Fiction: Space Guys adventure demo!

 

I'm woefully behind my usual obsessive schedule, and in the meantime, I've been starting into something new that could waste vast amounts of time. Here's a link for the start of this in Chelsea the social worker, and one of my posts on the Marx 4-inch space guys and my newly acquired space girl. Also included, a preview pic of a Marx spaceship I just got!

 

The ship, from a distance, looked like an arrow, complete with the three-finned tail and a triangular head. For that matter, the resemblance did not diminish at closer examination, except for a flared waist amidships where a number of lesser objects were clustered. If viewed from the front or especially the rear, however, there was a certain resemblance to the symbol of peace, thanks to a ring supported by the three pylons of the tail. The designers would certainly have dismissed it as a coincidence brought on by a purely functional design. Yet, the fact remained that it was both a symbol and a product of peace. And the voyage ahead might well determine whether that peace would last or end in disaster.

At the moment, the ship circled a planet colored a deep but vivid red. Ahead was something like a five-spoked wheel, spinning gently. Several small craft were moored at regular intervals along its edge. Any other craft would have docked in one of the berths, but the incoming ship was almost half as long as its width. Instead, the ship launched one of its own lesser craft. Soon enough, the shuttle joined with the space station. An airlock opened, and a pilot emerged into the station corridor.

The pilot was a handsome man, no longer quite young. He was clean-shaven with an orderly haircut. He wore a jumpsuit of a material that looked vaguely like leather, with a harness that strapped across his chest and abdomen and a collar obviously intended to support a helmet. He gave what could almost have been a smile at the approach of two young men and a woman with reddish-gold hair who clearly made them nervous. “Hi, I’m Jason Freeman,” said one of the young men, somewhat more confident than the other. “I’m from the New Dakota settlement. On Mars, of course. This is my friend Jackson, and I guess this is Dr. Cahill.”

The lady stepped forward. It was evident that she was over 30, though certainly under 50. “That’s Lana Cahill, Doctor of Botany,” she said. “My specialty is astro-horticulture, which is the fancy name for studying how plants grow off Earth. I came here from England to help the colonies become self-sufficient. I understand these nice boys are pilots.”

Jackson ventured to speak up. “We’re all pilots out here in the Colonies,” he said. “Jason and me are the best, and we have the scores and the record to prove it.”

“I don’t doubt it,” the newcomer said with a chuckle. “I’m Lieutenant Harrison. I’m here to take you aboard the exploration vessel Janus.”

They followed the pilot through the hatch in what became a descent into the shuttle below. The shuttle pod proved to be a titanium alloy tube with a bullet-shaped cockpit on one end and a communications console at the other. The interior was almost but not quite tall enough to stand upright in. The lieutenant clambered straight for the door to the cockpit at the front. The men took two seats that faced each other in the middle. The lady took a seat at the rear, turned sideways to face the console. “Say, one of us should take that seat,” Jason said.

“I know what I’m doing,” Dr. Cahill said. “In fact, I have equipment in my office that’s more advanced than this. In fact, it must be newer than this.”

The airlock shut. There was a jolt as the shuttle cut loose. “It probably is,” Harrison said. “It’s 6 months each way from Earth to Mars, plus it takes at least 4 months to prep any equipment for Mars conditions. All our equipment needed two years of prep time minimum, and that was the stuff they didn’t have to build from scratch.”

Jason turned his head for a better look at the pilot. “Have you done this before?” he said. “A Mars run, I mean…”

“I did it once,” Harrison said. “That was enough, for a while. I’ve done most of my time on low-orbit runs, a Moon trip now and then.”

 Jason nodded before venturing the real question. “What’s it really like, on Earth?” he said.

There was a moment of silence. Then the pilot laughed again, quite kindly. “Anybody else but me prob’ly would ask you what it’s like out here,” he said. “You might as well get used to it. I don’t really get around much myself. Most of what I see is from orbit. From there, there’s no place that looks much different from another. Most of it’s big, blue ocean. On the land, you’re got lots of green, a few big splotches of desert, mountains and rivers like long snakes. Then you have the cities… They really don’t take up that much space, but they glow like suns. The biggest I ever went to was Hong Kong, I had to put on sunglasses to see. That was after flying in the dark, of course.”

Jackson spoke up. “You could be a poet, mister,” he said.

“Oh, who says I haven’t tried it?” Harrison said with another chuckle. “I’ve been around long enough to try a lot of things, once. I still only found one or two things I’m good at…”

They had pulled alongside the craft called Janus, visible through a porthole on the right. It seemed like a slow approach, but the Martians both knew that the larger ship was racing at many thousands of miles per hour, and they were going the other way. They first passed a roughly triangular section at the front, really a shuttlecraft big enough to carry two pods like their own in its underbelly. “That’s the Pegasus,” Harrison said. “It’s an Orion-class payloader. There are only four of them so far. I’ve flown one. They say it’s set to take over the low-orbit trade…”

“I know,” Jackson said, somewhat impatiently. “We’re rated to fly them, as soon as we get any.”

That drew another chuckle from Harrison. “I suppose spaceships are all you talk about out here,” he said. “Or all you hear about, anyway.”

By then, they were past the payloader to the long, thin fuselage, which on close examination was a connecting corridor lined with fuel tanks and cargo pods. A module at right angles to the main corridor sported a secondary docking bay and a 10-meter sensor dish. “It’s what the out-of-towners always talk about,” Jason said. “We usually have to ask to find out about anything else. When it’s not spaceships, it’s sports we can’t even play.”

He saw the pilot nod. “So what do you like to talk about?” he asked.

“Music,” Jason answered. “Movies. Cartoons. We like the ones about animals. Out here, we don’t have anything but lab animals in cages. Even those are mostly just insects in little glass boxes. You might see cats and dogs in the films that go back to Earth, but we usually don’t even see mice outside the big settlements. Port Eris got a couple goats once. We rode the monorail 300 kliks to see them. By the time we got there, they had both died. There were people paying to look at the bodies.”

