The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Jurassic World Ceratosaurus revised!

 

It's time for the weekend post for the second full week of the month, and by my obsessive-compulsive scheduling, that means it's time for a dino post. As it happens, I had something backlogged that I had already done a video for, which you would think would make this quick. To start things off, here's a pic of my new find just out of the box that I kind of forgot I covered in a previous post.

For the backstory, this is part of a Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous line called Roar Attack, apparently first released around June 2021. I got this when I saw a good deal. It only belatedly crossed my mind that this looked more than a little like the Ceratosaurus I already had. That set off a suspicion that this was a recolor of the earlier one, though this was dispelled as soon as I got a look at it. Here's a couple more pics of the thing right out of the package, obviously before assembly was completed.

Now to back things up, since childhood, Ceratosaurus has been my favorite carnosaur (maybe tied with Dilophosaurus). It usually gets portrayed as just a second banana to Tyrannosaurus and/ or Allosaurus, and the latter has some truth since it was a smaller and far less common contemporary of A. fragilis. On more careful consideration, however, Ceratosaurus was really a very unique dinosaur that was probably far more common than the known fossil record would indicate. (In fact, the main reason we have so many allosaur specimens is a few sites where they outnumber even the herbivorous dinosaurs, which clearly could not represent a "normal" ecology.) Among other things, it had unusually large teeth, proportionately if not absolutely larger than Allosaurus. Certain arguments have been made that ceratosaurs were faster and more agile than allosaurs. Their comparative rarity is in itself a plausible indication that they were at least less prone to getting stuck when on muddy ground. Despite their third-class status, they are very frequently represented in movies and paleo art, even if they often are secondary or "background" dinosaurs.

Returning to the present dino, the big surprise was that, while the new ceratosaur is definitely heavier than the one I had before, they are about the same length. Unfortunately, this also means there's a big difference in stability. I've gotten the "old" ceratosaur to stand up before (even with the Truckstop Queen on his back), but I had absolutely no luck this time. The new one, on the other hand, has been surprisingly easy to work with. Here's one more pic of the pair together, I'm sure with my hand propping it up.

And a pic of the old one.

That leaves the big gimmick. Instead of just snapping the jaws and making noise, the new dino has a kind of  ratchet deal. If you push a slide above the hips, the jaws open and then lock in place. If you keep pushing, the jaws open wider, until they reach maximum gape at the third spot. Each time, there's a different roar sound effect. (See my Valley of Gwangi review for my rant on why we know dinos didn't roar...) It's an interesting idea that doesn't work quite as well in execution. It's definitely handy to take pics without using one hand to keep the mouth open. However, having the jaws open all the way just doesn't look right, I'm sure in part because it "should" be held only briefly by an animal in motion, a problem that has cropped up with "action" poses since the days of the Marx dinosaurs. Either of the intermediate poses do look quite a bit better. Here's a sequence of the gimmick in action.

And one more...

"You can tell me, doc; do I need the root canal?"

All in all, both of these dinos are what they should be, good representations of a very cool dinosaur. If it comes to that, it's the kind of thing that just might raise the profile of a species. And how about one more with the Truckstop Queen/ Kate?

That's all for now: more to come!

Featured Creature: The one where deader is betterer

 

 

Title: Pet Sematary II

What Year?: 1992

Classification: Weird Sequel

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

 

As I write this, I have again been looking at turning some of my reviews into saleable content. (Have I mentioned I have an ebook lately?) That has brought me back to The Revenant Review, the single most forcefully retired of all my features. That in turn brought up one particular movie I didn’t know what to do with the first time around. This time, I decided to do a full review under this feature, which has already been home to some odds and ends from my zombie movie files (see the Night of the Living Dead remake and Leviathan). I present Pet Sematary 2, among other things the textbook case why Stephen King doesn’t do his own sequels.

Our story begins with tragedy as an actress is electrocuted on set, leaving her son Jeff and the estranged husband to seek a new life in Ludlow. Maine. The kid makes a new friend, a chubby boy who has the crude town sheriff for a stepfather. He soon hears stories of a burial ground where the dead return to life, and the tragic fate of one Dr. Creed. When the sheriff shoots his buddy’s beloved dog, they join on a quest to resurrect the pet. Sure enough, the tale is true, but the dog comes back mean enough to take out the sheriff. The pair try to cover their tracks by bringing the guy back to life, only to find him even creepier than before, and the story still isn’t going to let the dead mom go. Before the end, they will truly learn that dead is better!

Pet Sematary II was a 1992 horror film directed by Mary Lambert, created as a sequel to the director’s 1989 adaptation of the Stephen King novel Pet Sematary. The film was one of the first sequels to a film based on King’s work, and the only such theatrically-released film to be based on a novel prior to IT Chapter Two in 2019. (Yeah, I checked on that.) The film starred Edward Furlong as Jeff and Clancy Brown as Sheriff Gus Gilbert, with Anthony Edwards as the dad. The film was commercially successful, earning over $17 million against an $8M budget. However, it made far less than the original film's $89.1M box office, and received mixed to poor reviews. Lambert has continued to direct for film and television, including Halloweentown II and Urban Legends: Bloody Mary. A remake of Pet Sematary was released in 2019, with some elements resembling Pet Sematary 2 rather than the novel or the original film. As of 2022, Pet Sematary 2 remains available for digital rental and streaming through Starz and Hulu.

For my experiences, I’ve been having to sort out how many of my Stephen King-related rants I already put down when I took on Sleepwalkers (see also my worst list and video) and Maximum Overdrive. The main thing I definitely have to say is that I absolutely regard Pet Sematary as the best King novel I have read. (To me, the only real competition among the books would be The Eyes of the Dragon and Rose Madder, from when it looked like King might leave the horror genre entirely.) What I find striking is that there was a time when reviewers and commentators spoke just as highly of the original film as one of the very best King adaptations. It has puzzled me to see its reputation go downhill in more recent years, definitely independent of the remake or any other “new” King film. To better assess why, I decided the present film would be a good start, as a film that had genuinely impressed me in the past… and that right there says something about how King films don’t age.

