment gone amok. It’s an early preview of the character’s increasingly strict “no kill” policy. It also establishes a clearly and convincingly paternal relationship with Robin, notwithstanding the jokes that were brewing even then. There’s a point, however, where this becomes yet another case of “too much and not enough”. You can have Batman colorful and campy or dark and moody, but there was never going to be much room for middle ground. One extra bit of annoyance is that the movie all but inverts the vigilante angle, at one point explicitly announcing that Batman is a deputized agent for the police. All this simply dissipates any antiauthoritarian subtexts carried over from the source material, at least until the end, which almost anticipates Superman IV.

That leaves the “one scene”, and this time it’s one that I was genuinely unprepared for. Batman discovers a bomb in a room above a tavern on a wharf, and promptly goes into overdrive. It is truly a comic-book bomb, complete with a sizzling fuse. The amusing part is that he does everything reasonable within moments, warning the patrons to flee the establishment. It’s more than enough to prevent civilian casualties, unless that thing’s a Davy Crockett nuke. (And it’s clearly not his fault two idiots keep eating…) Rather than leave well enough alone and run for it, however, he grabs the bomb and rushes out onto the improbably crowded pier. A completely surreal sequence follows as he encounters one heartrending innocent after another, like a baby carriage, a marching band that seems to be everywhere at once, nuns, young lovers in a rowboat, and even a flotilla of ducks. He finally says, “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb!” And then… then… the damn thing goes off.

In closing, this is one time I don’t feel like I need to justify my rating. This is a movie that makes no excuses for itself, and to that extent, it lives up to the series. Yes, it’s weird. Yes, it’s dated. Yes, it hovers between campy and outright bad. But the superhero genre and the franchise had to start somewhere, and this certainly isn’t the worst outing for Batman or DC in general. It also shows that what is “dark” in the franchise and genre was always there, and you don’t have to ramp up gritty for its own sake to 100 on a scale of 10 to do it justice. It was a good start, which should be good enough to remember, if not always to dig up again. And with that, I’m once more calling it a day.

Image credit The Bat Channel.

Movie Mania: Lanard Alien/ predator returns!

 

In the course of running this blog, one common denominator is that when I do get something new that I choose to cover here, it's completely up in the air how soon I will get to it. Usually, this doesn't have much bearing on what I do in the meantime, particularly given my disregard for keeping things in the packaging. Once in a while, though, I have held off any permanent action until I can properly document. For this post, I have something I waited on longer than usual, from a line that has provided a non-trivial chunk of my posts. Here is one more unboxing from the Lanard Alien/ Predator line!

As previously recounted, this all started with a direct-to-Walmart release by Lanard Toys, already on my radar for the Primal Clash megafauna, that was actually licensed as tie-in merchandise for the Alien/ Aliens franchise. I first covered this line for the colossal kaiju Alien Queen, and later covered an earlier Alien haul that accounted for most of the line. The line returned with a series of larger-scale 7-inch figures that also included Predator entries. Because of limited availability, I only got one of the Predator figures (plus the insane 12-inch Predator). My interest dropped off after I got the excellent Aliens-style figure. A while later, I found the one I had missed, a Predator clearly based on the first movie. I held onto it in the box for a long time, not because I cared about collector value (really, in the time it takes for the real market to emerge, there's going to be more of these things in the box than out of it), but because I didn't want to unbox without documenting immediately. This week, I finally got to it, and still ended up taking a few days to get to it. Here's a few pics from the unboxing.

Also, here's the interior packaging, demonstrating the usual standards of unnecessary detail.

As you can see, this is intended to be the half-cloaked Predator. Ironically, it's painted with a little more detail than other figures, which skimped on the forearms and the mesh. Here, you can differentiate the forearm shield and the wrist nuke from the flesh tones of the elbows. There's also some sense of texturing behind the netting stuff. It looks like there would be more detail on the back. Of course, I had to take it out of the box to confirm they skimped on that big-time. Here's some pics.

What's worse, that the joints can bend this way, or that this worked better than anything else I tried?

If it bleeds, we can sell it health insurance...

