Retrobots Revisited: Robby the Robot and friends!

 

After the struggling through half the usual number of posts last month, I was seriously debating whether to do anything at all this week. I finally decided I needed to get at least an off-week's worth in, and that brought me to a new acquisition. I have been trying to get scale figures I can work into pics for the Marx Space Guys adventure. I've had the hardest time with robots, mainly because the ones I had thar were closest to the look I wanted are very small or, in a certain case, bigger than generic Godzilla. I finally made a new acquisition that had been on my radar before for a somewhat lower price than I found the last time I had gone looking. I present Robby the Robot, action figure scale.

Even a robot can look good coming or going...

Now, the real story here is how I got fixed on Robby for this project. As previously recounted, Robby the Robot was a character and suit that first appeared in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet (I'm thinking about it...), and was reused or imitated regularly thereafter. Since I was a kid, I loved the robot and its design without knowing anything about the original film. In considering ideas for my next time-wasting project, it crossed my mind that Robby was very possibly the first non-anthropomorphic robot in cinema. Sure, he had arms and walked on legs, but even these were no more human-like than dictated by pure functionality. The centerpiece is the domed head, which doesn't offer even a hint of a face (notwithstanding occasional efforts by misguided artists to project one onto it), a feature which is distinctive and potentially unnerving. It's all the more noteworthy that despite this inhuman outer shell, the film portrayed the bot as "friendly" or at least neutral, a decision evidently honored as often as not in later appearances. It wasn't until the 1970s that cinema again tried non-threatening robots that didn't follow a human pattern, in the likes of Silent Running, Star Wars and The Black Hole. I quickly came to the further conclusion that Robby fit the look of the Marx figures far better than anything Marx itself had turned out. By further comparison, the bot actually included with the 70 mm space guy set I possessed was a flat washout as soon as I reexamined it.

With that in mind, what I first considered were the Tomy windup bots which started this misbegotten feature, which led to experiments I included in the Archer space people post. The original "Rascal" bots were close enough to Robby for army man scale, with the further benefit of clearly being designed to be just generic enough not to trigger a lawsuit. As a bonus, I had it in two different sizes, so it could work with the 70mm space guys. The one that really looked good was the "tall" Tomy bot, which I had even dubbed Robbie. At something like 2 and 3/8ths of an inch, this was tall enough to terrorize 54mm and 45mm army men like a set of gas masked troopers I had gotten as space marine analogs (see last month's dino post), and it had a good size compared to the original Rascal bots, something like 6-7 feet if they were 4 1/2 -5 feet. However, it was much too small to fit in in with even the 70mm space guys. What I needed was a bot at least 4 inches tall. I managed to find a few different things. What I soon settled on was a Diamond Select Vinimate of Robby, from the same outfit that made my Black Hole bots, described most places as 4 inches tall. This, of course, is the bot featured above. Here he is with a Rascal bot.

"You picking on my little brother?"

And why not the Truckstop Queen?

If anything, this bot was more than I bargained for. It was definitely well over 4 inches tall, possibly even 5, not much smaller than the Queen. Assuming a 1/18 scale for the largest Space Guys, that gave a height of up to 7.5 feet. On careful measurement, which I already knew would be tricky after trying it with the windup bots, I concluded he topped out at about 4 and 3/4ths inches, which still came out at over 7 feet. He would actually be even taller if his proportions were closer to the movie bot. On the other hand, the squashed shape makes him more massive, and it keeps this a few degrees away from stealing the movie esign outright. Here he is with an MPC Teenette figure I got to represent a character named Alek Kapek, listed as 90mm with the base.

Yeah, the jokes are already writing themselves.

And here he is in a battle with the protagonist/ knife guy. The guy is already a little over 4 inches, wonky pose and all. The bot is still obviously taller. For a little color, I used the Mexican day glo figures.

Now for some fun, here's the bots with some figures and props. First up, part of a new reissue Marx space accessory set!

And a few air base figures...

And a couple Evermodel ladies I got. These are quite good "civilian" figures for a very good price, but you want them unpainted, because the paintwork this company does is incredibly awful.

"You're cute, but I'm already dating the Iron Giant."

And leading the space marines. That's the Mold-A-Rama space capsule behind them. This was really a test whether I could take a pic with the gigantic base cropped out.

And here's the big guy with Moxon, the obvious villain, with another piece from the accessory set. I think for once, his "scar" is showing pretty well.

And here's something extra. This is a wind-up from Schylling that I've included in pics at least once, purchased around 2007. It was and is sold under the name Planet Robot, with artwork implying that it is a reissue or copy of a 1950s-'60s toy. I suspect it's of much more recent origin. Still, it captures the look of both Robby the Robot and vintage tin toys. I can't see working him in unless I also include some of the Marx 6 inch figures. Here he is withe Truckstop Queen and Connie.

And that's enough for me to wrap this up. This is what makes this blog fun, and I'm glad to be finally trying to turn it into an actual story. That's all for now, more to come!

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 2!

 It was time to post my actual weekend post, and I'm punting with the one thing I had ready, a second installment of the Marx Space Guys adventure!