“I heard about that,” Harrison said. “Too bad. I had an uncle who raised goats. They’re smart. Kind, too, in their own way.” Jason nodded, but his attention was diverted. They were passing the main shuttle bay at the midsection. It looked like the cylinder of a six-gun from one of the westerns, except with the bullets on the outside. The wheel was rotating to receive a larger shuttle. He was sure he glimpsed a face through the porthole of the craft. He could have sworn it was a woman, more beautiful than he had ever seen, indeed more beautiful than he could have imagined outside of the movies on record, with deep black hair.

“Now this is going to be the tricky bit,” Harrison said, with a hint of a nervous edge to his voice. They were approaching the rear of the Janus, and Jason was beginning to feel something between awe and outright unease at its vast size. He looked to Jackson, who was if possible more uneasy. Suddenly, the other Martian spoke up.

“Remember the old movie about the big gorilla and the really tall building?” Jackson said. “I read the Janus is longer than the real building was tall.”

“Mm, not exactly,” the pilot said. “The Janus proper is 360 meters, including the payloader. The Empire State Building topped out at 380 meters. I went there once, before… Well. Before. Say, you fellows have any girls back home?”

As he spoke, the pod twisted sharply. The porthole showed empty space. “Uh, actually,” Jason said, “Jacks is already, ah- married!” There was a sudden jolt as the pod docked with the spinning tail.

The Martians sat gasping. Jason took some reassurance from the sight of the woman smoothing her garments and rubbing her head. “There!” the pilot said cheerfully. “That was hardly any trouble at all!”

Jason scrambled through the hatch unapologetically. His first thought was to get out of the rattletrap tin can of the pod. His second was to find the dark-haired goddess he had glimpsed during the trip. He had pulled himself through the hatch into welcome gravity when he froze. He was in a corridor that was unaccountably dark. There were cargo containers and instruments all around, with little rhyme or reason. Then, from the shadows, a figure seemed to materialize rather than emerge. He saw little but a silhouette and one side of a face. A half-smile curled the visage as the head turned, revealing a hideous scar.

“Welcome aboard,” said the stranger. As he spoke, he raised a pistol.

Really Good Movies! The one with TV zombies

 

 

Title: The Signal

What Year?: 2006 (copyright)/ 2008 (general US theatrical release)

Classification: Improbable Experiment

Rating: Underrated! (1/3)

 

As I write this, I’m looking at really going through with an ebook compiling my Revenant Review feature. I’m once again coming back to this feature to take care of loose ends I didn’t get to before. This time around, I have a movie that I considered very strongly for that feature but never felt satisfied calling a zombie film, even compared to admitted gray-area entries and oddities like An American Werewolf In London, The Grapes of Death and Tourist Trap. To me, it’s a definitive example of a “zombie adjacent” film, sharing many conceptual and thematic affinities with the genre without quite falling within it. Considered as a zombie movie, it is both one of the strangest and one of the best of the “modern” era. I present The Signal, a post-apocalyptic film about a TV broadcast that makes people crazy… except, there’s a good chance they think you’re one who's crazy, and how do you know they aren't right?

Our story begins with a woman watching TV with her lover, before hurrying home to her clearly suspicious husband. Meanwhile, a strange, constantly-shifting image starts appearing on TV screens and a range of other devices. Whoever watches the broadcast soon become erratic, distressed or openly violent, with a speed and degree that varies widely. As the odd apocalypse unfolds, the lady is forced to escape her apartment to get away from her husband, with the aid of a clearly unreliable survivor with enough of his marbles to improvise a gnarly mace. The ordeal leaves her wandering, zoned out to the music of a Walkman, while we double back to the building, where her husband has holed up with a mixed group hosted by a woman who still thinks they are gathered for a party. Finally, we come back to the boyfriend, apparently the only person to recover his sanity after being exposed to the signal, in a race to find the lady before her husband does!

The Signal was a 2007 independent horror film originally shown at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was written and directed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry, with each having full control over a separate segment of the film. It was reportedly made in 13 days on a total budget of $50,000. The cast included Anessa Ramsey as the lady Mya and AJ Bowen of You’re Next as her husband Lewis, with Sahr Ngaujah as Rod. The film did not receive a general release until early 2008, to mixed to positive reviews. The film’s DVD release included three shorts based on the film’s scenario, all credited to Gentry. It is available on digital platforms.

For my experiences, this stands out for me as a “forgotten” movie that I personally can remember being fully aware of when it came out. As usual, it was a while before I saw it, but I don’t think any later than 2012 and maybe as early as 2010, which is almost immediate by my standards. I have also been almost sure I originally saw it on Netflix streaming, except I also remember seeing the movie with the shorts, which I have never found except on the DVD. (I’m going to go ahead and say that the experience is just not the same without them, especially “The Return”.) Beyond that, my strongest recollection is an early suspicion that this was an unofficial adaptation of Stephen King’s Cell. That will give as good a jumping-off point as any, as this is among other things a far better use of the ideas shared with the novel than the “real” movie that we eventually got.

Moving forward, the most noteworthy thing by far about this film in the zombie genre context is the degree to which it develops a point of view for its zombie analogs. This isn’t especially unique; there have been sympathetic “character” zombies before and since in films like Dead Heat, Shatter Dead and Warm Bodies, with the definitive example still being The Crazies. What is different is that most such films ease the viewer into accepting the “good” zombie (especially of the “character” variety) as in some way different from the rest, or else reveal they were “bad” all along (see Life After Beth). Few besides Romero really accepted the full implication that the “infected” characters who remain likeable and non-threatening (for the moment…) are still a part of the bigger problem that will have to be dealt with sooner or later. Grapes of Death was one; this film is another, perhaps even more effective. Here, most of those affected by the signal still envision themselves as the heroes who will save the day or at least them, and many freely admit that they will have to overcome or control their own derangement to do it. The problem is that far more often than not, they just end up becoming the villain of someone else’s story. Then there is the husband Lewis, who by absolutely all indications is simply acting out tendencies that have been bottled up all along.

