The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Walmart Megafauna!

When I thought of this feature, it was always my intention to keep things open to a range of prehistoric creatures. (Otherwise, I couldn't have gotten near the patchisaurs.) This partly reflects my own trajectory as a paleontology student. I naturally love dinosaurs as a kid, but by the time I reached high school and college, I recognized there was more to paleo than dinos. As time went on, I started acquiring favorites that lived well before and after the dinosaurs. I also learned that if I had a shot at a line of toys/ collectibles that included both dinos and other creatures, the non-dinos were the ones to get, simply because they were a lot less likely to turn up again. I had one such opportunity about a year ago when something new turned up on the Walmart shelves. Here's some pics of what I picked up.

The name of this line is Primal Clash, released direct to Walmart by Lanard Toys, who also made the Alien Queen. It consisted of a total of six beasts, several of which had previously been released under the name Jurassic Clash before the manufacturer presumably went with something less lawsuity.  Surprisingly, only two of the creatures were dinos, while a full three were Pleistocene creatures. I first picked up the bird, called Titanis, and then ordered the other (simply called Mammoth) online. For posterity, I took a few unboxing pics of the Mammoth.

For the price, the beasts come with a fair amount of detail, admittedly somewhat fanciful. This shows most in the bird, which is unaccountably scaly in the thighs. The mammoth's coloration is somewhat improbable but interesting. The mask does come off relatively easily, revealing some particularly nice patterning on the face. Here's a closeup.

The big gimmick with the beasts is obviously that they come with riders and semi-futuristic weapons, modeled or directly copied from Lanard's The Corps and related lines. They turned out to be slightly larger than vintage Star Wars and GI Joe figures. Each came with a gun that fits in a hole on the back (the same as the packs on GI Joes) and a pistol that fits in a semi-functional holster sculpted at the hip. The guy that came with the bird looked like an old friend from my misbegotten "Naughtenny Moore" stories, and I thought of setting him up with the Truckstop Queen, but the scale differences were a bit much. Here they are with the Queen and Bossk for reference.

Forced perspective can only go so far.

As one more extra, here's the backstory printed on the back of the box. Back in the 1980s, this would have been something like "Guys on dinosaurs fight!" This reads like a synopsis of a Japanese monster movie.

"It's the year 25XX." (Why does a date 500 years ahead need to be abridged?) "Super advanced technology let humanity bring back and live among dinosaurs and megafauna. With dino-control technology, machines, beasts and humans working together were able to bring pollution down to almost zero" (Hey, 1980s kids would have cared.) "Oxygen levels raised flora and fauna grew in size and finally a peaceful and self-sustained world was achieved, all thanks to the supercomputer known as the EVOLUTION, the very apex of human technological achievements, until the singularity, also known as the CYBERGEDDON happened." (So Teminator meets Jurassic World? And I'm only about halfway through here.)

"The sentient EVOLUTION decimated humanity and enslaved all remaining living creatures, tepeathically controlling dinosaurs and humans alike creating THE FINAL IMPACT, a military unit specialized in hunting down humans and feral dinosaurs for TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION!!" (A computer has telepathy? And was world domination ever not total? And why exactly 2 exclamation points??) "A small group of RAIDERS escaped, living on the run in a new world between feral prehistoric wilderness and technological doom!" (Dear Logos, make it stop! Wait, I'm almost done...) "But the surviving humans are strong and their willpower is iron." (What, is the evil supercomputer trying to sell them stuff?) "Alongside their tamed dinosaur companions and incredible technology they will retaliate and launch THE ULTIMATE FINAL CLASH!" (Or they'll stay in the boxes that adult collectors snapped up and tried to scalp online.)

That's enough for today, more to come!

