Movie Mania: My "worst" movies list

 As I write this, it’s the last weak of a rough month, and I’ve  been at home sick. I decided to use the time to do the one thing I have opposed in principle all along, a list of the “worst” movies I’ve reviewed. I already protested this concept in my own fashion just by doing a “best” list a while back. Now, I’m back for another round, and I’ve been trying to think of a way to make this different. What convinced me this was worth doing was a conclusion in parallel with my “best” list: Just as many of the movies I considered best still took a hit in ratings, many movies pulled through short of the lowest ratings, especially on my original Space 1979 scale, were at least as bad as those that got them. What interested me was whether things would be that different if I did things over again. So, here’s my list, and I’m going to start with the dishonorable mentions.

1.       Star Trek The Motion Picture- I absolutely mean it, and the fact that it’s just the runnerups should give an idea what we’re in for. Not quite the worst of the very few “franchise” movies I’ve reviewed, but the muddled story and hopeless pacing make up the difference in sheer frustration. The big bonus is that it doesn’t have the excuse of being a “threequel” or higher.

2.       Alien 2- A movie that did get the lowest rating, a mediocre knockoff with the chutzpah to pose as an actual sequel. Competent enough to ignore, if not for padded running time and a script that was clearly rushed through to exploit a legal loophole.

3.       The Time Machine (1978)- In here to represent the TV movie category. Quite possibly the most technically incompetent entry here, its numerous individual flaws are still outweighed by the clear indifference of those who made it to the source material and objective quality in general.

4.       Creepers- Would definitely be top 5 or higher if I had made it through a complete viewing. Cut-rate killer plant effects terrorize a cast who cannot act.

5.       Death Bed- Another low point for objective quality, a demonic piece of furniture in a castle devours curiosity seekers who have no reason to be there. Incredibly cheap, barely coherent, yet too damn weird to evaluate on any terms but its own.

And now, the real countdown…

10. Hard Rock Zombies- Quite possibly the worst film to be rated on my Revenant Review feature and scale. A very tame hair metal band is brough back to life by their fans, setting off a localized zombie apocalypse. Isolated bursts of creativity are lived down by distasteful themes and a non-existent story.

9. Sleepwalkers- The most actually offensive movie here, .and my nomination for worst Stephen King movie. A mother/ son pair of immortal vampires live it up between kills; bonus for vintage instrumental abuse.

8. The Nest- Maybe the worst actual “B-movie” to get on my radar. A town is terrorized by insects colony that evolve into humanoid impostors. Cheap but creative effects bring it up to 2/5.

7. Santa Claus The Movie- Easily the worst “big budget” film to get here, from Superman franchise offenders Alexander and Ilya Salkind. A promising update of the myth buries itself in second-hand nostalgia and inexplicably bad effects.

6. Space Mutiny- Yes, we’re still not even in “top” 5. A braindead jock and his lady love fight mutineers and stolen Cylon footage for control of a generation ship. Competent acting keeps it out of the basement.

5. Z.P.G.- A major reason I decided to do this (see The Last Child), the perfect storm of iffy production values, contrived melodrama and conceptual stupidity. Attractive white new parents are hunted by the authorities of a dystopian police state that doesn’t seem to know literally anything about reproductive medicine. Stupid, stupid, so stupid…

4. Man-Thing- A surprise from the current millennium, and one of my most recent reviews. Corporate goons and semi-random bystanders are picked off by a mysterious ecologically themed monster. Halfway-decent creature/ gore effects don’t hide a story that’s nothing happening to characters we care nothing about.

3. Inseminoid- One of my very first reviews, still one of the worst. A cowardly and incompetent starship crew is routed by a woman pregnant with an alien’s child. Kind of a tie with the marginally more interesting Prey by the same director.

2. War of the Planets- A movie so bad I initially wrote it off as too terrible to be of interest. An obnoxious space captain faces off with an ancient supercomputer on a distant planet, wins anyway. Hits just the right combination of incompetent and actively lazy.

1. Ingagi- The clear winner from the bad old days. Stolen footage and obvious fakery is stitched together into a “documentary” supposedly showing African natives intermarrying with apes. Lazy, inept and actively evil on every possible level.

 

Now, at this point, I could have gone with more dishonorable mentions, especially if I opened this up to animation. What interested me more, however, is whether I already need to revise my “best” list, which you the readers (if any) are free to take into account in judging the present list. At the time, I decided to limit the field to the films I had reviewed through very late 2021. With further hindsight, there are indeed a few new entries, most of which I wouldn’t have tried to compare with the films that figured in my best list. You can therefore consider the following list items 21-25 for the original list.

1.       A Christmas Carol (1984)- The one of most interest, as it figures in comments I have already been called out for regarding Duel on the original list. George C. Scott as Scrooge faces off with specters of Christmas Past, Present and Future, highlighted by Edward Woodward as the middle spirit. While I absolutely stand by my assessment of Duel as “greatest” of its kind, this one will clearly serve as an example of a made-for-TV movie that is by no means technically or artistically inferior. While it could never equal the impact and influence of Spielberg’s outing, it does offer a definitive take on its already overly familiar source material.

2.       Return To Oz- The most impressive of the 1980s fantasy wave that I have been surveying in greater depth. Dorothy is back in Oz, but this isn’t the kid-friendly land of the MGM musical. I said and I will keep saying, absolutely the best treatment of the books.

3.       The Gate- A late runner-up in the 1980s fantasy wave. Two kids and a teenage girl find themselves in the path of an invasion of stop-motion demons from a portal to the netherworld. Part dark fantasy, part urban horror, all fun.

4.       The Brain That Wouldn’t Die- My tongue-in-cheek entry. A man saves his fiancee’s head is the most comprehensible thing that happens as we meet a zombie, sex workers and a possible lesbian in the world of ca. 1959 exploitation cinema. A genuine cult/ B-movie, far better than many of its kinds and perhaps deeper in its symbolism and subtexts than it actually intended to be.

5.       Cross of Iron- On this list if only because I haven’t reviewed any other like it. Nazis fight a losing battle on the Russian Front, without interrupting a feud over who will receive the titular medal. A strange, in many lights uneven film by Walter Peckinpah, with a star-studded cast including Maximillian Schell of The Black Hole and David Warner of Time Bandits.