On more detailed analysis, most of the arguable and inarguable problems with the film come from its necessarily hit-or-miss experimentation. Just how much it works for any given viewer is very likely to depend on which segment seems best or worst, which in turn is definitely open to mood as well as opinion. Judging from correspondences, many/ most favor the first part, which has the raw vitality of the best zombie movie openings. Less optimally, it is the one segment that is supposed to be focused on the lady, who in fact is already eclipsed by Rod, the one major character whose status is never resolved to my own satisfaction. To me, the movie hits its peak in the middle act, which I find reminiscent of Link, of all things. What it shares with that film (yeah, the killer monkey butler one) is the feel of a mannered Victorian murder mystery gone entirely awry. Here, we have Lewis devolving as already outlined, locked in with a hostess who has apparently only killed once in actual self-defense and an unexposed bystander who just tries to go with the flow. The dynamic quickly becomes malign positive feedback, to the point that the conformist helps dispatch one of the unfortunate few to intrude, while the other two get fuzzy on who’s who and indeed who’s alive. It’s telling and unfortunate that the least is usually said about the finale. It is by my own appraisal the weakest segment, enough to bring down the rating. On the other hand, it does have its own strengths. I find it especially intriguing that it’s only here that hallucinations of the actually impossible play a major part, conspicuously Rod’s return as a reanimated head. Whether or not it was planned, it’s a crossed boundary that was best saved for last, the final breakdown of reality as well as reason.

That leaves the “one scene”, and if it was all up to me, I would go with “The Return” short, which is the main reason I didn’t just buy this movie long ago. But since even the occasional deleted scenes I have featured were at least intended to be in the movie (see Lethal Weapon and for that matter Link), I’m going to go with a bit from the middle act, tellingly by the same collaborator who went back to do the shorts. Not long after our introduction to the principle characters, someone arrives insisting he’s come for the party. After a very tense debate whether to terminate him with prejudice, the two guys let him in. What follows is a surreal and oddly grating encounter I’m surprised I didn’t remember as I did several other specific moments from this part in particular. At face value, the new arrival is the most “normal” we see at any point in the proceedings. The increasingly obvious problem is that he acts far too normal to be both rational and aware of the actual situation. Still, one can allow that he may be trying to play it cool as the middle man already is… right up to the point when he starts talking openly and crudely about his chances of finding a lady friend once the other guests arrive. It’s a mindboggling moment even for this film, and like many of the best, it never is entirely explained.

In closing, all I have to add is that, while it could still find its way into certain plans for the Revenant Review, this is one that never quite belonged there. Whether it counts as a zombie movie need not have been a problem, but it still wasn’t the kind of movie I had set out to cover. That also puts it in a problematic position within the current feature. While it has started to get a reputation as a neglected or “forgotten” film, I find this no more warranted than discounting it as entirely bad.  From what I can both remember and reconstruct, its actual status is close to that of The Thing, which it already has plenty in common with it thematically: It was reasonably well-known when it was released; it was well-regarded by many critics if not most; and it has remained accessible up to the present day. If anything, it was never polarizing enough to attract the hostile comments The Thing sometimes did, and of course, it cost too little not to have made a profit for somebody. However, it still never risen to the status of an undisputed “classic”, either of the conventional or “cult” variety, despite already approaching the edge of the 10-20 year window in which such things usually happen if at all. In just a little more time, it might well become a ”forgotten” film, especially if someone manages to botch the digital rights. For now, I will praise it as what it is and always was, an offbeat gem that’s just a little more satisfying for staying that way. With that, I can rest.

Rogues Roundup: Archer space people!

 

It's the Tuesday after a week off, and I was genuinely debating what to do for this. As it happens, I just got a new acquisition today that might turn into something bigger. I've been looking through stuff I either already have or had considered getting for a story based on the Marx space guys (see, of all things, my latest and kind-of last installment of Chelsea the social worker). One of several things that brought to mind was the Archer line of space guys, which I had exactly one of, previously featured in my sort-of research post on the space guy-to-astronaut evolution. One thing that had come to my attention was that Archer, unlike Marx, had made several female figures. So, I looked around and found a deal on a space guy and space lady. Here's the pair on the Couch Mark 2.

As you can see, the space guy is a copper-colored with an unambiguous gun, as opposed to the hair dryer/ vacuum/ massager thingy the previously featured figure was apparently arrested for carrying. I'm satisfied that he is or at least could be an original. The metallic tint matches the one I already had, and they make the same ceramic clinking when tapped or knocked over. I wasn't so sure about the lady. She has a different coloration, and the plastic definitely seems different, perhaps intermediate between the very hard plastic of the Archer space guys. On further investigation, however, I concluded that the copper guy was the one that was definitely a latter-day copy, based mainly on a prominent bit of flash I just confirmed is visible in the photo above. (My sometimes-correspondent at Space Trucks has been on this for a while.) I remain skeptical whether the other two are entirely of common origin, but I'm satisfied that they are at least of comparable vintage. Here's more pics; one more thing I'll mention is that I had a lot of trouble getting the lady to stand up on the book.

Now this is where she's just mocking me...

I am so smarter than an inanimate piece of plastic!

"Did you prepare my nuclear curling iron?"

Of course, the real question is how well these play with the Marx space guys. A major consideration is that these are all 3.75 inches, which along with the obvious style differences aren't a good match for either size of the Marx figures. (See the 4-inch evil space guys, part 1 and 2 on the 70mm space guys, and the Mexican fluorescent figures while you're at it.) Still, they're close enough to pass as human/ humanoid natives for the explorers to interact with. (Ironically, they are the right size to mix with Star Wars figures as long as they don't have to fit in a cockpit.) My pictures still don't nearly do justice to how preposterous the space lady is both in garments and endowment. You might get a better look at the air tanks in back, which someone was making a joke about; they are in fact identical to what you will see on the guys. Here's a few shots with the 4-inch evil space guys.