Space 1979: The one where brain slugs crash a frat party

Title: Night of the Creeps

What Year?: 1986

Classification: Parody/ Mashup

Rating: Pretty Good! (5/5)

 

In planning this feature, my hardest decisions have been whether to cover horror, especially zombie movies. As I have recounted elsewhere, I got into zombies back when most of what was out there was movies from the 1970s and 1980s, exactly the period I’m trying to cover here. (I also wrote my novel Walking Dead before the show came out.) For the most part, however, these are not the kind of movies I want to cover here. At the same time, there are definitely a few I have  wanted to make an exception for, particularly those with a science fiction element. For this review, I’m finally getting to one of the very best, the romp known as Night of the Creeps.

Our story starts as usual in space, with a short sequence of an alien with milk-white eyes running through the corridors of a spacecraft with a strange canister. The canister is launched into space, to land on 1950s Earth, where it intersects with the stories of a young woman, her date, her police officer ex and an axe murderer. That episode is promptly followed with a jump to 1986. We meet two nerds who break into a lab on campus as part of a frat initiation, under instructions from a jock who freely tells his soon-to-be-ex girlfriend that he won’t admit them even if they succeed. They find a freezer with a body that proves not quite as dead as it appears. In fact, it’s one of the gentlemen from the 1950s, infected by alien slugs that can control the bodies of the living and the dead. While the slugs multiply, a romance is sparked between the jock’s ex and one of the nerds, and we also meet a hardboiled detective who was the other man in the ill-fated trio shown at the beginning. When a bus crash leaves many of the frat boys dead or maimed, the protagonists and a swarm of the reanimated gather for a final siege at a sorority house.

Night of the Creeps was the first feature by director Fred Dekker, whose subsequent films would include Monster Squad released the following year. The cast included Jason Lively of TV’s original 21 Jump Street as the lead/ nerd Chris, Steve Marshall as his crippled companion JC, Tom Atkins of The Fog and Lethal Weapon as the detective, and veteran cameo actor Dick Miller as the custodian of a police arsenal. Two endings were filmed, of which I consider the theatrical ending superior. The movie had an estimated budget of $5 million, and made less than $600,000 at the US box office.

For zombie movie connoisseurs, Night of the Creeps stands out mainly for its high budget, production values and strong cast. By comparison, Reanimator was made for $900,000, while the original Dawn of the Dead cost $500,000 to make. Atkins stomps the scenery as the detective and clearly has a blast doing it. His one-liners grow increasingly nonsensical yet no less entertaining, while his big reveal about the fate of his old flame has genuine depth. By comparison, the rest of the cast mostly register as uniformly competent (which is impressive enough). Jill Whitlow gives a decent turn as a damsel who turns Ellen Ripley in the final scene (the same year Aliens came out!), while Dick Miller supplies his usual gritty charm in a tense scene that doesn’t quite provide a resolution. My pick for the best performance is Marshall. He conveys genuine vulnerability without overplaying the role as tragic victim. His performance culminates in perhaps the most surreal moment of the movie, as he narrates his own infection and death on tape.

The humorous yet subtly disturbing tone of the movie comes through with the undead and the slugs that create them. A number of gags come from unobservant characters casually encountering the zombies, most memorably a bloody and unclothed corpse that gets an inane pleasantry from a police officer as they pass each other. On a deeper level, these undead really are unnervingly good at blending in; their only equals in this regard are the thoroughly domestic revenants of Life After Beth and the cosmic repo men of Sole Survivor (reviewed on my old blog). Without the usual hunger for flesh, they mostly seem to wander around until the incubating parasites are ready to emerge. As a bonus, we also see several infected animals, including a very creepy dog that figures prominently in the theatrically released ending.

 The slugs themselves have always fascinated me as much as the zombies. I commented in the Critters review that even very good practical-effects creatures often struggle to convey speed and agility. These are at the opposite extreme, almost comically low-tech in appearance but zippy as roaches on skates.  When they emerge, they either launch themselves from a host’s mouth or erupt en masse. In the finale, we see the remaining slugs gather in a swarm that orients  toward any prey like iron filings toward a magnet. I have never been satisfied exactly how these creatures were created. Some shots (including ones removed from the theatrical release) look like stop-motion, others are clearly practical effects. Normally, I would long since have looked up the details, but this is one time I am more satisfied with not knowing all the details.

