Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 7!

 Here's yet another installment of Sidekick Carl, because I really live and don't learn. For this chapter, I included an intro for a villain I decided to bring in a while ago, I swear from the original adventures. I also worked in a little bit of anecdotal research I did pretty early on in the project. And, here is a link for the last chapter, at least.

The creature in the enclosure was unmistakably a cat, but not like any other. It had a stocky, almost boxy body, broken up by ring-shaped spots. Its tail was a twitching stub, while its teeth protruded a little past its upper lips. Its jaw gaped 90 degrees as it yawned. It seemed indifferent as it surveyed the smattering of guests, a few children, two women, an old man, and a balding, well-dressed man who clearly wasn’t with any of the kids. The sign said, ANDEAN DIRK CAT. A caption below read, Last known living specimen, captured 1993.

After a few minutes, most of the visitors moved on, leaving the two men and one child. It was then that a someone came up to the well-dressed man. It was a woman, looking nervous. She glanced specifically and pointedly glanced at the cat. After a few moments, they moved a short distance to a shaded bench. “Sir,” the woman said, “you know the zoo had asked for a genetic analysis of the dirk cat, to confirm if it could interbreed with any other species?”

The man nodded, and began to smile. “Of course,” he said. “Did they find a match?”

“Sir,” the woman said, almost stammering, “see for yourself.” He looked at the printout she held out. His smile quickly became a frown.

“It must be an error, some kind of contamination,” he said.

The woman shook her head. “Three samples were tested. I collected one myself. There’s no chance of mistake. The genome is… human.” As she spoke, they both looked toward the enclosure. The old man and the child were gone.

 

So was the cat.

 

***

It was about noon, and Carl was in yet another conference room, as the presenter. The room was full enough that some were standing. One of them was Dana, who leaned against a wall at the back. Also present were Audrey, her mates, and a somber man from a previous panel who would have been identified as a career government agent from orbit.  Dana shifted as yet another pair in the audience looked at her and then whispered to each other. “When research into nanotechnology first began, people were afraid that nanobots could spread like a disease, and even enslave humans,” he said. As he spoke, he removed his helmet. There were murmurs and at least one gasp. “That was pure fantasy, at best, and propaganda and active sabotage at worst. All the real progress toward a human-nanite interface has been about making technology and organic life work together. I’ve lived in what you could call symbiosis with nanites for 20 years, and I can say, I wouldn’t be alive without it. Now… any questions?” Every other hand in the room went up.

“So,” said a bored-looking teenager, “are you really, like, half-machine?”

 “Well, the best answer I can give is to show you,” he said. He removed his gloves, revealing one hand of flesh and the other of translucent machinery. “It looks like this hand is mechanical and this one is biological, doesn’t it? But really, the tissue on this hand is maintained by constant activity from the nanites, and I still keep it covered most of the time, just in case. By the way, what you see is mostly from the last five years. Then the other hand is about as artificial as it looks, except that it’s supported by a mix of cloned nerves and microcircuits that goes down to my fingertips and up to my elbow at least. So, sure, you could say I’m part human and part machine, but there’s hardly anywhere you could look and say which part is which.”

Another question came: “Can they really fix any injury?”

Carl responded with a chuckle that was a little too disarming. “Well, obviously, I haven’t had an injury I couldn’t recover from yet,” he said. “What you have to remember is, nanites aren’t invulnerable. It took years just to make nanites that could survive contact with a single piece of dust. Even now, nanites need nearly anaerobic conditions to produce more of themselves. What I have is layered protection. First, there’s the helmet and the suit, which can self-seal against catastrophic injuries. Then there’s a polymer dermis that protects my muscles and their main work force. Then there’s the innermost defenses for my lungs and digestive system, completely and totally rebuilt, which is really the same as replacement.”

Another hand came up. “Then how do you know what they’re doing, or going to do?” a young man asked. “Can you talk to them? Or do they talk to you?”

Carl leaned back, clearly uneasy. “That’s not how it works,” he said. “The nanites have what you could call a hive mind. They probably couldn’t handle human language and communication even if they were trying. Sometimes, it seems like I talk to them, or they talk to me, always through dreams or subconscious thought. Even then, I’m pretty sure it’s mostly my mind trying to put their input into terms I can give a conscious meaning to, not what they’re doing themselves. As for the rest, almost everything they do is to solve an immediate problem. Once in a while, they do something new and we don’t know why. That’s what happened when they got to work on my face. I think, maybe, it was for the challenge.”

One more hand went, that of a man old enough to have been a fan as a child. Just from the expression, Carl knew it would be personal if not confrontational. Still, the question caught him unprepared: “Do you think there’s a chance the Toxo Warriors are still alive?”

Carl stopped himself from sighing, but did not hide his irritation. “I’ve already spoken about this, at this convention,” he said. “Their lab was destroyed. Nothing survived, nothing could have survived, I barely survived getting out of it. And if they had, what then? It was 12 years ago. Do you think they would have just laid low this whole time?”

“But… there’s reports…”

“What reports?” Carl said. In the very corner of his eye, he watched the agent. “Where? Of what? From whom?”