Moving forward, what’s noteworthy off the bat is that there’s no attempt to make this a “real” sequel. We have the same setting and certain references to the characters and events of the previous film, but for practical purposes, this is an outright reset. On consideration, the nature of the undead has also changed, enough that it no longer corresponds either to the book or the original film. Among other things, the revenants we saw before were unambiguously alive, in that they ate, aged, and usually could be redeanimated by the same things that would kill a conventional mortal creature. This time, the reanimated are in many ways more conventional, grisly, gooey, and none too fresh after a while. The most interesting contrast is that there’s no break from their past selves, as strongly implied in the book. Undead Gus in particular seems like a creepier and far meaner version of himself, not a native god-demon wearing him as a suit. One more thing that just feels random if you know the franchise is that the undead effectively multiply by burying already-deceased bodies in the cemetery, something that wasn’t even discussed in the book or the previous film and wouldn’t come up again until the damn remake.

Beyond the reasonably ambitious conceptual framework, however, this one is simply a mess. Yes, there is a lot that is good. Clancy Brown, otherwise best known for Highlander and Starship Troopers (link for the soundtrack), is as disconcertingly entertaining as he usually is playing an actual psychotic. (His best/ most underrated role is still as the voice of Lex Luthor in the 1990s Superman cartoon.) As noted, his arc is transformation without fundamental change, all conveyed with surprising nuance. It’s especially intriguing and darkly amusing to see him go from protecting his pet bunnies to zestily preparing for rabbit stew. Furlong, just off Terminator 2, is up to the task as the kid, by turns sympathetic, believably temperamental and darkly obsessed. A further good word is in order for Edwards and Lisa Waltz as the sheriff’s wife, the latter the one character who brings out a sense of affection and likeability beneath his crude manners. But all of these things balance poorly against a great deal that is excessive or entirely unnecessary. This includes some outright “cringe” material, particularly a frivolous werewolf dream sequence that single-handedly lost this one at least one rating point. What literally drags this one all the way down is the distracting dead-mom subplot, which ultimately does little more than add 10 tiresome minutes to the running time. It was all well and good to show the protagonist dealing with his own grief, but the one thing that wasn’t needed was to have her brought back without Jeff even being involved. I find it all the more telling to compare this to Robocop 2, where the biggest tragic-backstory moment is literally never brought up again.

Now for the “one scene”, I worked ahead so I could get this in while I could still go back to a digital rental. After the dog is brought back to life, the veterinarian father corresponds with another vet who clearly knows something about the past goings-on in Ludlow. He finally meets the expert in person, to find him channeling a midnight movie host. We first find him talking to a taxidermied dog as the dad comes in. He says ominously, “Can’t you just let it be?” When pressed, he gives an account of the events of the previous film, which we have so far only seen referenced in an obviously unreliable tale from one of the kids, even claiming to have examined Church and Mrs. Creed. He finally declares, “There is no `blood condition’. The dog isn’t sick, it’s dead!” Then in case his feelings weren’t clear, he says, “You get the Hell out of that town!” It ends with his laugh and a close-up with one of the stuffed dogs. It’s a fine moment, but also the surest proof how much of the film’s melodrama was completely unneeded.

In closing, the one thing I have to add is that with this review, I have come one step further to making peace with what I did and didn’t do with the Revenant Review. This one is a true “crossover”. It obviously falls in the zombie-movie vein, but it’s also exactly the kind of 1990s-ish monster movies I had in mind when I created this feature. Finally, I find that it does give me a certain perspective on the original film. The first film was an egregiously ‘80s film, with all the good and bad that implies. The present film was the kind of ‘90s film that tried to work ahead of its time and failed. That is one more reason why I still absolutely hold up the original as both a “classic” in itself and one of the best and most faithful King adaptations. By comparison, this is a watchable film that could have been far more, far too often by simply doing less. That’s enough of an epitaph for both the movie and its time. With that, I can rest.

Fiction: The Adventures of Chelsea the Social Worker, Part 14!

 

It's the middle of the week, and I have more Chelsea. Honestly, the stuff here is what I had in mind before I wrote this into a Big Battle scene. This time, I'm including my concept for the building, which I thought I had up under Futures Past but maybe not. As usual, the table of contents for all chapters is at the end.

Skinny McCoy had fired six shots when the first officer arrived. He had come out of an elevator behind the wraith. The officer called out, “Hey, you need to evacuate, somebody’s shooting out there!” It was a blunder he never admitted to his peers, but it probably had saved his life. Skinny twisted at least 90 degrees at the waist, bringing his rifle to bear. The single shot staggered the officer. He promptly retreated back into the elevator. Skinny turned back and fired one last shot in the direction of the Aster.

Skinny descended a tree 3 meters from the balcony. He dropped to ground holding his cutlass pistol. Two officers challenged him. A shot from the pistol smashed through the helmet of one. The other stepped into the path of the wraith as he strode forward, firing a .38 revolve that he carried against regulations. A single thrust of the blade went straight through his face plate. Skinny stepped over him as he fell. From his gun belt, he took out a translucent plastic shell that enclosed a fin-stabilized microrocket and a small powder charge. It dropped handily down the muzzle. A quick wipe of a rag cleaned the blade before he sheathed it again. He unlimbered the rifle single-handed, twirling it to shut the hinge that held its two parts together. The entrance to the shopping plaza was just ahead, guarded by two more officers. He fired and then reloaded with a very strange circular motion of his wrist, which made the barrel drop downward and bob up again as he worked the sliding grip. He fired again, and again…

* * *

 

Chelsea’s van rolled slowly along the sidewalk. Frank was still at the wheel. He gaped at the Dodge cargo van that had taken out the entrance, a missing pane, and a bullet hole in a window rated to stop a projectile with 2000 joules of force. From inside, the sounds of battle could still be heard. “Dammit,” he said, “what the Hell happened and where the Hell are they?”

* * *

 

For several long moments, Skinny stood in the doorway, holding both rifle and pistol at ready. “Chelsea,” Diane hissed, “what are we going to do?” Chelsea only stared ahead. She sighed and looked to Shad. “Shad, can you tell what he’s got?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Shad said. “That’s a Burgess .45 folding slide-action rifle, didn’t even exist in Mainline time. I suppose the other one’s an Elgin cutlass pistol or something like it…”

From across the main corridor, Hexley groaned. He had propped himself up against the wall, just outside the barrier that sealed the other end of the cross-corridor. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s about what I figured.”