This brings us to the “one scene”, and I had a harder time than usual. Still, there was one that stood out all along, and it is again supplied by Marshall. Around the midpoint, JC is in the bathroom in a building where several of the infected have been wandering. An establishing shot finds him casually examining graffiti on the walls of the stall. The camera then gives us the character’s viewpoint as he opens the door, revealing a collapsed victim with his head split open. There are glimpses of several slugs darting around before JC shuts the door. He then takes out a book of matches and sets the whole thing alight with one of the few matches remaining. As soon as he sets the book on the tiled floor, a slug instantly strikes. The flame incinerates the creature but burns itself out. JC must crawl for safety without the braces he uses to walk. The scene ends with a floor-level shot of a slug zipping straight for his mouth.

Like Critters, Night of the Creeps marked both a high point and the end of an era for its genre, except that it did not get the benefit of a profitable release or sequels. It came out at the tail end of a wave of relatively big-budget zombie movies (notably Reanimator and Return of the Living Dead), and there can be little doubt that its failure contributed to the decline of the genre thereafter. Fortunately, it did not fall through the cracks as many vintage zombie movies have. Through the more recent booms and busts of public interest, this movie has remained reasonably easy to find, and even influenced “new wave” zombie movies like Slither. If you haven’t seen it, it won’t be any trouble to obtain. If you have, it’s well worth watching again. In that respect, at least, it’s fully comparable to other movies I set out to celebrate with this feature, and that was reason enough to work it in.

For links, the image credit goes to JoeBlo. I recommend the Brandon's Cult Movies review; I am literally in awe of the channel's creator. As usual, see the Introduction for details of the ratings scale, classification system and inspiration of the feature.

Crypto Corner: The boy from nowhere, or anywhere

I decided it was time again for something new on this blog, and this time it’s something I wanted to do from the beginning. I have a life-long interest in cryptozoology and other Forteana that has frequently featured in my own writing, but I’ve never gotten around to writing down many of my ideas on the subject. I decided to start with one of the most famous mysteries of all, the case of Kaspar Hauser.

This is a story that has been told often enough not to require much retelling. In 1828, a disheveled young man appeared in the town of Nuremberg. He appeared disoriented, ignorant of his surroundings, and barely able to speak. He also showed signs of abuse or imprisonment, including bleeding feet and abnormal development of the knees that many attributed to limited exercise. The only clue to his origins was a pair of clearly forged letters that claimed he was the son of a cavalry officer. As time went on, he showed a growing command of writing and speech, enough that he was able to tell an extraordinary story. Prior to his appearance, he had been confined in a cramped and squalid room without any direct human contact except for bread and water left at the door and rudimentary lessons in writing. His sudden appearance led to speculation that he was an illegitimate child of a nobleman. Those who were in close contact with him quickly became far more concerned with his mental health. He often behaved in bizarre ways, which many attributed to the trauma and isolation of his upbringing. He also showed a less benign tendency toward narcissism that was made worse by his fame. These problems culminated in a series of injuries that he claimed were inflicted by one or several attackers, the last of which ended in his death at the end of 1833.

This is a tale were the retellings were far more instructive than any of the events. In the 19^th century,  most of those interested in his case were fixated on a search for royal scandal, while in the 20^th century, anomalists sought to place it in the realm of the paranormal. In hindsight, both angles were wildly misguided and ultimately narrowminded. It’s especially easy to see that the notion that an unidentified waif might be heir to a throne was strictly a romantic conceit, one which received notably little encouragement from Kaspar himself. The definitive rebuttal to that diversion was offered by Colin Wilson, who observed, “Kaspar’s strange and inhumane treatment sounds more typical of ignorant peasants than guilt-stricken aristocrats… The theory that (he) was the stepchild of some wicked Grand Duke seems on the whole less likely than that he was the illegitimate child of some respectable farmer’s daughter terrified that her secret would become local gossip.”

