Atlas Shrugged: Part I.

Review #2321: Atlas Shrugged: Part I.

Cast: 

Taylor Schilling (Dagny Taggart), Grant Bowler (Henry "Hank" Rearden), Matthew Marsden (James Taggart), Graham Beckel (Ellis Wyatt), Edi Gathegi (Edwin "Eddie" Willers), Jsu Garcia (Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia), Michael Lerner (Wesley Mouch), Jack Milo (Richard McNamara), Ethan Cohn (Owen Kellogg), Rebecca Wisocky (Lillian Rearden), Christina Pickles (Mother Rearden), Neill Barry (Philip Rearden), Patrick Fischler (Paul Larkin), Sylva Kelegian (Ivy Starnes), Jon Polito (Orren Boyle), and Michael O'Keefe (Hugh Akston) Directed by Paul Johansson.

Review: 

You may or may not know the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Born and educated in the Russian Empire, she moved to the States in 1926 and wrote a handful of novels and plays (I vaguely remember reading Anthem as a high school freshman over ten years ago but can remember more about Orwell's Animal Farm by a landslide). Describing the book as her magnum opus and one about "the role of man's mind in existence", the book grew a certain following among libertarians among a wide variety of reviews (one review said that within the novel, "a voice can be heard ... commanding: 'To a gas chamber—go!'"). Every year, over 400,000 copies of the words of Rand (including the novel) is donated to high schools by an institute that bears her name. For decades, there had been rumblings of trying to make the novel into either a film or a miniseries, with Rand even trying to make a screenplay before she died in 1982. The rights ot the film had been given to her heir in Leonard Peikoff, who had sold an option on producing the film to investor John Aglialoro in 1992 (a chairman of Cybex International and a member of the Board of Trustees of The Atlas Society). Through failed attempts at a miniseries on TNT and a project overseen by Howard and Karen Baldwin and Lions Gate Entertaiment that went nowhere in the 2000s, Aglialoro eventually took it upon himself to write screenplay with Brian Patrick O'Toole (as opposed to using the script by Randall Wallace that would've somehow made the movie into a two-hour work) that eventually got into production just two days before the film option was to expire. Stephen Polk was replaced by Paul Johansson as director just before filming began; Johansson is mostly known as an actor to go alongside directing fourteen episodes of One Tree Hill and go figure that this is his only directing credit. Shot over the course of less than six weeks for apparently over $10 million (speculation was that it actually was $20 million, but at any rate, "red camera technology" was used to get digital images for the film), the movie had to go through covert marketing outside of the usual norm that saw promotion from whatever "FreedomWorks" is. The movie never was released to more than 500 theaters at any point during its release cycle that started in April of 2011. Aglialoro went so far as to call critics who panned the film as "lemmings" that were scared of Ayn Rand and called it motivation to get the sequels made, which were done with lessening budgets and different directors and cast for each successor in 2012 and 2013. 

Honestly, I don't really try to put much of a political slant in these reviews (editorializing is more fun in calling Evel Knievel a bum than trying to spend sentences on Michael Moore, for example), I just go for what might be interesting (with Turkey Week being the "fun" alternative). It was either going to be this film or God's Not Dead (2014) and I shudder to wonder if I picked the sillier movie by accident. You just have to love a movie where an overhead shot cuts to a closeup where one says, "In order to save my family's business [actor pause] I'm going to have to abandon it" which is then immediately followed by a guy playing with a train set. I just have to ask myself: what in the actual hell is this movie? Where the hell did the money go to make a movie that has the trappings of a Hallmark movie? Do libertarians treat this movie like folks treat religious movies? The only thing "epic" about this movie is that it has the absolute weirdest sensibility about storytelling and dialogue that feels like it was written by aliens. This weirdo rendition of 2016 somehow makes the real one look sane by comparison, complete with obsession for trains. The jargon that gets spoken on screen makes me appreciate the technobabble heard on Star Trek episodes because at least those episodes didn't feel like pants about to rip in two from stress or involve a "State Science Institute". Folks disappear when people ask about "John Galt" while their photo turns to black-and-white that lists their name as if it was an NCIS episode, with the last guy being "on strike". People either share exhubrance for being in boardroom meetings or trains in a manner that suggests the movie is actually the product of someone actually having sex with a boardroom or train. I suppose there might have been something about "makers vs. takers" and capitalism to talk about here, but the whole experience is hollow and not at all compelling enough to not move past being a self-righteous screed about governments and money that has the persuasive power of a homeless man talking to you about certain men being the Devil for 97 minutes. The only amusement I get is the random bits with name actors trying to make sense of playing such weird caricatures, whether that involves Armin Shimerman (best known as Quark on possibly the best Star Trek show in Deep Space Nine) talking about "social danger" metals or Polito and Lerner playing spooky elites. Schilling and Bowler don't prove ideal to serving these leads because the characters have very little depth to actually deliver substance (you would almost rather see a hammy actor) that might actually make you wonder if they swapped brains with Neil Breen. Beckel just gives off crazy vibes. By the time one gets to burning oil wells for the climax (okay, funny word to use for the film but still), one is as satisfied in getting to the "End of Part I" title card as one would be in finding that one's housekeys were on the roof. As a whole, this is a baffling movie to watch, having little to offer people in actual production value that looks and feels cheap in the ways that matter most for a hollow experience. It somehow seems out of date and out of touch in terms of delivering a point beyond meandering mealy-mouth mush.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.