That rounds out my list. In honesty, I don’t expect to need to revise it even as much as my “best” list. Most of the ones I have listed here are ones I reviewed or at least considered at a very early date. While I still have a few in mind that are at least as bad as those I listed here, none of them would fundamentally change the list you see here. (Also, at least one of the biggest stinkers is one I simply wouldn’t watch in entirety.) With that, I’m wrapping this up. That’s all for now, more to come!

Animation Defenestration: The one that put Tolkien on TV

 

 

Title: Return of the King

What Year?: 1979 (copyright)/ 1980 (broadcast date)

Classification: Runnerup/ Weird Sequel

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

 

I have often commented how much randomness goes into my movie reviews, especially in the fairly frequent event that my original plans go completely and hilariously wrong. How it happens varies. Most often, I don’t get to something within the timeframe set by my already flexible “rules”. Sometimes, a movie just doesn’t give me the right material to work with, at least without further thought. And now and then, I have a movie that goes back in the “maybe” pile simply because I’m not sure where it goes among my various features. This time around, I have a trifecta, one movie that fell through and another that I figured on taking more time to evaluate, and because I run by OCD or not at all, I’m reviewing the latter. I present Return of the King, an animated fantasy TV movie based on the Lord of the Rings, and of all the things you wouldn’t expect, you can start with an orc musical number.

Our story begins with our familiar Hobbit heroes recounting the destruction of the One Ring by Nine-Fingered Frodo in the courts of the elves. We then get dropped right into the final act, with Frodo captured by the orcs, Sam in possession of the Ring, and Merry and Pippin in the midst of the war between the free kingdoms of Gondor and Rohan and the vast armies of Sauron and his general the Witch King. Sam makes a perilous decision to free Frodo before continuing their journey to destroy the Ring, while the hobbits join the climactic battle at the gates of Minas Tirith. Of course, the good guys win, for the time being, but Frodo and Sam must still evade the orcs and Gollum to reach Mount Doom, and the greatest threat of all is the corrupting power of the Ring!

The Return of the King was an animated fantasy TV movie by Rankin Bass, based on the book and series by J.R.R. Tolkien. It was presented by Rankin Bass as a planned follow-up to the earlier TV movie The Hobbit, aired in 1977 by NBC. The release of the second film was challenged in court by the makers of Ralph Bakshi’s 1978  Lord of the Rings, possibly based in part on suspicions that it was instead intended as an unauthorized sequel to that film. Orson Bean returned as the voice of Bilbo and also Frodo, with John Huston as Gandalf and Roddy McDowall (see The Black Hole) as Sam. The film originally aired in May 1980 on ABC. It is believed to have been first released on VHS in 1991. In some cases, the Rankin Bass films have been sold and promoted as a “trilogy” with Bakshi’s film, though both parties had publicly agreed that their works were independent and otherwise unrelated. Return of the King is currently available on disc, but not in digital formats.

For my experiences, this is a movie I first encountered as a tape on video store shelves that I never picked up. At that point, I had seen Bakshi’s LotR (dear Logos, Bakshi) and knew of The Hobbit, and with that context in mind, it really didn’t seem that interesting. I picked up the trail again when I started reviewing both animated and live-action films from the late ‘70s to mid-80s boomlet (see The Black Cauldron, Willow, Dragonslayer, etc, etc). Once I looked up a few clips, I very quickly admitted that I would be reviewing this one sooner or later, but I held out quite a while to see if I could get out of paying to buy a disc. I finally ordered it with bonus points in the last week, while I already had other things on my plate. Once I watched it, I knew I had the winner… sort of.

Moving forward, the one thing that stands out from the beginning right to the end is that this movie manages to come closer to Tolkien’s storytelling style than any other adaptation that has come to my attention. What’s debatable, unfortunately, is whether this is entirely a good thing. The movie bombards the viewer with the same songs, retold tales and in-universe mythology you would get in the books, and it works in long stretches. It’s a bit thin to sustain the story, however, especially with so much of trilogy told in flashbacks and passing references if at all. (And how did we never get an animated Shelob???) Then there are choices that are just odd. This shows especially in the efforts to portray the influence of the Ring, which can at least be said to “work”. Even more problematic are the Nazgul, a common denominator with the Bakshi version. Here, the Witch King is faithful to Tolkien’s vision, if you can get past the inexplicable voicework, but the rest of the crew are incompatible and simply goofy. In my further opinion, the Pegasus-like steeds we see most of the time are better than the pterosaur monster used in the big battle.

Meanwhile, what really keeps the movie a mixed bag is the uneven use and development of the characters. There’s little to complain about with Sam and Frodo, who remain the focus of the story. Gollum is quite possibly the most compelling and flat-out best of all, as pitiful yet treacherous in his brief appearances as Serkis’ incarnation was over two movies. There’s also more attention given to some of the lesser villains, like the Watchers and the Mouth of Sauron. Far too many others, however, only appear because key events require them, egregiously Eowyn, who as far as I can tell gets absolutely no screen time before the showdown with the Witch King. Even Merry and Pippin don’t have much of an arc beyond that of bystanders. (Then there’s the easy joke when they complain about stench…) At the most fundamental level, this simply won’t make any sense if you haven’t read the books, an issue that shows especially in the opening escape from Cirith Ungol.

With that said, the “one scene” is truly the one to rule them all, and it somehow failed to come to my attention before I watched the whole thing all the way through. While Frodo and Sam are resting after their breakout, a column of orcs pass by and soon pick them up as presumed deserters. Up to this point, these have already been an intriguing take on the race, which as per my previous rants are almost always misunderstood. Here, there is at least some balance. They don’t look too threatening, or even much bigger than the hobbits, yet there are glimpses of the intelligence and intrigues manifested in the book. Now, they are heard singing a gloomy marching song that quickly becomes catchy. It practically puts them in a sympathetic light as they complain about being forced to march to war whether they like it or not, with the surreal chorus, “Where there’s a whip, there’s a way!” We get a further sense of the orcs’ point of view when the group runs into a column of Sauron’s human allies, who show more contempt for them than their enemies ever do. It all goes downhill from there, without diminishing the buildup. It’s an intriguing scene done well, which the movie could certainly have used more of.