Diane looked at the feed on her own wrist organizer. The wraith had lowered a bandana that would have covered his face. What was revealed was unsettlingly mundane, the visage of an evidently old man with a silver mustache. His mouth was twisted strangely. She realized that he had at least two rounds of ammunition tucked into his cheek. “All right,” she said. “How many shots does he have?”

“Now that’s a bit tricky,” Shad said. “The magazine is good for six .45-.70 cartridges, plus one in the chamber of course. He could get in 8 shots if he used the .45-.60 load.  If he topped off a bit, he could get up to 10…”

Finally, the wraith spoke. “Dat’s a smarta boy,” he said. “You canna tell them whata dis is.” He took a step back and fired the pistol. Shad covered Chelsea instinctively. The rocket-assisted projectile turned a corner and sailed right past them. It finally lodged in the door at the end of the corridor. A fraction of a second later, the projectile started spewing a blood-red vapor.

“Oh, yeah,” Shad said as the gas advanced. “That’s really bad…”

There was a metallic sound as Skinny reloaded the pistol. Diane tried to convince herself that he hadn’t done it with his tongue. “Listen, Skinny,” Shad said. “You aren’t getting to her without coming through me. If you did, you’re still going to have to kill me, because if you don’t, I’m doing everything I can to kill you.”

“She’s notta goin’ soft on you no-ah more,” Skinny answered. “She may taka you back, but iffa you get in my way, I’ma clear to taka care of you.”  

Shad put his arms around Chelsea. “Then I give her up,” he said. There were tears in his eyes, though all their faces were already red with irritation. “Just let her go.”

“No,” Skinny said. “You mighta think you mean it. Butta she would taka de bullet first.”

Before she really knew what she was doing or would do, Diane stood up and stepped into the main corridor. “Okay, I still don’t know what this is about,” she said. “But I am done with these two idiots. I’m leaving, and you aren’t going to shoot me because you’re low on ammo and you’re not getting paid to kill me.”

“Diane Clairaborne Weber,” Skinny said. Diane flinched at the sound of her name and the half-smile on his lips. “You mighta be surprised. But fora now, you canna go.”

Diane nodded. Behind her, Hexley held up two fingers. She dived for the panel by the barricade. The wraith cursed but held his fire. In a moment, the barricade opened.

And that was when the shopping plaza exploded.

* * *

 

On the other side of the barricade that cut off the shop from the main market floor, the goons again fell back, dragging almost half their number behind them. The parted crowd revealed the battered, blood-stained bronze god in an almost ape-like pose, leaning forward far enough to show the full fan of his arms from above. His blades retracted and his fists became hands again, including the severed arm that lay on the floor. From the other side came none other than Spike. “So, fine, you beat up my gang,” he said.

“Then it is single combat,” Deve said. There was a clong as his damaged arm dropped to the floor.

“I suppose you could say that,” Spike said. He glanced down at the two pieces of the severed arm on the floor. He showed no particular surprise as they crumbled into verdigris.

“A fair fight?” Deve pressed.

“I doubt it,” Spike said. He drew a four-barreled weapon, easily recognized by the knowledgeable as a semi-improvised, definitely illegal plasma carbine. A fist-sized bolt hit Deve in the chest, followed by two more. For a moment, his whole body glowed with a checkerboard pattern, the inverse of the grid beneath his hide. The glow grew brighter, and his body began to hum like the last, lingering reverberation of a gong. Then there was another sound, which might have been called a laugh, if a hyena, a buzzsaw, a fusion bomb and a neutron star could all laugh simultaneously.

“Frinkin’ frink of a frink,” Spike said, almost contemplatively. Then he ran like hell.

* * *

 

The whole building shook with the blast. Across the arcing face of the ground floor, panes of flexiglass broke, bowed, or came right out of the frames. The light turned the glass gray and then black as safety tinting kicked in. Officers, bystanders and goons dropped to the ground if they weren’t blown down first. The tiny Fiat van rocked to the right, enough for the left wheels to mount the sidewalk as they turned. Ahead, a wraith-like figure flailed like a scarecrow in the wind. Hector leaned out the window and pointed with a large claw. With his toothless snout, he managed to whistle, “Squin-hee!”

“Stop!” the other officer Hexley shouted to Frank. “Let me out and I can take him!”

“Uh-uh,” Frank said. “This is gonna be fun…”

At that moment, Skinny turned. “Aye,” he said, “carape diem…” Then the van hit.

* * *

 

Diane led the way as they ran through the cross-corridor. “What the Hell was that?” Chelsea said. “Did Frank just run over the bad guy  with my van?”

“Who knows?” Diane said. “But we sure as Hell aren’t going out that way!” They crossed another corridor without stopping. Suddenly, Shad pulled Chelsea back. Diane froze a moment later. Directly ahead of them was an old woman they all knew well, flanked by two escorts.

“My sweet boy,” she said, “why do you make this so hard?”

“Maimeo,” Shad said to his great-grandmother, “just let us go.”

The crone smiled. “Shoot her,” she said to the escorts.

“My Lady,” the one on the left said, “I told you, we don’t have that kind of contract.”

“Then give me a gun,” she said.

“We can’t do that,” said the other.

“Well, then, I suppose it’s just as well I brought this,” the crone said. She reached into an immaculate black handbag, and pulled out Shad’s one handheld saw.

Shad practically wrapped himself around Chelsea as the saw came to life. “Maimeo, don’t!” he shouted. The crone shrieked and turned aside, straight for Diane. She had just time to scream… and then the old woman was on the floor, wrapped in a still contracting net.

Percy stepped forward from the main entrance. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “We were tied up across the street. I suggest you keep going.”

The van had skidded to a halt just a few meters from where they burst out on the other side of the Aster. Chelsea’s first reaction was, “Frank! What the Hell did you do to my van?” The van was indeed in dubious shape, shaking as it idled and leaking an impressive variety of fluids.

“Never mind, get in!” Frank shouted. “We’re getting out of here!”

Hexley climbed out of the van. “Did you see my brother?” he shouted. He looked over his shoulder and swore. In the midst of the van’s trail was a grotesquely crumpled shape that a pair of officers were just venturing to approach. Suddenly, the shape rose, reforming itself by a series of contortions back to something close to a man.

The only sign of Skinny’s rifle was the grip and splintered stock, now permanently separated from the barrel. But he still wielded the cutlass pistol. “It’s over, Skinny!” Shad shouted. “Maimeo just got busted. If you kill her now, you won’t even get paid!”