Candidates that fell by the wayside for our fifth and most successful Turkey Week in terms of terrible crap seen: 

Mitchell (1975), If Ever I See You Again (1978), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Simon Sez, 

 Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, Killing Me Softly, Project Moonbase, Shanghai Surprise / Body of Evidence, The Slime People, Don't Go in the Woods, H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come, Folks!,

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, Return to Blue Lagoon, 

The Starfighters, The Identical / God's Not Dead, Dave Movie, and 2024's Reagan / The Crow. 

We shall see where the road takes Turkey Week in 2025.

Viva Knievel!

Review #2320: Viva Knievel!

Cast: 

Evel Knievel (himself), Gene Kelly (Will Atkins), Lauren Hutton (Kate Morgan), Red Buttons (Ben Andrews), Leslie Nielsen (Stanley Millard), Marjoe Gortner (Jessie), Cameron Mitchell (Barton), Frank Gifford (himself), Eric Olson (Tommy Atkins), Albert Salmi (Cortland), Dabney Coleman (Ralph Thompson), and Sheila Allen (Sister Charity) Directed by Gordon Douglas (#663 - Them! and #686 - In Like Flint)

Review: 

You might wonder why I had this movie on my mind. Of course, you might have a curiosity of who Evel Knievel was. Born in Montana in 1938, Robert "Evel" Knievel was a stunt performer and entertainer that did numerous motorcycle jumps after having the aspiration to do so by seeing a daredevil show. He worked in copper mines, rodeos and served in the Army to go along with working in insurance and motorcycle dealer shipping before he became famous. Eventually, he became his promotor to rent out venues and set up a show to get folks to see him do wheelies before jumping stuff such as a box of rattlesnakes or (eventually) cars. Among the most famous of stunts in the early years was a jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on New Years Eve 1967 that actually had him get John Derek and his wife Linda Evans to shoot the jump and landing...whereupon he landed just a bit short of accomplishing a pain-free 141 ft jump and crushed his pelvis and femur among other injuries that one can actually access. In 1971, a biopic of the rider came out that was produced and starring George Hamilton that had him do a monologue about being the "last gladiator in the new Rome" (for his part, John Milius co-wrote the movie and called Hamilton a "great con-man" while Hamilton believed that Knievel became the persona in the movie). Eventually, he went with an idea to jump Snake River Canyon in Idaho that would be closed-circuit TV and broadcast in theaters (to namedrop for fun, it actually had Vince McMahon as an investor while Shelly Saltman served as a promoter) in 1974 with a "Skycycle X-2" that failed to accomplish the jump. Knievel would jump on and off for the rest of his years, whether that involved walking out on his own power in Wembley after breaking his pelvis to having a planned shark-jump lead in him crashing into a cameraman and breaking his arms in rehearsal. Prior to the film being released in June of 1977, Saltman's book called Evel Knievel on Tour came out about the life of Knievel (covering the buildup to the Snake River jump) with interviews that had Knievel speak on the matter of certain subjects. Knievel did not like the book (which was pulled out on threats of lawsuits) and took it upon himself to speak to Saltman. On September 21, Knievel, who apparently had hurt his arms in an accident to the point they were in casts went to the 20th Century Fox lot (Saltman was a studio vice president) and struck him with an aluminum baseball bat that saw a shattered wrist and arm to the point of needing plates for Saltman. This was the first and only film for its star in Knievel; the screenplay was done by Norman Katkov and the story was written by Antonio Santillán. This actually was the last film for its director in Gordon Douglas, who directed a wide variety of movies from Our Gang to Elvis and Sinatra that led to such films as I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), Tony Rome (1967), and In Like Flint (1967); Irwin Allen was a supervising producer on this film, if you can believe it.