In closing, this is one time I don’t feel a need to comment on the rating, This was easily among the most improbable experiments of the vintage fantasy wave, and by any standard the most ill-advised. What gets it above the lowest rating is that, for all its limitations, it still succeeds far more than it has any right to. What keeps it from going much higher is the unavoidable sense of disappointment that this wasn’t developed into a full treatment of the series. The real bottom line for both versions of the books is that they were films for the wrong time. The fantasy wave of the time was driven by interest from studios more than success with audiences, and one more movie wasn’t going to change that. What we have left is a film to appreciate for what it is, which is by all means good enough. And with that, I’m done.

The Anthology Anthology: Kornbluth collection and monster anthology

 

It's time for the mid-week post, and I decided it was time for another post on anthologies. Here's a pair I've meant to get to for a while, which I have come to associate in my own mind. The first is The Best of C.M. Kornbluth, part of the 1970s Nelson Doubleday wave of anthologies, edited by the author's friend and frequent collaborator Frederik Pohl. The other is a more eclectic collection titled Bug Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg, an assemblage of 13 stories published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, a publisher I otherwise knew for their textbooks. To keep a running start, here's some artwork from BEM, which features a cover by one Ruby Mazur and a selection of art by the great Gahan Wilson.

Moving in, one thing these books have in common is the 1951 story "Friend To Man", a savage yarn that is indeed one of Kornbluth's very best. It's the tale of a very unlovable rogue who is either rescued or taken hostage by a native of a desert planet where he is stranded. While he tries to figure out the mysterious alien's motives, we learn through flashbacks of his amoral exploits, particularly a petty scheme that brought tragedy and moral ruin to a damsel. The punchline reads like a prototype of a certain famous film that cannot be mentioned without a spoiler. I have been more intrigued by the barely repentant and perhaps unredeemable anti-hero, surely a satire of the Victorians' fixation on the noble highwayman. It's an idea that turns up with some frequency in "Golden Age" pulps, but only really came into its own in the deconstructionist 1960s and '70s. This story in particular was a major reason I suggested Kornbluth as at least an indirect influence on Lincoln F. Stern in the course of reviewing Heavy Metal. As a further footnote, the story has turned up on at least one public-domain website, which I am posting a link to since it's under the reputable Project Gutenberg banner, but the legal status remains clear as mud.

Turning to the Kornbluth book, it's certainly the better collection, yet not necessarily the most interesting. It predictably includes "The Marching Morons", which I ranted about reviewing Idiocracy, and other regularly reprinted "classics" like "The Little Black Bag", "The Silly Season" and "Two Dooms". Of these high-profile pieces, the one I've come to appreciate most is "Shark Ship", about the same length as "Morons" but far deeper in its worldbuilding and in my opinion probably a lot more revealing of Kornbluth's real thought on population control, the media and the nuclear family. Then there are short pieces that are otherwise fairly hard to find, like the especially bleak post-apocalyptic tale "The Remorseful" and the Disney send-up "The Advent On Channel Twelve", which again prominently features Kornbluth's conflicted outlook on parenthood. The most memorable of the short pieces is "The Words Of Guru", a proto-psychedelic piece from the perspective of a child prodigy gone absolutrely psychotic. What I have always found interesting is that virtually everything could be reinterpreted as hallucination or at least beyond the mortal plane, if not for the narrator's insistence that he can and has used his growing powers to harm and kill real people. Of course, we are under no obligation to take his word for this or anything else, yet it remains a convincing portrait of the intricacy and inscrutability of madness met on its own terms.

Turning to the other book, this is a compilation that runs the gamut of time and subgenres, from the Gernsback era to the 1960s and somewhat beyond. What's striking is that few if any really live up, or more accurately down, to the title and stated theme. We come closest with the earliest tale, "The Miracle Of The Lily" by Clare Winger Harris from 1927, a tale of a war between humans and insects that becomes tragic irony as the victorious humans reach out to explore neighboring planets. Also fitting to the theme is Donald Wollheim's "Mimic", which I discussed on reviewing Mimic 2, and Robert Bloch's "Talent", about an orphan with a strange ability to imitate others. Things get more nuanced with stories like "Stranger Station" by Damon Knight and "Puppet Show" by Fredric Brown, both featuring apparently altruistic but still unsettling extraterrestrials. Things take a more mature turn starting with "The Other Kids" by the perennially underrated Robert F. Young, followed by later entries such as "The Faceless Thing" by Edward D. Hoch, "The Last One Left" by Pronzini and Malzberg themselves, and the last and longest, "Hostess" by Isaac Asimov. In the midst of it all, Kornbluth's entry serves as a kind of bridge, ultimately revealing an alien whose actions are no more horrific and far more justified than its human counterpart.

With that, I've really done what I meant to do, in a lot less space than I thought I would need. I still haven't done much with this feature, and this post has been a reminder why I started it. It's always nice to revisit old books, even if they don't live up to my memories, and these two volumes have if anything gotten better with time. If you have them or can get them, by all means enjoy. That's all for now, more to come!

The Rerun Review: The other one where babies are illegal

 

Title: The Last Child

What Year?: 1971

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Runnerup

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

 

When I started doing movie reviews, one of the first rules I laid down was not to cover TV movies. This has long since become a case of protesting too much, as I have long since covered a number of famous or infamous examples. The big surprise has bee that the floodgates didn’t open as soon as I started a dedicated feature. I decided, however, that I was going to have to make time for at least one wonky TV movie, and I very quickly came up with a very short list of candidates, including one I had to do a substitution for when I decided I couldn’t work with it. This time, I’m back with the alternate of the alternate, and oh boy, it’s about the single most irritating trope in science fiction. I present The Last Child, another movie that cashed in on the overpopulation panic.