Unfortunately, even researchers as normally critical as  Wilson missed (or declined to address) what now seems the “obvious” solution: Kaspar’s account of his imprisonment was itself an invention, and his motive was always to win sympathy and support from the public and especially the nobility. This is the theme that I quickly discovered in more recent scholarship, and unfortunately, it presents the most direct answer to any number of questions and doubts already raised. The letters he carried were quickly discredited by contemporary investigators, while many then and since openly held that his stories of being attacked were simply self-inflicted injuries. There were also many accounts of former benefactors denouncing him as unstable if not dishonest. Why not allow that the bizarre story of his origin was his own fabrication?

It is at this point that skepticism, long absent entirely, starts to overreach. There is a sensible outline for why his story could not be true: In the absence of proper diet, exercise, normal education or sunlight, he would easily have ended up far more debilitated than he was, if he survived at all. However, there was certainly independent evidence that he was neglected and abused, including the abnormality of his knees and more ominous scars from injuries. There were also plenty of anecdotal accounts of strange speech and behavior consistent with social isolation and sensory deprivation. Finally, the very precise descriptions of the room in which he was confined remain the most lucid and convincing element of his tale. Even granting that it is impossible that he could have spent his whole life in such a space, it is easier to allow that it existed and was sometimes used as he described than to believe that nothing untoward happened at all. Given his subsequent behavior, it must be further acknowledged that his caretakers could easily have found confinement necessary for his own and others’ safety.

With this in mind, the truly unbelievable element of Kaspar’s story is that he knew nothing about his family or where he had been imprisoned. However, we can now work in the realm of rational calculation. If Kaspar’s family and guardians treated him a tenth as badly as he would claim, he had every reason to fear being returned to his original home (unfortunately a common outcome for “real” victims of abuse). Another immediate possibility was that testimony about his real past would have resulted in him being locked up as a self-destructive lunatic, which in hindsight would have been the ideal outcome of his case. He may have further obscured his place of origin simply by walking further than strictly necessary, which could at least partly account for the extent of his apparent injuries. Once he reached relative safety, it would not have taken long to recognize that it was easier to get sympathy and attention as long as his past remained a mystery. Thus, what began as a semi-instinctive survival strategy could easily have evolved into more calculated exploitation, and from there to the deterioration that ended in his own self-destruction.

The real lesson of Kaspar Hauser’s case is just how dangerous the appeal of mystery can be. It’s easy to laugh at the 19^th-century rumor mongers who wanted to believe a wandering lunatic was a nobleman fallen from grace, but the 20^th-century efforts to find even a hint of the paranormal in his case were even more pitiful. The real horror is that if Hauser had not told his tale well enough to capture the imagination of his upper-class benefactors, he would most likely have either been locked away or allowed to wander off with no more notice than when he arrived, which beyond doubt has been the fate of any number of persons no less worthy of sympathy. And if this seems short (certainly shorter than others I have in mind), it’s because I don’t feel a need to add any more. More to follow, hopefully a happier tale.

For sources and links, Wilson's essay on Hauser can be found in The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries, available in ebook form. Other articles I recommend as insightful are available from LiveScience and Factinate.

Space 1979: The one where the monster hacks the computer

Title: Forbidden World aka Mutant

What Year?: 1982

Classification: Knockoff/ Evil Twin

Rating: What the Hell??? (3?5)

 

This feature has been going for a while now, so I recently decided to look back at a list I compiled when I first though of this. I determined that I had reviewed 11 of the movies on my original list, while a total of 8 reviews were of movies I hadn’t originally included. The big difference was that I hadn’t gotten to a number of Alien knockoffs I had originally considered, including a few I still haven’t made up my mind about. For review number 20, I am getting back to one that’s been in from the beginning, a specimen called Forbidden World.