Jason was still staring at the apparition when Jackson and the Englishwoman came up behind him. “Well?” the figure said. “Ah, of course…” He holstered the pistol he held. “Lieutenant Andy Moxon, Chief Personnel Officer. You could call me head of security, but it’s really just directing traffic. I do a bit of target practice here.”

Jason looked around uneasily. They were in a cargo area in the midst of a drive nacelle, surrounded by tanks and fuel lines. There was indeed a plate at the other end with a target pattern spread across it, marked with a spread that would have been considered poor marksmanship except that none had hit the bullseye as simple chance would have dictated. A plate to one side had a poster of Sparky the Space Squirrel, blinded and mutilated with indisputable precision. Moxon gave a laugh, or an attempt at one, that came out as a sharp, hoarse bark. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s so much shielding in here, you’d need 6 hours with a mining laser to bore a way out. What’s your name, kid?” He belatedly offered a handshake.

Jason warily took the extended hand. “I’m Jason Freeman,” he said. “This is my friend Jackson Lightower and Dr. Lana Cahill. We’re from Mars.”

“Which sector?” Moxon said, evidently curious. “Amazon? Elysium Mons? Hellas?”

“New Dakotas,” Jason said. “It’s in the Hellas basin, a ways west of Port Eris. There’s 12 families now. There’s going to be a lot more once we get a pipeline in.”

Moxon nodded. “Yes, I’m familiar with it,” he said as he shook hands with the others in turn. “I was stationed on Luna myself, when Janus sailed. Before that, I was in the UN Airborne Crisis Response Corps. They said space was going to be an easy job.”

 

“They say there’s going to be almost a hundred crew aboard,” Jason said. “It must be hard to keep track of everyone. Anyone, really…”

“Not as much as you might think,” Moxon said. “Even Janus is a pretty tight space. Sooner or later, you run into everybody even if you aren’t trying.  Actually, it happens even if you’re trying not to. Keep that in mind before you try to get a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, if that’s your thing.”

“I was wondering,” Jason said, “do you know anything about who’s on the shuttle that just docked at the main bay? I think it’s why we had to dock back there…”

“You mean the lady?” Moxon said with his evidently characteristic half-smile. “I checked myself. Don’t worry about any of them. They’re higher-ups from the Federation side. Way over your head, or mine. If you run into them, just keep your head down.” He laughed again, no differently than before.

They followed the personnel officer down corridors made from two partially-connected rings of the crew habitat and the long, thin intersecting nacelles at supported them. The three drive nacelles alternated with more gracile living modules, laid out in the form of two crosses with a shared arm between them.  Their form made Jason think of the worn-out pipes he and Jax and their brothers had played with at home, especially the junctions that were prized and sometimes fought over. He mused that they could have built a model of the ship from the same pipes, but they had always preferred building desperately stylized animals like horses and giraffes and the Brontosaurus from King Kong.

What really stood out, however, was the spacious layout, which to him was luxury bordering on extravagant waste. In a Martian dome house where a space or object with only one function was no better than space left entirely empty, the very idea of privacy had been alien, and the spacecraft he had flown were even more cramped. Here, the space was subdivided into actual cabins, arranged either lengthwise on the main corridor or turned at right angles in cross-passages that extended to either side. All were the same size, almost 3 meters long and nearly half as wide, though only the ones on the main corridor appeared configured for sole occupancy; it was of some concern that even they had standardized 1.8 meter beds. Most amazingly, sections of the forward modules were given over not just to kitchen and lavatory spaces, but to recreation areas with tables, recreational screens and even gaming cabinets.

“In our current configuration, we have 60 cabins for 96 crew,” the officer said, seeing his curiosity.  “The primary life support pods have 15 standard cabins each, with some extra space for officer quarters and mixed use up front. We’re still working out sleeping arrangements. Actually, a girlfriend wouldn’t be a bad idea at that.”

Jason fidgeted through another awkward silence. “You know,” he said, “the living quarters are big compared to what we’re used to, but the beds are a bit small…”

“I noticed,” Moxon said. “You’re a tall boy, even for a Martian.” Jason was exactly 2 meters tall. “A solo cabin could hold you, but most of the assignments are already in. We can talk to the captain about that.”

“We’re going to meet the captain?” Jason said. It was closer to an exclamation than a question.

“Oh, yes,” Moxon said. “Our captain insists on meeting every new arrival.”

 There another silence, this time merciful. It lasted until Jackson gaped at the sight of a bathroom with a toilet and an oddly shaped tub in a drive nacelle’s rear escape pod. Jason flinched in surprise when Moxon spoke up again. “Funny story about that,” he said. “A company wanted a paid sponsorship to put one of their prefab bathroom sets on the ship. Command said Hell no. Then the company agreed to pay for the whole thing and the fuel to carry it, on top of what they offered for the sponsorship. It’s not so bad, at that. We might get more use out of that tub than anything else.”

After a pause, he continued to talk. “You know, there’s stories going around, about what it’s really like on Mars,” he said. “I wouldn’t pry into such things myself, but you’re going to have people ask… especially about your women.”

He managed a shrug. “There’s not much to tell,” he said. “There’s more women than men, leastways in the surface settlements. Not by a lot, maybe 6 to 5. The men who get out this far are the kind who want to keep going. The women are the ones willing to settle down. It’s not like you’d think, though. Most of them are just scientists. Older women, I mean. A lot of them were mothers back on Earth, even widows. Not that we have a problem with them, of course, they just… aren’t like us.”