Our story begins in what is intoned as the “not too distant future”, which by now would be at least 20 years in the past, where a woman who gets separated from her child in a crowned transit station is taken in when the police discover she is pregnant. We learn that this is still the US, where the government has implemented a one-child limit on family size. That brings us to our protagonists, a married couple (of course attractive and “white”) who are having a new child after their first died in infancy. Of course, the state isn’t making a reasonable exception, nor making the fair argument that losing a baby in 2 weeks in a society with modern healthcare could mean a bigger problem in their genetic codes. The laid-back police prepare to take the expectant mother into custody, but  don’t care enough to stop them from making contact with a bleeding-heart senator. The chase is on as the pair race for the Canadian border- and come on, did you think there was going to be a twist in a 1970s TV movie?

The Last Child was a 1971 made-for-TV movie produced by Aaron Spelling, originally aired by ABC. It was one of the first of several films dealing with overpopulation, preceding ZPG in 1972 and Soylent Green in 1973. The film was directed by John Llewllyn Moxey, a veteran of television shows including Mission Impossible, from a script by Peter S. Fischer. The film starred The Mod Squad’s Michael Cole and Janet Margolin as the couple, with Van Heflin as Senator George and Ed Asner as the lawman. An official credit was given to General Motors for vehicles used in the film. The film received some attention from contemporary genre critics including Philip Strick, who noted the film for its “lack of impact”. The film has been released on VHS and DVD. Fischer went on to write for shows including Murder, She Wrote. Margolin died of ovarian cancer in 1993.

For my experiences, I caught wind of this one while running down ZPG, which would definitely be on my “worst” movies list if I ever do the inevitable follow-up to my list of the best movies I’ve reviewed. In the course of trashing that odious little nothing, I already did plenty of ranting on the overpopulation craze. What I put front and center was simply that those claiming to be concerned about overpopulation were unable to portray the actual consequences of malnutrition, poverty, and overcrowding, at least in the medium of film. Going in, this film at least offered a more rational take on paper, particularly since its scenario was in fact eventually pursued in China. It seemed possible that this would be the one that made some amount of sense. On investigation, it proved to have a whole different set of flaws.

Moving to the movie itself, the one thing that’s beyond question is that this is the conservative counterpart to the allegedly progressive ZPG. The immediate consequence is that it can make its implied arguments in intelligible contemporary terms, rather than justify itself with hypotheticals that aren’t even proven “in universe”. In the process, we get a future fleshed out enough to feel lived despite the limits of its running time. Some of the more intriguing moments seem to allow for societal problems that might have little or nothing to do with overpopulation per se, like passing mentions of loss of life in wars abroad and the decline or general collapse of the automotive industry. Also of interest are the police, who are polite and startlingly restrained, at least when dealing with the middle-class, non-minority protagonists. The one big hole in the world-building is a sort of passive euthanasia program where medical care is discontinued at age 65, which in any foreseeable reality would start a civil war by the AARP. It would make marginally more sense if the politicians and their donors had written loopholes for themselves or were using their money for private care abroad; but then, we mostly just hear about this from the idealistic senator who might not be the most reliable source.

Meanwhile, the biggest problems loom well beyond the cool car chase and undoubted “happy” ending. I personally am a disability self-advocate, “pro-life” and break-the-needle anti-eugenics, and even I would tell this couple it might be a bad idea to have kids. Then there’s the largely unresolved question of whether the problems are local or global. China pursued its policies for reasons that were peculiar to itself, and the same could be true of this future USA. It’s doubtful, however, whether fugitives would simply be welcomed with open arms. Even now, Canada’s as overpopulated as a Norman J. Warren film festival downwind from fertilizer plant (because I don’t make enough Inseminoid references), but it would still be a tall order to deal with millions or tens of millions of new citizens. Then what’s really left undiscussed is the complex nature of healthcare. It's easy to characterize taking care of the old and the weak as a drain on resources, even more so in a socialistic system. What really happens, however, is that medical care generates many jobs, and in the process redistributes wealth through all levels of society as effectively as any communist scheme. Denying medical care even to those who can pay for it is how you cut off your nose to spite your face.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the car chase. In the finale, the protagonists acquire a car, which is evidently out of the reach of many or most, and outrun the police. But Asner’s lawman still hasn’t given up, and as things transition from night to day, their vehicles pass fatefully. The part I love about this scene, indeed the whole movie, is the cars. They could have gagged up a few sci fi-looking car. Failing that, they could have gotten a few vehicles that looked advanced for the time, like the Stingray, an early Ferrari, or dinky European oddities like the Reliant Robin or the Messerschmitt Kabinenroller (why not a Mystery Men link?). But no, these cars as 1970s as a tie-dyed VW Bus. We get a good, tense chase as the lawman does a U-turn and gives chase. There’s closeups of the couple and Asner, the latter clearly gleeful but still focused. A hatchback briefly intrudes, which is easily the most futuristic vehicle we see at any point. and gets left behind by both parties after being run off the road.  They have to pay attention when a semi comes into view. The good guys go left, the lawman goes right, and you know what’s coming. The last impressive touch is that the law’s crashed car burns brighter than the actual oil tanker in Duel.

In closing, I come back to the same rants I already gave with ZPG. There were plenty of things we didn’t know in the 1960s and ‘70s, but the overpopulation scare was predicting the past. At best, it was an extreme way for honest proponents of birth control and women’s rights to make a point. At worst, it was a barely veiled defense of the eugenics movement that had already abused thousands in the name of prejudice and pseudoscience. In that context, this was a movie that could at least wring a human story out of it, which is enough to come out far ahead of ZPG. With that, I’m done.

No Good Very Bad Movies Countdown 2: The one that's the worst Marvel movie

 

Title: Man-Thing

What Year?: 2005

Classification: Improbable Experiment

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/3)

 

With this review, I’m continuing my countdown of worsts, and the next up is the Marvel superhero movie. What complicated this is that I already have long since covered the most notorious entries in the genre, like Howard The Duck, the Spiderman TV movie, and even Roger Corman’s unmovied Fantastic Four movie. But by my usual standards, the least of these are at a high standard of mediocrity, and you aren’t really going to find anything much worse without delving into cancelled animation pilots, foreign knockoffs, fan films and the like. There’s one, however, that falls in its own category of badness, and far from being a bootleg from long ago, it was made well within the modern era under Marvel’s own movie arm. As a bonus, it happens that I watched it not long ago and forgot almost everything about it, which as I established with Inseminoid is a very, very bad sign. Here is Man-Thing, a film based on the Marvel counterpart to Swamp Thing that somehow makes that movie look good.