“Well… they’re talking about it online…”

“Then there you go,” Carl said. “You can’t believe everything you read.” As he watched, the somber agent showed no reaction. He leaned back in satisfaction, and did not notice the government man rise and leave.

As the session ended, the audience either started to leave or gathered for autographs and more questions. The man who asked the last question was among those who left. In the midst of it, he met eyes with Dana, who smiled and then Audrey, who cocked her ears. He quickly extricated himself from the crowd, to meet the small creature in a backstage storage area. “I have a question I need to ask,” Carl said, twirling his helmet in hand, “and I think you might be the one who can answer. Do you think… there’s really love at first sight?”

Her ears literally pricked as she nodded. “It’s complicated,” she said. “The thing about it is, it happens differently. Men think they feel it, once in a while. Women are the ones who know. It still doesn’t happen often, but we can mostly understand why it does, even if it’s to someone in another species.”

Carl nodded. “Did it ever happen to you?” He followed her gaze through the open door. Her two mates were just within view, one rusty red and the other piebald, managing half a dozen kits. Even at a glance, their personalities matched their appearance, the first confident, the other submissive and almost clumsy.

“Yes, you could say that,” she said. “I saw my first mate across Basiliskus’s pen. I came up to him, we both sniffed each other, and then I told him, `You will do.’”

“What about the other one?” Carl said.

Audrey had started to turn away when he spoke. She turned back with what could only be a smile on her face. “Oh, him? He followed me home one night and whined at the door till I let him in.”

She had started to leave in earnest when Carl called out, “After how long?”

She called over he shoulder, “About a week!” Then she was gone.

Carl found Dana at the door. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about last night,” he said, managing not to wince as quite a few eyes turned toward them. “I may not ready to get engaged, but I’m ready to try something. How about a two-week trip through Mogollon and back, off the grid?”

Dana smiled. “We can make it three,” she said. “When do you want to leave?”

“How about… now?”

“See?” she said as they hurried out. “We’re already thinking on the same wavelength…”

 

It was bare moments later that the government man reappeared, looking about intently. He reached the door just in time to hear Dana’s RV drive away.

Unidentified Found Objects: Marx space station and... tower... thingy???

 

For today's post, I have an acquisition I got not too long ago but still ended up backlogged for a while simply because it doesn't quite fit with my other material. I finally brought back a feature that went by the wayside almost a year ago, originally created for the Spiff ship and the immortal arcade prize fleet, and then dropped after the Diener Space Raiders. The present items were never as untraceable or obscure as the prize ships or as elusive as the Spiff ship, if only because I'm a bit too young to have had them new, but as we will see momentarily, there's still plenty of mystery and pure weirdness to go around. To start things off, here's a couple pics of the items, first prepared for the last space guys post, both from the 1960s heyday of space toys, and they sure are... plastic?

For once, the backstory on these is straightforward. These pieces first appeared in Marx's Operation Moon Base set in 1962, coinciding with the introduction of semi-realistic "transitional" astronaut figures. Evidently, the tower was intended as a base for a wire or rod to support an orbiting space craft, including but not necessarily limited to the second piece, sometimes simply called the "space platform". The two items reappeared during the last ride of Marx space toys, the Martian Landing, Star Station Seven and Galaxy Command playsets, the last of which was sold by Mego in 1980 after Marx's bankruptcy. While the Moon Base set accessories were red, all known copies from the '70s playsets are yellow as seen here. The later sets did not feature the orbiting gimmick, and may have removed a piece from the space station. 

As with many Marx items, the real difficulty with getting these is getting hold of one without buying a boxed vintage set outright. I got hold of these for a price on par with some of the rarer 6 inch Marx figures. What I absolutely wasn't prepared for was how big they really are, especially the space station.  Here's a lineup of the tower with some representative "space guys", a 60mm astronaut, the army man-scale and mini/ original Galaxy Laser Team Commander, the 70mm Space Guy Who Doesn't Care, the Timmee nuclear guy and for good measure 6-inch Scooper.

While I'm at it, here's a shot with the Truckstop Queen and the Duchess/ Connie. I think the tower is a little taller!

What obviously stands out about these is that the implied scale s wonky even for army-man vehicles and accessories. The tower could just about harmonize with figures on the low end of the scale, including Marx's own 35-45mm figures, at least if you don't worry too much about what the art on top is supposed to do. (Given the conspicuous gap between the first and second bulbs, the designers clearly didn't.) The space station, on the other hand, must clearly be much larger. What's far stranger is the contrast in style. The space station looks like something out of 2001 (or at least The Green Slime), while the tower would fit in with the Flash Gordon comic. (The Delaurentiis movie comes close.) One is ahead of its time, the other feels "retro" even for its time. Here's a few more pics to show what I mean.

While the tower is a fine bit of retrofuturism, it's the station that has kept me fascinated and at times frustrated. As with many space toys (see the Altair-3 Space Raiders ship), it makes more sense the bigger the scale one considers. What comes up for my "head canon" is that the jets on the outside are actually some kind of spacecraft in themselves, perhaps capsules to ferry people from Earth or larger ships, perhaps something much bigger. But, that makes it much harder to account for the upper part, which I just think of as the "basket". It looks like a railing, which would bring a measure of sense to the tower. Here, however, it just messes up the scale more, and on top of that, the protruding peg in the middle doesn't leave room for a figure to stand. Meanwhile, those three things on top- lights? instruments???- actually make sense for something a person could ride in, but less and less scaled up, And that brings us to the strangest part, the box art from one of the playsets (image credit 2 Warps to Neptune). It would have been just fine to show it in space overhead, but instead, they did this...