Our story begins with a man floating in space, haunted by visions of a hideous monster (and for some reason women in the shower). It is unclear whether these are meant to be flashbacks or premonitions, but after a completely gratuitous space battle, we see him arrive at a research lab on an uninhabited planet, accompanied by a bot that looks like an offbrand stormtrooper. The staff reveal the results of their work, a genetically engineered organism initially encased in a suspended cocoon. While the crew are occupied with various hijinks, the creature gets loose and kills off a few of the staff. While the surviving crew hunt the monster, the protagonist learns darker details of the lab’s research and the demise of another of the staff. As the final act approaches, the creature makes itself at home in the lab. The two female crew members hatch a plan to attempt to communicate with the creature (hashed out while they are both in the shower), and a dying senior researcher comes up with a more desperate scheme to fight the monster with his own diseased cells.

Forbidden World was made by the egregious Roger Corman, using sets originally created for Galaxy of Terror as well as spaceship effects from Battle Beyond The Stars. Like Galaxy of Terror, it was widely regarded as an Alien ripoff, with even more justification given the strong likeness of the creature to the Alien. The cast included June Chadwick, best known for TV work including the series spinoff of V, and career offender Jesse Vint as the lead. Its release and titles ended up being a saga in itself. Posters featured two versions of the artwork, one with a still of the creature from the movie and the other featuring an entirely fanciful beast. Curiously, while this is one of quite a few movies to feature a creature clearly based on Alien, it is the only one to come to my attention that included an image of one in the movie poster. The alternate title Mutant appears notably but not exclusively on German-language posters. An unrelated 1984 film originally titled Night Shadows was also known as Mutant in its home video release. In an ironic twist, the previously sighted knockoff The Falling was sometimes known as Mutant 2; which movie this was supposed to tie into is lost to history.

In the course of these reviews, I have several times acknowledged movies I wanted to like. This, on the other hand, is a movie I would have loved to tear apart. This is a knockoff that seems determined to do everything wrong that its source material did right. Where Alien looked and felt ahead of its time, this movie looks like it was shot by Dario Argento in actual Technicolor. Where Alien’s camerawork and editing clearly and coherently show what is supposed to be happening, many of this movie’s sequences are as choppy as a descent-into-madness horror movie. Where Alien was quite straightforward in its biology, this movie buries itself in convoluted pseudoscience. Where Alien was surprisingly subdued in its violence and almost free of explicit sexuality, this movie goes full frontal and over the top. Yet, these are by all indications conscious choices. This is the surprisingly rare movie that really tries to be “so bad it’s good”, and even more uniquely, it succeeds without descending into outright parody.

Any chance of further redeeming qualities clearly lie in the monster. This is at face value the one part of the production that misses the point of Alien rather that defying it. The Alien suit (made by practical-effects master Carlo Rimbaldi from Giger’s designs) looked complicated, but its basic outline is quite elegant, a fact reflected in the range of motion achieved onscreen. The creature here is a mishmash of fangs and limbs that requires highly selective camerawork just to appear mobile. It is certainly a creepy creature, however, with the cartoonish but no less menacing qualities of one of the Dark Horse Aliens comics. It also offers a reasonable range of behavior that suggests intelligence and a certain amount of vulnerability. It hides or retreats from crew members who are armed, and at one point leaves a decoy in the form of a discarded cocoon. It navigates the lab without difficulty, at one point cutting off a fleeing human. In the movie’s most surreal moment, it even uses the lab’s computer equipment to communicate with the crew, albeit just long enough to lure the heroine within range.

