Movie Mania: Space 1979 ebook announcement and movie poster artwork!

 

I'm due for a third post of an off week, and I decided to use the lead time for something I have planned for a ridiculous amount of time: I published an ebook compiling the first 50 reviews I posted for Space 1979. Here's the link for the ebook.

As a bonus, I decided to cover some movie poster artwork I used for the covers and interior art. My first idea was to use VHS art from The Falling, That led to the image featured above. To get to that quality, however, I had to find a download a new version of the same art, probably the source used by the site that I first got the image from. By then, I was already going in other directions, so I used it for an interior "gag" art.

Something I reviewed in the process was the legal ins and outs of movie poster art. On that front, the pervasive perception is that such things are "public domain", which is absolutely a myth. When it comes to the internet, however, it's pressy much a distinction without a difference. Inevitably, images get scanned, pasted, copied and reposted indefinitely, far too widely to run down all arguable violations. In further practice, a movie poster that continues to circulate online is fulfilling its intended purpose, and copyright holders don't normally object to literal free advertising. For my own part, I have tried to provide a confirmed link for the sources of the images I have used, unless it's from one of the massive sites anybody can find. That served me well enough until I started looking at using images for monetized content. I quickly decided that any "major" movies would be off-limits, both because they would be the ones connected to deep pockets and because they were very much the exception to the rule. I further decided that I would have a better defense using already wonky images from semi-obscure movies that didn't get good reviews, to emphasize the humorous intent. The contender that quickly emerged was the following poster, originally used for my Planet Of Dinosaurs review.

As I proceeded with setting up a cover to use this image, I did look into it further, and wasn't surprised to find plenty of further material (see here). Per the lore, the poster was created by an artist named Tino All, possibly for a distributor in Lebanon. It's noteworthy that this was clearly intended for theatrical showings, which for this particular film are so sketchily documented I had to address claims that it never had a theatrical release in the first place. What was clearly doubtful was whether the poster was in any way approved by the people who made the movie. Of course, this was just as well, since the poster offered ample grounds for a lawsuit by George Lucas et al. I considered trying to mitigate the issues somewhat by cutting out the gratuitous bottom half, which led to the following image.

Even with only the top part, this is baffling. Of course, it would be par for the course if the artist had no opportunity to see the movie before throwing the poster together. What throws it off is the image of the Millennium Falcon apparently in the water (and wildly out of scale), which actually corresponds pretty well to the crash in the movie (covered in a lot of detail in the review). By further comparison, the element of the muscled hero defending the damsel from the T. rex at least approximates the film, apart from making the characters look a lot more attractive than anyone in the cast. (There's a third figure in there, a kind of generic guy behind the other two; also, the lady is showing even more skin than you might notice.) But what are we to make of the foreground figure? He's certainly not eye candy, and he's portrayed in a lot more detail than needed. If anything, it looks like he's supposed to be a villain, in itself something the film doesn't have apart from the jerk boss. But then, why is he the one who looks either terrified or in absolute agony? As usual, this is clearly far more analysis than the artist ever bothered with.

Then there's this little exhibit, a late effort that didn't really fit in. I wouldn't have worried about referencing the movie, but using the Atari furniture was definitely pushing the limits. Plus, I didn't have a good match on the colors or the font size and format.

Finally, here's the centerpiece, my very first try, from a foreign poster for Dark Star. It came out absolutely beautifully, but alas, it was everything that I couldn't use. On top of the obvious problems of using material from an influential film, I was never satisfied with the provenance on the original image, which seemed to be associated with a re-release I couldn't conclusively date. Here it is in full glory.

And here's one more. It's pure gag, but the film absolutely deserved it.

With that, I'm calling it a night. That's all for now, more to come!

Really Good Movies! The one that was the first vampire movie

 

Title: Nosferatu

What Year?: 1922

Classification: Prototype

Rating: Classic! (2/3)

 

As I write this, I’ve been looking at finally getting my movie reviews into circles beyond my blog. In the process, I decided it was time to do something new and different enough for yet another feature, which really meant going in more conventional directions. As I have regularly pointed out, my whole approach to reviewing has been the roads less travelled, away from the usual “best” and “worst” movies that get discussed everywhere. I decided it was time to deal with the movies that have stayed above my radar, the kinds of movies that are influential, well-regarded and even successful in their own time. The one that will be first is also the one that convinced me it was time, a film that had enough of an impact to be remembered and celebrated on the 100^th anniversary of its release. I present Nosferatu, the first vampire movie if not the first horror movie, and it’s the kind of movie where “classic” might not quite be a compliment.

Our story begins with a protagonist and his bride, celebrating a promising offer from a reclusive count to purchase a property in the city. The count proves to be a strange, goblin-like entity with  an even more eccentric servant, holed up in a castle that the locals fear to approach. While the young man stays with the count, he begins to feel strange, and discovers strange marks on his neck. Back home, his bride becomes distressed by premonitions of danger and approaching evil. Soon enough, the count arrives on a ship whose crew has been mysteriously wiped out, then moves in to a house near that of the couple. In short order, the city is devastating by a mysterious plague. With the aid of a convenient tome, the lady figures out that the count is one of the undead, feeding on the living. To save the town, she must lay a trap for the revenant- but it may cost her own life!