Of course, this is clearly overanalyzing the Marx crew never did. By the late '70s, the manufacturer was clearly down to reusing old molds without regard for whether it fit the original concept or made any sense whatsoever. Still, it was enough to get me to try something. I worked out that the basket doesn't have to be pushed down all the way, which gave me  an unbroken surface, Here's the result.

With that, I'm wrapping this up. It's been more random than usual, but it's one more thing out of my backlog, plus it brings me back to a feature I meant to do a lot more with. That's all, more to come!

Featured Creature: The one with the Jurassic Park guy and invisible Chevy Chase

 

Title: Memoirs Of An Invisible Man

What Year?: 1986 (optioning and development)/ 1992 (theatrical release)

Classification: Improbable Experiment/ Runnerup/ Mashup

Rating: Pretty Good! (5/5)

 

With this review, I’m starting yet another review feature, one which I have thought about on and off for a very long time, specifically for films which didn’t “fit” with my other features. The backstory is that when I started reviewing with Space 1979, the focus was on 1970s and ‘80s movies, with earlier and later films largely excluded. I opened up the field a lot more with the Revenant Review and Super Movies, but there were still entries piling up that I wasn’t covering, and the common denominator was 1990s films broadly in the “monster movie” genre. For a very long time, I simply planned to cover them later, ideally as another October/ Halloween run. But over the weekend, I finally got a movie that I felt forced my hand, in part because I would probably just buy it if/ when I’m ready to buy it again. In the process, I’m carrying over the Space 1979 rating scale with an “unrated” option, because what I have in mind is really all over the map. Here is Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, a team-up of John Carpenter, Sam Neill and… Chevy Chase?

Our story begins with a voice giving a monologue that hints at a longer story. As the angry narration goes on, the camera focuses on what looks like an empty chair, until a piece of gum is chewed and blown into a bubble in mid-air. We learn that our main character is Nick Halloway, a businessman who gets left behind when a vaguely described experiment that would normally done as far from civilization as possible goes awry. The end result is that Nick is left invisible, but is still detected by a group of government agents as he tries to leave the scene. Soon, he is the focus of a covert manhunt led by an agent named Jenkins. He manages to stay ahead of the agents while trying to salvage the remnants of his former life, including a romance with a lovely documentary filmmaker. But when Jenkins zeroes in on his lady love, Nick must go on the offensive to save her. Will he prevail, or has his luck run out?

Memoirs Of An Invisible Man was a Warner Bros production, officially adapted from a novel by Harry F. Saint. Its development was initiated by star Chevy Chase prior to the publication of the book, as a further effort to transition from comedy to dramatic roles; a number of further delays and departures were reportedly caused by disagreements over the tone of the film. The film was ultimately placed under the director John Carpenter, with Chase as the lead, Sam Neill as Jenkins, one year before his starring role in Jurassic Park, and Daryl Hannah of Blade Runner as the love interest Alice. Many of the film’s effects were created with CGI from Industrial Light and Magic, building on earlier work for The Abyss and Terminator 2, contributing to a final budget of up to $40 million. The movie was a commercial failure with a US box office of only $14.4M, and received many negative reviews for its handling of science fictional, dramatic and comedic elements.

For my experiences, this was a movie I was aware of when it came out, which is really looking like a bad sign. As with many things, I finally saw it on TV, and was reasonably impressed, particularly with Chase and Neill. What has interested me most is the number of genres and films it seems to reference, including a disconcerting number that came out at the same time or later. It’s clearly indebted to the Universal “Monsters” franchise, to the point of copying certain sequences and shots, and less directly to H.G. Wells, which put it on my radar during Wells-A-Thon. (I had also thought of giving this feature a head start for the ‘90s Island of Dr. Moreau.) If anything, it has an even stronger affinity with The Fugitive, actually from the following year, and the “chase” genre it inspired. The most random yet striking association that comes to my mind is InnerSpace, quite possibly the only movie to try something like this blend of elements and influences with inarguable success at the box office as well as other fronts. I find it all the more significant that this one started its difficult development about the time that film was in production.

The central reality of this movie is that, whatever Chase’s intentions, it is a comedy, albeit a fairly “dark” one. What it does show is that his obvious gifts for comedy include a command of timing, body language and situational awareness. This comes through especially in the rather odd decision to show Nick visible for most of his screen time, notwithstanding the amount of money plowed into the effects needed to make him invisible. Due credit must be given to Chase and his costars (especially Neill) that this generally works. His posture and expressions are always in character with someone who is undetected but still wary, while the rest of the cast advances the conceit by acting around him without simply looking oblivious or stupid. As the movie continues, the invisibility conceit opens up more complex and tense scenarios, as he evades the agents, eavesdrops on acquaintances, and another man’s sketchy behavior toward Alice. This is as good a point as any to mention the effects just for comparison. The transitional-period CGI easily hold up at least as well as significantly later CGI, conspicuously Hollow Man, in no small part because they don’t look that different from ‘80s practical/ optical effects. However, while the effects led to some good moment, especially a shot of Nick inhaling cigarette smoke, they are never as flat-out effective as Chevy Chase is in full view.