Our story begins with teenagers partying in the wetlands of an unspecified Deep South location. Of course, it leads to a grisly end for two young lovers who sneak off by themselves. We jump forward to a new sheriff in a town whose main employer is an oil company drilling in the middle of a tribe’s sacred land. A reporter and a spunky school teacher warn the lawman that people are disappearing or turning up gruesomely mutilated in the swamps. He quickly runs afoul of the head of the petrochemical company, who would clearly be puzzled by the suggestion not to engage in corruption. Meanwhile, a tribal elder warns that the cause of the shenanigans is a supernatural entity outraged by the company’s desecration, and one of his peers has disappeared on a mission of sabotage or worse. Things heat up when one of the sheriff’s deputies becomes another victim. He sets out to find the monster- but the real evil may be human!

Man-Thing was an American-Australian film by Artisan Entertainment and Marvel Enterprises. The film was based on the character and comic from Marvel, first published in 1971 two months before DC’s Swamp Thing. The companies had previously produced the 2004 version of The Punisher, as part of a venture that was reportedly planned to create up to 15 films. The film was directed by Brett Leonard, following The Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity, with Marvel’s Avi Arad as producer. While the story was set in the American Everglades, filming took place entirely in Australia. The cast was led by Australians Matthew Nevez as the lawman and Jack Thompson as the villainous industrialist Schist, with New Zealander Rawiri Paratene as the medicine man Horn. A Man-Thing suit was created by the Make-Up Effects Group. By the best estimates, the film was made for $5 million. Arad stated that the Marvel had little or no direct control. The film was withdrawn from US release, in part due to the bankruptcy of Artisan, but received limited theatrical showings in foreign markets as well as airings on the Sci Fi Channel. It is currently available on free streaming from Tubi.

For my experiences, I first encountered this one on the used shelves, which left me interested enough to request it in my rental queue around 2016. I ultimately watched it on portable equipment in 2016 during a ride to work, and gave it little thought after that, even (indeed especially) after starting my misbegotten Super Moviesfeature. What kept me somewhat intrigued is the very odd placement within the genre timeline. It at least technically predates the start of the “MCU” with Iron Man, yet still falls well within the “modern” era, long after X-Men and the Raimi Spiderman made big budgets and mainstream talent were the norms rather than exceptions. What it really represents is a throwback to the 1990s direct-to-video wave, when offerings like the first Punisher were good enough for near-respectability. In hindsight, it might have opened the way for more low to mid-budget entries and perhaps to a level of creativity only animation achieved before or since. But that, of course, would have meant being good.

Moving forward, the central reality of the movie is that the scenery and the effects are the only things going for it, in that order. The swamp landscape is spectacular, far more so than I could have assessed on the equipment I first viewed this on, and the creature mysterious and very physical. Everything else fails any potential they offer. The acting, characters and dialogue barely average out as tolerable, with all the relatively good moments coming from Thompson and Paratene. The real defects kick in with the story, which manages the common comic-book flaw of being simplistic and convoluted at the same time, while also remaining unaccountably dull. It doesn’t help that a number of story points completely ignore actual tribal law, which would in fact allow the natives to throw the hero and the bad guys off their land at any time. But the one thing that racks up the irritation factor is the bizarrely flat camerawork, certainly far inferior to Craven’s, which inexorably erodes any sense of atmosphere and mystery. While I’m usually indifferent to analog purists, this is definitely a case where the old tech did a far better job. The gritty look of film was a key part of what made Swamp Thing interesting, where even the better moments of this one look as bland as an infomercial.

Even with these problems, what invites the closest and most unfavorable scrutiny is Man-Thing himself. To start with, his role amounts to cameos in his own movie, an approach that definitely could have worked for other characters, especially “dark” protagonists like Wolverine and The Punisher. Given this setup, however, it would have made more sense to frame the story from the perspective of the villains rather than the sheriff. (The fact that I have said even less about the love interest is by all means an intentional snub.) This is where it would have helped greatly to know more about the character’s origin and backstory, if only to heighten the confusion and growing dread of his adversaries. Then the fundamental problem is that there’s simply no way to frame the creature as the “good” guy, even in relative terms. We might accept his crusade if his victims were workers for the company and others who were harming the environment, however reluctantly or unknowingly. But far too many of them are simply random bystanders, or those who would otherwise be on the same side. What’s even more difficult is that, outside of the hazily explained ending, there’s no sense of a character who might once have had a more positive role. All we really have is an ecoterrorist version of the Punisher, with even less moral judgment.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the encounter between Horn and the creature. By the finale, the medicine man is desperate enough to seek out Man-Thing himself. We find him in the swamp at night, moodily lit. He sings his songs and shakes a ceremonial rattle, until Man-Thing appears. It’s our first really good look at the creature, and it is certainly very effective, by the filmmakers’ accounts realized with a practical suit augmented by CGI for the tendrils and the eerie red eyes. The creature just stares as the shaman calls out his challenge, finally saying, “Take my life, and be done with it!” It’s the one time we see some sign of grief or remorse from the creature, but it doesn’t change the outcome as creature picks up the human. Then, as if to add extra offense, the character goes through a series of distractingly strange convulsions. We get back to some sense of pathos as the camera zooms in on his face, just in time for a bizarre gore effect. It’s easily the best sequence in the movie yet still a showcase of its flaws and squandered potential.

In closing, I am back at the rating. This is one where I went through some debate, and it’s been one of the few times where the “hate” factor wasn’t much help. I can’t say this one left me angry or offended like Inseminoid or The Golden Child, or disappointed the way Star Trek The Motion Picture and the TV Spiderman did. What it really came down to was an equally subjective test, whether this felt like incompetence or actual laziness, and I definitely go with the later. Maybe the filmmakers couldn’t have gotten better effects, cameras or even actors, but surely, with Marvel behind them, they could have gotten a better story and script. Even apart from such considerations, the fact remains that this is easily the worst film to come out with Marvel’s name in the current millennium, if not for all time. The bottom line remains, boring is even more unacceptable than “bad”, and that especially applies for an entry in a genre built on action and vivid characters. So congratulations, Marvel, you did your worst before anyone was paying attention, and I am not forgetting it.