Nosferatu was a 1922 horror film by expressionist German filmmaker F.W. Murnau. The film was considered an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, though it differed from the novel both in its concept and portrayal of the vampire and a number of other points. The film starred an actor known as Max Schreck as the vampire, named Orlok, with Gustav von Wangenheim as the protagonist Hutter and Greta Schroder as his wife Ellen. Murnau and his production company were successfully sued by Stoker’s widow, resulting in a court order to destroy all copies of the film. Prints of the film survived in nominal public domain, allowing the film to grow in popularity. Certain rumors grew around the film and its cast, including unfounded claims that Schreck either never appeared in another film or was a wholly fabricated persona. In fact, Murnau and Schreck continued to make films up to the times of their deaths in 1931 and 1936 respectively. Wangenheim and Schroder survived World War 2 and continued making films, the former as an East German communist. Many prints of the film were altered to use the name Dracula and other Stoker characters. The most well-authenticated versions will be those with the recovered original score by Hans Erdmann.

For my experiences, what defines my frame of reference was my rejection of the cinematic vampire over “the” zombie, and my further research into the far more complex and befuddling entity of the vukodlak (see my misbegotten post on The Greek Vampire Hunt). With that admittedly eccentric but by all means well-grounded perspective, any interest in Dracula barely lasted past elementary school, when I can just remember reading a sort of comic book/ cassette treatment. In hindsight, it amuses me all the more that the Stoker estate successfully litigated any claim to ownership of the vampire concept, which was really an effective admission how much of the “lore” the author pulled out of his posterior. In any case, to this day, the only movie vampires I can take seriously are the present film and, of all things, From Dusk Till Dawn.

Moving to the movie itself, the foremost thing that must be admitted against its reputation is that the film as it would have been made is just plain gone. We can restore the prints, adjust speeds, add filters and put in the non-Anglicized dialogue cards, but it’s still just reconstructing what is long since lost. This shows especially with the music, where even the most thoroughly restored soundtracks appear to be subject to intense debate. In practice, anything you could readily cross-examine ranges between unconvincing and flat-out awful, to the point that I have literally preferred to watch the film in actual silence rather than put up with what others have done. In the viewing for this review, I finally got through the bulk of the movie with Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastique for accompaniment, which worked better than it really had any right to. And even if we could get everything exactly right, could we really feel or even understand its impact when it was released? The unfortunate answer is, probably not. Silent films were their own artform for their own time; we can only give our best estimation of what they meant to their audience.

With that out of the way, what remains is either unforgettable or just odd. There’s plenty here that’s just filler, like frivolous shots of a fly trap plant. There’s further hints of the passive protagonist/ antihero of modern horror, as the main character coasts through his own story with little evident awareness of what’s happening. Something else that can easily become distracting is how to classify the film and especially Murnau’s camerawork. It would be easy to take the film as surrealist fantasy more than horror, if not for the pervasive shots of quasi-Gothic buildings and streets that would have been as mundane to the Central Europeans as convenience stores and Walmarts. This is horror by way of the prosaic rather than the fantastic, and an impressive preview of things to come.

Since I’m already going over, there’s obviously plenty more to say about Schreck as Orlock, except he already speaks for himself. The design and makeup would be easy to dismiss as a goofy cliché, even factoring in its influence on later films, yet it unquestionably works. There’s further intrigue in seeing the count somehow navigate quite ordinary situations without arousing suspicion, not to mention the indignity of carrying his own coffin with him. The rest is all in the mannerisms and fine details that define silent film itself, at least up to the finale. Here, Schroder becomes the one who finally rises to Schreck’s level. On top of that, we have the genuine fantastical vision of the count’s approaching silhouette, and even that transposed on the shadow of the quite ordinary banister. (Then there’s a shot that could easily be ridiculed as lewd, but again, it works.) It all plays out as the allegory of doomed virtue against overconfident evil, culminating in the defeat of the vampire by the rising sun which nobody had actually done before.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and the one that has always stood out to me is the unaccountably long episode on the ship. Here, the count quickly and rather counterproductively picks off the crew, until the last two crewmen are left to throw their shipmate overboard. (This is the surest indication that the victims of this revenant don’t come back to life.) Finally, one of the pair rushes into the hold, intent on finding out what their cargo is. Of course, that brings him to the count’s coffin, which he tears open. Orlok promptly emerges in perhaps the most bizarre shot of the film, seemingly stiff as a board as he rises upright. It’s all too much for the sailor, who doesn’t stop running until he’s already overboard. On paper, it’s comically overdone at best, yet there’s enough subtlety that the full extent of the strangeness is easy to miss.

In closing, all that remains is the rating, which I will be going into further as a post script. This time around, there will be no “bad” rating, only degrees of good. On the scale I envision, this film truly embodies both the upsides and downsides of a “classic”. On one hand, it is without question a product of its time, with a further outsized influence that can make it seem overfamiliar even on first viewing. On the other, it has the proven worth to speak to generations of audiences, and provide key insights on the history of a genre. Take it or leave it, it commands respect, and that’s enough to get it on my roster. More to come, and this time, I look forward to it.

 

As a post script, here’s my latest rating scale, in ascending order.

 

Underrated (1/3): Important and underappreciated film, often unsuccessful at the time of release, due for further recognition. In other words, the kind of movie I would usually review…

 

Classic! (2/3): A recognized and influential film, successful both with its original audiences and later generations, arguably with dated or flawed elements.