“Perahaps, per’aps not,” Skinny said. He raised the gun with care, sending officers and  bystanders scattering. He fired the most sophisticated of his rockets, a homing round that could navigate to a target through a crowd of bystanders and even around anyone selfless enough to block its path. What it wasn’t designed for was hundreds of needle-like flechettes from not one but two guns, fired ahead of the still-accelerating projectile. The rocket blew apart in mid-air, throwing off a spray of shrapnel and phosphorous over a radius of a meter or more. The two Hexleys nodded to each other, one by the van and the other leaning against the door frame. They each turned their 12-gauge riot guns toward skinny. But then a figure stepped into his path, still glowing red with eyes that flashed blue-white.

“Pardon me, officers,” Deve said. “I believe I can render some assistance.” From five pairs of hands, his blades sprouted again. The Hexleys lowered their guns, while the other officers backed away warily.

Skinny laughed and reached over his shoulder with his free hand, drawing a forward-swept kukri blade 60 centimeters long. “Once-ah,” the wraith said, “I kill a ding like-ah you.”

“Funny you should mention it,” the bronze god answered. “So have I.”

Even Chelsea stared as the combatants sized each other up, indeed virtually the same in height, until Percy shouted, “Go ahead and get in the van! If it doesn’t run, I can push!”

As they piled in, the wraith and the bronze god lunged at each other. Deve’s headpiece rang like a gong as a slug lodged in the metal. Skinny undulated  one way and then the other, dodging flurries of blade strokes and simply absorbing several that struck home. Twice, the cutlass pistol’s blade rang on Deve’s hide, then the kukri cleaved deep into his chest, with enough force and effect to make him draw back as Skinny extricated his weapon for another stroke. By then, the van was back on the road and making its way along. The wraith’s whole torso twisted as he prepared for a swing at the idol’s neck. But Deve struck first with a hook on his second-lowest pair of arms, snaring Skinny’s shoulder. With a further twist, he deflected the blade enough to disarm the foe with one of his trowel-like thrusting blades. He followed with a double claw on his matching hand, hauling the wraith into the waiting fan of his blades. And of those who were escaping, only Shad looked back.

“Ever hear the ballad of Leroy Brown?” he said. Chelsea just shook her head. “`He looked like a jigsaw puzzle… with a couple of pieces gone.’”

Part I: The romance!

Part II: The parking violation!

Part III: Capsule hotel destruction!

Part IV: The Kelsiraptor, and Harryhausen monster bureaucrat!

Part V: The restraining order!

Part VI: The trial, part 1!

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

Part VIII: The goon!

Part IX: The religion!

Part X: Kloe!!!

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

Part XII: Skinny McCoy!!!

Part XIII: The Harryhausen monster fight!!!

Super Movies: The one by the guys who made Empire Strikes Back

 

 

Title: Robocop 2

What Year?: 1990

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, it’s been a little over a month since my nominal revival of this feature, and I’ve been continuing to consider what I really want to do. I’ve also been reminded how often I’ve talked about such things and how irrelevant it usually becomes when I lay tings down outside my blog. So this time around, I’m just going to say that I’ll be reviewing a movie that was never really not going to be here, but just got lost in the shuffle. It will also stand out as a movie where the comic book/ superhero angle is unusually indirect (even more so than They Live), which to me has made it all the more interesting. I present Robocop 2, a sequel to a movie that probably ripped off a comic book by a guy who wrote comic books.

Our story begins with our hero Robocop back on the streets, hunting for the source of a drug called Nuke and the crime lord/ cult leader Cain directing the operation. Meanwhile,  the familiar rogues’ gallery at OCP are trying to create another cyborg, but their “candidates” keep literally self-destructing. Things continue to go downhill as the police go on strike and OCP proceeds with a hostile takeover of Old Detroit. When Robocop gets chopped up by the bad guys, however, he overrides his new politically-correct programming to go on the warpath. The aftermath sees Cain crippled, leaving his crazy girlfriend and juvenile delinquent lieutenant to spin a new scheme to leverage the city government. But the real wild card comes in play when the company’s cyber-psychologist decides to put the self-proclaimed Messiah in a new robot body!

Robocop 2 was the first sequel to the 1987 film Robocop, widely believed to be based on the character and comic Judge Dredd (see also Hardware). The project was pursued without significant involvement by director Paul Verhoeven, though writers Edward Neumeier (see Starship Troopers 3) and Michael Miner provided an early and largely unused script. The production proceeded with a script by writer/ artist Frank Miller, with Irvin Kershner (see Never Say Never Again) as director. Peter Weller (see Leviathan, Of Unknown Origin) and Nancy Allen (Strange Invaders) returned as Robocop and Anne Lewis, with Daniel O’Herlihy (The Last Starfighter) as “the Old Man”. Cain was played by character actor Tom Noonan; other cast included Gabriel Damon as Hob, and the late Galyn Gorg as Angie. The villain Robocop 2 was portrayed with extensive “go-motion” effects by Phil Tippett (all hail Phil), who had also created ED-209 for the original film. The soundtrack was scored by Leonard Rosenman, whose previous work included Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings, replacing Basil Poledouris (see the Conan the Destroyer and Starship Troopers soundtrack posts while you’re at it). The film was a commercial disappointment, earning under $46 million against a budget of up to $30M. Weller declined to return for Robocop 3, which was received very poorly. Kershner never directed another film, though he continued to  work in the industry; his final credit was as executive producer for The Lost Tribe, released several months before his death in late 2010. Gorg died of lung cancer in 2020.

For my experiences, Robocop was yet another 1980s property that influenced me without more than casual exposure to the thing itself. I can now see in it the backbone of the exotroopers, the Evil Possum, and especially Percy the robot cop. Yet, I’m sure that I couldn’t have seen the movie more than once or twice from elementary school to the start of college, and then always as the outlandishly bowdlerized network TV cut (which I still find in many ways more fun). On the other hand, I can very vividly remember encountering its pop culture trail, from the cartoon to the NES game to the live-action TV show. On top of that, I can now see its mark on still other things I knew and loved back then, like the psychotic TV series Sledge Hammer. It was in the wake of all that when I rediscovered the original film, still on TV and bootleg video tape. That finally inspired me to go looking for more, and what I came home with was a tape of the sequel. From all I can remember, I really liked it as well as what I had seen of the original, which is what I’m bringing to the table even now.