Fiction: The Evil Possum Vs Godzilla Part 2!

 Still haven't got anything but movie reviews done this week, so here's the second part of my recovered Evil Possum adventure. Incidentally, the monsters here include Geryon from Greek mythology, who is completely confusing to describe if you don't know the myths, plus another from the Cthulhu mythos and an early version of the eurypterids. Yes, this is absolutely as far as I got, though I'm pretty sure I must have written a longer version originally since there's a line I remember (and reused) that isn't here. Here's an extra link for the adventures index.

            It was a grim scene on the asphalt plain.  Four more large monsters were dead, along with scores of the ants.  The overturned wreck of No-Hands' halftrack lay smoldering  on the pavement.  It was surrounded almost completely by a wall of slain giant ants.  A giant gila monster also lay dead a few feet from the halftrack.  Skid marks showed where the halftrack had swerved to avoid the monster, just before falling on its side.  An abandoned 2 mm gatling gun stood on its tripod next to the wreck.  Thousands of spent shell casings and the firing tubes for four panzerfutz single-use antitank weapons were strewn about.

            A trail of more shell casings and dead ants led away from the scene of the wreck.  One could thus follow the trail from the wreck to the concrete outcropping where No-Hands was currently blasting away at a giant sea gooseberry with an antitank rifle.  The rifle was as long as he was tall, and had to be supported with a bipod.  two questing tentacles were blown off.  Sparks erupted as volley of shots pierced the monster's globular body.  Several of the flickering lights under its hide went out.  The monster shuddered and drew back, but the damage wasn't great enough to keep it back for long.  "Mr. O'Leary!" No-hands shouted.  "Come here!"

            Nick ran up to No-Hands.  "What do you need?"

            "I need you to get on hands and knees and touch your chin to the ground," No-Hands said.  Nick, being both naive and unimaginative, complied without question.  No-Hands rested the bipod of the rat's rump, set the rifle for fully automatic fire, and let fly.  With the extra elevation Nick provided, he was able to fire into the monster's open mouth.  Sparks flew, tentacles fell and lights flickered.  The creature slowly descended to the ground, where it collapsed like a deflated balloon.

            "Ack!  Wedgie!" Nick exclaimed.

             No-Hands cast the empty rifle aside.  Nick followed him back down the sloping concrete face.  As they reached the bottom, No-Hands looked straight up, and froze.  “DUCK!” he shouted.

            Nicholas O’Leary handed him a little stuffed duck.

            No-Hands slapped away the toy and tackled Nick.  They tumbled into a fissure together, just as a giant bird’s talons closed where the two had been standing.  Anja ran to them and thrust a rocket launcher into her husband’s hand.  No-Hands fired at the departing bird, and hissed when the shot went wide.

            “Oh,” Nick said, gazing at the bird.  He scratched his head.  “That doesn’t look like a duck to me.  More like a great big two-headed eagle thing.”

            Anja quickly reloaded the rocket launcher.  No-Hands used that rocket and two more after it an eight-foot-long scorpion-like creature crawling toward their position.  Each shot caused some damage, destroying compound eyes and damaging one of its pincers.  However, the scorpion had scores of eyes and three more pincers to spare.  It and eight other monsters continued to close in.  The scorpion clacked, scraped, buzzed and whirred threateningly with an assemblage of mouthparts that looked like they had been designed for revenge on every gourmand who ever dismembered a lobster.  No-Hands used the next two rockets on a one-eyed creature that looked like an ambulatory fried egg.  One blew a crater in its gooey body, but failed to do any meaningful damage.  The second rocket blew out the central eye, killing the creature.  With his last four shots, No-Hands killed a fish with legs and sent a dinosaur-like creature limping away.  "We are out of rockets," Anja announced.  "All we have left is your 4 mm grenade launcher."

            “In that case, it is time for us to part,” No-Hands said.  His wife grimaced.  “I will carry out the contingency plan alone.  I will go forth and kill as many monsters as I can before I am killed or captured.  If they choose to capture me rather than kill me, I will gain access to their ship and thus have a chance to carry out my mission.  Whatever the outcome, the chances of my returning are low.  I will not let your life be put on the line with mine.”

            “The choice is not yours to make,” Anja said.  “Wherever you go, I will follow.”

            “Where I am going, you must not follow!” No-Hands snarled.

            “I will, nevertheless.”

            “Why do you insist on doing the irrational?”

            “Because I love you.”

            No-Hands gazed into her eyes and sighed.  “I love you, too,” he said, caressing her face with his left hand.  Then he clenched his hand into a fist and punched his wife unconscious.

            Nick watched in shock.  What shocked him most was that he thought he saw a single tear welling up in the assassin’s eye.  When No-Hands saw him watching, Nick tried to look like he was examining the ground.  “You!” No-Hands snarled.  “You can come with me if you like!”

            No-Hands emerged from the crevasse alone.  The way he moved exuded determination and confidence, and a clinically murderous gleam was in his eye.  At the sight of him, all the monsters lurched back.   It was a terrifying sight that few beings had beheld and even fewer had lived to remember: No-Hands looked angry. 

            A giant with three torsos was first to strike.  It had a club in each set of hands, and it struck at No-Hands with two clubs at once.  When the caved-in section of concrete where No-Hands had been standing proved devoid of  flattened possum, the three heads looked at each other in confusion.  Then one of them heard a whisper in its ear: "I say, are you looking for me?"  No-Hands then bit said ear and leaped to the next torso.  He fired three grenade at the already-injured head as it turned, taking out both eyes.  The blinded torso blindly  clubbed its neighbor, while No-Hands jumped to the  next torso.  He shot that one in the neck, and then clambered down a forest of body hair to the ground.  As a parting shot, he fired the last grenade in the magazine under the giant's big toe nail.  As he dashed away, the giant was hopping on one foot.  One torso clutched its throat in an attempt to staunch the bleeding, another clutched its injured foot, and another continued to flail blindly at the air, the ground and its neighbors with its club.