 

Awesome!!! (3//3): A good film that’s popular and fun to watch, often regarded as “cult classic” or “so bad it’s good”, in some cases with underestimated quality and serious themes. So, also the kind of movie I would usually review.

Movie Mania: Dinosaur pop culture book of EVERYTHING!!!

 

It's the start of an off-week, and I decided it was time to cover something I've had backlogged a long time. It also happens to be one of the most unclassifiable artifacts in my book collections, and the nucleus of a great deal of my pop culture experience. I was finally driven to reference it in my review of The Crater Lake Monster, and I knew it was time to cover it for real. I present The Dinosaur Scrapbook, and to get things rolling, here's the original cover art, missing from my copy and every other I ever encountered.

For the background, this is something I feel like I've had with me my whole life, though any clear memories of it are from a much narrower window. I suspect I read or at least saw it in libraries when I was a kid, possibly in school libraries, which I now find moderately horrifying. I definitely read it a lot in college, where I found it along with Peter Nicholls' Fantastic Films. The actual copyright is 1980, so it is certainly possible I encountered it much earlier.

For the book itself, it's nothing less than a survey of dinosaurs in popular culture, going all the way back to the Victorian era. It's the kind of thing a proper scholarly treatment would need a whole shelf to cover. The author, otherwise best known for the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back (I'll think about it) and the 1996 film Dinosaur Valley Girls, keeps things very casual, telling the tale with a huge number of pictures. Incidentally, I had to use a little care what I took pics of, because there are a significant number of "adult" images, starting right inside the cover. Here's a sample of the first page I cared to picture here.

For the movie side of this, a large part of the book is dedicated to dinosaur movies, though not as much as one might expect. 4 of its 13 chapters cover the full range of dinosaur movie tech: stop-motion; "gagged up" live reptiles and other practical effects; Japanese suit monsters; and animation. More dinos in audiovisual media are covered in chapters on Edgar Rice Burroughs and dinosaur-related TV shows. Naturally, the quite comprehensive overview covers a number of movies I've reviewed: Planet of Dinosaurs, The People That Time Forgot, Robot Monster, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, Godzilla Vs the Smog Monster and even Allegro Non Troppo. Many/ most of theses were ones that I had already seen or heard of, but there were some that I learned of or at least got interested in because of this book, particularly Allegro Non Troppo, which I didn't even remember from previous reading before I bought my copy of the book. Then there are many more movies that are now notorious, like Reptilicus and At The Earth's Core, but others that remain inaccessible or wholly obscure, like Unknown Island and Monster On Campus. One I have personally investigated is a 1923 silent short called "Monsters Of The Past", featured in the book under the title of a separate compilation. The book mentions the footage in connection with a rumor that it was animated by Willis O'Brien, which Glut dismissed. In fact, the only identified party is Virginia May, shown in the film as a sculptor, who by my guess is most likely the one who did the animation. Here's a sample of pics from the movie sections.

I cropped this to cut out my arm. You do not want to see that...

Meanwhile, the book has a lot more on dino pop culture, including pulp magazines, comics, tourist attractions and toy. Here's one of the most impressive, a comic reportedly published by Jack Chick (covered here) .

Here's more comics...

And models! I don't know how, but I'm sure I had the Dimetrodon.

And Marx dinos! Also... bigmouths???

Then there's this, apparently from a comedy album. This... this is just unsettling.

So that finishes another meandering trip down memory lane under the belt. This time around, I really have hit on something that had a tremendous influence on me, even beyond my own memories of it. The book remains a testament to diligent scholarship, and a time capsule of how we heard of and learned about older media before Youtube, Amazon and the internet itself. If it comes to that, it's still a worthwhile read that could still tell you about a few things you didn't know. And to wrap this up, here's the silliest pic in the book, apparently a gagged-up lizard that got cut from a film.

That's all for now, more to come!

No Good Very Bad Movies 21: The one by Michael Crichton

 

Title: Looker

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Parody/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Who Cares? (2/3)

 

As I write this, it’s not quite a month since I put together a list of the best movies I’ve reviewed. In the course of that project I freely admitted that many if not most of the ones I listed there weren’t the ones that got my highest ratings. Since then, I have pondered further whether the same could be said for the “worst” ones. What I’ve come to recognize is that there are times even the test of personal hate doesn’t give the full picture, especially for the big-budget films. Movies like Star Trek The Motion Picture and Santa Claus don’t offend the way Inseminoid and War of the Planets do, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t as bad or worse in their own hollow, muddled way. I definitely vented my distaste for mainstream gloss in reviewing The Golden Child, which brought me in turn to what was always next in line. I present Looker, a strange entry that has stuck in my mind with more than enough force to hate, but as we will see, things aren’t quite that simple.

Our story begins with a beautiful woman who answers the door in her underwear, then gets apparently murdered by a mysterious, possibly invisible assailant. We then meet what will pass for our protagonist, a plastic surgeon whose clientele seems to be mostly already beautiful women looking for an extra edge. All is not well, as it turns out several of his clients have been killed off in apparent accidents and suicides. Then one of the girls comes to him, warning that she fears for her life because she is “perfect”, just before taking a dive of her own. When a new patient is offered a new modeling job, the doctor investigates and discovers LOOKER, a program that turns real-life women into digital models that can be used in any setting. But the same tech has been used to manipulate human minds, creating an assassin who can make himself invisible and brainwash his victims into doing themselves in. Then the doctor discovers his part in the real plan- to use plastic surgery to create perfect women for the bad guys’ machine, and then dispose of the originals!