Some further comment is in order about the two women in the crew. The movie’s male characters already bounce between annoying, creepy and bland, and its women suffer far more, especially in comparison with the standard set by Alien. Even here, however, the movie sidesteps the most obvious causes for offense. To start with, there is at least none of the hypocritical moralizing of a slasher entry. When the women’s adventures are shown, it is clear that they are enjoying themselves as much as the audience is expected to, without the immediate punishment of violent death. The gender roles are a bit iffy, with Chadwick being clearly competent while her coworker played by Dawn Dunlap tends to hang around without obvious duties or functions. Their big plan to reach out to the monster is particularly problematic; on this point, they are arguably made to appear naïve, but still not stupid, particularly since the creature actually responds. The one true “cringe” moment is the death of Chadwick’s character. If the implied fate of Lambert in Alien was discomforting, the exit wound shown doesn’t leave much room for a reconstruction that isn’t from the bottom up.

For the “one scene”, the best of many absurd scenes is the creature’s first attack. At this point, it is in by far its creepiest form, the suspended cocoon which resembles a nest of tent caterpillars. A crewman who seems to be the space janitor sees the cocoon pulse (very!) menacingly. When something oozes out, he reports that the creature is doing something strange and prepares to shut the glass case holding the creature. Because sensible behavior certainly isn’t going to move this story along, something like a living fruit rollup springs and latches onto his face. The victim proceeds to destroy seemingly every piece of equipment in the room as he flails about in agony, only occasionally making a visible effort to remove the creature from where it has been all along. Eventually, the creature eats in far enough that blood starts to spurt. The gore literally begins to cloud the camera, which is revealed to be a security camera feed. A final cutaway shows the rest of the crew, who have been specifically warned to check on the creature, paying absolutely no attention whatsoever. 

Overall, this movie is one of the best Alien knockoffs, which is the reason I didn’t get to it much further. I seriously considered rating it higher than I have, but there was way too much that personally annoys me to get off that easy. Compared to The Falling, this is clearly superior in production values, but the nonsense factor brings it down where the other was bonkers enough to get up to the middle of the scale. This is the type of film that never tried to be anything but what it is, and for that I can leave it be.

No links this time. As usual, see the feature Introduction for details on the classifications and rating system. (It's about time someone did.) More to come!

Bigger than Godzilla! Walm@rt Alien Queen

I needed something a bit quick today, so I dug up something from a while back that might or might not end up being a feature. When I do pick up something that's really new, it's usually on an expedition to Walmart. Usually, it's small and cheap, but in recent years, the chain has been coming out with genuinely impressive "exclusives" that usually end up scalped online. I really hit the motherlode at the beginning this year when the store got the actually authorized release of a new line of Alien toys from Lanard, the makers of The Corps. Over several weeks, I bought up about 2/3rds of the line (which I have a lot more material on), including absolutely the most enormous Alien Queen ever released. Here's some pics I took at the time.

Like most of this mini-line, the Queen isn't exactly great. The articulation on the (four!) arms is uneven, with too few joints in some places and ones that don't help in others (a particularly pervasive problem for the line. The feet are positively clunky, though I suspect this was necessary to make the damn thing stand up. But, again, this thing is huge. In fact, on examination I realized that it was prtty close to the size of Generic Godzilla. With that in mind, the showdown was inevitable.

Twenty points of articulation don't do kr@p against 13 inches of Genericzilla!

Obviously, the Queen isn't quite as big as Godzilla. However, this is mainly because of the odd articulation, which prevents the head shield from going vertical. I do believe Her Majesty is heavier, and the Generic Godzillas aren't exactly feather-light. The shots I took (including a couple I redid for this post) were a lot harder than they might look. Godzilla's arms always had limited range and reach, while the Queen's extra set of arms tend to get in the way in a close-quarters grapple. That doesn't mean it wasn't fun. Here's a couple more close-ups.

"Get away from my boyfriend, you b!tch!"

For links, see YouTube channel Destroying the Value for a review of the Queen and the rest of the line (plus a power loader!). That's all for now, more tomorrow!