The natural counterpoint to chase is Neill as Jenkins. In many ways, he is the best thing about this movie, but n another level, he is the one thing that doesn’t “fit”. The impression I get on critical viewing is that the character seems written one way and played another. With Neill’s invested performance, he falls comfortably into the mold of Deputy Gerard (who was after all a character on TV first) as a “good” guy on the wrong side. But the story keeps painting him as a full-blown “black ops” agent, with a generous helping of fanaticism under the surface. On consideration, I wonder further if the filmmakers didn’t quite know what to do with him. I find this especially in their two most direct confrontations, a middle-act scene when Nick infiltrates Jenkins’ office and the finale at a construction site, The first is easily the high point of the film and for both actors (indeed very close to a choice for the “one scene”), with both stars staying fully invested in their characters and the premise. The second, in contrast, becomes a series of increasingly questionable decisions that are unnatural for either character, culminating in a conclusion so unsatisfactory I literally forgot about it until looking up the movie on disc. To me, the best reaction I can muster is my usual tendency to think of a better way to do it, but beyond writing in some common enemy to unite against, I just draw a blank.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I was considering at least two or three well after I had returned the disc I used for this viewing. My final and difficult choice is a sequence I will admit I had forgotten, portraying the aftermath of the accident which has turned not only Nick but a good part of a building invisible. The individual moments may not stand out in casual recollection, but the surreal whole gives its own impression. It is easily the most compelling effects sequence in a film that often works at least as well without them. The structure looks like it is in ruins yet still standing, with furniture, walls, rooms and whole sections seemingly suspended in mid-air. As Nick and the investigating agents try to make their way through the building, they repeatedly run into walls and obstacles that are now invisible. In the process, the invisible man disturbs enough still-visible objects for the agents to realize his existence for the first time. (The state of his clothes will be a matter of recurring inconsistencies.) The tension rises as they close in, but the true culmination is when the structure finally disappears in full, either wholly disintegrated or else transmuted to another plane of existence.

In conclusion, I will acknowledge that this is a movie I have rated higher than it deserves (about on par with Dr. Moreau). There’s enough problems that I could have taken it down a rating. But when these issues are balanced against the effort and talent clearly invested, not to mention the disastrous misfortunes that afflicted the project, these are minor complaints at most. This is a movie that’s overdue for recognition as what it is: A clever, creative adventure that took moviemaking in new directions. It might not be “great”, then or now, but it gets a pass from me.

Rogues' Roundup: From Space Guys to Astronauts

 

With this post, I'm starting another "short" week. I decided it was time to catch up on some backlogged material, and that in turn offered me a chance to expand on some ideas and terminology. In writing about Marx figures, I've referred to certain figures as "space guys". What that has meant to me is the 1950s style of space figures, characterized by leathery flight suits and removable helmets that looked like either fish bowls or water tanks. (See my 3 inch space guys revisit.) In using this term, there's never been a question in my mind that this would not apply to the Marx "Apollo" figure set, nor to the later Galaxy Laser Team astronauts (though I realized I have used it offhandedly). What I never settled in my own mind is when the transition occurred. To begin with, here's a recent acquisition that was literally handed to me, an Archer space figure, and boy is he a "space guy". Here he is with the Mexican evil space guys for comparison.

This figure stood out as my first hard plastic space figure, which puts him squarely in the 1950s. He's about 3 inches tall, comparable to the 3 in/ 70mm Marx figures but a lot more robust. There's a quite distinct sound when tapped, almost like porcelain. He is intact apart from a missing water-tank helmet, despite the appearance of the weird gadget. However, there's a hairline fracture in the hose, which is very often missing in figures for sale. Exactly what he's doing isn't clear, maybe surrendering to the space police while holding a blow dryer? The main thing to be learned is that even in the "space guy" era, Marx was far ahead of the competition.

Meanwhile, what was clear was that the transition from space guy to astronaut happened in the 1960s. Over a few different online orders, I built up a modest sample of the line that did the most to bridge the gap, the MPC astronauts. The MPC spacemen are most noteworthy as the longest-lived of "vintage" figures to originate from an American manufacturer. They were first made in the early to mid-1960s, and remained in production until as late as the 1980s, long after Marx and Timmee had moved on or gone belly up. They were notable for combining the "space guy" suits with more modern helmets, and also for retaining weapons for a good part of their run.  Here's a lineup of the lot, I'm sure spanning a wide period of time.

Unfortunately, what really stood out to me once I had a good sample is that they are absolutely terrible, in ways I couldn't appreciate until I had some in my hands. The sampling I gathered are highly varied in condition and evident composition, but every one of them looks and feels cheap. Here's a closeup of the best one, featured in the center above, and another of the same sculpt, sometimes called "pistol and lunchbox". I'm sure the former figure is a little larger than the others, but it was hart to prove that photographically. 