And here's one more pic with the City Predator. Can we just say the second movie is better... kiiiind of?

"Hey, at least I stabbed more humans than I shot with the plasma bazooka!"

And one more! By the way, the accessory is something that only appears in Predator 2. And wow, those claws are long.

And while I'm at it, here's a round of bonus pics of the Aliens. I tried to use more of their articulation, but I could still barely make them look threatening. In place of the ladies, I brought in the Marx astronauts and Evil Space Guys. The scale works disconcertingly well (see also the Aliens APC). It gives me a vibe of a throwback to the pulps and B movies Alien ripped off.

"No, actually, I don't want to know what's in that bag..."

"Are you sure you don't want to see a mysterious empty starship?"

"See, this never works when we have guns..."

"Yeah, well, what else are you going to do if you're in outer space and you need to slice a pie?"

"You're telling me pink doesn't work???"

And how about a lineup with real lighting?

"Okay, the sportsman code means you don't use the gun.... uh, right???"

With that, it's the end of one more chapter for this blog and for me, at least unless more of these come out. It was indeed a good run, and it's safe to bet there will be more ahead from Lanard. That's all for now, more to come!

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

 

Title: Dragonslayer

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Runnerup

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Anthology Anthology: Pan horror!

 

Something I've commented on previously is the degree to which both horror and fantasy went underground from the 1950s through the 1960s. To really figure out what was happening, the best place to go is the now-obscure anthologies I conceived this feature for. After kicking things off with the Helen Hoke YA horror anthologies, the natural next step was the series regularly cannibalized in those books, the infamous Pan Book of Horror Stories, which Ramsey Campbell famously commended as "illiterate, disgusting and meritless".

For my experiences, I became aware of this series gradually. I started paying attention when I looked into a story called "The Ski Lift", very suspiciously similar to Frozen. Another line of inquiry that went in that direction was research on Gef the Mongoose, during which I learned of a potentially related story called "The Tunisian Talking Ferret" by Harry Turner (see the Gef blog). It was the latter that finally convinced me to buy one of the damn things, with great reservations. It turned out what I was looking for was in volume 16 of the series, which was warning enough especially since that still was barely halfway through the total run. I then ordered it online for a mid-range price typical for the series, not so high that only a collector would pay but not so low that one can simply build up a collection for casual reading. What quickly became clear was that I had had good reason to be cautious.

In my little volume, the central exhibit is certainly the entry from Turner, a moderately noteworthy author who published much of his output in this series. It's about a traveler who witnesses a talking animal on the streets of a North African city, and decides to try to find out the secret. It's hackwork, but the kind that works, with some nicely understated grue and a colonialist vibe that's on the deconstructed side of such things. It all leads to a mad doctor who would make Megavolt and the villain from Wild, Wild Planet politely change seats. The one real surprise is that it ends in a stock last-minute rescue rather than what would already have been an equally formulaic "dark" ending. As an extra foot note, this and a number of other Pan contributions were included in a now-expensive 1978 collection of Turner's work with the mindboggling title The Man Who Could Hear Fishes Scream (honest!). I managed to find and read the title story, and have respectfully declined to cover any more of his fiction.

Returning to the collection, I'm honestly not sure how much more of this thing I even read. What's by far the most interesting thing about the collection is the mix of genres, including a number of entries that are science fictional at face value. It's further apparent that many trends in the US did not extend to Britain or Europe, including the separation of horror from "respectable" science fiction and fantasy.  For the individual stories, the ones that interested me enough to make an impression were "The Eve of the Wedding", one of several contributions to the series by Maureen O'Hara, and "Revolt of the Ant People" by one Lavan E. Coberley. The former is a giallo-style crime/ psychological horror piece that relies on mental illness and amnesia for its posited twists. The latter is obviously a science fiction piece, actually just about more or less normal-sized ants on a rampage on the vein of Phase IV. It's all kinds of not good, yet entertaining and unconceited. The rest I'm sure I read before I started this post will not be dignified with comment, though I will be getting to one more.