Space 1979: The one I quit watching

Title: Howard the Duck

What Year?: 1986

Classification: Parody

Rating: What the Hell??? (3/5)

 

One thing that should be clear about me from this feature is that I have a cast iron stomach when it comes to movies. I’ve sat through some of the most legendarily horrible movies ever made, and when I start a movie, I really sit through it, especially if I’ve spent any amount of money on it. It takes something really exceptional for me to stop watching a movie. It’s one thing if I get bored or lose interest, usually if it’s a romance or drama that would be hit or miss with me anyway. It’s another matter for me to quit something because it’s flat-out bad. Then if I give up because it’s too weird, we are really into extreme territory. For this review, I’ve gotten to the one that did it for me, in the first ten minutes.

Our story opens with a view of another world where birds instead of primates are the dominant intelligent species (with a civilization seemingly built on bad puns). We follow one particular seemingly average bird named Howard to his apartment. As he sits down with some (ahem) recreational reading material, he is suddenly sucked into a wormhole that leads to Earth. After a rough landing, he meets up with an unlucky musician named Beverly and a scientist who hasn’t risen above intern. As his misadventures continue, he gradually finds out about an experiment that created the wormhole. He soon realizes that another being known as the Dark Overlord has come through, masquerading as the scientist’s boss. In the final showdown, he must choose between saving the Earth. And if the outcome was meant to be in doubt, they wouldn’t have put the final musical number in the TV spots.

Howard the Duck has been remembered as the creation of executive producer George Lucas, though differing accounts have emerged of his involvement. Per the lore, Lucas may have been interested in making a movie using the character, introduced in Marvel Comics in 1973, before Star Wars was released. The eventual production was a joint venture between Universal, Lucasfilm and Marvel. Lucas reportedly argued for producing it as a live-action film rather than an animated feature. The ILM crew provided animatronics and effects, including multiple puppets and suits to represent Howard and a stop-motion creature by Phil Tippett as the Dark Overlord’s true form. The final budget reached an estimated $36M. Unfortunately, the finished film failed to resonate with critics or audiences, earning only $16.3M in US box office. Worldwide receipts may have brought the gross to $37M, presenting a relatively early example of a movie that earned more in foreign markets than in the US.

My own experience with this film was vague awareness without much further interest, going back to ads for its occasional airings on 1990s TV. I finally gave it a try on Netflix streaming, but didn’t get past its opening sequence, which I still reckon the most strange and risqué in a movie with plenty of competition. Eventually, I ordered it on disc, and in the last year or so, I finally bought it on Blu Ray. That finally gave me the opportunity to fully appraise the film.

The main thing to stand out about the movie is Howard himself. The practical effects are used to genuinely good effect, as is the voice work of Chip Zien. It’s all the more impressive that the lines were put in after filming. Any problems with the effects are of the “uncanny valley” variety, particularly the very anthropomorphic eyes; after seeing that singled out by none other than James Gunn, I began to wonder if that was part of what threw me off way back when. Overall, Howard is a likeable if sometimes disreputable character. Most of his jokes really aren’t that funny, but feel like a natural response to his predicament. There is better payoff from his moments of indignation at human treatment of birds. The human characters are well-cast. Lea Thompson gets the most attention as Howard’s question-mark love interest, though her scenes include some major “cringe” moments. Harold Robbins is more impressive as the scientist, in one of his earlier roles.

The other major creature is the Dark Overlord, played by Jeffrey Jones and voiced in part by Brian Steele. Jones delivers an entertaining and increasingly menacing performance, noteworthy for apparently total indifference to what human bystanders know about him. His transformation is augmented by some impressive practical effects, including an unnerving tentacle. By comparison, the stop-motion incarnation is disappointing, which is positively heartbreaking for me to say. The model seems like a deliberate downgrade from realistic creatures of Star Wars and Dragonslayer, and even more at odds with the effort put into Howard. The creature design is almost distractingly strange, something like a mashup of an angler fish, a scorpion and a Rancor monster. I was particularly jarred by a prominent set of fangs that look almost like mandibles, a year before Predator was released.