            No-Hands reloaded as he ran.  Suddenly, he found himself in shadow.  He dropped the grenade launched as the two-headed bird came swooping in from behind.  The bird lifted him into the air.  It took the creature a moment to realize that the possum was not in its talons, but clinging to one of its legs.  Right about the time it had this revelation, No-Hands set its tail on fire.  The bird rapidly descended to the ground and began hopping around and beating its wings against its tail feathers in an attempt to put out the flames.  It succeeded in spreading the flames to its pinions.  The bird ran away in the direction of the nearest  stream.

            As soon as the bird touched the ground, No-Hands leaped off and ran for his grenade launcher.  He found the weapon guarded by a puma-sized, saber-toothed creature.  Its face was not unlike No-Hands' own.  It grinned and chuckled as it reached for him.  But then, the giant hit it with a club.  While the creature was stunned, No-Hands grabbed his grenade launcher.  He fired the three shots in the magazine into the monster's head.

            A brontosaurus came at him from behind.  There was no time to  reload.  As the huge head descended to swallow him, No-Hands ducked under its chin and caught hold of its throat.  In a few savage seconds, he tore out its throat with claws and teeth.

            No-Hands swiftly reloaded.  As he finished, the ground shook with the footsteps of a new arrival.  He looked up and saw nothing- except for a bullet that seemed to hover unsteadily above the ground.  "Back for more?" No-Hands said.  He emptied the grenade launcher at the monster.  Two of his shots struck the bullet, driving it deeper into the monster's transparent flesh.  The monster fell once again.  It landed in a stream, parting the water with its form.  This time, it didn't get up.

            No-Hands reloaded his weapon yet again, with the last two grenades from one bandoleer and three more from the other.  As he closed the grenade launcher, his left ear twitched.  A fraction of a second later, a pincer as long as his body came down like a hammer.  The scorpion had crept up behind him.   However, it wasn't quite fast enough to catch No-Hands.  The possum dodged the blow and jumped onto the damaged pincer.  He fired his grenades at the scorpion's eyes while clinging to the pincer  with his metal hand and his flesh-and-blood foot.  The grenades destroyed more eyes.  One of the pea-sized eyes popped out of its socket and dangled by a nerve from the right side of its face.

            When the grenade launcher was empty, No-Hands dropped it.  He needed to hang on with both hands as the scorpion shook its claw in an effort to dislodge him.  He jumped to another pincer, which was smaller and less strong.  He crawled along the limb like a three-legged sloth, unfazed by the scorpion's angry shaking.  The scorpion jabbed at him with its tail; he dodged the blow by letting go with his metal hand and swinging to the side.  The scorpion shook its pincer, throwing  him into the air and toward the clashing mouthparts.  He landed feet-first on a flattened mandible and bounced back to the small pincer.  From there, he swung to the big pincer.  Finally, he caught hold of the dangling optic nerve.  He climbed onto the  scorpion's face, swinging once to avoid another blow from the stinger. 

            No-Hands stufed his bandoleer into the empty eye socket. The stinger struck again and snagged his  jacket.  He shed the jacket to get free, only to go sliding off the carapace.  He caught hold of the optic nerve with a desperate grasp of his metal hand, and cme to a halt just above the mouth parts.  The nerve jerked a little further out.  No-Hands hauled himself up just in time to avoid being caught  by a set of snapping mandibles.

            As he climbed back onto the carapace, he heard two angry squawks behind him.  He didn't turn around; there was no need to.  The two-headed bird hopped  eagerly toward the scorpion.  No-Hands pulled the pin out of a large hand grenade and tossed it into the eye socket.  He then vaulted over the cluster of compound eyes, narrowly escaping the bird's snapping beaks.  Before the bird could strike again, the grenades went off.  A puff of smoke and flame erupted from the carapace.  Its brain destroyed, the scorpion began to writhe  convulsively.  The tail swung forward, stabbing the bird in  the chest.  The bird screamed hideously.  It managed to pull itself free of the barbed stinger, but that only added to the damage.   The tail struck one last time, transfixing the bird's right head.  The remaining head let out a mournful shriek, and then died.

            No-Hands leaped to the ground and ran for the ship.  His way was blocked by a wall of flame that suddenly sprang from the ground.  He turned around,  only to see another wall of flame shoot up behind him.  He looked to the left, and saw the cause.  A dragon with a broken wing was advancing toward him.  It was the same one he had knocked out of the sky earlier.  The dragon tilted its head back and shot an arc of flame over No-Hands' head.  It swung its head from side to side, creating another wall of fire.  No-Hands was trapped in a triangle of flame, with the monster at the apex.

            The dragon spoke, in a banal voice that was clearly not its own: "Surrender, and you and your companions will not be harmed."

            "Return to the world from whence you came," No-Hands responded, "and you shall not die."  He then dashed up a gently tilted chunk of concrete and leaped into the air.  At the height of his ascent, he pulled a hidden switch in his mechanicla leg.  A 6 mm grenade flew out of the heel and into the dragon's eye.  The recoil sent him flying backwards over the wall of flame.

            No-Hands could see the circular spaceship, looming over the concrete just a few hundred yards away.  Nothing stood between him and his goal- or so it seemed.  He raced over the concrete plain.  Halfway there, he passed a deep hole in the concrete.  In the matter of a second, a ten-foot-tall mutant flamingo rose from the hole.  No-Hands stopped and turned, his fur bristling.  As the bird's gaping bill descended, he drew a revolver.  A single shot echoed across the plain.

            The bird flew at top speed bck to the ship.

            Anja awoke with a scream.

Featured Creature The Rat File 2: The one with R. Lee Ermey and an illegal alien rat

 

Title: Willard

What Year?: 2003

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

With this review, I’m continuing my series within this feature on rodent-based movies, which I probably started at the worst possible time. Nevertheless, I’m forging ahead with the one that gave me the idea for this, though it would already have fit in with my previous and planned reviews of remakes. It gets in here as an example of the range of this especially odd subniche genre. We’ve seen a kid’s movie with The Witches, which was still quite dark. This time, the movie is unquestionably adult, though not quite in a gory or “graphic” way. I present Willard, the remake of a classic/ infamous 1970s film, and I would have liked to say it was better, but as we will see, things aren’t so simple.