Looking ahead, the figures that set the standard for "realistic" astronauts were certainly Marx's astronauts, dated 1970 and available in both 60mm and nominal 6-inch scale. I continue to see debate about the exact timing of the release of the small figures, with a number of sources persistently reporting that they were not available until the late '70s. What I find noteworthy is that they are in what I consider "pseudorealistic" style, highly detailed but not that close to the suits that were actually used. Here's a lineup of a group I acquired some time ago, representing 9 out of 12 sculpts. Note Scooper, the Commander and the Stepping Guy in the center.

All of this inevitably brought me back to the Timmee astronauts. For completeness, I decided to do a comparison shot of the large GLT commander and the 6-inch version of his Marx counterpart. The differences in style, as well as certain similarities, should be especially apparent at this scale.

As previously recounted, the GLT astronauts originated as miniature figures included with Timmee/ Processed Plastic rockets. Having done some further research and correspondence, I'm now satisfied that these date no earlier or later than the 1970s. (See Steve Nyland's channel for the latest and most complete analysis.) What has intrigued me is that the GLT helmets are evidently based on the Gemini space suit, retired by 1968. I have long noted a tendency for toys to retain dated or anachronistic features, especially knockoffs/ bootlegs (witness the whole convoluted history of the patchisaurs), but this seemed a bit different. In fact, the more I thought about it, they seemed familiar, and that was my "eureka" moment.

Here is a foreign poster for The Green Slime, one of the first and still among the earliest films I roasted for Space 1979. Here, you can see a very accurate depiction of the costumes and props from the film, and they are clearly Gemini-style space suits. While I won't go so far as to suggest that this particular movie was the source for the Timmee design (particularly considering how egregiously it ripped off other films), it certainly establishes science fiction cinema as a possible and even likely influence. More importantly, it presents a clear "trickledown" point, where even low-budget films aimed at (horrifyingly) young audiences were trading in leather suits and fishbowls for "real" spacesuits.

And to wind things down, here's a lineup of my odds and ends. Front and center are a couple "Hing Fat" astronauts in 2 different sizes, which have long since made MPC look like quitters. I have had a set of them since before I started this blog, but I definitely won't be taking the time to look at them here and now. There's also two copies of a guy that came with some of the MPC astronauts and a Marx stego. I thought might be a "ground control" figure from the "space guy" era. I'm now satisfied it's an MPC police figure, but the similarity remains unmistakable. Then there's two girl/ lady "civilian" figures I ended up with, because why not?

Finally, as a bonus, here's a copy/ possible bootleg of the Marx 35mm alien that came in one of these literal mixed bags. He's a bit bigger and of a different material, with a stand that's definitely not part of the original. But who can say no to shiny?

With that, I'm wrapping this up. I had a bit more that will need to wait for another day, but at least I have a good part of my backlog out of the way. That's all, more to come!

Space 1999! The one that's NOT a ripoff of Groundhog Day

 

Title: 12:01

What Year?: 1993

Classification: Runnerup/ Mashup

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

In earlier reviews for this feature, I have commented that the 1970s were the inarguable golden age of TV movies, as evidenced by Duel and Trapped. With this review, we’re jumping forward to their last hurrah, the early to mid-1990s. At this stage, network TV movies remained inarguably a “thing”, with some of the very best examples still coming out. However, the networks were no longer in a position to challenge Hollywood, nor hold off further challenges from cable television and direct-to-video releases (see Deep Space). With the present entry, we will be looking at the arguable last hurrah, a TV movie that brought in Hollywood talent and production values. In the process, it also entangled itself with a major theatrical movie, without anyone ever quite sorting out their actual relationship to each other.

Our story begins with a guy named Barry living a mundane life in a demeaning office job. Things continue to go downhill when he crashes and burns with his office crush and then witnesses her murder. When he wakes up, however, the lady is alive and well, and nobody remembers anything amiss. He soon realizes that he is reliving the same day, as the same events continue to repeat. After a few repeats, he begins to learn that his employers are working on a project to develop a new source of energy based on time itself, which a critical expert warns could create a “time bounce”. He also continues to try to do better with the lady, who turns out to be a scientist on the project and a whistleblower who suspects one of her two bosses of unauthorized use of their prototype machine. The loop finally breaks when he saves her, but the day will soon start over again, and they still don’t know who has triggered the time bounce. Can any amount of tries stop what already happened?

12:01 was a feature-length production made by New Line Cinema and originally aired by Fox. The feature was based on a 1973 story “12:01 PM” by Richard Lupoff (d. 2020), and also an expansion of a 1990 short film based on the same story starring Kurtwood Smith, fresh out of his type-breaking turn as Clarence Bodicker in Robocop. The full-length treatment took a much more upbeat tone than the short story or the earlier film; the original story notably features an attempt by the main character to stop the time loop, but does not resolve if he succeeds or has any chance of doing so. The feature starred Jonathan Silverman as Barry and Helen Slater of Supergirl as the romantic interest Lisa, with veteran Martin Landau as the enigmatic inventor Thadius Moxley. The movie aired in July 1993, five months after the very similar Groundhog Day, making it at face value a “runnerup” to the theatrical film. Lupoff directly accused the creators of that film of plagiarism, while the latter appear to have made no statement. Unusually, 12:01 received an MPAA rating, of PG-13. It was released on VHS and later on DVD, but has been “out of print” and costly to obtain in recent years.