“You mean not the kind a young man like you would marry,” the officer said. “Nothing wrong with saying it. And say, what about marriages?”

“Okay,” Jax blurted, “if you’re thinking of those two girls in Port Eris, that’s a Federation settlement, and it only happened once!”

“Actually, I meant your marriage,” Moxon said. “The file showed you had a wife.”

“Well, I got married a year ago,” Jax said. “She’s preacher man Mosey’s granddaughter. We met over the wires, then her family paid for her to come down. Mosey married us. We were talking about having a baby when I was called up.”

“So she’s a Negro?” Moxon said, not as a question. The Martians just looked confused. The officer spoke like an adult instructing small children. “Mosey is Moses Williams, isn’t he? I’ve met him. He’s a Negro, like the natives in the jungle movies. His daughters married before they left Earth. So your girl is like him, isn’t she?”

“Sure,” Jax said. “What, is that something people still talk about back on Terra?”

Jason stepped in. “We call them morenos, when it comes up,” he said. “In the Union settlements about a third of us are like that. The older folks say coming here was the `forty acres and a mule’ plan. I don’t get it.”

“You wouldn’t,” the officer said, for the first time in a tone that Jason judged not unkind. “No need to worry about it, anyway. Things have changed.” He laughed again, which unsettled Jason more than before.

“You know, there’s another story,” Moxon said, bare moments later.

“No,” Jason said. “That never happened.”

“I didn’t say what it was,” the officer mused.

“You didn’t have to,” Jason said. “If it had happened, we would know.”

“You’re sure?” the other man said. “You never heard anything about it?”

“Yes,” he answered irritably. “The only people who talk about it are out of towners.”

“I don’t know,” Jax said. “I suppose there’s people who wouldn’t talk, if it happened at all. But then, why wouldn’t we have heard about it?”

“I suppose you’re right,” the officer said. “Ah, and here we are…”

They came now to a space that was configured differently from the others. Here, the partitions of two cabins had been opened up to expand the already generous common area. There was a whole kitchen with a glass sphere to dispense coffee, cabinets for foodstuffs, and a pair of gaming cabinets. A long, narrow couch ran the length of most of the other side, which Jason correctly guessed could be used as a bed. In fact, it was the first he had seen that could definitely hold him. A space at the end that in other modules had held a kitchen and lavatory instead held more amenities, including a flight simulator. Beyond that was a small dining booth that likewise could clearly convert into a bed. Jason froze at what he saw.

One side of the booth was occupied by a man with a face that radiated kindness, complete with plump cheeks and a thick beard just beginning to go to gray. It made him think of strange stories from Earth about a fat man who brought children toys. Across from him were a man who was clearly some kind of scientist and a woman, still dressed in spacer fatigues. Her head was turned, but he staired at her deep black hair. He literally lurched back as she turned her head. He immediately recognized her face as the same one that had entranced him seen from a passing porthole. He belatedly realized that there was something familiar about it. He almost fled as she smiled at him and said, “Hi, Jason. I was just asking about you…”

The 1970s File Finale: The one that's the other worst zombie movie

 

Title: Horror of the Zombies aka The Ghost Galleon

What Year?: 1974

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

As I write this, I’m continuing a long, slow buildup to a new ebook. In the process, I’ve continued to go through material I hadn’t come up with a use for before. That brought me to yet another oddity I had already considered for the present feature, which happened to fit better still with the present 1970s lineup. As I have previously recounted here and elsewhere, the 1970s was a golden age of the zombie movie. Inevitably, some were good and some were bad, with many of the best and worse coming before the genre had quite emerged as its own thing. Here is a definitive case and point, an entry that might not even be counted as a zombie movie if certain parties hadn’t labeled it as such. Here is The Ghost Galleon, aka Horror of the Zombies, and on top of everything else, it’s the first appearance on this blog for the Blind Dead, a horror franchise that makes the worst excesses of the slasher boom (see Sleepaway Camp) look remotely sane.

Our story begins with two lovely models lost at sea who wouldn’t be qualified to operate a bumper boat. Per their desperate pleas, they have wandered into a warm, foggy sea that an all-purpose scientist insists shouldn’t exist at their latitude, where the only other ship in sight is a spooky derelict sailing ship they see absolutely no problem climbing aboard. Their fate must be decided by a crew of human traffickers and a woman who was more than friends with one of the damsels at sea. A ragtag expedition makes their way to their position, where they find only the ghost ship which they see no downside to boarding, even after the scientist asserts that they are really in another dimension.  The other shoe drops when they realize the ship belongs to the Templars, who in this loose retelling are Satan-worshippers summarily blinded and burned at the stake for human sacrifice and other unpleasantness. Now, they haunt the land and sea as skeletal undead who hunt their prey without sight, and this time, the idiots are on their turf!