For the “one scene”, my pick was inevitably going to be a diner scene that leads into the final act. Howard and Beverly make a stop with the metamorphosing lead scientist. While they order a meal, the Overlord quite freely announces his identity and his further plans to wipe out humanity, seemingly unconcerned if anyone tries to stop him. Meanwhile, Howard gives the best of his fits when the waitress serves him eggs, then gets into a rapidly escalating dispute with a band of duck hunters who begin to consider putting him on the menu. It’s a great and surprisingly low-key bit of comedy, much better than a simple summary can convey. However, it serves all too well as a reminder what the whole movie should have been like.

On a deeper level, my strongest reaction to this movie is that of looking at a test reel for a movie that was never made. In my own judgment, it “should” have been animated all along. I am tempted to say it might have been better still if the movie had gone far enough for a straight-up R rating. Unfortunately, I’m equally satisfied that the actual production date is either 10 years too early or 10 years too late for that to have worked. In the 1970s, such a film could have stayed in the underground scene with the likes of Fritz the Cat, while in the1990s, it could have taken its pace as the west’s answer to the anime revolution. The 1980s, on the other hand, were a low point for the acceptance of adult-oriented animation, despite (if not because of) the successful example of Heavy Metal. Being associated with a name as prominent as Lucas could have easily proved a lightning rod for further censorship and general meddling from the studios and the “moral guardians” in the general public. On watching the inuendo between Howard and Beverly, I must add that I’m glad nobody pushed that envelope any further.

In the end, the lesson of history will always be that we have to judge what is rather than what could have been. In those terms, this was at the least a worthy and creative experiment. Even if you’ve seen it before, it’s worth trying again, and like me, you just might change your mind.

For links, all I have this time is the feature Introduction. More to come tomorrow.

Timmee Tuesday! Giant army men

I'm back with another acquisition I've been holding onto for a while. I was a bit young to have seen Marx army men the first time around, but I definitely remember having a few Timmee soldiers around growing up. I never got around to buying any of them along with other Timmee reissues. However, I got interested when I found out that Timmee had made some large-size army men. On further investigation, I determined that it wasn't hard to get a set for a low price, so I ordered a small group online. Here's a few shots of what I got for the money.

"Yeah, talk to me about not having a big enough bayonet."

The first thing that will be apparent is that the figures are based on Vietnam rather than WW2 uniforms and equipment, though the only member of this group to show this is the guy with the M16. (Of course, the gun is damaged, which the weapon's critics would undoubtedly argue to be entirely realistic.) They also clearly demonstrate Timmee's preference for stylization over detail. It's of further note that these are larger than the "large" Galaxy Laser Team figures but still somewhat smaller than the Marx 6-inch line, putting them at a straight 5-inch scale. Here's a lineup to show what I mean, featuring the GLT astronaut and the Marx Japanese officer.

The ones that interested me most were the guys with the bazooka and mortar, which I absolutely remember having as a kid. As seen previously, these static poses are more dynamic than attempts at "action" poses. The downside is that this made for more anatomical complexity than the molding process could handle, especially for the bazooka man. Then there are some things that are just weird.

"It's not really a bazooka, it's a plasma cannon with a direct neural interface. And it's still more futuristic than the one in Laserblast."

The sculpt that has the biggest problems is the trooper with the gun over his head. (For some reason, army man makers loved this pose.) Viewed from either side, he looks fine, but if you take a close look at the face, the two sides don't match up. The result looks like Two Face or the Phantom of the Opera. Here's a few closeups, though even these shots don't really capture how messed up he looks.

All in all, these are a good addition to any Timmee collection. They mark an important transition in army man design, and they still look pretty good. For a closing, here they are with the ultimate Vietnam figure, the Lido draft dodger.

"All I'm saying is, give desertion a chance."

That's all for now, more to come tomorrow!