For my experiences, I distinctly remember hearing of this film when it aired, and was immediately interested. However, I didn’t see it until a good while after when it aired again, possibly 2000 or even later. (I think I might have recorded it, and dammit, I have no idea where the tape could be.) I managed to watch it at least once or twice more through Netflix, most recently around 2016, before it finally disappeared from their disc catalog. Ironically, it took much longer to get hold of the original story, which is easily among the bleakest I have encountered, then a few years later took a look at the short film, which if anything is actually darker. Once I started doing reviews for this blog, I thought of reviewing this film on and off, but in usual form, I put it off. When I decided to open up to TV movies, I had this one lined up even earlier than the others. Still, I got to it a little later than normal, courtesy of a “bootleg” online video. In further keeping with experience, I quickly found a lot more issues than I would have expected from a film I had viewed not too long ago.

The first thing to be said about this movie is that it is genuinely charming and reasonably funny, and that in itself might be too much for anyone coming to it as a fan of Lupoff’s story. However, this is one case where the liberties taken are all but necessary. The scenario worked for a short story, and remained sustainable as a short film, but taking it to feature length without introducing some hope of resolution would have been as grueling and tedious for the audience as it was for the main character. In a striking further revision, the time loop is drawn out from one hour to a full day. On this point, the easily distracting similarities with Groundhog Day (which I have actively declined to watch) start to look more like convergent evolution than plagiarism in either direction. The further parallel choice to focus on comedy is greatly helped by the casting of Silverman, best known for roles like Weekend At Bernie’s, and perhaps more so by Slater, who on top of her obvious charms is convincing enough as a “brainy” type to fill in a lot of the scientific rationale herself. Extra credit is in order for Jeremy Piven and Robin Bartlett, who fill out the office-satire element as Barry’s buddy and his harassing manager respectively.

On the downside, this is a movie that simply feels like “too much and not enough”. This shows most blatantly with the action sequences, which outside of a chase scene when Barry first rescues Lisa feel as self-restrained as a kiddie ride. Matters aren’t helped by the music, which often feels like it’s either trying too hard or has already given up and descended into self parody. Then things really go awry with the romance arc, exactly where far higher profile productions than this routinely end up in solid “cringe” territory. Factoring in the usual unintentional horror of ‘80s-‘90s “romances” (if anything exacerbated in the latter decade), this one is at least self-aware. Barry starts generally likable, and when he does something that could be considered “creepy”, he usually learns enough not to do it again. It can also be allowed somewhat generously that there is a measure of chemistry with Lisa/ Slater, aided by the fact that her character is established to be aware of the possibility of a time loop. All in all, it would work perfectly well if it all built up to the pair going out on a date. But the storyline keeps pushing that they must get “together” in the space of a day, and eventually relies on the fact that Lisa must rely on what Barry tells her about their previous encounters. (This was all a further reminder of what I have been making fun of with the Sidekick Carl adventure.) It crosses my mind that this might have been mitigated if she started to “remember” the preceding days herself, except that would probably have been beaten into one more “love conquers time” cliché.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with the first and most clever iteration of the time loop. Before realizing that the day is being repeated, Barry has called the police before Lisa’s murder actually happened. Rather than preventing her death, he ends up in jail as a suspect. He ends up in a cell with another prisoner doing exercises, who will make you think, “That guy looks like Danny Trejo,” and then forget about it until you find out it’s Danny Trejo. There’s a tense buildup as midnight approaches. Barry predicts that the day is about to repeat, to which the other inmate responds that the days are all the same. Then he muses that the time loop might not repeat, and calls out, “I want another chance!” Trejo answers more irritably, “No more chances, you’re doing time now!” The camera focuses on the clock, which distorts and blurs as time reverses, and the next shot finds Barry back in his own bed.

In closing, the best thing I can say is that 12:01 is a movie that feels like the “last” of its kind even if you know full well that it really isn’t. There would be plenty more TV movies through the coming decade, some of them at least as good. (Back when I first tried my hand at this, I did a review of the Ted Danson Gulliver’s Travels that might still out there somewhere in the ether.) Yet, none of them would be the same, especially in terms of challenging the big-budget Hollywood system. Under further scrutiny, it shows that even at its relatively early date, network productions were selling out to TV conventions, to the point that I docked it a full rating compared to what I expected going in. What remains impressive is that enough of the premise and further execution got through, and above all that it continues to challenge you to think. Once again, not bad for a movie of the week.

Planet Puzzle: Retro ray guns and other vintage key chain puzzles

 

I'm back with I feature I would have expected to do a lot more with by now. In fact, the lot here is material I had already gotten last time, but ended up sitting on while my format and posting frequency was in flux. I got these in the course of a minor binge of online shopping for keychain puzzles, the ancient ancestors of the party favor puzzles I grew up with. In the end, I ended up with a lot of lost bids for big lots that sold for a lot more than I would have paid, and all of three purchases I paid relatively high prices for. To kick off the lineup, here are my prize acquisitions, two copies of a puzzle first made in the 1950s, obviously modelled on a Flash Gordon/ Buck Rogers style ray gun.