"I swear, I'm holding it for a friend... and I have no idea what it is."

"No worries, these things are bulletproof."

"So you have an orbital nuclear weapons platform; you still pay for your own beer."

And here's a few more experiments. First, the 70mm space guys with the large Tomy Rascal robot, ironically the most authentic 1950s-style bot I have. It's clearly descended from Robby the Robot (see also the giant W@lmart version), a great, innovative non-anthropomorphic design that I would happily use if I thought I could both afford a scaled copy and get away with using it.

And here's the tall Tomy bot and regular-sized Rascal with the Galaxy Laser Team lady. Now this looks promising scale-wise...

And how about the turtle-crab alien? I'm conflicted, because I already had an awesome alien design from an unmade stop-motion movie. (Heck, here's the only surviving clip.)

And here's the space lady with Sidekick Carl and a new version I got recently. The new guy needed a little touching up after his backside broke off. Awesome!

Ad for a little more random, here's the mid-size space guys with an amphibious troop carrier I don't believe I ever blogged about before. Hey, cheap, lazy and random was what Marx was all about.

And that covers everything I wanted to get to. Needless to say, things are brewing that could waste a lot more of my time, though I hope to bring a few other things to an end before I get a lot further. That's all for now, more to come!

The 1970s File: The one with Charlton Heston

 

 

Title: The Omega Man

What Year?: 1971

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

Having just finished my No-Good Very Bad Movies 1980s lineup, there’s really only one place to go from here, which is to cover the 1970s. Surprisingly, I really haven’t done a lot of ‘70s stuff for this feature, if only because I already dredged much of the worst of the decade in my other features, especially Space 1979. (Heck, I reviewed Cross Of Iron here, which is actually one of the best ‘70s movies I’ve covered.) Even more surprisingly, the one that convinced me to do this now is one that I hadn’t really thought about until it came up in my rental queue. I present no less than one of the most famous and/ or notorious movies of the decade, one which people would probably expect me to love or hate. Here is The Omega Man, and I’ll say right off the bat that I still don’t know what to make of it.

Our story begins with our protagonist Neville cruising the streets of a seemingly deserted city. He hurries to get back home after dark, however, where he is met by a group of strange assailants wearing Medieval-looking robes. It turns out that he is the lone uninfected survivor of a plague that has left most of the human population either dead or turned into light-sensitive mutants. He has set himself up in a second- or third-floor apartment that we will see is really more vulnerable than a ground-level dwelling would be, where he searches for a cure to the plague when not fighting with the mutants. The other side of the feud is a charismatic leader named Matthias, who has established a sort of Luddite cult dedicated to removing the vestiges of the former civilization. In the midst of their inconclusive battles, Neville discovers another survivor, a spunky non-white lady. Inevitably, romance blooms, and she introduces him to a colony who have sensibly relocated to the countryside. But the plague is still claiming their lives and those of the mutants. It’s up to Neville to save the remnants of humanity, but will the mutants allow themselves to be cured?

The Omega Man was a 1971 post-apocalyptic science film by producer Walter Seltzer and screenwriters John and Joyce Corrington. It was the second adaptation of the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (see Duel), following the 1964 film The Last Man On Earth and preceding the 2007 film of the same name, and in most respects the loosest treatment of the source material. The film was directed by Boris Sagal, a Ukrainian-born filmmaker best known for television including the Twilight Zone episode “The Silence”. The late Charlton Heston starred as the protagonist Neville, the same name as the protagonist in the novel, with Rosalind Cash as the love interest Lisa and character actor Anthony Zerbe as Matthias. The music was composed by Ron Grainer, whose work included the Dr. Who theme. The finished film was distributed by Warner Bros. It was a likely commercial success, with a box office estimated as at least $4 million. While it received mixed reviews from contemporary and later critics, it has remained popular and readily available a cult film. Seltzer went on to produce Soylent Green, also starring Heston, before retiring in 1976. Sagal died in 1981 in an on-set accident. Cash died of cancer in 1995, at age 56. Zerbe turned 86 in May 2022.

For my experiences, this is another case of a movie I grew up aware of (I have to mention the Simpsons parody) without seeing it or being interested in doing so. What stands out all the more is that I can’t recall ever making the connection to I Am Legend on my own, and I definitely had read the book at an early date. As with many of these things, I only got to it relatively recently, more or less out of curiosity. That encounter just left me vaguely baffled, not only by how they got this from the book but all the more by how it had stayed seemingly popular and certainly relevant for so long. That was where things stood until I reviewed The Last Man On Earth, and after that, I had to come back to it.

Moving forward, this movie is truly an egregious case of an Anachronistic Outlier, more specifically the peculiar variety that feels like an egregious example of a period that it’s really barely in at all. In this case, there are so many ludicrous 1970s cliches that it’s tempting to cut the Gordian Knot and allow that the cliches came from here, which is certainly plausible given the movie’s influence. This includes plenty of things that are by all means good when considered on their own merits, including a visual style that genuinely bridges the ‘60s and ‘70s, a generally groovy vibe from the supporting characters and a solid, understated performance from Heston. Unfortunately, the action sequences are among the things that don’t hold up so well. To me, they feel frenetic without being surreal and garish without being shocking. The upshot is that there was at least one extended period when I simply tuned out the film. (It's all the more disappointing considered the uncharacteristic savagery of "The Silence".) Then what’s absolutely wrong to the point of distraction is the music, on a level far beyond the cheap, synthesizer-heavy soundtracks of lesser and generally somewhat later films. It’s mostly a competent, vaguely introspective sort of smooth jazz that would have fit certain scenes, especially between Neville and Lisa, repeated at the most random and entirely inappropriate moments. What’s baffling and unacceptable is that this is very obviously the work of an accomplished composer who had in fact done good work in the sci fi genre before. (Oh, yeah, Grainer died in 1981.) Maybe he was struggling through the transition period the film was made in, but the difference between a love scene and a shootout is not something that changed over time.