The Horror of the Zombies was an American title of the Spanish film  El Buque Maldito (most literally “The Damned Vessel”) by the late Amando De Ossorio. The film was the second sequel to De Ossorio’s 1971 film Tombs of the Blind Dead, following The Return of the Evil Dead (the good/ tolerable one) in 1973. The film continued the series’ pattern of not directly referencing earlier entries, and sometimes contradicting them on various points concerning the backstory, powers and weaknesses of the Templar entities. The film starred Maria Perschy and Barbara Rey as the highest-billed damsels, with the American exploitation veteran Jack Taylor as the least expendable male. Perschy made the film after reportedly suffering burns on set in 1971. The film has been released both under its listed title and as The Ghost Galleon. The former title has appeared on copies of poor quality in public-domain combo packs. De Ossorio completed a fourth and final Blind Dead film Night of the Seagulls in 1975, and reportedly continued to feature the Templars in paintings. He died in 2001 at age 82. Perschy died of cancer in 2004.

For my experiences, what really led to this review was my own debate over the actual “worst” zombie movie. As I have regularly commented, the genre is distinctive for a wealth of movies that are “bad” by any technical or professional measure yet still “work” on their own and the genre’s terms. For the purposes of this feature, the “winner” hands down was Deadgirl, specifically because of issues that went far beyond objective quality, with The House By The Cemetery and perhaps Frankenstein’s Army as dishonorable mentions. That still left plenty more to consider on more objective grounds, and I narrowed it down to about three. Two that I will name-drop were The Alien Dead and The Chilling, both semi-amateur films from the 1980s, which I have written up in other formats. The present film was the one that stood out, again because it unquestionably reaches a minimum standard of competence. Why it went wrong was something I am still trying to comprehend and express.

Moving forward, there’s so much that can be said about the franchise that it’s easy to get bogged down. The Templars are quite possibly the strangest revenants on record, and from me, that is really saying something. The obvious problem is that it is virtually impossible to try to explain or describe them in cold blood without making them sound ludicrously unthreatening. Visually, they are a good example of the “skeleton” variant of the zombie/ revenant concept, and if things ended there, they would be unobjectionable. Things get weird with their posited handicaps. They really are supposed to be blind, a premise that is rarely if ever at odds with their portrayed behavior. On top of that, they are slower than usual, often advancing with what amounts to a back-and-forth wobble. On the other hand, they are clearly intelligent and very good at surrounding or cutting off their prey, especially in confined artificial spaces. At their best moments here and elsewhere, there is a sense of cat-and-mouse sadism in their slow and steady approach, often in far greater numbers than needed. Their real advantage is that the franchise features the dumbest, most amoral and outright irritating protagonists to be encountered in the genre, who in this case are too interchangeably unlikeable and dull for the viewer to get invested even in seeing them picked off.

That brings us to what is supposed to set this film apart from its predecessors, the ghost ship. From outside, shrouded in the equally mysterious fog, it would surely be credibly eerie on a good print, calling to mind the superb gothic horror of William Hope Hodgson. A bad copy, however, just seems to amplify what is cheap and wonky while obscuring what might have been effective. It’s boosted somewhat by the talk of interdimensional collisions from the simultaneously omnicompetent and utterly useless scientist, which culminates in the unsettling disappearance of the boat. The interior spaces provide some good moments, yet it gradually become frustrating. The dark, cramped chambers suit the Templars’ tactics better than usual, but after the first two or three kills, there’s no further tension nor anything to build up to. Obviously, these people have to get off the ship or they’re going to die, and nobody familiar with this franchise is going to bet against the Templars. The one source of residual interest is the strange horned skull that seems to serve as both an idol and nerve center. It’s a fascinating design that seems truly and fully pagan rather than Christianized shorthand for the Satanic, and again, it would surely be even more unsettling on a copy of quality. It still doesn’t really do anything except blaze in ineffectual rage when defeated. All in all, it’s just too little, mostly too late.

That already leaves me at the “one scene”. I’m going with the one that was baffling enough for me to go back and try to figure it out. As sometimes happens, it really turned out to be an extended sequence. A little ways in, one of the original damsels has survived long enough to explore the vessel. In the process, we get a good feel for the ship and its pervading atmosphere. At the point that I really wanted another look at, she actually settles down to sleep in the ship, listening to what looks for all the world like a Walkman. This is a distracting rabbit trail in itself, because while more or less portable cassette players would have existed by the 1960s, the Walkman didn’t make it a major “thing” until the early 1980s. The simplest explanation is that this is a vintage portable radio. (Never mind how it’s getting a signal…) Eventually, she wakes up and turns it off, by which time it’s very clear the Templars are active and aware of her presence. What makes this very brief and random moment strange even for this franchise is that this isn’t the first character in the series to survive quite inexplicably, at least for a while. Perhaps those without fear or guile have a certain protection against the Templars, perhaps this is another artifact of their apparent humor, or perhaps they haven’t been interested enough to respond until now. Alas, in this case, they are already closing in, confirming that even those who escape their attention usually don’t do so for long.

In closing, I come as usual to the rating. In honesty, this was one time I chose the rating ahead of a fresh viewing. I will freely admit that I came close to changing my mind. What held my resolve is just how much the whole series wastes its own potential. De Ossorio started with a singularly unnerving variation of the undead, and added the creative freedom of a franchise that effectively reboots itself with every movie. What he actually delivered was one decent-to-good movie and three more that range between mediocre, disappointing and completely intolerable. The present film may not even be the worst of the lot (I’m now inclined to give that distinction to Night of the Seagulls), but it is by all means an egregious showcase of everything wrong with the series. With that, I for one am happy to leave it in the rear view mirror.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Return to the Wild!