I got these separately, one advertised as a "vintage" puzzle and the other as a packaged specimen of unspecified age. It should already be apparent that the one in close-up above is the vintage one. I believe it dates from the 1950s (the awe-inspiring Rob's Puzzle Page gives a date of 1954 for the design), while I'm sure the other one is at least a decade more recent. The older specimen is hard plastic with a solid feel and primary colors that are still bright. The copy, on the other hand, is mostly made of almost translucent plastic with a singularly flimsy and unpleasant feel that makes me think of handling very old paper. (The "packaging" was a tiny bag with instructions printed on it.) Ironically, it was the copy that I was able to disassemble, mostly because it's rickety enough that it is close to coming apart to begin with. By comparison, the original is solid enough that I spent days twisting the key piece before I gave up. When I was preparing for this post, I finally managed to take it apart. Here's some shots with my phone camera of the ensuing disassembly. Again, it should be quite obvious which parts are from which version.

Here's a few close-ups of the piece that caused all the trouble, a sort of nose cone. The "trick" is to line up a notch on the inside with a protrusion on the grip piece; the totally unfair part is that there's no external indication whatsoever where it is. I finally tried turning the piece and tugging a few degrees at a time. It turned out that the notch on the original was just a nudge counterlockwise from a minor imperfection I had been looking at all along. On further examination, I found a visible white residue on both specimens, I'm sure from wear, as further indicated by a rough edge on the central piece which I have also photographed.

One more thing I found on close inspection is that the geometry and proportions of the two specimens are subtly different. The copy is narrower in the two main pieces, no doubt to slightly reduce the amount of plastic used, while the nose is less rounded and closer to a true cone, which may have simplified manufacturing but has no obvious further benefit. There's also visible differences in the supports for the sight on the center/ grip piece, which was already strangely proportioned on the original. It's clear from these differences that the copy was made without access to the original molds. Again, the original is better and flat-out more pleasant. Here's a few more close-ups.

Meanwhile, I had two more puzzles that I got in one lot. The first was a readily identifiable Steinhardt cube, which I previously featured in the prize puzzle box. It was interesting mainly as a demonstration how closely the pattern has been copied. Here's a couple comparison pics.

Finally, there's perhaps the most interesting piece, a bowling pin. The big gimmick here is that it has a compartment for a ball in the middle for a ball, which was still with the puzzle. The cover has a notch that makes it easy to remove with the piece on top. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the two pieces of the body, which I simply can't budge. I'm convinced this is because the plastic is either warped or decayed into gunk that fused it all together. At least it still looks nice. Here's a couple pics.

All in all, I have to say these acquisitions were a letdown, especially for the prices I paid for them, to the point that I called off or held up other purchases I had been considering. I suppose this is a non-trivial reason I haven't done more installments a lot sooner. All in all, they look good, but no great shakes compared to the large and decorative puzzles of  the 1970s-'80s (see the last post), and even compared to the prize puzzles, they lose out in durability and ease of use. One can be glad they existed and still exist, but time has moved on and we have done better. With that, I wrap this up. As always, more to come.

Space 1999! The one George Lucas decanonized

 

Title: Ewoks: The Battle For Endor

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

For the next installment of this feature, I’m up to a major reason I’m doing this now. Three years back, it was May the 4^th, and I had only recently bought the Star Wars Special Edition on Blu Ray after years swearing I wouldn’t get it unless George Lucas pushed it into my cold, dead hands. I was just aware that fans had been making it a tradition to watch the franchise in a marathon on that date, plus a young family member was visiting. I considered watching the original trilogy, either on Blu Ray or the massively overplayed VHS tapes I had been watching since junior high. Instead, I did the most subversive thing I could: I threw on the Ewoks TV movies. This year, on the day I’m starting this review, I did it again, and now I’m recounting the experience just in case you’re still fond of them.

Our story begins with a girl Cindel and her family, living as happy castaways on the Forest Moon of Endor with the Ewoks. Things go downhill when reptilian marauders capture many more of the Ewoks for slaves (actually the “soft” interpretation) and kill her brother and parents. The girl narrowly escapes the leader of the raiders, who is obsessed with finding a power source for their decaying technology, and teams up with her best Ewok friend, Wicket. Together, they survive a dragon-like predator and other hazards of the alien world long enough to meet a stranded old space traveler and a creature called a Yuzzum that can move at superhuman speed. With their new allies, they set out to infiltrate the marauders’ fortress and free the Ewoks, but they must overcome their leader and a powerful witch with her own plans. Will the Ewoks triumph? Will the girl and the old guy build a working ship? Were you expecting ambiguity from a Star Wars spinoff???