Moving forward, the foremost thing to say is that this is a clear case of a sequel being “different” rather than necessarily better or worse, which has left me all the more puzzled by the criticism and occasional outright hate it was getting both at the time of its release and since. What’s all the more curious is that there is a certain school that tries to pin the blame for the arguable and inarguable failings of the film on its departures from Miller’s story and script (evidently including Weller and Miller himself). Having considered among other things Miller’s own comic book treatment of his original script, I have to dissent that this is getting things exactly the wrong way ‘round. What’s in the movie, for better or worse, is exactly the libertarian/ anarchist  manifesto he intended, especially the very direct connection drawn between allegedly progressive “political correctness” and actual corporate censorship. (For that matter, Robocop 3 is pretty much Miller ramped up by a factor of Miller…) What I find to be the movie’s strength is that this is moderated throughout by good action scenes, engaging dialogue and intriguing character development, all of which I will definitely give the director at least some credit for.

With that laid out, the further pros and cons lie in what is done with the characters and the assumed world. The plans of OCP for Old Detroit have progressed, with even more overt villainy from O’Herlihy as the CEO. On the downside, there’s also more outright irrationality, and not solely in the scheme to use a criminal as their new cyborg. The whole scheme to drive up crime while driving the police to strike made a certain amount of sense as a short-term goal, but by this point, they should be either getting the cops on their side or replacing them (which is admittedly shown in both the comic and the threequel). On the other side, it’s debatable whether there’s anything new for Robocop and Lewis. If anything, Robo has the better arc, as he proves himself more willing to question OCP and more open to human emotion. By comparison, Lewis is just herself with a little more snark, without any sign of being affected by the heartrending ordeal she went through last time. A final good word is in order for the bad guys. The gang from the first movie were too feral for evil deeper than basic sadism. (If they were already raising the dead, why couldn’t we get Kurtwood Smith back?) The trio this time are nuanced, clearly intelligent characters with a complex and increasingly disturbing dynamic, and the kid is the most cunning and quite possibly the most dangerous of them all. This is true Greek tragedy, regardless of whether one can muster sympathy for any of them.

Now, I’m definitely going long for the robots and the effects. Robocop 2 is by any standard one of the best bots created through any method or medium, to me really only comparable to the very odd cyborg of Saturn 3. Its shape and look is essentially ape-like, with touches of the dinosaurian influences of ED-209. What’s most impressive is that it actually seems to have an advantage on Robocop in mobility despite its larger size and evidently far greater weight and durability. This thing can climb, jump, and manipulate objects. On top of that, it has a greater armament. There’s really just two problems. First, the final battle gets long and very bloody for something that could and should be literal comic-book fun, as evidenced especially before and after the surreal melee in the elevator shaft. Second, this isn’t really a natural evolution of the Robocop design, which is already more functional as a one-man SWAT team than a general-purpose law enforcement AI. (I think even kid-me thought of that with Percy.) For an actual tank on legs, there’s not much this can do that an upgraded ED-209 couldn’t do better. For something that can at a minimum chase the bad guys while still entering through the door (and ideally using the stairs…), the already terrifying “joke” Robocops at the beginning were far more promising. (I especially like the first one, which also offered a more natural use of the TV screen interface.) If it comes to that, you could keep the already very good design and just scale it down to Robo’s size.

With that, I’ve gone much longer than usual and I’m still just getting to the “one scene”. Right around the end of the first act, there’s a reunion between Robocop and Mrs. Murphy, and it is not happy. We learn that Robocop has been “patrolling” around his family’s new home, leading to a lawsuit. On coaching from his handlers, he admits that he is a machine before his wife enters. It would be understandable if she only asked to be left alone; instead, she addresses him as Alex, then starts into a speech that they can be together again. Robo simply says, “Touch me,” and she touches his fully exposed face. (We never do get a full explanation how that part actually works.)  He gives the dodgy explanation that the likeness is to honor Alex Murphy, then states, “Your husband is dead.” He then leaves, saying, “I don’t know you.” This is one more thing where I can easily credit Kershner for making it work as well as it does. (Yeah, there is a corresponding scene in the comic, and this is vastly better.) The most frustrating yet counterintuitively effective part is that this is the first and last we will see or hear of it. The whole point of great storytelling and great filmmaking is that if a scene is truly memorable, you don’t have to reference it at every opportunity to keep it applicable to the rest of the story, which is what marks the best of the very best.

In closing, I am left very late with what I think of the movie. Depending on mood, I might rate this lower than I have, but definitely not lower than 3 out of 4. To me, the bottom line is that this is the kind of franchise where “canon” does not apply. The original was so spot on, both in what it showed and what it didn’t show, that a “real” sequel was neither necessary nor conceivable. What makes sense is a “what if” that could just as well be a campfire tale told in the universe of the first film, and that’s the “head canon” by which I can accept the subsequent films (yes, even Robocop 3). In any case, what I have come to appreciate more and more is just how much creativity and actual genius went into this movie. Sure, it’s self-dated and in certain ways outdated, but such is the fate of all political comedy, no matter how good. (If it comes to that, I can count the eventual obsolescence of “PC” as anything but a reactionary’s straw man as one last “I told you so” for Miller.) That doesn’t change the fact that this is a very well-made movie that’s interesting even when it’s irritating. I can even find a last good word for the music, at least as long as there isn’t an actual choir singing our hero’s name. If I don’t get any more done under this feature, I will still be happy to have gotten to this one. With that, I am calling it a day. “They’ll fix you. They fix everything…”

The Anthology Anthology: Terry Carr Seventies collections!

 

It's the start of my second full week for this month, and after just doing a Philip K. Dick post, I felt like doing a little more with vintage anthologies. So here's a pair from one of the anthologists you just couldn't avoid, Terry Carr. To kick things off, here's another pic of the anthology that started this, a collection obviously titled Creatures From Beyond.