 

It's the middle of my second week of a month about to end, and I belatedly remembered I hadn't done a dino post. Since my other plans will require a bit more time, I decided to go ahead and do it today. Because I'm in a bit of a hurry, I'm doing a quick lineup of stuff I have sighted without buying since my last "in the wild" post. To start things off, I have something a bit different, a test photo of my best Marx space marine analogs fighting prehistoric creatures (see my Space Guys demo and the kind-of final installment of Chelsea the social worker). Here's another with the MPC sabertooth, taken on my phone.

Now to start the "in the wild" lineup, here's a repeat offender, the Walmart Marx clone set. This time aroune, I made my sighting at a grocery store, where I obtained the heavily overlapping bag of dinosaurs featured on my Youtube channel. Looking at it now, I'm tempted to buy this for the actually good unspecified-looking tyrannosaurid. On the other hand, it would mean yet another copy of the Hideous Abomination (see my mystery box video and post). At least this proves the good one isn't out of production as I had feared...

And here's something else different, a mystery dino from an online listing. I looked into this a while back, and the seller gave permission to use the images. The correspondent acknowledged not knowing where it came from. Certain other photos confirmed that it was hollow with no identifying markings. I confirmed certain affinities with a 1960s-era mode by Pyro that suggested a knockoff, but it's definitely neither original nor a direct copy. By my best guesstimate, it's 1980s vintage or '90s at the latest. Without knowing more, I wasn't about to put down money or storage space.

And here's the "in the wild" lineup proper...

A spino!

Baryonyx?

Zombie Tyrannosaurus!

Maniraptor with feathers... I think it was labeled a troodontid!

And a generic bag!

A robot stego, possibly also zombified.

Floriduh-metrodon???

This is different... I'm definitely not saying better.

Has anyone gotten Carnotaurus right???

"Say AAAHHH!!!"

A friendly face!

No. Just no.

And how about something completely different? This is Robby the Robot Vinimate and an MPC Teenette lady, under consideration as models for the Space Guys adventure. Thinking of all the ways this doesn't work out, even without getting sued...

And that's enough to wrap this up. That's all for now, more to come!

The Horrible Horror Vault: The one that's a slasher sequel without the slasher.

 

Title: Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

What Year?: 1983

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

As I write this, I’m looking ahead to Halloween, which has been my busiest time as a reviewer. It has also been the time I tend to end up looking at either starting new features or gearing up the ones that haven’t got off the ground. In the meantime, I ended up with something that I might have saved for later if I was in the habit of actually planning these things. It’s a very strange and fairly infamous entry in a famous franchise I have normally kept at a respectful distance. By my usual skewed standards, that made it of more interest than the more typical and popular ones. It was all the more appropriate to kick off yet another feature, dedicated to the horror genre. I present Halloween 3, a slasher sequel that tried to retire and replace its villain… and if you’ve seen any other entry in the franchise, you can already infer how well that went.

Our story begins with a gruesome attack that leaves the intended target mortally wounded. A rough and tumble doctor who will become our hero is called in to question the victim, who gives an unhelpful warning of an upcoming catastrophe. Meanwhile, Halloween is approaching, and the airwaves are saturated with ads from a manufacturer of Halloween masks called Silver Shamrock. The doc meets up with the daughter of the departed, who proves to be the owner of a shop selling the masks. This is enough of a connection to the Silver Shamrock headquarters, where they meet the charming old Irishman in charge. Soon, however, they uncover more deaths, apparently committed with a group of creepers who begin trailing them. It becomes apparent that these are not mere human attackers, but nearly indestructible android assassins who still bleed like their biomechanoid counterparts in the Alien franchise (which at this point is still just Alien…). They trace the killers to the factory, where they discover a plot to kill the company’s customers with boobytrapped masks that can only be triggered by convincing the kids to stand in front of a TV screen during a hyped-up Halloween broadcast. It’s up to our hero to save the day- but the bad guys have gotten the girl first!

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch was a 1982 horror/ science fiction film developed as a thematic sequel in the Halloween franchise, following the 1978 film and its direct 1981 continuation Halloween 2. The film was written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, from a script and story originally developed by British sci fi/ horror veteran Nigel Kneale. John Carpenter (see Dark Star, The Thing, etc, etc) returned as producer, reportedly on the condition that the film would not feature Michael Myers, who was (spoiler) shown killed by Laurie Stroud at the end of the second film. Carpenter also received credit along with Alan Howarth for the film’s soundtrack. The new film starred Tom Atkins (see Night of the Creeps, Lethal Weapon, Creepshow, etc) as Dr. Challis and the late Daniel O’Herlihy (The Last Starfighter, Robocop 2) as the villain Cochran, with Stacey Nelkin as the love interest Ellie. Dick Warlock, the second of two actors to portray Michael Myers in the earlier films, appeared as one of the androids. The film was commercially successful, earning $14.4 million against a $2.5M budget. However, it was poorly received by critics and fans, and was considered a box office disappointment compared to the earlier films. The next franchise entry, The Return of Michael Myers, was released in 1988. A franchise reboot was released in 2018.