Knievel received a bit of jail time and probation before getting sued in a civil trial. A movie involving a guy keeping his word (like wearing a helmet, for obvious reasons) and playing into his anti-drug image seemed funny when you considered he later assaulted a guy and acted like a bum about paying the guy that he shattered his arm and called it "frontier justice" (Knievel never paid any money to Saltman before dying in 2007). So, you've got two guys who were honored by the Academy with awards (Buttons, Kelly) to go alongside a stunt performer, an ex-Evangelist preacher-turned-actor in Gortner and an actual adversarial role in Nielsen and some sort of weird drug plot after it all started with him breaking into an orphanage to deliver his action figures (take a guess what happened to the market) to children. How exactly was this supposed to be a breathtaking movie for its star when you've got drug-addled guys going around bopping people on the head to take on killer stunts, Monday Night Football's Frank Gifford showing up in a yellow-and-orange suit, and Gene Kelly playing a drunk that doesn't really like his kid? Not to give away the game, but Knievel didn't even do stunts for the film, that fell to Gary Charles Davis to crash on cue (well, except for the one time they use actual archive crash footage). Knievel barely acts at all, as if he was only good on a camera if his hip was fractured rather than showing actual charisma. To say the role Kelly is beneath him seems to understand that his subsequent appearance in Xanadu (1980) was an improvement. Okay, so you might wonder what the idea is with the drugs: after getting Knievel to Mexico and sabotaging his bike so he dies, they will get him back to the States in a coffin with a tour trailer that happens to have drugs in the walls. Nielsen may have been a suitable actor for the occasional drama, but even he can't make this stick to actual credibility, particularly since it practically smells like it should be in a comedy that actually has Knievel lecture the audience about not doing drugs before a stunt in the first half. As a whole, this is a movie filled with enough hokum to batter one into having plates into his arm, inspiring plenty of chuckles in its breathtaking lack of charisma that would be perfectly up your alley for a bad movie night.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10 stars.

I love you too much to let you off Turkey Week without one more surprise tonight: Atlas Shrugged: Part I.

The Snow Creature.

Review #2319: The Snow Creature.

Cast: 

Paul Langton (Frank Parrish), Leslie Denison (Peter Wells), Teru Shimada (Subra), William Phipps (Lt. Dunbar), Lock Martin (the Yeti), Rollin Moriyama (Leva), Robert Kino (Inspector Karma), George Douglas (Corey Jr), and Rudolf Anders (Dr. Louis DuPont), Produced and Directed by W. Lee Wilder (#1599 - Killers from Space)

Review:

Sure, it made sense to try and give another shot to W. Lee Wilder, who couldn't have just been a hack director that so generously gave us Killers From Space, the movie with googly-eyed monsters that came out in the same year as this movie. Yes, after six relatively normal-sounding noirs and dramas, he had turned to sci-fi stuff with Phantom from Space (1953). So anyway, here we are with a creature feature movie that might as well be called "Shadows and Blah Blah". You might wonder how many movies exist where you don't really see the monster too much, and, well, there are a few that don't dwell too much on effects and go with the idea of "imagination in terror" or something to that extent. But this film, as written by Myles Wilder (no points to the guess of his relation to W. Lee) has only one apparent sticking point: it was apparently among the first in a string of "yeti" (okay, it's just bigfoot but cold) movies that would come across in the next few years (well there is a film called Pekka ja Pätkä lumimiehen jäljillä [1954] that was released in Finland as a Yeti-themed comedy but I'm sure Ishiro Honda's Half Human [1955] just came out of the blue). Clearly it led to inspirational movies such as Man Beast (1956), as made by Jerry Warren. Actually, Wilder wasn't done with the noirs, as his next film was The Big Bluff (1955) in a career that saw him do more movies that I'm sure will be fun candidates to return to in late November.