Before going further, I definitely owe a word on the editor. Terry Carr was a sci fi enthusiast and writer who started editing fanzines in the late 1950s. In the following decade, he tried both writing SF and editing anthologies. By the 1970s, he had shifted to the latter. Starting in 1971, he published the all-original anthology series Orbit. The following year, he published the first volume of the ambitiously titled Best Science Fiction of the Year. On top of that, he edited a number of perfectly good collections of science fiction from the "pulp" era. On the whole, he rivalled Robert Silverberg, Donald Wollheim and Roger Elwood as the most prolific anthologist of the 1970s. He kept up this output until his very untimely death in 1987, a few months after his 50th birthday. In my own further experience and opinion, his anthologies rivalled those of Martin Greenberg for the standards of quality. Thus, I picked up a lot of his collections from an early age, and the only ones I ever got rid of were one or two with freaky/ awkward '70s stuff I just didn't care for. One more item I ran across was The Light At The End Of The Universe, one of only three collections of his own fiction. It's a serviceable collection in itself, generally good with a few that belong among the best of the very best of the genre.

Now to consider the anthology at hand, the most interesting here is "The Worm" by David H. Keller, published in 1929, which came up in my review of Tremors 2. I re-read it after I was done with the movie. I have to say by way of context that I have read a fair number of Keller's stories and found them to be overrated at best, despite being hard to find and usually only mentioned in academic-leaning sources. This story, however, is enough to justify his reputation as a pioneer of fantasy and horror as well as science fiction. It's all centered on a kind of male Scarlet O'Hara analog, a loner living in his family's mill with his dog, still running the machinery as a matter of ritual. He begins to notice disturbances in the basement floor, and soon realizes that something is undermining the building. It is, of course, a huge worm, apparently attracted by decades of noise from the machinery. The subsequent events follow quickly in an already brief tale as the creature literally eats the building out from under the protagonist. What's most impressive is that there's never any doubt that this will end very badly, as evidenced especially by the hero's ludicrously inadequate weaponry.  It's all just building up to pre-ordained tragedy, perhaps for the creature as much as the man.

For the rest of this quite slender collection, the most impressive is "The Street That Wasn't There" by none other than Clifford Simak, with Carl Jacobi credited as co-author. Published in 1941, it's really a "cosmic terror" piece rather than a monster story, in which the protagonist sees the world around him literally erased by an unknown force. It presents an early example if not the very first of a concept that would resurface 1949 with "Private- Keep Out" by Philip McDonald and stay alive in pop culture thereafter. One can read it as either an alteration of history or just a representation of insanity or dementia, but there's no internal second-guessing. The result rivals McDonald's tale as among the most terrifying SF/ horror tales ever written. One may certainly wonder further how the division of labor really went in a work that's highly atypical for Simak. 

A story that does fall egregiously into the monster genre is "Beauty And The Beast" by Henry Kuttner, associated with an egregious cover of Thrilling Wonder Stories. A gem is recovered from a crashed spaceship returning from Venus, along with the seeds of some very pretty flowers. The gem proves to be the egg of a rapidly growing dinosaurian creature that rampages through Washington, but all is not as it seems... It's most interesting as a preview of 20 Million Miles To Earth. This was undoubtedly one of many cases where a cover was created and then presented to an author as an assignment. Kuttner is makes the best of a bad job with an ironic twist on the usual cliches.

For the rest of this very slender collection, I must admit that there are still at least a couple I haven't read. The most noteworthy are "Mimic" by Donald Wollheim, which I commented on in my Mimic 2 review, and Theodore Sturgeon's "IT", which came up in connection with Swamp Thing. (And don't make talk about Man-Thing...) Another interesting one is "Full Sun" by Brian Aldiss, of all things a werewolf tale, with a big twist. One more I'm sure I've read is "Some Are Born Cats", a collaboration between the editor and his wife Carol Carr. I remember it being vaguely charming, and not much else. Now for a pic of the "B" volume...

Now this is one that I'm sure made a more immediate impression on me, though I may have read even less of it. The centerpiece is "Joy In Mudville", an installment of the Hoka series by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson that didn't make it into Earthman's Burden; if you already know anything about it, set your brain to bonkers. Another interesting entry is "Mr. Meek Plays Polo", about a titular protagonist who keeps getting talked into dangerous tasks, in this case a futuristic sport with rocket ships. It's obviously set up as a series, though ISFDB only shows one other entry. The most intriguing is "The Great Kladnar Race", by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett, where Earthmen have a race with the local livestock, only to find that the natives are all betting on what seems like the oldest, slowest nag among them. The surprise isn't that things go awry, but that it happens in a way that isn't that obvious. Again, it's all solid.

With that, I'm done for now. I hope for this to be a fitting tribute to a very important figure in science fiction. Without anthologists like Carr, people like me might never have had a shot at many of the best of 1940s, '50s and even '60s science fiction. Even in the age of the internet, you can still find things in these old anthologies that you won't anywhere else. That's all for now, more to come!

Futures Past: A return to Philip K. Dick

 It's the end of an off week, and I've been debating how to round things out. I decided it was time to follow up on a post from a while ago, on Philip K. Dick. Last time, I was looking at two particular Philip K. Dick anthologies, one of which I admitted ridiculously limited familiarity with. This time, I'm back for a rematch, with a marginally better grasp of what I'm talking about, and I'll be going through in more detail some of the best, most interesting and in some cases most frustrating stories from Philip K. Dick, starting with some from the first volume of his collected stories.

"Beyond Lies The Wub"- This one is best known as Dick's first publication, in the July 1952 issue of the notorious Planet Stories (the source for the image above). Last time, I allowed it as a "classic" with obvious reservations; now, I'm ready to admit I was still doing it a disservice. An expedition to Venus buys a creature called a Wub from the natives, which looks like local livestock. It proves to be an intelligent and very talkative creature that wanted to come along. Alas, the captain wants to kill the creature, not because it's a potentially dangerous organism that might have ulterior motives, but because he wants to eat it. It doesn't sound like much from a synopsis or even a casual reading; on closer examination, however, it's an early glimpse of Dick in top form and an unnerving tale to boot. This is true tragedy and horror, where the comic twists only add to the perversity of the proceedings.

"The Skull"- Possibly the first Dick tale to deal with religion, and already showing his uneasy relationship with Christianity. A convict is offered a pardon in return for killing the founder of a cult, centuries in the past. The best that can be said is that this probably didn't seem as obvious in 1952.

"The Defenders"- And this gives us an even more definitive Philip K. Dick "twist", except that the big reveal is that things are a lot better than they seem. Humans in underground bunkers rely on robots to continue fighting a war that has wiped out the surface world, but the machines are reluctant to let them back in the loop. It's an interesting take on artificial intelligence, but it just doesn't feel quite right for Dick.