Ewoks: The Battle of Endor was the second of two made-for-TV movies based on the Ewok characters from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, following Caravan of Courage the previous year. The live-action TV movie coincided with the Ewoks and Droids animated series, as well as increasingly desperate efforts by Kenner to revive the original Star Wars action figure line. The cast included Warrick Davis reprising his role as Wicket and the late Wilford Brimley of The Thing as the old man. The production was also joined by Joe Johnson and others in the ILM crew, who provided extensive stop-motion creature sequences among other effects. Unlike the “Star Wars Holiday Special”, the Ewoks TV movies received authorized release on VHS, and were referenced in books such as The Illustrated Star Wars Universe. However, George Lucas specified that they were not “canon” during the production of the prequel trilogy, and the spinoff fell into out of print/ bootleg status in the following decade. In 2019, the movies received their first streaming release on Amazon, and in early 2021, they were made available on Disney Plus following an online petition.

For my personal experiences, the two Ewok movies are part and parcel with my conflicted feelings about the Star Wars franchise. To me, the most fascinating thing about the original movies is that they were based on mythology, and it always followed that there doesn’t have to be, shouldn’t be, and perhaps cannot be a “canon”. My own further ideas on this vein materialized as what I have (at least in my own head) termed “assumed mythology”, broadly the kind of stories people might believe and tell within a posited world rather than its literal “history”. (Then that led to my Exotroopers series, so I’m not exactly in a position to criticize.) I have increasingly felt that it was this spirit that drove the franchise’s 1990’s renaissance, which is where its footprint in my memory really centers, and that almost everything since has been pushing in exactly the opposite direction. That was how I came upon this strange broken branch of the saga on second-hand VHS, when I was in college and already tiring of the later “expanded universe”, and I choose the second of the pair in no small part because it’s the one I still own an tape of. I feel like I need to emphasize, it’s an authorized copy! And I have a picture of it! With the Truckstop Queen!!!

The foremost thing to be said is that, if anything, the second movie is an improvement over the first (in form for the franchise). Where the original movie followed the form of a wilderness-survival story, here we have a more complex plot and a conflict with antagonists who are willful villains rather than creatures doing what is evidently natural in their own habitat. It is also impressively grim, with violence that doesn’t feel toned down either for TV or the expected younger audience. The sequel also deserves some credit for the raiders, who feel uniquely suited to the Star Wars universe. It’s clear that they landed on the planet at some point, and they still have remnants of technology, albeit in a condition that makes the Millennium Falcon look like an A-Wing fighter. The leader himself is subtly terrifying, closer to the dark Jedi C’Baoth than any other character in the mythos (also more than a little like Megavolt!). He has clearly long since sunk into some combination of psychosis and/ or senility, with a further fixation on technology he has either forgotten how to use or never understood in the first place. Many of his misapprehensions seem to rise not from simple ignorance but an effectively animistic view of machines as sentient entities to be commanded rather than used or fixed, an attitude the rest either share or have learned not to challenge. He would be either pathetic or comical, if he didn’t torture, kill and even tear apart potentially useable spacecraft to get what he thinks he needs.

On the other hand, the problems very much carry across both movies. The costumes, sets and especially the effects look painfully cheap compared to the actual trilogy. Far worse is the inexplicable slow pacing of many of the action sequences, including the final battle, which in many ways magnifies the issues with the violent content. Then there is the acting, which somehow actually seems to get worse from the cast members who should know what they’re doing. Davis in the main Ewok suit moves more like he’s playing hopscotch than navigating a forest full of creatures ready to kill him, while Brimley seems to have been instructed solely to act grumpy and cute at the same time. The deeper waste is that we rarely if ever get a balance between the controversial “cuteness” of the Ewoks and the poise and dignity they were clearly meant to have had all along. With almost 3 and a half hours of screen time to answer their detractors and satisfy their true fans, all we get is shot after shot of Ewoks looking cuddlier than ever.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I would have gone with a sequence I knew of before I had any idea what it was from. As the finale approaches, the old man and the Yuzzum have infiltrated the marauders’ actual castle to rescue Cindel. It’s easily the most well-realized setting we see in either movie, and in itself is the best indication we get just how long the marauders have been around; either they built the fortress themselves, or they have had enough time to refit or rebuild it to their own needs. (Who else could have constructed it if they didn’t is one more question that’s more interesting without an answer.) They find two guards who are more concerned with playing cards. We get several closeups of both, and the makeup/ effects actually are on par with the original trilogy, enough so that I first sighted one of them in a cherished Lucasfilm art book without further explanation. The Yuzzum moves in to steal the keys. Cindel calls out impulsively, and a guard responds only with a bellow to silence her. We also get a shot of the witch, currently locked up after displeasing the leader, who only watches silently. After several missteps, the creature finally puts one of the metallic cards in the sleeve of one of the guards. Naturally, it falls out, just as he is gathering his winnings, and the loser draws both of his guns. It’s a tense, atmospheric scene we could have used more of in the trilogy, never mind a spinoff like this.

In closing, I can only return to the question of “canon”. For a long time, the Ewok movies have been a leading exhibit for unfavorable comparisons with the prequels and sequels of more recent years. On that front, I must call for a return to sanity. Whatever else you say about the newer movies, it’s literal light years ahead of this. The real counterpoint is that defining “canon” isn’t a license to tell people what to like. The would-be Star Wars TV universe was a disaster of Death Star magnitude, but plenty of people have enjoyed it and still do. That should be the real test of time, and it’s why the best of the franchise holds up, whether it’s currently “canon” or not. And if you still like it, let that be your expanded universe!