Sure, 69 minutes might seem short enough for a straight-to-the-point movie. But the easiest thing to say about the movie is that nothing actually happens in this miserable pile of boredom. It actually resorts to narration to help try and set up its scenario and manages to never get going, particularly since you barely see the creature in actual detail while going around with a pastiche of movies that it happens to make one yearn to watch with the "getting the creature from abroad onto America" in King Kong (1933) or the sewer-side climax from Them! (1954). But nothing will prepare you for the sheer amount of nothing that happens, even with a miniscule body-count and characters that seem to believe that they are the living embodiment of cardboard and should therefore talk as routinely as possible (gotta love how the unnamed Himalayan country has Japanese-speaking actors, who are probably more committed to worrying about the boogeyman creature than the others). People walk, talk in winded sentences (the idea of wondering where it should be in immigration services is thought about and forgotten) and so on and so on. Maybe Phipps is the highlight of a bad bunch, because he doesn't have to go around doing monologues (our hero at one point refers to the sherpas as being like "human mules"!), but it can't make up to a movie that because of its public domain status is usually found in languishing quality. The only thing to say about the creature is that it was played by Martin, a 7ft tall man who had appeared in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), who probably was as cramped in that "suit" as one is when watching the movie. The movie ends with silly jokes about someone becoming a dad because they were too wrapped up in the hunt to see their wife give birth...funny stuff. As a whole, the purses made by Wilder probably seem more tantalizing than seeing another one of his dull movies.

Overall, I give it 2 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Saturday, Saturday, Saturday! Viva Knievel!

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

Review #2318: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

Cast: 

Jon Voight (Bill Biscane/Kane), Scott Baio (Stan Bobbins), Vanessa Angel (Jean Bobbins), Skyler Shaye (Kylie), Leo, Connor and Christopher Lewis (Baby Kahuna), Justin Chatwin (Zack), Peter Wingfield (Crowe), Shaun Sipos (Brandon), Thomas Kretschmann (Roscoe), Stefanie von Pfetten (Jennifer Kraft), with Gerry and Myles Fitzgerald (Kahuna; voiced by David A. Kaye), Max and Michael Iles (Archie; voiced by Danny McKinnon), Jared and Jordan Scheideman (Finkleman (voiced by Jonathan Singleton), Maia and Keana Bastidas (Rosita (voiced by Melissa Montoya), and Joshua and Maxwell Lockhart (Alex; voiced by Rashad Hood) Directed by Bob Clark (#020 - A Christmas Story, #679 - Black Christmas, #1055 - Porky's, #1854 - My Summer Story, #2149 - Baby Geniuses)

Review: 

There really is no point in saying the obvious, but the original Baby Geniuses (1999) was a semi-success with audiences despite its ungodly idea of having babies that talk with mouth morphing. The only souls alive that really wanted another of these films must've loved the power of the dollar and also thought audiences really would be stupid enough to go with it a second time. You might remember that the genesis for what became the first film was partially at the hands of Jon Voight, who had sprung the idea of a script that had been done about intelligent babies, and that Voight showed a proof-of-concept film about babies sitting around talking. Of course, Clark eventually fiddled with things to be more about corporate intrigue for the movie that escaped onto theaters (the rare occasion when direct-to-video might have served this crap better). Voight, who was an executive producer on the film, now serves as the chief adult star to go along with one person returning from the last film. Gregory Poppen wrote the screenplay while Steven Paul (one of the people responsible for the last film's script) wrote the story and produced the film. Paul apparently really fought for the film when it came to the dawdling of actually releasing it, since as quoted by Voight, he was the who kept "awareness of it up." Truly inspiring. I can imagine that Now & Forever (2002), the only theatrical effort Clark did between the Baby Geniuses films that closed out his career before his untimely death, could be better. There were no more of these movies in theaters, but Voight appeared in three Baby Geniuses movies for the direct-to-video market. Tragically, Clark died in 2007 at the age of 67 in a head-on car crash, with this being his last feature film.