"The Piper In The Woods"-  A psychologist is sent to investigate why the staff of an outpost on another planet keep deserting. It's subversion even more harmless than "The Defenders"; next...

"Meddler"- And another time travel tale. A top secret project has been looking into the future, but when the future keeps looking worse, they must send someone to the future to learn the fate of humanity. What starts as a fascinating and forward-thinking take on history, fate and the observer effect ends as a routine monster yarn. The only surprise is that Dick couldn't do better.

"To Serve The Master"- Now I'm into The Philip K. Dick Reader with one I mentioned last time. Centuries after an apocalyptic war that most have forgotten a young man discovers a damaged robot during his errands for his impoverished colony. The bot tells him of a time when machines did the work and let humans live in luxury, until killjoys decided to do away with robots. Finally, the boy helps repair the bot, only to discover that his elders have been keeping back the other side of the story. I have rated this one highly because its exceptional brutality and an especially sympathetic protagonist, but it's another tale that feels just a little off. To me, it feels like a rare occasion where Dick let his antiauthoritarian leanings overcome the natural directions of a story. As usual, there is one side that is clearly lying and one side that could still be wrong. The problem is that there is no logical reason for the side that won to be silent until it is possibly too late, beyond the fact that it provides a dilemma for the hero.  What's disappointing is that in a Dick story, the police, politicians and other authority figures are normally sincere and rational even if they are in the wrong. Worse the outward plot convenience undermines the very themes that set it in his body of work. The point of propaganda is that you don't just keep your side from hearing an opposing view; you tell your version first and loudly and often thereafter. Dick of all people knows this better than anyone. Without that anchoring reality, it's little if anything more than a poignantly beautiful misfire.

"Exhibit Piece"- A nice one I don't believe I had read until after my original post. A man living the Eisenhower suburban dream starts to see signs that his world isn't what it appears to be, and he just might know more about it than he admits to himself. This is a satirical tale that feels all the more savage in light of the surge of 1950s nostalgia around the time of Dick's posthumous renaissance, now fading into more distant memory. It also offers an apt window on the overlapping worlds of collectors, model builders, and history enthusiasts, always in uproar over minutiae at the expense of deeper truth.

"War Veteran"- A visitor from the future arrives amid tensions between Earth and colonies on other planets, telling a tale of a war that will end in disaster for Terra. This is another Dick tale with a happy ending that is poorer for it. Given his known clashes with at least one editor, that might well be the case. Even allowing for that, I suspect that this is one that the author didn't know what to do with. On top of that, it's definitely longer than it needed to be.

"Shell Game"- Now this is what counts as a good and fun Dick story. The shipwrecked descendants of a starship crew are ever vigilant against attacks from Earthmen sent to bring them home, even though they never seem to find conclusive prove that the invaders were real at all. Meanwhile, a search of the wreck reveals that its original destination was a colony dedicated to treating the insane. It's an absurd yet intriguing premise, engaging characters, and dialogue that "works" even if it's not particularly good, in short, everything Dick was about.

"Explorers We"- Moving on from the stories in the collections I discussed last time, this just might be the most completely despairing of all the author's stories. The first expedition to Mars returns to Earth, but nobody is happy to see them. At face value, it's almost routine for Dick, yet very effective and even more vicious than "To Serve The Master". The imitation humans believe they are human, the humans won't believe they are anything but a threat, and everything that we see is certain to happen again.

"Holy Quarrel"- Just one more, and one of my personal favorites. The nuclear arsenal of the United States is under the control of a computer whose judgment is unquestioned, until it directs an attack on our own soil. The only apparent explanation is, it doesn't like gumball machines. What's truly amazing is that this 1966 story was written relatively late in Philip Dick's career and arguably at the very end of his term as a regular contributor to science fiction magazines.  Just when he was winning highbrow respect with his novels, he took the time to write a tale as completely silly as this. Hey, you gotta be you.

That just leaves the question, where does all this fit in whatever I've hoped to do with this particularly misbegotten feature? To me, there is a "myth" of Philip K. Dick that I cannot find in his actual work. Pop culture has wanted to make Dick an intellectual, a prophet and a visionary, which he was by all means, but not a fallible writer who could be wrong, dated or just goofing off. I tie this especially to the fact that his fame has rested on his novels rather than his stories. Make no mistake, his short fiction is absolutely great, yet it is unquestionably a product of the 1950s-'60s pulp market. That, in turn, should never have been a bad thing, and probably wasn't except to the brand of self-conscious, self-doubting sophisticates who wanted science fiction to be in but not of mainstream pop culture. I hope my lineup will provide just a little more perspective. (While I'm at it, here's a couple links for others' reviews, on "To Serve The Master" and "Holy Quarrel" respectively.) That's all for now, more to come!

Image credit American Literature.

Really Good Movies! The one with the vampire apocalypse

 

 

Title: The Last Man On Earth

What Year?: 1964

Classification: Prototype/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Awesome!!! (3/3)

 

As I write this, I am just getting around to looking at further use for my most forcefully retired feature, The Revenant Review. The main thing this led me to was looking at alternatives to the quite labor-intensive review format I use on my blog. That, in turn, has led me to reconsider some movies I had passed over for that feature. In many of these cases, I have decided to cover them another way. For a few, on the other hand, I have decided that a full review was indeed in order. The first of these was Day of the Dead, which I covered in the last installment of this still new feature. This time, I’m back with the other, a film that is highly influential and widely available, yet still easily underestimated in both importance and quality. I present The Last Man On Earth, the archetype of the zombie apocalypse, and that’s just the beginning of its impact.

Our story begins with an introduction to Robert Morgan, who narrates his own situation with brief, almost emotionless comments as he patrols a city seemingly devoid of human life. He disposes of many of the bodies of the dead, which he remarks are “the weak ones”, but sometimes, he runs them through with wooden stakes first. He hurries to get home by dark, when we finally see what he is afraid of: A host of blood-sucking undead, brought to life by the same plague that has wiped out civilization, led by his one-time friend and coworker Ben Cortman. The story is filled out by a succession of flashbacks to the onslaught of the plague, in which our protagonist lost his daughter and his wife, and had to redeanimate the latter. In the present, Morgan is the only uninfected survivor, still looking for a cure to the plague but mostly destroying the undead and the living infected. Things change when he discovers someone else is killing the undead. Then he finds a mysterious survivor who soon reveals the truth: Some of the infected have learned to reverse the effects of the plague- and they consider Morgan their enemy!