Beyond these problems, what we are offered is oddly inoffensive, even factoring in that it should never have been rated anything but R. As hard as it may be to accept the liberties with the source material, it is very soundly established that Neville is in the right. He’s looking for a cure for a disease that’s killing the survivors and at least some of the mutants. Even more strikingly, he rarely if ever kills any of the mutants when they aren’t actively trying to kill him. It’s the mutants’ side that starts to feel like a letdown. Matthias and his followers aren’t drinking blood, eating people or really doing anything violent or disturbing outside of the Wile E. Coyote schemes to kill Neville. (Extra points are in order for using an actual siege engine…) It’s their quasi-religious fanaticism, not any unambiguous effect of the disease, that makes them dangerous. Even on that front, when viewed from a modern standpoint, they are no more sinister or incomprehensible than an unusually crazed band of anti-vaxxers. (I was happy how long I had gone without writing about that subject, until I did the magnetic vaccine post.) On still further consideration, the only reason there’s a conflict at all is that Neville won’t simply lie low as the other survivors have. With all those parameters in mind, the (pretty much literally) tortured metaphors of the finale are simply one more thing that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really go anywhere either.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the opening. It all starts with Neville driving through the city as the credits roll. At first, it could be a perfectly normal scene, if not for the music, which sets an appropriately somber if not quite ominous mood. Around the 30-second mark, however, we start to see bodies and debris, still fairly subdued. (All is in accord with the “tidy apocalypse” conceit I have commented on with Night of the Comet and The Quiet Earth.) What really stands out is that this is as often as not shown in distance shots where the hero is increasingly dwarfed by the empty cityscape. It’s a bold move to make when handling a star remembered as an iconic large ham. Bolder still is the evident assumption that they had cleared the field of routine traffic and pedestrians, which wouldn’t seem like a big deal if you haven’t seen it go hilariously wrong in the likes of Zombie. It’s a promising opening that really does show off the best points of what’s to come, and as such, everything a good credit roll can be.

In closing, what I’m left with is not so much explaining the rating as how it reconciles with all the very deserved heat I’ve laid down. What it really comes down to is that this is another case of a movie that didn’t belong here apart from its notoriety. Sure, you can call it a “bad” movie both in its own right and as an embodiment of its era, but just try to beat me for bragging rights on bad 1970s movies. I’ve reviewed Laser Blast, Planet Of Dinosaurs, War Of The Planets, Prey and ZPG, and there are still 1970s movies I’ve seen that I consider too bad to review. After all that, this is a movie I just can’t trash, and it will be very obvious that I tried. It may be weird, it may be dated, it may have a lot of things that don’t make the slightest bit of sense, but we’re talking about the goddam Seventies here. Sometimes, you have to look at the positive for the sake of your sanity. The bottom line here is that if this movie hadn’t gotten made, we might not have Star Wars, Alien or Dawn Of The Dead either. That alone is enough for a pass from me, and with that, I can rest.

Fiction: The Adventures of Chelsea the Social Worker, Part 16!

 It's the end of the very last day to do the weekend post, so I scraped together another installment of Chelsea. This really is the end. Almost. Needless to say, this is a tribute to Ray Harryhausen and the Marx evil space guys. (See also The Space Guy Who Doesn't Care.) As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

The same day Diane and Frank separated, Shad received an invitation to the BIG center for a special showing. Of course, Chelsea went with him, somewhat confused. They were seated in the center of the uppermost tier, with John and Tilly. “What’s this about?” Chelsea said.

“Well… remember what I was working when I was in the… special place?” Shad said. “They put it in a movie. This is the opening night.”

“But the Center almost never shows anything new,” Chelsea said. “How did…” She shook her head.

 Of course, the film was about monsters, this time in outer space. It was about an expedition to investigate strange radiation from the moons of Saturn, launched by the great nations of Russka, Edo and Los Estados Unidos. They made the trip in a rocket ship that looked like a flying banister, equipped with leathery space suits with domed glass helmets, ray guns and a slow-moving but formidable robot. The hero was a boy from the EU, the most junior member of the crew, and his obvious love interest was an attractive Russkan biologist. The captain was an older gentleman who took the boy under his wing, and intervened when he was harassed by the overzealous chief of security. At any rate, they got to their destination. On the surface of the moon, they found an enormous crater that held an Earth-like environment, filled with prehistoric beasts like mammoths, a sauropod and a giant carnivorous bird. In the center was a domed city, inhabited by tall and beautiful men and women who had come from Earth in the ancient past. The technology that sustained the city and the surrounding land was controlled by a benevolent king, his beautiful daughter and a reclusive priest. The only life outside the crater were a mysterious race called the Beetle Men and a hideous 12-limbed Guardian that held them at bay.

But of course, it turned out that all was not as it seemed. The captain and the chief of security were really under orders to find alien weapons that could be used in a war with Russka. They first sabotaged one of the 3 landing craft, killing the Edonian members of the expedition. They began to plot with the high priest, who sought their aid to seize control of the city. When the lady scientist discovered the plot, the captain sent the robot to kill her, but the hero and a resourceful Russkan ranger rescued her and escaped into a maze of tunnels under the city. There, they met the Beetle Men, really a race of genetically engineered humanoids with exoskeletons, who had once served the king who built the city. With the aid of the creatures, they defeated the forces of the priest and the captain. The hero faced the captain and the robot with only a knife, and narrowly defeated them both just before the captain could call on the mothership to destroy the city. Then the priest summoned the Guardian, which attacked the city. The princess summoned a mammoth, and there was a great battle which ended with both the creatures dead and another lander destroyed. While their crewmates escaped, the hero and the lady remained behind with the ranger, who married the princess and became the new king, and it all ended happily.