Looker was the fourth film directed by Michael Crichton, reportedly based on ideas developed soon after his debut film Westworld. The film was produced by The Ladd Company, with distribution by Warner Bros. The film starred Albert Finney as Dr. Roberts and Susan Dey as Cindy, with James Coburn as the villainous executive Reston. Like Westworld and Futureworld, the movie made substantial use of CGI, including possibly the first digitally-rendered nude figure. It further portrayed the use of 3-D scanning and digital composite shots, though no sequence in the film used such technology. The soundtrack was composed by Barry DeVorzon with a theme song performed by Sue Saad. The film was a commercial failure, earning $3 million against a budget of up to $12M. Contemporary reviews were also negative, with Peter Nicholls describing the film as “barely  comprehensible”. Crichton is believed to have made substantial cuts and changes, for uncertain reasons. Coburn later stated that his own role was “left on the cutting room floor”. The film is available on multiple formats, apparently only in its theatrically released cut.

For my experiences, this was one I looked up not long ago, after coming close to buying it outright. What immediately stood out was that it anticipated the future that has come to pass, while still getting things entirely the wrong way round. With the current state of technology, what’s shown is definitely feasible if a bit extreme; at the same time, the whole scenario is simply redundant. With a big enough CGI budget, we could make Oprah Winfrey look like Grace Jones and make Ms. Jones look like she did in Conan The Destroyer, without laying a finger on the originals. (I honestly couldn’t think of a more contemporary reference.) We don’t do it because the tech has already advanced as far as demand will take it, and if it comes to that, society at large has gotten more accepting and diverse in its standards of beauty. The decisive consideration for advertising in particular is that an ad only needs to be good enough to sell the product. If you shell out millions to get some ideal of perfect aesthetic beauty, you’re not only spending far more than you need but possibly distracting from the product you’re trying to sell, an obvious consideration which the movie seems to acknowledge at one point.

Moving to the film itself, what’s jarring to the point of distraction is how often it calls up other movies that should have been independent. There are especially strong similarities to Brainstorm, which would have been filmed at about the same time but got held up by scandal and actual tragedy. Then there are the more obvious though fairly superficial parallels to Tron, plus The Hidden, They Live and perhaps Predator. The most completely random déjà vu moment is the demise of a patient in full view of the doctor, literally identical to the opening nosedive in Lethal Weapon. It all makes the film feel unmoored in time, enough that I went back and added my admittedly overused Anachronistic Outlier designation. What’s stranger still is that this is by all indications meant to be funny or at least satirical, as if Crichton were writing color commentary on tomorrow’s news… and not doing it that well.

That brings us to the central reality, this whole thing is a flat-out mess. Sure, there’s some great and indeed amusing surreal moments, especially in the finale, which is the only reason I didn’t give this the lowest rating outright. (This incidentally demonstrate why you film your actors and render your environments rather than vice versa.) But it never really goes anywhere, because it never makes any sense. It’s one thing to fail to anticipate the future of the technologies that are portrayed, and bad enough from a usually insightful futurist like Crichton. It’s another to lay down a scenario that hinges on the bad guys killing people who should by all means be worth more alive. My acid test of evil plans is the simple question, would this make sense to Megavolt? (See Frankenstein’s Army, etc.) Here, that great mind could definitely raise some concerns. So you already have the live models scanned; what’s the harm in having them around to do it again if you have to, especially if you’re relying on early 1980s hard drives? So you might have to pay them royalties; how does that really compare with dealing with a hitman who can both rat you out and kill you if betrayed or annoyed? So they could use the plastic surgeries you paid for to get a job with a rival company; can’t you just use your tech to make a few good old-fashioned blackmail videos, assuming you can’t get them the old-fashioned way?

That leaves the “one scene”, and despite strong competition, there was one that came out ahead very quickly. As the protagonists explore the villainous corporation’s headquarters, they hitch a ride on a cute little retro housekeeping bot, which would have gotten honorable mention if it wasn’t more or less in the same sequence. This leads them to a room where the doctor continues nosing around, while one of the company’s advertisements plays. It’s the ad that stands out, every bit as ridiculous as any number of actual 1980s spots. It’s an encounter between a housewife and a costumed mascot for a cleaning product called warrior. I will admit I can’t recount it, because to my surprise I couldn’t find a clip after I sent a disc I used for this review, but I don’t think I could capture any better the bizarre feel as the lady all but propositions the mascot. What’s most telling is that the actress playing the housewife has clearly had none of the medical or digital treatments that the models are supposed to have been put through, and equally clearly doesn’t do any worse presenting the product. Then in the midst of it, the doc turns to the damsel, to find her staring at the video.