Now you have super babies with super strength to go along with brother reveals and plans about TVs making kids stay inside the house (nowadays you might as well worry about the iPads seeping one's attention span). It isn't particularly worthy to get mad and launch a comprehensive review about how this manages to be worse than the original, one that might make you wonder if you could give a -1 rating to a movie. The whole movie just seems unnatural, ugly and lifeless in ways that even mediocre movies blow out of the water in terms of actual entertainment value. Nothing changed in the five years from the first film to make one believe babies could be funny talking except for the people making it. I wonder how they came up with the idea of an apparently immortal being that will be stuck in the body of a three-year old baby that goes around protecting kids in his weird lair. Voight must've been watching too many movies about German-speaking doctors and thought it would be a neat bit for this film. There may have been movies in Voight's past and present that were actually effective, but this is clearly not one of them for a movie that would've been great to crush in the Berlin Wall. Baio has exactly one film credit that I remember with Bugsy Malone (1976), which had child actors play adult roles, incidentally. The nicest way to describe him here is "vacant". Shaye gives it a go for a movie that offers one nothing beyond a check. You know those cheesy b-movies that maybe don't have the effects or all-around acting to get the whole way across the finish line? Superbabies proves that having money ($20 million apparently) to pair Academy Award winning actors with effects made from the backside of God is not everything. Let's just throw out some words to call the movie to at least practice some alliteration for "education" about the movie: Incoherent, incompetent, insane, insecure, idiotic, ignominious, ignorant. I would rather see someone feed AI this crap just to see how it would respond to getting soullessness for a prompt (editor's note: do not do this).

Hell, I've run out of bile, so in the tradition of Thanksgiving, let me just repurpose old material for you: Getting kids (age 5-9, apparently) rather than adult voices to voice the babies (such as say, Look Who's Talking [1989]) is probably the least sad thing of the whole thing. What could possibly invite you to waste 95 minutes on a movie that never succeeds in every joke that is attempted? If there was a God, I do not believe that watching babies walk and talk would be high on the priority list. You might as well call it the film most likely to be thought of as having no soul in it. The people who made this film probably did not think much of the film either during or after production, but that doesn't give an excuse for this being one of the worst things I have ever seen. Hell, it shouldn't even be called a film, it should be put in a special garbage can that you would put expired food products in. You might think, oh, well, Monster a Go-Go (1965) is filled with more inconsistencies and worse acting. Well, maybe, but that has the label of being made in weirder circumstances of "make the best out of the footage", what kind of excuse does this Hollywood slop have? Absolutely none. Clark and his team probably thought it was one of those things you can put on for the kids and enjoy, but no, they did not. It's easy to say folks are mailing it in, but, well, yea, they are mailing it in as if this was a direct-to-video production, complete with little motivation to do much of anything. They repeat one line four times in quick succession and later do a repeat of a gag where an adult gets tricked into getting hit in the beans after talking about it. The voices coming out of those babies were never going to work with how it looked because it just isn't a useful effect that you would want to see for very long. It is a gag that has run amok for what might as well count for anti-comedy. Truly, this was a sad experience to sit through, because it means that Bob Clark may be one of few people who directed both a vaunted classic and a horrendously awful feature in the same career. Avoid, unless you like garbage.

Overall, I give it 0 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Black Friday gives you relief in boredom with the return of W. Lee Wilder and The Snow Creature.

BloodRayne.

Review #2317: BloodRayne.

Cast: 

Kristanna Loken (Rayne), Michael Madsen (Vladimir), Ben Kingsley (Kagan), Michelle Rodriguez (Katarin), Matthew Davis (Sebastian), Will Sanderson (Domastir), Geraldine Chaplin (Fortune Teller), Udo Kier (Regal Monk), Meat Loaf (Leonid), Michael Paré (Iancu), and Billy Zane (Elrich) Directed by Uwe Boll (#1765 - In the Name of the King, #1924 - Alone in the Dark, #2144 - House of the Dead)

Review: 

I forgot that Boll wanted to be a filmmaker because he saw Mutiny on the Bounty as a kid...the Marlon Brando version. This was the third film in what you might as well call the Boll Gaming Cycle that came in the wake of House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark (2005). The movie is based on the action-adventure game series of the same name, which began in 2002 involving various locations being visited by a member of the "brimstone Society" to deal with supernatural creatures and Nazis. An "unrated" director's cut came out on DVD, incidentally, which apparently came out with a copy of BloodRayne 2 on it (incidentally, the series has had just one game released since the film came out). The next video game movie Boll did for theaters was In the Name of the King (2007). You might recognize that the screenplay was written by Guinevere Turner, who apparently delivered a first draft a few weeks late that Boll went right in to pick and choose what to use immediately (which was apparently 20%) for the actors to apparently take a crack at it. While the movie was a financial failure, Boll would direct two sequels for the direct-to-video market: BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (2007) and BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011), in which only Michael Paré appears in each film of the "trilogy". 