Shad was elated as they drove home. “It was all based on the works of the Masters, only it was mostly stuff they never got to make in the Mainline,” he said. “I was doing the work even before we met, I’m sure I told you about it…”

Chelsea interrupted him with a kiss. “That was wonderful,” she said. “I’m so proud of you, I’m definitely giving you therapy the moment we get home. So… do you want to do that again? Making a movie, I mean?”

Shad frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “This was my dream for so long, and I don’t regret one moment of it. But now, I have you.”

Chelsea smiled. “Well, here’s something else to think about,” she said. “Remember what I said we could do by our second anniversary?” It took him a moment, but only a moment. “Well, I had my implant turned off today. And you never did get one of your own, did you?”

Shad shook his head. “I didn’t really need one,” he said. He took a breath. “Well, it’s not like it’s going to happen right away. They say they fixed that with the latest model.”

“Wow,” Chelsea said, “if you weren’t already getting it, you would totally have struck out.”

 * * *

Another six weeks later, Chelsea met with Daisy, the Siptar girl. She proved happier than she had ever been. “So, Daisy, this is probably going to be our last meeting,” she said. “You seem to be doing well in your new housing situation, so we’re ready to close your case.”

“That’s fine,” Daisy said. “Really, I’m doing great. I’m living with my dad’s uncle now, he’s cool. And I think I have a boyfriend now. He keeps watching me, then he says he’s not, and yesterday he asked me to the movies. Say, did Spike’s Motorcycle Gang really try to whack you?”

Chelsea cleared her throat. “Well, we did have a problem with them,” she said. “That’s all over now.”

“Okay, fine, don’t talk about it,” Daisy said.

“You can still talk to me,” Chelsea said. “I’m putting my number in your file. If you ever are in trouble or just need someone to talk to, just call.”

“Sure,” Daisy said. “Say, are you knocked up yet? It seems like you’ve been trying. I can usually tell.”

“Well, it’s not like that,” Chelsea said. “You’ll understand, when you’re older.”

“Fine, don’t tell me,” Daisy said. “Later…”

That night, Chelsea returned home through the second-story entrance of their townhome unit, to find Shad waiting with a grin. “Listen,” he said, “remember what Frank was working on?”

Chelsea smiled. “You mean the recording we made that nobody else is ever going to see?” she said.

Shad’s smile grew a little more awkward. “Well, Frank and I showed the department some of the recordings,” he said. “We got approval for a project for the Therapeutics Division.”

Chelsea continued to smile, though her eyes were still critical. “And what’s the project going to be?” she said. “Make more recordings?”

“Yeah… kind of,” Shad said. “They want us to do a sort of… database. They want us to record couples during therapy, with the rotocams. They’re putting out a call for volunteers from the department to join, with their partners, of course.”

“Nice,” Chelsea said. She embraced him with a smile that extended to her eyes. “About the… database,” she said. “Do you want to join?”

“Well, they didn’t really ask me,” he said. “My job is to set the criteria for candidates. There’s a lot of things people don’t think about. There is one thing… I told them you should be our narrator. One of them anyway. They’re trying out actresses, but none of them worked. And you did record public-service messages for the Department before. Really, we’re begging you. I’m begging you.”

“Sure,” Chelsea said. “Just as long as I’m not on camera.” And she said no more for a while.

That night, Chelsea lay with Shad, very happy.  “I was just thinking… I change my mind,” she said. When he stirred, she continued, “I think I’d like to be in the project after all.”

 Shad gave her a fuzzy, still blissful look. “Okay, I’ll put in our names,” he said. “We’ll just be alternates, though. There’s, like, 100 couples just from our division. …” He paused, and then spoke more lucidly. “Hey, did you have something to tell me?”

“No,” Chelsea said. “There’s nothing you need to worry about.”

* * *

 

Three more months passed. Diane moved in with them, Frank moved in with them, and once, Frank came to the door looking for Diane. The day after, Chelsea went to Diane at the office. “He wasn’t even loud,” Chelsea said. “He just sat down by the door. Then Shad let him in and talked for a while, until Percy came and drove him home.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Diane said. “I didn’t really want the separation, you know. But as long as we were partnered, we were going to keep doing therapy, and I just need to be me for a while.”

Chelsea looked at her intently. She was sure there was something evasive in her tone. Before she could pin it down, something else came to the fore. “Wait a minute,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Why did you say `sorry’ about Frank, unless… You stuck-up prude, you did.”

“We’ve been talking again, all right?” Diane said defensively. “About the project. The fact is, we want in, just not together. Oh, dear Logos, no. Once we talked… Look, I told him it was just once, okay?... And your husband is mental. You’re mental. Shut up.” She buried her head in an orthopedic cushion.

In another month, Chelsea was making no effort to hide the bulge in her belly. She was wary when Shad met her at the door with a grin. “Hey, you know how we were going to start filming today?” he said. “Well, here’s what happened. There was this one lady who was really psyched to go. But right when they were all in the waiting room, she screamed that it was horrible and we were all perverts, then she ran out and went straight to the admin desk to file for separation from her partner. The other couples backed out, too. We would probably have had to scrub them anyway.”

“Okay,” Chelsea said. “What does that mean?”

“It means we’re not alternates anymore,” Shad said. He glanced at her abdomen and blushed. “If, you know, you’re still up for it.”

She smiled. “Come here,” she said in her most authoritative voice, “and I’ll show you…”

* * *

 

Weeks and then a month still went by. Finally, Diane and Chelsea both went to Deve’s home office. Chelsea made no effort to hide the bulge in her belly as she sat down. “Hello, Ms. Clairborne, and Ms. Feaghan-O’Keefe,” the multi-armed being said. “It’s somewhat irregular to see two people at once, but your complaints do seem to overlap. Now, for Ms. Clairborne, you have been one of a number of unpaired persons to volunteer. In the process, you have stated that you wish to remain separated from your only legal partner, Mr. Weber.”