In closing, what this really brings me back to is why I keep saying I don’t do worst movies lists. This was one time I came in ready to deal with a movie far more harshly than I have, and the fact that I have relented doesn’t mean I am taking anything back. This is absolutely among the worst movies I have seen, especially with my usual adjustments for budget and talent, certainly far more so than any of the usual suspects I’ve seen fit to defend. On top of that, it’s among the most obscure movies I’ve investigated (see Two Evil Eyes, and my best movies list while you’re at it), again proving that other people’s supposed worst lists don’t top what I turn up virtually at random. With my knowledge and experience, however, the one thing I can’t say is that it’s unique. On the contrary, it is a perfectly typical example of the glossy mediocrity of an entire decade that it was barely a part of to begin with, and on a certain level, even going harder on it would just be giving it more attention than it deserves. With that, I say enough, and gladly end things for another day.

Image credit Movie Screenshots.

Fantasy Zone: The one with the Luck Dragon

 

Title: The Neverending Story

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

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

 

As of this writing, it’s exactly one week since I announced I was done with this feature with Return To Oz, so of course, I’m back with another installment. In my defense, it’s one I hadn’t decided whether to review here or anywhere else, though it would seem obvious enough that anyone with me all the way would probably have been expecting it. In fact, I had expected it to be a while before I even got to this one. Instead, with the usual random factor, I found it available on a streaming plan I activated while trying to get other problems with my paleolithic rental arrangements sorted out. So, I gave it a look, and with a pileup already building, I knew I had to cover it here and now. So with that equivocal introduction, I present The Neverending Story, an ‘80s fantasy movie that happens to have a theme song from the same composer as Cat People, and that’s just the start of the weird and random.

Our story begins with a boy being thrown in a dumpster by bullies. He takes shelter in a bookshop whose proprietor reveals a special book. As he reads, the world of Fantasia unfolds before our eyes, a land of magic and whimsy threatened by the advancing threat of The Nothing, a misty void that consumes all in its path. A boy hero named Atreyu goes forth on a quest to heal the sick Empress and turn back the tide. He must navigate a range of perils, from the Swamps of Sadness to deadly sphinxes, stalked by a mysterious wolf. With the help of a mystic turtle and a Luck Dragon who acts like the guest star on a Law And Order: SVU episode, the hero makes his way to the edge of Fantasia. It all comes down to a final battle with the wolf- but the fate of Fantasia still lies with the Earthly boy!

The Neverending Story was a 1984 American/ West German film by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the first part of a novel by Michael Ende. The film was produced by Neue Constantin Films with distribution by Warner Bros, with a budget equivalent $25 million. While the film was shot mainly in Munich, all dialogue was in English. The film starred Noah Hathaway (see Troll) as Atreyu and Barrett Oliver as Sebastian, with Alan Oppenheimer as the voices of the Luck Dragon, Rock Biter and the wolf G’Mork. Animatronics and other effects were provided by a crew led by Brian Johnson, whose previous credits included work on 2001, Alien and Dragonslayer. The soundtrack was provided by Klaus Doldinger, with a theme song by Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey. The production was troubled by a falling-out between Petersen and Ende. Who criticized the finished film as “kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic”. The movie was a commercial success, earning $100M worldwide. Attempts to expand it into a franchise were less successful, resulting in a 1990 sequel with a new cast and a third film that did not receive a US theatrical release. In 2019, a cover of the theme song was featured in Stranger Things. The film remains available in multiple platforms including free streaming from Netflix.

For my experiences, this is one I personally saw very early, I’m sure well before my family had a TV or VCR of our own. Even with my world’s-worst-superpower memory, I don’t believe I ever remembered more than a bare outline of it. I have a much clearer recollection of looking it up soon after getting Netflix, still well over a decade ago. I think that in itself is a significant commentary on the film’s impact. For kids, it’s a decent, fairly routine 1980s adventure, at least apart from the existentially terrifying nothing. It’s for adults that it becomes pure nightmare fuel, both intentionally and unintentionally. Through mature eyes, it’s an allegory of the conflict of hope against despair, perhaps between life and mortality itself. Yet, the one thing that gets casually referenced more than anything else is the theme song, even more egregiously Eighties than Moroder’s work on Cat People.

 Moving forward, it must be reemphasized from the start that this is serious fantasy, especially for a movie directed at kids. This is generally reflected in the effects and overall production values, which sometimes get rough but never campy or “cute” for its own sake. Most of the further issues rise either with the film’s own premises or inherited genre conventions. Fantasia and its inhabitants are a mishmash, by all indications to represent corresponding subgenres of fantasy. The main character is vaguely generic, though this is done with reasonable self-awareness and still with more effort and depth than the average preteen/ adolescent wish-fulfillment protagonist. The supporting characters tend to be either useless or overpowered. What easily balances everything out is the terror of the Nothing, portrayed with deceptive simplicity, and the monologuing G’Mork, whose simple motivations are all the more unsettling with age and hindsight. I definitely considered the “one scene” just for the line, “People without hope are easy to control…”

The real con in all this is simply that the film seems to second-guess itself by falling back on cliches that really aren’t even for the kids but for supposedly “hip” older viewers. This is most obvious with the music and the theme song, which I already ranted about. It also is definitely evident in the ending,  which bends over backward to show that everything is okay, and shoehorn in a vengeance-fantasy comeuppance of the bullies. There’s also the inexplicably risqué sphinx thingies, and then the trainwreck that is the Luck Dragon. I don’t believe they wanted to go there, I don’t believe they wanted anyone to think they were going there, but how did they think adults then or at any other time were going to react to a wonky animatronic creature talking to a 13-year-old boy about talking in his sleep and then asking for an ear rub?