For my experiences, what really stands out in hindsight is that this was the only Halloween film I was really aware of when I was growing up. Just from the summary, it certainly seemed odd, but of course, for all I knew, it could have been “normal” for the franchise. By the early 2000s, I knew the basics of the franchise without taking any interest in it, I’m sure mainly because of my antipathy to slashers. I finally saw the first movie, either right before or actually after watching the reboot in the theater. My only other foray was to watch the original sequel, which I would have to give another look to comment on. The one thing I drew from all of this is that the first two movies were pretty much two halves of the same story. I was unsurprised to find ample evidence that Carpenter was trying to bail on the whole thing after Halloween 2. I still gave little if any thought to a review, until I trashed Sleepaway Camp just a little before the present review. I decided it was time for a rematch, so I decided to try this film in particular and see if it suited my purposes. I came in with modest optimism, and came out simply baffled.

Moving forward, already a lot further in than usual, what settled me on doing this review at all was the music. The centerpiece on this front is the absolutely maddening Silver Shamrock jingle, all the worse for actually being pretty catchy. If you can look past that, this is a true showcase of Carpenter’s perennially underrated talents. The music calls all the way back to Dark Star and ahead to They Live. Most intriguingly, the score has a lot in common with that of The Thing, which would have come out just a few months earlier. This strongly suggests either that Carpenter contributed more to that now-definitive film than he has gotten credit for, or that he had already learned something from working with the great Ennio Morricone. By the finale, however, it has long since become clear that Carpenter is still learning the ropes here, as numerous cues clearly based on The Thing equally clearly fall short of it. What was a masterpiece of minimalism from Morricone just sounds more cliched than it is here, which admittedly hasn’t been helped by Carpenter’s own influence on often inferior filmmakers.

That brings us to the story and characters, and here is where things really start to go downhill. O’Herlihy is the real star here, charming and menacing by turns. There’s a hypnotic dignity as he gives his Celtic account of the “real” meaning of Halloween. To more refined sensibilities then or now, it’s just a version of the blood libel, yet there is a pre-Christian authenticity that is not easily discounted, surely helped by the actor’s Irish heritage. By comparison, Atkins is just workmanlike, feeling so much like his character in Night of the Creeps that I honestly wrote parts of this review on the assumption that he’s supposed to be a cop. A non-trivial problem is that there’s really no good reason for him to be the one rooting out the plot if he’s not law enforcement. The real weak link is the love interest, whose lack of attraction or any interesting traits highlights the fact that there was no reason for the relationship to be anything but platonic. The belated high points come with the scenes of the TV studio. It’s a given that none of it makes sense or would work even by the movie’s half-logic (how many kids are really going to stay up till 9 on Halloween just to stare at a TV screen?), but there is a pointed allegory in play that seems to mock the moral guardians who took offense at Carpenter and his peers. (I can’t avoid mentioning Looker, which tried to cover similar ground a lot less effectively.) It all ends with a callback to The Thing that really works as Atkins continues to try to halt the scheme, with a desperation that easily overrides any common-sense analysis.

After all that, I still have to say a little about the androids. These are easily among the most sinister on record. It’s all the more disconcerting to see them really bleed a range of unwholesome fluids. In the process, it’s established that they can be killed or disabled, but they certainly take a lot of damage. Considered in cold blood, it’s really all quite silly, yet in the best early ‘80s horror tradition, it genuinely works in context. If there’s a “problem”, it is that we never get a sense of their motivations and mental life, which is made particularly acute for one that replaces a major character. For the most part, they seem to follow orders without complaint or further reflection, which makes them far more sinister than they would be if they were the kind of AI that might question, defy or outright kill their creator. Still, there’s not much here that hasn’t been done as well or better before, with an odd familiarity that belies the movie’s ambitions.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s brief and odd even here. A little ways in, the doctor is in a bar where a cartoon is playing on the TV. He asks the doctor to change the channel, and suddenly we do see Michael himself, in an ad for what’s introduced as “John Carpenter’s immortal classic” Halloween! Of course, it’s a huge “meta” moment that begs for overanalysis. Does this mean the present film is supposed to take place in “our” world where the previous films did not? Is this an alternate universe where the franchise is based on real events? If so, was Michael unkillable because he was really an android? What intrigues me is what it says about Carpenter’s career and creative trajectory. There was definitely an ego factor that emerged early on, whether or not Carpenter himself wanted or encouraged it, and this casual reference definitely reflects that, with talk that was awfully strong only four years after the first film. (So, is this already the future???) In my opinion, however, there is an element of irony and perhaps self-deprecation here. The core fact is that Carpenter has had many points where he could have rested on his laurels, either by retiring or settling into rehashes of his earlier work. Instead, virtually every one of his films has been followed by another that has been quite different, for better or worse. I absolutely take this passing in-joke as an early sign that this was what he wanted all along. He deserves even more credit for Halloween now than he did then, but he deserves all the more credit for moving beyond it.