“That’s right,” Diane said. “Frank feels the same, now. You said the Department is offering a settlement.”

“To be sure,” Deve said. “Now, a number of single applicants have, in effect, resolved the matter, by making an existing relationship a formal partnership, or accepting an assignment from the Department. At least four partnered with each other, after meeting in the course of negotiation. That has left us with a total of 23 male applicants and 32 women. Mr. Feaghan and Mr. Weber have both said that there might be 6, perhaps 8 suitable pairs among them.”

He drummed the fingers of four different hands. “What we are prepared to offer is to run the profiles of the remaining applicants through the assignment system,” he said. “The most compatible pairs will be granted provisional partnerships for the duration of the project. What you might do after that will be a matter of choice. Of course, if you accept, it is not guaranteed you will be given an assignment, particularly given the disparity in gender…”

“Sure,” Diane said. “Put me down.” As she spoke, Chelsea frowned but said nothing.

“Now, Ms. Feaghan-O’Keefe,” Deve said. “Your complaint is more… unusual. It appears you took issue with something a technician said.”

“Yeah,” Chelsea said. “The head of the finishing crew said they were going to edit my belly out, if Shad and I participated.”

“It would seem reasonable,” Deve said. “We guaranteed to all participants that any images would have identifying features removed. Mutual anonymity is of utmost importance, even among the volunteers. If images were to appear of you in your current state, it would be quite easy for others to deduce your identity.”

“I don’t care,” Chelsea said. “I’m proud of my husband. I’m proud of becoming a mother. I’m proud of doing this. That’s why I want to be seen as I am if it happens at all. And don’t act like you can afford to let me go.”

Diane spoke up then. “Why can’t we do this the other way?” she said. “Edit some of the other sessions, so we show the belly, too. I’d do it, if I’m chosen.”

Deve nodded. “It’s workable,” he said. “It might even motivate others to volunteer. Very well; you may go.”

“You’d think it would be the other way ‘round,” Diane said as they exited the building. “You know, men and women volunteering for this.

“It was, at the start,” Chelsea said. “Shad told me about it. Lots of guys volunteered because they thought it would be showing off what they think they have, or because they thought it would get them a girl. Almost always, the tests showed they weren’t right for it, and they’d probably back out anyway. The ladies are the ones who can go through with it.”

After a moment, Chelsea spoke. “Listen, do you think Frank took that deal?”

For a moment, Diane just looked confused. “Oh, no,” she said. “You know Frank, he would never have trouble finding a girl. Anyway, we never even went through compatibility testing. After seeing how you and Shad did, I didn’t want to. If you couldn’t crack .6, what were are chances?”

Even as they spoke, there was a buzz from Diane’s wrist organizer. She answered almost by reflex. “Hello? Yes… No, that can’t be… I see. Yes, but…”

Chelsea leaned in close enough to hear a stern reply from Deve. “Of course, you aren’t required to accept this or any other assignment,” he said. “But we cannot make another offer without denying the same opportunity to another volunteer. If you decline, you will be out of the project, unless, of course, you are able to find a partner on your own.”

Diane looked up at Chelsea. There were tears in her eyes. “You saw this coming, didn’t you?” she said. “I certainly should have.”

“I don’t know,” Chelsea said. “What happened?” She already knew, but she would still be surprised.

“I have a .91 match,” Diane said. “With Frank.” As she spoke, she smiled.

“What are you going to do?” Chelsea said.

“I think… I’m getting remarried,” Diane said. And then her smile became a grin.

“What if Frank says no?” Chelsea said. They both burst out laughing.

Table of Contents

Part I: The romance!

Part II: The parking violation!

Part III: Capsule hotel destruction!

Part IV: The Kelsiraptor, and Harryhausen monster bureaucrat!

Part V: The restraining order!

Part VI: The trial, part 1!

Part VII: The trial, part 2, with the King Kong Moral Contraband film!

Part VIII: The goon!

Part IX: The religion!

Part X: Kloe!!!

Part XI: The Arcostate Zoo, plus Spike's Southside Motorcycle Gang!

Part XII: Skinny McCoy!!!

Part XIII: The Harryhausen monster fight!!!

Part XIV: The Showdown!!!

Part XV: The Multiverse!

Super Movies! The one with a superhero who's not a superhero

 

 

Title: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai aka The Adventures of Bucakroo Banzai Across The 8^th Dimension

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: Ow, My Brain!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

As I write this, I’ve been on a bit of a 1980s binge. That presented the perfect occasion for a movie I have been meaning to do a ludicrously long time. It’s an entry whose very inclusion in this feature requires even more arm-waving than Heavy Metal and They Live. To me, however, it was an integral part of my comic-book pop culture experience long before I saw it. Once I thought of this feature, I knew it belonged here. I present The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, a movie I might never have seen or heard of if not for ads in old comic books.

Our story begins with a test of a new vehicle, a sort of rocket car with a special overthruster that allows it to travel through solid matter, possibly either to save on tolls or always have a place to park. The pilot proves to be the titular Buckaroo Banzai, a billionaire, inventor, brain surgeon and actual rock star (well, more like blues meets techno neo-swing), because in a 1980s movie, Mary Sue was not only an acceptable model for a character but an ideal one. After the trip, he finds an unknown if seemingly harmless organism stuck to the car, apparently the fauna of another universe. We also meet a former colleague of Mr. Banzai’s late father named Dr. Lizardo, who took part in a similar experiment only to come out raving mad. In reality, he’s either possessed or replaced by an evil overlord who has been waiting for an invention like Buckaroo’s to return to our universe. Buckaroo must keep the overthruster out of the hands of Lizardo and his concealed alien minions, with help from a nominally friendly alien faction that still isn’t above taking out Earth as collateral damage if they lose. But the greatest challenge may be a troubled young lady who just might have the key to his past- and his heart!