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with a scene with the Rock Biter. Just before the finale, Atreyu finds the giant , last seen at the beginning, now all alone. He sounds almost bemused as he stares at his hand and says, “They look like good, strong hands, don’t they?” He then gives a succinct account of trying to save the zany Lewis Carroll characters we saw early on. He relates that he literally tried to hold onto them, but concludes, “The Nothing pulled them all away.” Oppenheimer’s voice work is as heartbreaking as G’Mork is chilling as he announces his intent to wait for the Nothing to overtake him. Then, like a broken record, he seems to start over, as the boy warrior turns and moves on. It’s the surest demonstration just how much depth and maturity the movie has, when it’s actually trying.

In closing, the one thing I feel worth addressing is why I didn’t cover this before. As outlined above, it was up in the air if I was going to get a crack at this one without more time or actual money. Even apart from that, from my skewed standpoint, this is exactly the kind of movie that usually ends up above the radar, well-known and regarded, influential, and even profitable in its own time. At the same time, it was odd and notorious enough that I gave serious thought to covering it in my “worst” movies feature. With a fresh viewing, I easily convinced myself it didn’t belong there, which on a certain level was its own disappointment. What really convinced me to do the review was that I felt I could offer a new perspective. It’s not a perfect “classic”, and it’s not a hilariously self-dated relic either. It’s a thoughtful film that didn’t follow through quite far enough to reach its full potential. With that, I’m bidding all good night.

Image credit Film Affinity.

No Good Very Bad Movies 20: The one that's worse than Planet of Dinosaurs

 

Title: The Crater Lake Monster

What Year?: 1977

Classification: Knockoff

Rating: Guinnocent!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

In the course of my time writing movie reviews, my longest-running rant has been the futility of “worst movies” lists, to the point that I started this feature pretty much as a rebuttal. All my usual points especially apply if the standard is objective quality and competence. The reality is that you can always point at the likes of Robot Monster, Plan 9 From Outer Space or Troll 2 and laugh at them for being absolutely inept. But then if you’re enough of a masochist to do the real legwork, you’re quickly going to find that there are really dozens and hundreds of movies at least as bad; what’s more, you will find that the vast majority are simply boring. This is why I really don’t do much with actual “B-movies”, especially before the mid-’70s or so. With the present movie, I’m making an exception to the rule. It happens to be an example of my first love among low-budget genre films, the stop-motion dinosaur movie, and as advertised, it makes Planet of Dinosaurs look good.

Our story begins with a small group of characters exploring an ancient cave in the woods of the northwest. There, they discover petroglyphs that portray a “dinosaur”, specifically a plesiosaur that nobody points out isn’t actually a dinosaur. Soon after, disturbances ensue as several mountain men and tourists are lunched by a creature that mostly stays off camera. A lawman and other voices of authority realize something is amiss, while two local knuckleheads who rent out watercraft simply worry that their clients keep disappearing without returning their boats. Things heat up when a liquor store robber runs into the wilderness, where they come face to face with an enormous archosaur that has somehow kept a low profile until now. As the body count rises, it’s up to the sheriff to turn the tide- with a commandeered bulldozer!

The Crater Lake Monster was a 1977 film directed by William Stromberg from a script cowritten with the eventual star Richard Cardella. The film was funded and distributed by Crown International (see… Galaxina?), with a reported budget of $100,000. Stop-motion effects were provided by David Allen. Cardella later criticized Crown for significant issues with the released film, including the lack of post-production work on scenes filmed as “day for night”. The movie was released in late 1977, for a reported box office of $3 million. Donald Glut’s The Dinosaur Scrapbook noted it along with Planet Of Dinosaurs as independently produced “fan” stop-motion dinosaur films, without further comment on the quality of either film. Andrew Smith later described it as “nearly as bad as its reputation”. Of the cast and crew, costar Michael F. Hoover went on to an effects career in films including the 1988 version of The Blob and Spider Man 2, while Stromberg’s sole additional credit was for effects in the 1985 film Night Train To Terror.

For my experiences, I got into old monster movies in large part because of stop-motion animators like Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen. To this day, I continue to be amazed by just how far even the least of their efforts exceeded the actually typical monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to figure out that the golden age was passing by the 1970s, especially later in the decade. That brought me to Planet of Dinosaurs, first encountered in a VHS box set, which remains a mindboggling low for actual incompetence. In the process, I also first heard of the present film. It was only much later that I got to this film, and it immediately stood out as probably about as inept, yet somehow vastly less entertaining. It’s like the difference between a bad Italian movie and a bad French film; the former might not be any better, but you wouldn’t expect it to be boring.

Moving into the film itself, I have two things to admit. First, I watched my copy of this movie literally a decade after buying it, albeit as part of a larger set. Second, I spent almost the entire viewing working on another review. In my defense, this is absolutely a movie where not paying attention is the one way to make it tolerable. The story here exists solely to string the special effects together, and even in these terms, it doesn’t do the job well. With the same effort, we could have had a bonkers plot with larger-than-life characters, or a sleazy “slice of life” tale with believably unlikeable antiheroes we would be happy to see get lunched. Failing that, we could at least have had a bunch of idiots as comically inept as the carnosaur fodder in Planet Of Dinosaurs, and perhaps enough gore and/or skin to earn the “Seventies PG” rating. With this cast and story, the only characters who stand out enough to be amusing are the two guys with the boat rental operation, who eventually manage to inject a bit of tragedy. Everything else is just dull filler, apart from an out-of-nowhere robbery/ double murder and car chase. As an extra irritation, what exposition there is consists of several mutually incompatible pseudoscientific “explanations”, notably a meteor that’s made redundant by the cave art.