In closing, I hope finally to be brief. If it seems like my rating is at odds with my own comments, it’s because my own feelings are conflicted. Even sight unseen, I have long wished that this film had had greater success, if only because it showed there was another way to do a franchise than conveniently resurrecting the villain/ monster as often as needed. I will further allow that it probably would have failed in that regardless of its actual quality; the 1980s slasher trend had already been set in its course by other minds. But the fact remains that it did fail from numerous flaws all its own. It might not be worse than other slasher sequels or even others in its franchise. For a film that set out to carve a whole new course for a franchise and a genre, however, it could and should have been better. With that, I for one am calling it a night.

Mystery Monday: The Marx Moonship!

 

It's time for my 2nd planned week of posts this month, and it happens I have something backlogged. As an extra twist, I had already prepared both pics for a blog post and a video on the matter more than a week ago. Rather than do an immediate post, I included a photo with my Space Guys adventure demo. I used the intervening time debating what to do, and of course decided nothing until it was almost too late. What I settled on was to put up the video first, and use this post to follow up with a deeper dive. This was indeed a long, strange trip worthy of a feature that started with a figure I needed 30 years to identify. To kick things off, here are pics of my unassembled Marx Moonship.

Now for the details, for this adventure, I actually started off with the bare outline of the facts, which is more than I have often had to work with. This is a reissue of the Moonship, one of a ludicrous number of accessories originally included with Marx's Operation Moon Base playset in 1962. I had already featured the two other most noteworthy specimens in a previous post outside this feature, the space station and the Flash Gordon-y tower thingy. Unlike those venerable fixtures, however, the Moonship did not have an afterlife in the later Marx playsets. As further recounted by my lapsed correspondent Steve Nyland/ Space Trucks, the original Moonship has long since sunk out of sight except in astronomically expensive complete examples of the Moon Base playset. 

That brings us to the present specimen. It has been offered online for a while now. What is obvious is that the craft is black instead of blue, and the mold for the upper half was substantially modified, turning what looked like tail fins on the original (I have thought of them as retractable) into a more filled-out and decidedly redundant set of wings. It is also apparent that this was done to make the craft look more like a stealth bomber, which was in fact a part of the tailless/ delta wing lineage that presumably inspired the original toy.  That puts the origin of these things around the 1980s, if not later. The modified design is also missing two openings that appear to have been part of a firing mechanism for a pair of rockets/ missiles, which fits the controversies over such things in the early '80s timeframe. The most curious part is that these are coming out unassembled in sealed bags, with the included missiles still attached to the frame. This means either that someone is making these things from recovered molds, or (as I have opined to be far more likely) they have just been sitting around for an indefinite amount of time. The bottom line is that even the person or persons selling them probably don't really know. Here are a few pics of the unassembled components with the Truckstop Queen, who hasn't been coming out much lately; she's still definitely bigger than the thing she's being a reference model for, but it's much closer than usual.

And here's the absolutely awful missiles, which fall right out without the springs.

Another detail here is that the nose piece (actually half of one since it's only in the upper part) is definitely an addition. My initial assumption was that this was a replacement for a lost piece, but when I looked into it, I confirmed that original specimens are simply open at the front, reportedly so kids could aim through a corresponding hole at the back. I very seriously considered knocking the added piece right out, but I quickly concluded it's not going anywhere without using a knife. I will also mention, there is a horrendous amount of flash on the modified leading edge of the wings. After accidentally putting a notch in one trying to remove it (after all the photos were taken), I took a file to them. It helped, but they're still rough. Here's some shots of the assembled plane, usually with the nose visible. You may notice a couple ships to one side that will figure below.

Wow, you can really see that flash...

Now for the actually interesting question, just how did Marx get the idea for this conceptually very advanced design? It really does anticipate the space shuttle, and in fact is in some ways more  sophisticated. With my usual encyclopedic random knowledge and further research, it wasn't hard to find precursors. The bare idea of a triangular tailless aircraft was put to use in the Vulcan bomber among others. The further idea of turning such a design into a returnable air-to-space craft can be traced at least back to the semi-infamous Silbervogel Nazi drawing-board superweapon (see Jalopnik, if anything), which I turned into the Tottenkarte for the Exotroopers adventures. (I just might have to reuse my joke scenarios from that anti-series for the Space Guys adventure to make sense.) Of course, there were intermediate outgroups in this conceptual lineage, most intriguingly the Convair shuttlecraft concept from about the same time the toy came out. The picture that emerges is a toy that did incorporate some very good ideas, without coming out too far ahead of its own time.

Then there's one last thing. Ever since I discovered its existence, I have been absolutely certain that this was the basis for the arrowhead ship in my immortal arcade prize collection, which I had already traced to the Diener Space Raiders line. Here's a pic to illustrate my case. The funny thing is, in many ways, the prize ship fits what I've been picturing better than the original.

And this is where I wrap this up. This really has been fun, despite the frustrating Wall of Nothing on many of my questions. As I said in the video, If you like Marx space stuff, get this one while you can. That's all for now, more to come!