It probably goes without saying that Boll has not managed to achieve anything in the manner of effective entertainment even when having a video game right there for adaptation. In the aim of blood, dirt, and sex, the success rate is about on the same level as an apple becoming a tomato (one interview had him stating it would possibly be two hours but it ended up being 95 minutes long). It certainly never seems sexy even with its attempts at doing so with leather outfits and I kid you not, hiring actual prostitutes to be in a scene (as one does when filming in Europe). The thing about Boll is that he seems to direct things as if it was a blunt instrument to plow through regardless of who is cast or the scenario. He has a lead actress in Loken that might as well be playing T-X from Terminator 3 all over again. He has a movie where one actor called it an "abomination" that still would say yes to being in another Boll movie. The best parts in the whole movie is either Meat Loaf lounging around with prostitutes or the bits and pieces where Madsen seems interested enough to actually make effort (probably the result of liquid courage, but I can think of worse ways to get through a film). It probably is most amusing to see Zane in the film when you have the whole context: Zane liked being with such a "decisive" director even in a small role and he apparently gave Boll the idea to use Romar Entertainment (which Zane was involved with) as a way to handle distribution of the film to a target of 2,000 theaters...only 950 theaters ended up getting the film on opening day and Boll later sued Zane (incidentally, Zane co-starred alongside Loken in Boll's Darfur film, released in 2009). Christian Slater might not be a particularly great actor, but at least him being in the aforementioned Dark film seemed to make sense. But Kingsley? An Academy Award-winning actor wanting to play a vampire deciding to join here? I suppose it must be a British tradition in the Michael Caine sense, but even Caine was better at this, because Kingsley barely delivers actual substance to what is meant to be a villainous role. One sees more effort in the makeup job than from Kingsley, who can't even play to the cheap seats for something funny. The movie is listless and barely seems competent to actually approach what you might call filmmaking. It just feels like a movie patched together, where even a sequence of someone trying to dodge traps (and water, because ooooh, water) has little weight to actually level attention to. The sex scene might actually inspire confusion over how it is staged more than anything, and yet somehow this is a movie that is more tolerable than Bolero (1984), even with all of the godforsaken wigs. As a whole, this is merely just a boring bad flick, not even measuring up to the lesser vampire movies you've probably seen before. It isn't completely incompetent as with some of Boll's previous line of work because it just is blah B-movie stuff that really should not have tried to be anything more. It is dull and goofy in ways that would probably be amusing with a couple of beers for the turkey night, I suppose.

Overall, I give it 2 out of 10 stars.

Laserblast.

Review #2316: Laserblast.

Cast: 

Kim Milford (Billy Duncan), Cheryl Smith (Kathy Farley), Gianni Russo (Tony Craig), Roddy McDowall (Dr. Mellon), Keenan Wynn (Colonel Farley), Dennis Burkley (Deputy Pete Ungar), Barry Cutler (Deputy Jesse Jeep), Mike Bobenko (Chuck Boran), Eddie Deezen (Froggy), and Ron Masak (Sheriff) Directed by Michael Rae.

Review: 

Admittedly, willingly watching this movie is low-hanging fruit on the levels of say, Trog (1970). But you have to have a palate cleanser when it comes to wondering what kind of crap exists for sci-fi, so here's one for the books. You might wonder about the director of the film in Michael Rae. Well, there isn't much to really say, because it is the most notable movie he directed. However, it is a production produced by Charles Band (son of Albert Band, who himself had directed movies such as I Bury the Living), who at least some people know for a variety of low-budget films directed and produced over the years, which started with Last Foxtrot in Burbank (1973); his brother Richard even worked on the music for the film (alongside Joel Goldsmith). The movie had alien effects from David W. Allen, who did a variety of movie effects that spanned from Equinox (1970) to puppet/effects work in Young Sherlock Holmes (1985; he received an Academy Award nomination) to several Band productions prior to his death in 1999. Franne Schacht and Frank Ray Perilli wrote the movie, and the latter (also a writer on that Burbank film) actually did manage to write something better in that he was a co-writer with John Sayles on...Alligator (1980). 