Returning to the bigger picture, the series went on for a total of 30 volumes, from 1959 to 1989, with the vast majority edited by Herbert Van Thal. The first few volumes were mainly reprints of "literary" horror and fantasy, including both Victorian/ gothic writers like Bram Stoker and H.G. Wells and modern talent like Jack Finney, Nigel Kneale and Muriel Spark. Later volumes shifted to original fiction and "new" writers, including some genuine rising stars like Joan Aiken and many more who may or may not have ever published again. Some volumes were republished in the US, along with certain individual stories that were reprinted in anthologies. By all accounts, quality declined over time, though fans seem to argue how soon and fast it happened. My guess is that past the initial wave of reprints, the quality probably didn't change that much. What it did surely provide was an outlet for new material, especially in the 1960s. The writing on the wall would have been when Stephen King and certain other authors started taking horror back into classy venues. Once the real talent had other places to go, Pan would have been in the same position as much of its fiction, halfway between old and new.

Meanwhile, I recently managed to find a couple more of these collections in downloadable form, which in turn gave me a better sense of the real tone of the series. These were the 8th and 10th volumes, which contained certain stories I had previously taken an interest in. Here's an overview of the more interesting stories.

"The Growth" by Bruce Lowery (8th volume)- This was another thread that led me to this series, a story with a similar plot to The Manitou. It's by an author who published mainly in French and evidently for the "YA" market, now best known for the 1960 novel La Cicatrice. It's laid out as a science fiction piece, complete with a postulated future history that includes a "Canado-American War". Otherwise, this is straight-up body horror, recounting the ordeal of the narrator's mother as she is afflicted by a mysterious mass that seems to take on a life of its own as it grows and finally absorbs her. Naturally, she proves to be the first casualty of an epidemic. There's a good sense of clinical detail as the top men of science and medicine examine the inexplicable malady. However, as with many entries in these books, it's surprisingly tame even for the time. My favorite line cements its status as self-dated relic: "It all began in the dreadful year 2021..."

"The Ski Lift" by Diane Buttenshaw (10th volume)- I already covered this one in my Frozen review (as I headlined, not the Disney movie), so I won't go into it further. I will, however, include an excerpt I previously posted only in a usenet discussion, where one of the characters actually tries the clothes-as-rope escape: "Klaus felt his way down, the material stretching and awkward in his grasp. He could feel the knot beginning to give way. He would have to jump now; to let go as he reached the end of his rope before it broke. The ground couldn't be all that far. He let go, falling, falling, far farther than he had expected. The rocks hit him in a blinding, smashing, flaming sheet of pain..."

"The Ringing Tone" by John Christopher (10th volume)- This could be the most interesting and impressive entry I've read, by another author otherwise best known for YA fiction, this time the classic Tripods trilogy. It's a short, uncomfortable tale of an outwardly respectable, not-quite-elderly veteran who makes obscene phone calls to fill his time. Things get stranger and more awkward than they already were when he calls up a woman with her own secrets to share. It's not "really" horror, just a tableau of the dysfunctionality of urban life, but then, you could say the same thing about Duel.

 "The Morning Echo" by Giles Gordon (16th volume)- This was a pleasant surprise while I was looking through my hard-copy volume, a polished borderline SF/ fantasy story about tomorrow's newspaper, by an evidently prolific genre author. It would have been at home (and rather routine) in the pages of Unknown. The only real twist is that there is no twist, but like Christopher's contribution, it rises to the level of pointed satire, complete with a prescient glimpse of the overinformed yet oblivious media consumer.

And while I'm at it, here's the covers of the other two volumes, somehow exactly what you'd expect British 1960s horror to be...

You really need some newspaper here, because this thing is going to move, and you're definitely going to have fluids...

What, can't a guy have pets?

With that, I'm wrapping this up. For me, this whole misadventure was all a snapshot of a period people are already forgetting. That's why I have always loved anthologies. They gather stories from the past and the present, and then they endure in their own right, old, self-dated, yet occasionally with enough punch to incite a book burning if anyone was paying attention. It may be going out of fashion in the age of the internet, but there will always be a place on my shelves for a pokey old story collection. That's all for now, more to come!