All of these things might still be tolerable if the movie delivered a decent monster. In reality, this is where it falls far behind even Planet Of Dinosaurs. The obvious difference is that there’s only one monster, which still leaves it within “old school” parameters. The far bigger problem is that they chose an aquatic creature. This too could have been all well and good, if it was using the neck to hoover up boaters and campers on the shore. Instead, almost all the shots of the monster show it lurching on land, so slowly that the victims literally have to freeze in place to remain in danger. What’s most inexcusable is that it’s just not a good monster in design or execution. The shape of the thing is halfway between plesiosaur and pliosaur, an issue suspiciously shared with the Marx Kronosaurus toy. Then the model itself just looks rubbery and overweight, with none of the streamlining that an actual marine reptile would have, very much like a poor copy of Danforth’s already iffy plesiosaur in When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. The comparison I can’t avoid is with the Archelon in the Harryhausen version of One Million BC, which Harryhausen himself insisted wasn’t intended to be menacing except in size. It all comes crashing down in the finale, where the tractor seems to bump the creature apologetically until it rolls over and dies.

Now for the “one scene”, what stood out to me is the opening scene. After an establishing pan of the landscape with hilarious “eerie” synthesizer music, we meet a character who summons two friends to a mine. He points out that the cave was inhabited by Indians before it was a mine, and casually mentions “all the legends we’ve heard about this place”. He then shows his companions petroglyphs that look like the paint should still be drying, complete with a background of mountains and trees that is almost always missing from the real thing. Then he points to a very detailed, unambiguous and unstylized drawing of a plesiosaur that looks like it came straight from a 1950s picture book. The companion referred to as the doctor declares, “A dinosaur!”, and the guy answers, “Exactly right!”, and even kid me would be shouting. Especially kid me…

In closing, I come as usual to the rating. What’s different here is that this is the first movie I’ve given the “Guinnocent” rating that I really debated much. The minor irony is that this is closer to the kind of movie I came up with the rating for than a number of those I have given it to. That definitely has a lot to do with the shift in what I covered, from obviously incompetent movies like Ingagi and Death Bed to ones that made honestly unconventional choices, notably Earth Girls Are Easy. By comparison, this one shows just enough innate competence for its flaws to look like laziness rather than mere ineptitude, exactly what would put a movie in line for the lowest rating. What stayed my hand was that it at least doesn’t cross the line into offensive stupidity, like Robot Monster, War of the Planets or Inseminoid way back when, and of course, it didn’t provoke me to actually quit like Creepers. The bottom line is, I still don’t quite hate it, and that’s enough to get this one off on a technicality. With that, I’m moving on, and I wish I could say it’s to better things.

Featured Creature: The one that was the most hated remake ever

 

Title: King Kong

What Year?: 1976

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Prototype

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

 

At this writing, I’m back to this feature after taking a break, though as far as I’m concerned it’s been ongoing through my fantasy feature. In that time, I’ve put more thought into what I really want to do here. On one hand, I have plenty more of the 1990s-ish monster movies I first created this feature for. On the other, I always intended to widen things out at some point, as I did up to a point with Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster.  That brought me to the present movie, which I was very close to covering elsewhere. The more I thought about it, however, the more I felt it belonged here, if only because my original idea would have reinforced perceptions I have long felt were overdo to be challenged. I present King Kong, the 1970s edition, one of the first remakes of the modern era and even now one of the most notorious ever, for reasons that really had very little to do with the movie itself.

Our story begins with a corporate-funded expedition to a remote island where the sponsoring company believes there is oil to extract. Along the way, they pick up a scientist named Jack who stows away in hopes of a first look at the island’s wildlife and a stranded model named Dwan who narrowly survived an unrelated wreck. The improbabilities are smoothed over as the ship reaches the mist-shrouded island, where a well-maintained wall divides the natives from an unseen entity named Kong. Of course, the natives decide the blonde is perfect for their next offering to Kong, and kidnap her. The damsel discovers that this is none other than a colossal ape 40 feet tall, who seems to treat her as a pet and potential companion. They bond despite her frequent efforts to escape, until the survivors of the expedition take her back and manage to capture Kong. It’s back to civilization, where Kong promptly escapes. With the giant on the loose in New York, Dwan and the scientist are the only ones who can stop Kong and save him- if the authorities will consider any option but Kongicide!

King Kong was a 1976 film by Dino DeLaurentiis (see Flash Gordon, Earth Girls Are Easy, etc.) and Paramount, based on the 1933 RKO film of the same name. The remake was produced in the midst of ongoing legal battles over rights to the original film and the character, including an independent Universal production. The final outcome was that only DeLaurentiis’ project advanced beyond pre-production. The filmmaker drew further publicity with a decision to build a life-size animatronic Kong, which was abandoned in favor of a suit by Rick Baker (see American Werewolf etc). The film starred Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, with Rene Auberjonois as the geologist Bagley. It was promoted with a merchandising campaign that included a game by Ideal toys by Mego. The film was commercially successful, earning $90.6 million against a $24M budget. Many critics and genre fans were hostile; The Golden Turkey Awards characterized it as a “rip-off” for misleading claims about its effects and quoted Baker as complaining he was denied time and money to improve his suit. By the 1990s, the film had become more accessible than the original, but became harder to obtain thereafter. In 2021, the film received a new disc released by Shout. As of this writing, it is available for free streaming from Paramount Plus.