The Last Man On Earth was a 1964 post-apocalyptic film starring Vincent Price (see… Dead Heat?), based on the horror/ science fiction novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (see Duel… and Jaws 3???). The film was made by AIP, from a script written by Matheson and previously offered to Hammer Films. Matheson reportedly declined credit for the script after significant revisions. The movie was filmed in Italy, with Sydney Salkow and Ubaldo Ragona sharing directorial credit. The film received a US theatrical release in early 1964; it was not considered commercially successful. It gained influence over time, notably being acknowledged as a major influence on Night of the Living Dead (see the remake review). Matheson’s novel was adapted far more loosely as The Omega Man in 1971 and I Am Legend in 2007. The film is in the public domain.

For my experiences, this is another case where I read the novel before I saw any of the movies. I was impressed enough to reference the book in my own work, but I’ve had a lot of trouble when I’ve tried to come back to it. The problem I found from the beginning was that Matheson tried much too hard to remove the supernatural from his tale. It was all well and good to skewer the Christian pretexts of Victorian literature and later Hollywood (possibly the most surreal passage of the very odd book is a musing on a Muslim vampire!), but the lengthy (pseudo) scientific “explanations” aged no better than the source material he was making fun of. On still further consideration, the best thing Hollywood could have done with it was what we already got from Romero: Let the rationalizations go, whether scientific or religious, and focus on the sheer terror and despair of civilizational collapse and the further fear of the unknown and unknowable.

With that all said, the present film is a singularly impressive effort, capturing and at times arguably amplifying the isolation and paranoia of the novel. As often happens, many of the strongest moments come early on as we see the protagonist’s clearly well-practiced routines. The story gets a boost from the flashbacks of the middle act, as we see the military destroying the infected. We get a further sense of the protagonist’s transformation, as his struggle to give his loved ones a dignified burial ends in his reanimated wife trying to do him in. It’s enhanced throughout by the singular undead. These are truly the missing link between the cinematic vampire and the zombie. They’re pale, vaguely grungy, and decidedly slow-moving. They almost always appear emotionless, with no sign of pleasure at making a kill. Most intriguingly, there’s some fairly detailed exploration of their intelligence, albeit mostly from the protagonist’s conjectures. They can talk and use tools, though Morgan maintains that he would be dead if they were his equals. He further compares them to starving and diseased animals, implying that they may have deteriorated mentally. Certain weaknesses, especially an aversion to mirrors, are taken to be psychological “blocks” possibly shaped by pre-existing superstitions about vampires. One thing not directly commented on is that the gang gathered at his door don’t seem to number more than 10 or 20, implying either that they are solitary or that their numbers are thinned indeed.

The quite typical “con” here is that things get dodgier in the final act. The meeting of Morgan and a survivor is played up as drama, when in reality, it’s a certainly intriguing but not “game-changing” development. After all, we already know that there are several varieties of living and undead in play, so one more doesn’t necessarily reframe Morgan’s predicament. Things do get interesting as they interact, with Morgan still suspicious. At the peak of his psychotic detachment, he speaks freely of his intent to kill his nemesis Cortman. The best moment comes when he is confronted for killing the living infected along with the undead, which he really knew all along despite his protests. My favorite part is when she remarks that he knows even less than she already did. It’s some truly great moments, despite significant flaws. What follows, however, is merely routine, made all the more problematic by Morgan’s unrepentance as he freely decimates those justifiably sent to kill him.

And since these reviews have already been going long, what I have found most intriguing is that it all feels like it “should” have been made far earlier than it was, what I have called the Anachronistic Outlier. Of course, I have said this often enough to start doubting my own judgment on such things. Yet, this is truly one of the clearest, most definitive and most egregious examples, complete with black-and-white cinematography at a time when even junk like Hercules Against The Moon Men was being shot in color. I can’t be entirely alone in this, because I repeatedly had to recheck the date of release due to sources that incorrectly list it as 1960, which is still later than it really looks. To me, it is the sense of being unmoored in time that has come to define the experience of the film. It looks like it could have been shot in the 1950s or even earlier, but the sophistication of its themes and presentation still compare favorably to much later films.

That leaves the “one scene”, and what stood out for my purposes is the return of Mrs. Morgan. After burying his wife rather than burning her, our protagonist is back at home, more surreally calm than usual as he pours himself a drink; a case could be made that he knows perfectly well what’s coming. (Ah, yes… why couldn’t they just call him Neville???) He looks merely puzzled at a very faint voice repeating, “Let me in.” He calls out as he approaches the door, seemingly unable to recognize the voice or at least unsure. By the time he reaches the door, the voice has stopped. Instead, the door knob is wiggling, shown with a closeup and very audible sound effects. Finally, he opens the door, which is evidently locked from inside but not bolted. Of course, the revenant is right there, looking disheveled and simply spaced out. Only then does she say as she advances, “Robert.” The funny thing is, for once, I’m not cutting things off, as this is truly as much as we see of the incident. It ends simply with Robert staring back, and in my “head canon”, I picture him debating whether to fight back or join the undead voluntarily. The lesson remains, there are times when we’ve already seen enough.

In closing, what I come back to is a question I already ranted on with my review (and follow-up video) of The Thing: What really constitutes a movie that is “underrated”, and how far does it have to go to cross over into an accepted “classic”? This is a film that, on top of everything else, falls on the borderline. It’s clear that it was successful enough in its own time to have an immediate impact on genre films. In the long term, it has been so widely proliferated that a good number of people who would claim familiarity with it simply because it’s in a public-domain boxed set they may or may not have watched. In a sense, it has gone through the “classic” treatment and out the other end, in the process creating quite a few things that might now be casually dismissed as cliches. That, ultimately, is why I rate it as highly as I have, in some ways higher than I now would the novel. (I will give one more shout-out for the graphic novel treatment by Steve Niles and Elman Brown, which is truly everything you could hope for.) For everything that is dated and overly familiar, there are still things that can take you off-guard, whether you’re watching it the first time or the twentieth. That is what makes a movie a classic and even more, and that’s enough for me to call it a day.