Our story begins after a bonkers opening credits sequence with an introduction to Willard, a man living with his elderly mother in a Gothic mansion. In short order, we learn that he is the son of a deceased businessman, reduced to working in a protected pity job under his father’s former business partner. Meanwhile, Willard looks into his options for exterminating a colony of rats in the basement of the estate. But he has a change of heart when he meets a friendly albino rat dubbed Socrates. He soon goes as far as feeding his new friends, though he remains wary of a very large rat he names Ben. Things take a turn for the worse as his mother deteriorates and his boss brings in an attractive temp to do his job. As his life unravels, his rapport with the rodents grows, and he discovers that he can make them do his bidding against those who wronged him. When his boss kills Socrates and schemes to take his job and the house, he sets out to take his revenge. But is he really in control, or is it Ben who rules the horde?

Willard was a 2003 movie written and directed by Glen Morgan, based on the 1971 film of the same name and the 1968 novel The Ratman’s Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert. The film was developed and promoted as a new treatment of the novel and story rather than a direct remake of the original film. The film starred Crispin Glover as the title character and R. Lee Ermey as his boss Mr. Martin, with Laura Harring as the ambiguous love interest Cathryn. The film relied heavily on live animals, including a Gambian pouched rat used to portray Ben. Additional effects were provided by The Character Shop, an animatronics crew whose members contributed to Aliens and Ghostbusters, with some animation/ CGI by Centropolis Effects. The soundtrack was composed by the late Shirley Walker, also a contributor to Dungeommaster and Mystery Men among many other film and TV credits. While the movie was released to mixed to positive reviews, it was a commercial failure, earning $8.5 million against a budget believed to exceed $20M. In the same year the movie was released, the importing of pouched rats into the US was banned, based on concerns about disease and invasive populations, especially in Florida.

For my experiences, I first heard of the original movies Willard and Ben in junior high, both from books on movies and popular works on biology. I loved the ideas and themes enough for homicidal rats to feature in my fiction, but as often happens, I was never that interested in the source material. I did watch the present film not long after it came out, and absolutely loved it at the time. Then, within the last few years, I watched both versions of Willard, and remained impressed enough to buy a copy I used for this review. As alluded, I went in optimistic that that this one would meet the same high standards as most of the ones I have chosen for this feature in particular. It was only as the viewing unfolding that it finally crossed my mind that something is just a little off, and this is exactly the kind of movie where such things take on an “uncanny valley” feel far more bothersome than greater flaws in a lesser production.

Moving forward, one thing that is clear from the start is that this is a film with top-tier talent, beginning with Ms. Walker’s theme, which feels like the composer is trying to be more Danny Elfman than Elfman after using his music as the basis for the Batman cartoon. Naturally, there’s fine performances from Glover and Ermey, who are clearly loving their characters, flaws and all. The supporting cast are generally game, duly sympathetic or increasingly creeped-out by Willard’s deteriorating state. The two characters that are maybe not quite fully developed are Willard’s mother, played by Jackie Burroughs (see… Heavy Metal???), and Cathryn. The mother is mostly just shrill and vaguely oblivious, though her final decline is ghastly. Then the maybe-love interest is a case of too much and not enough. From a little reading, the romantic angle was more of a “thing” in the book than either movie, and it’s hard to avoid concluding that the films made the right decision. Here, the relationship can be considered largely platonic, driven to a rather uncomfortable degree by the lady’s insistence on comforting Willard in his grief, complete with the comically ill-fated cat. She still plays a far more limited role than she’s played up to be, and Ms. Harring, an actual Latin model, just doesn’t fit.

The con, alas, is the rats themselves, and this is what drove me to rate the movie as low as I have. There’s plenty of great scenes that benefit from the old-school effects, especially the destruction of the boss’s car and the demise of the cat. The root problem is that there are way too many things that simply don’t make sense if you know anything about actual rats. Just for example, the movie repeatedly shows the horde spanning halls and whole rooms as they swarm. But, apart from anything else, rats and other rodents normally follow walls and edges, most likely because it keeps their whiskers in contact with a solid surface. To move into the middle of an open space would be the equivalent of stepping from under a street light into a dark alley. (This is also probably why pet rodents of all types relieve themselves in the corners of their cages, which definitely figures in here.) Another symptom is Ben, whose actual species is 2 or 3 times the size of a common brown rat. It’s a fair conceit, especially considering how often Willard comments on his size, but it’s far too easy to see that the animal is free of wounds, disease or even dirt. The most troubling part is that this much deviation from natural behavior would only really happen at population densities virtually as dangerous to the rats as active extermination efforts, which would be a fitting point about Willard’s misguided sympathies if it was made. You can call this overthinking, but these are points I could figure out in 8^th grade, without in any way slowing down a story.

Now it’s time for the “one scene”, and I’m going with one between Glover and Ermey, and unusually, I’m doing this without an extra look. After Willard is notified he is being fired, he barges in on the boss. Martin says, “This is all a misunderstanding,” only it becomes clear he is pointedly ignoring Willard while finishing another conversation on the phone. Once he deigns to pay attention, things quickly heat up as Willard lays out their arrangement: By an agreement made with his father, Mr. Martin can’t fire him. In his own despicable way, the boss quickly makes the case why such “protected” positions are demeaning for all concerned, centered on the simple point, “You hate being here!” Things level off as Willard grows desperate and Martin lays out his real intentions, which he would probably abandon if he knew the conditions at the family mansion. The routine shenanigans don’t diminish a powerful scene between two great actors, which is all too relevant for disability self-advocates like myself.

In closing, I come back not to the rating, but to what I really think of this one. I’m well aware that I am giving it a lower rating than considerably weaker films, especially Starship Troopers 3 and Mimic 2. This is, however, something I have done before with far more reluctance; as usual, the films with greater limitations are simply on a different standard. (Okay, it did feel a little weird giving this one the same rating as Congo…) The fair comparison is with the 1970s Kong, another “good but flawed’ remake, and perhaps A Quiet Place, a mainstream attempt at a monster movie, both of which did get the same rating. The bottom line, you can have a good story, good characters and good creatures, but once you let one go, the others will start to slip accordingly. The result here as elsewhere is a movie that’s good fun to watch once, not so much to come back to. Now, I for one am moving on.