The 1970s File: The one you can't watch

 

 

Title: Him

What Year?: 1974

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: Guinnocent!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

As I write this, I’m way behind on a range of things, including not starting my scheduled weekend review until after 9 PM on Sunday. After these hilarious setbacks, I decided it was time to do something new. It’s all part of a project I had pondered long before I created this blog, which previously figured here way back with (dear Logos) Ingagi. I speak of my “unmovie” file, the movies that were censored, suppressed, or flat-out lost to the void. I still haven’t decided just what I’m doing with this vast body of material, but with a 1970s lineup already in play, I decided it was time to cover the most infamous example of all. Here is Him, the original actual gay Jesus movie, and the real mystery is why there are people looking for it.

Our story begins, by the most reliable reconstructions, with a man having moderately indecent fun with a cat. We then transition to our protagonist, a young man of apparently Catholic upbringing and affiliation who is obsessed with Jesus. This is not just the usual religious fervor, but a fully carnal obsession. He will wander his way through modern life while continuing to either fight or nourish his fantasies of very worldly relations with the Son of God. And that is really about all we know, and did we need to know anything else?

Him was a 1974 LGBT erotic film by the artist Gustav Von Will, who starred as Jesus, and a director identified as Ed D. Louie. The film is believed to have been produced by and for the 55^th Street Playhouse, an independent theater that had been associated with Andy Warhol. It is believed to have shown for several months at the Playhouse, and was later shown at theaters as far away as San Francisco. The film received mixed to favorable reviews from underground magazines including Screw. The film was featured in the 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards by Michael and Harry Medved, as part of a critical survey of offensive and “un-erotic” trends in adult films. If the Medveds’ account was based on first-hand knowledge, as implied if not explicitly affirmed, they may have been the last to view or locate a print of the film, which disappeared from all subsequent records. By the 2000s, skeptics including critics of Michael Medved questioned or denied whether the film had existed, based in part on the Medveds’ admission to have included a fictional film in the book. Contemporary records, including advertisements and reviews, repeatedly confirmed the authenticity of the film, while the admitted fabrication was confirmed to be unrelated. In 2010, a partner of Von Will released a photo said to be from the film. Von Will died of complications from HIV/ AIDS in 1991.

For my experiences, I suppose this one is a major reason I got interested in “lost” films. I read about it in the Medveds’ book, and remained intrigued by their challenge to identify the film they made up without really seriously considering that this could be the one. I was taken rather off-guard when I found the trail of controversy around the film and its existence, but I rode the thread all the way down. (See the troopers at Snopes, Lost Media Wiki and To Obscurity And Beyond for the real legwork.) Later, I even made it a running gag here in the adventures of Percy the robot cop. (I was further inspired to come up with the worst adult film in the multiverse...) In the midst of it all, I have come back to the question, why should we really care about this film? I will be the first to admit, I wouldn’t watch this movie if they did find it. But even I must admit a certain Quixotic draw. Someone cared enough to make this damn thing, even if it was for the patrons of an adult theater. If the thread of memory and evidence is thin enough for the newcomers to deny it even existed, I certainly care enough to see them proven wrong (or right!).

The counterpoint in all this is something I have ranted all along (see my video on my worst movie list): Among the actual “worst” films ever made, the true bottom of the barrel are the ones that are just plain gone, especially from the silent era through the 1930s. What we can know about this film gives an unfortunately plausible picture of what they would really have been like. In a further irony, it bridges the most predicable categories of offenders: Amateur erotica, political propaganda and religious media, already as paradoxically interdependent as the heads of a hydra fighting themselves. What’s further apparent is that the survival prospects of such things are poor even without the frequent role of official persecution. Indeed, the single most curious footnote in this strange saga is that the only public outcry plausibly connected with it came long, long after the film had gone to its fate. For the 1970s, the idea of portraying Jesus as gay was seemingly either under the radar or over it, if only because run-of-the-mill Puritans were still able to ignore the LGBT community in day-to-day operations.

It’s at this point when one might genuinely wish not for the film, which surely speaks for itself even unseen, but for some account of what those responsible really wanted. What makes it mindboggling enough to remember is that it clearly aimed for something higher than immediate gratification. (Well, in addition to that…) Was the aim to be as extreme, and on a certain level silly, as they could be for an already “fringe” audience? Were they hoping to shock or outrage any religious conservatives who wandered in, as the Medveds  eventually did? Did they actually see this is a symbolic reconciliation of gay rights with Christianity? Or was the extent of their ambitions to shake a fist at mainstream morality, and perhaps provoke its defenders into acknowledging that other paths existed? Even here, the answers one could imagine are all too likely to be more interesting than the reality. Such is the allure of lost media, that even an entry as inauspicious as this invites one to find something more than what it in all likelihood was.

With that, I’m wrapping this up. (A “one scene” is obviously out.) It’s just one trail among many in the world of lost films. For now, I deem it enough to represent the whole. My final verdict is, we can at least be glad to live in a society where people who want to make a 1970s gay-Jesus porno were free to do it. I will even go so far as to say that what they did was almost certainly more worthy of survival than the likes of Ingagi. That brings me to one last unwarranted philosophical moment courtesy of Gandalf: “Many that die deserve death; can you give it to them?” This is why we need media preservation, because even if what is preserved is pure coprolite, it will make the good stand out all the more. So go watch something good, or maybe create something you would rather destroy than show to anyone but you. If you want to be you, be you!