For my experiences, my central memory of this movie is a massive load of second-hand hate (see my Mighty Peking Man review). I saw it mentioned regularly in books on movies, literally always negatively, especially by fans of dinosaur movies and/or stop-motion. What really made me give in to the rage was an experience in the late 1990s: My favorite video store only had the 1970s version, and the one time I asked an employee about it, he insisted it was because people wouldn’t buy the original. Because of that, it took literally years longer before I saw the 1933 stop-motion film, and loved it so much that I begrudged the lost time even more. It may be a random anecdote, yet it is a perfect encapsulation of the degree to which the film has been buried in the tomb of its own hype. It’s only with the remake further in the past than the original was in its time that a truly impartial appraisal has a chance.

Moving forward, already further in than usual, I can attest that the remake does a very good job from the start, though as we will see, how well it is sustained is another matter. The oil expedition gives a more convincing setup than they could have gotten trying to update the original; one can take it as further commentary that the romantic Carl Denham is replaced with company suits. The balance of affectionate tributes and updated sensibilities continues as Dwan (seriously, she spells it!) is introduced to Jack and the motley crew. The high point comes with the landing on the island, as effective in its own way as the stylized matte work of the original, followed by a tense and nuanced confrontation with the natives. (There’s an extra dark yet comical note when a company man insists that the island is uninhabited, just before the natives’ drums are heard.) Things start to get uneven from there, with very good moments like the recreated “log roll” and flat washouts like the snake. The film struggles most in the jarringly bloody finale, which feels like an intentional parody that only occasionally works. The last really noteworthy moment is a shot where Jack visualizes the World Trade Center as the monoliths of the island, now all the more poignant.

On the inevitable con side, if there’s one thing where the haters definitely weren’t wrong, it’s that the Kong effects do not hold up for their own or any other time. Even here, however, things aren’t as clear cut as the critics would have it. While it’s easy to believe the suit could have been better, it’s not by any means “bad” if one has pre-Star Wars effects as a frame of reference.  The rig gives a genuine range of expressions that build up Kong as a character. The real problems are very much of the “uncanny valley” variety. It’s obviously an improvement on the Toho suit monsters, but it has neither the realism of 1980s practical effects nor the stylized beauty of the stop-motion masters. Then there are things that just look weird, like when Kong puffs his cheeks and blows (and his breath definitely wouldn’t be as pleasant as it looks!). What’s difficult for the discerning historian to judge is if there was really anything that would have worked better. The most telling comparison is Kassim in Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger. As I gushed previously, it's possibly Harryhausen’s finest creation, and it certainly compares favorably to Baker’s work in terms of creating a sympathetic character. At the same time, it must honestly be admitted that it wouldn’t hold up nearly as well if it was presented in a big-budget production rather than a low-budget, already “retro” genre film. In the cold light of day, the only really good answer was to make the film 5-10 years later, which just begs the question how far the tech or the genre would have gotten without experiments like this.

That brings me to the “one scene”, and I came close enough for a couple honorable mentions, the noted “log roll” scene and a fine bit of monologuing from Auberjonois dashing the oil company man’s hopes. (Real-life fact, if you ignore or annoy geologists, we will laugh at you when you go bankrupt. Or die; we’re hardcore.) But I still couldn’t avoid one I remembered from my one earlier viewing. In the lead-in to the final act, the ship is on its way home with Kong in the hold and Dwan and Jack steaming things up on deck. They get as far as debating a retreat to her cabin, in a good use of the movie’s honest sexual tension, when Dwan’s handkerchief drops into the hold. Whether he senses the shenanigans or just gets keyed up by the scent, Kong becomes irritable enough to start pounding at the hold. It’s among the very best effects sequences, and unlike the later escape, there’s a convincing sense both of the solidity of the structure and the strength needed to damage it. After just a few moments, it’s clear that the whole ship could be in danger, Kong included. It all sets up a dramatic moment as Dwan falls through a grate into the hold. Of course, Kong catches her, and she calms him enough to save the ship. It ends with a very effective shot of Kong at rest, with the symbolic conflict delayed but not resolved.

In closing, my final thoughts aren’t on the rating or even the movie itself, but the whole remake phenomenon. In the proverbial light of day, the movie’s greatest offense was that it was set up as a replacement to the original, which would surely have been enough to turn genre fans against it. I will admit it is open to debate whether this happened by design or mere apathy. Certainly, DeLaurentiis himself, for all his ego, would never have been anything but horrified by experiences like I had. What’s absolutely clear in hindsight is that those who did promote it at the expense of the original were setting it against a bar that only a bare handful of remakes have ever reached on their own merits (see The Blob and Night of the Living Dead). Compared to these very few, the present film is an unfortunately typical example of its kind: Generally competent; superficially trendy; and ultimately as self-dated as its source material. While it may have been treated more harshly than it deserved, its critics were certainly right to favor the original as better in every way that matters. With that, I for one have made my peace.

Image credit Board Game Geek.