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai was a 1984 science fantasy film directed by W.D. Richter, based on a character, story and script developed in collaboration with novelist/ screenwriter Earl Mac Rauch. The film starred Peter Weller (see Robocop 2, Leviathan, etc.), with John Lithgow (see Santa Claus The Movie) as Dr. Lizardo and Ellen Barkin as love interest Penny Priddy. An extensive supporting cast included Jeff Goldblum (see Earth Girls Are Easy), Clancy Brown (Pet Sematary 2), and Christopher Lloyd (see… Star Trek 3?) as chief minion John Bigboote (pronunciation a running gag…). The theme music, used only in the end titles and certain excerpts within the film, was composed by Michael Boddicker, otherwise best known as a synthesizer performer. While the film had a medium to high budget of $17 million, it was not given a corresponding budget for marketing on television or “mainstream” publications. Most of its limited advertisements were instead printed in comic books, presumably on the assumption that it would have the greatest appeal to superhero fans and younger readers in general. The movie included a teaser for a sequel, which the creators of the film later downplayed as a joke. Whatever the intentions of the filmmakers, the film was unsuccessful, earning only $6.3M. It gained much greater popularity as a cult film, eventually being featured or referenced in other media such as Ready Player One. Efforts to develop a sequel or “reboot” have failed to progress, in part because of reported conflicts over rights to the film and characters.

For my experiences, as I have alluded, this was a movie that I only knew existed because I saw ads for it in old comics, probably around the early 1990s. What’s strange in hindsight was that given this context, it never crossed my mind that there was anything unusual about the film itself. I hadn’t heard of it, and wouldn’t for years to come, but it wasn’t the only time I ran across a movie I hadn’t heard of before in this fashion. Even the wonky title and goofy character names in the ad didn’t seem that odd for the ‘80s/ ‘90s, especially with Marvel comics as a frame of reference. In a final irony, I finally watched the movie and still didn’t know the full story, which from what I know now is that of a cursed production to rival Star Trek 5, with possibly even greater confusion and active hostility from studio management. My effective verdict was that it was not much more or less than good fun. That left a decade or so to second-guess myself before I got hold of it again.

Moving forward, the main thing to talk about (at least after the astonishing theme music) is the title character. It goes without saying that his range of careers and skills I completely and surely willfully preposterous. That, in turn, has invited the argument whether this qualifies as a superhero movie. Certainly, Buckaroo has counterparts in the annals of superheroes, especially Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark. (Okay, yeah, Iron Man probably kind of ripped off Batman.) On the other hand, there are signs of earlier roots which are difficult to pin down. When I was preparing for this review, a correspondent suggested Doc Savage as a source, which definitely feels in the right neighborhood. I find more immediate parallels in 1960s-‘70s animation (see, dear Logos, my Captain Scarlet post). What has fascinated me most is that Buckaroo is never pushed into the “strong, silent” and implicitly “dumb” stereotypes of masculinity. He communicates well, both professionally and personally; he can talk others through their emotional problems; and he certainly isn’t afraid to express his own feelings. This is the part that seems surreal specifically for the 1980s timeframe, except, many of the background sources I have mentioned were showing intelligent and emotionally complex male characters before, during and after the decade’s collective freakouts, a whole other rant I will get back to momentarily.

For the arguable con side, the core “problem” is that this really does feel like a first installment that wasn’t really trying to be the best. The central plot never gets far ahead of the hero’s personal trials and side antics, while the heroics needed to defeat the villains are mild as such things go, without any doubt as to the outcome. Quite a few more issues rise from the nature of the villains. The aliens are more comic-book than Buckaroo, and more goofy than sinister even by those standards. What’s all the more problematic is that neither they nor their opponents ever do much that a human couldn’t; indeed, this could have been quite a bit more interesting if they had native collaborators to do their dirty work on the lines of They Live. There’s a further missed opportunity in the apparently racial divide between the “red” and “black” factions, which hints at a backstory that might make the villains either more or less sympathetic without ever being explored. Finally and rather counterintuitively, we never have any cause to doubt that they are fundamentally rational, strange mannerisms and grandiose posturing notwithstanding. This is the logical villainy of Rupert Thorne, not the actual insanity of the Joker or Megavolt. That’s not bad by any means, but it misses the one thing that makes so many outwardly goofy villains utterly terrifying on more considered analysis.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the one that has kept my interested in the film. A little ways in, Buckaroo is performing with his band when he pauses and says, “Is somebody crying?” That actually draws an apology from someone in the audience. That’s when the spotlight turns on Penny, who at first sight is impressively a mess. At first, she is unwilling to talk, but he draws her out enough to tell her story. Buckaroo continue with semi-philosophical comments like, “Don’t be mean,” and, “Wherever you go, there you are.” He then starts the next number, while several of the bandmates continue to scrutinize her. In the midst of it, she draws a gun… and puts it to her own head. And this is where I can go on a cluster rant. I can say as a self-advocate, this is a quite good portrayal of a mental-health intervention. Of course, it shows things you really shouldn’t do, but there is far more done right that the media still don’t get. And that comes back to the movie’s baffling place in 1980s-‘90s masculinity, where anti-intellectualism and homophobia were pretty much a chicken/ egg thing. Right at ground zero, however, we have this film portraying an attractive, intelligent, heterosexual guy who can talk feelings as well as physics. The real lesson is that “goofball” genre films like this could be vastly more intelligent about gender roles, sexual orientation and mental health than the “mainstream” pop culture.

In closing, I have to say that I am finally at the ending I planned for this feature. For me, it was the perfect choice, if only because there is truly no other like it. That, in turn, is why I have chosen to designate it “unrated”. To me, this is a film I could have given any of my usual ratings, depending on the part and my own mood. The fair compromise was always to let it be its own thing, and let you the viewer draw your own conclusions. With that, I can end another chapter. “Home is where you wear your hat.”