Admittedly, I do check around to see how certain movies are rated when it comes to picking out ones with reputations in the tank. With this one...eh, I don't get it, the movie is merely just a hokey dud that is pretty strange to try and sit through for 80 minutes. One minute you'll see a bit featuring an old pro getting a quick buck in Wynn and then if you turn around for a bit you'll see "Character Actor Pro" Burkley playing a silly cop before you see the guy from The Godfather and a young (if there ever was a time to say that) Eddie Deezen. All of this goes with an amusing looking laser device, a not quite-so thought-out outline and effects that only work best when looking at aliens only. The fact that the film has a sequence where one is seen blasting a Star Wars sign is probably the biggest chuckle the film has to offer (intentionally or not), since I assumed the film was too cheap to afford a Close Encounters of the Third Kind sign. Milford had appeared in the theatre from a young age, later appearing in the original Broadway productions of Hair and The Rocky Horror Show. This was the first of his three most prominent film appearances in 1978, where he appeared in Corvette Summer and Bloodbrothers. Sadly, Milford suffered with heart defects throughout his life that saw him die at the age of 37 in 1988. The movie doesn't give him the plight one would expect from a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde knockoff to, well, actually drive drama to where it needs to go for meaningful tragedy (he may have a girl but sticking his hand up the silly weapon so he can use his other hand to fire it is clearly worth more because....). One just sees the routine of making him look like a ghoul and just sighs. The best part might as well being the pot-smoking cops played by Burkley and Cutler (folks might recognize the former as having voiced Principal Moss in King of the Hill), since they merely are shooting the breeze in a way that inspires chuckles more than quizzical stares; naturally, the film has to let one of them get lasered, so of course it has to be done when taking a bathroom break. Russo merely inspires a chuckle in trying to play the agent type for a film that barely has any cohesive structure when it comes to "pursuit", particularly when you have Wynn there to briefly exchange words about totally relevant stuff. Smith has nothing of presence to actually say, which is funny for a film where McDowall is given the bare minimum to do for what I'm sure what was a lark. The fact that Deezen is playing a nerd that actually gets in on bullying the lead is actually more amusing than the performance itself that came out before I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Grease. The movie has little to really offer beyond a few moments spent with the aliens (which naturally works out to set up a convenient ending), which seem more at home for the film than some of the actors. The movie ends just as weirdly as it starts, featuring convenience to wrap itself just as amusingly as it had set itself (aliens blasting people and stuff). The movie is dopey but a curiosity that I could at least see had something worth looking into beyond calling it one made on liquor and stupidity. In that regard, it might be worth a sit to gawk at the results.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10 stars.

Next up: For Thanksgiving, have a lump of coal with Uwe Boll and BloodRayne.

Bolero (1984).

Review #2315: Bolero.

Cast: 

Bo Derek (Ayre “Mac” McGillvary), George Kennedy (Cotton), Andrea Occhipinti (Rejoneador Angel Sacristan), Ana Obregon (Catalina), Olivia d'Abo (Paloma), Greg Bensen (Sheik), Ian Cochrane (Robert Stewart), and Mirta Miller (Evita) Written and Directed by John Derek.

Review: 

The best way to talk about these weird Derek-Derek films is to just go with it. The Hollywood-born John Derek had the looks to score a few bit parts in the 1940s before getting a break with being cast in Nicholas Ray's Knock on Any Door (1949). Derek would do a handful of films in the studio system era along with a select group of European productions but was on record for saying he never liked acting, with one trouble listed by him being his "monotone voice". He pursued directing and photography while marrying and divorcing three wives. He did work on Nightmare in the Sun (1965) as a co-producer before making his feature debut with Once Before I Die (1966). In total, he made eight feature films as a director, half of which starred Bo Derek. Born Mary Collins, she had decided to go to Greece to do a movie with Derek rather than continue to attend high school (she was 16 in 1972). The two had an affair that just happened to lead to the two marrying and returning to the States in 1976 (as for the film, Fantasies was released in 1981). Anyway, it was her appearance in 10 (1979) that raised her presence to the public (cornrow hair and all). A Change of Seasons (1980) and Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981) would follow, with the latter being her first "starring" role that was directed by her husband. What better association for the Dereks to have with Bolero and Cannon Films? Menahem Golan served as an executive producer and apparently suggested to the Dereks to spice up the sex scenes. Amusingly enough, the movie was shown to the CEO of MGM in Frank Yablans in an attempt to get him to intervene against Golan...who in turn stated his disliking of the film to the point where MGM dropped releasing the film when it looked like it would get an X rating to the point where Cannon released it themselves without a rating. The Dereks did one more film together with the "release" of Ghosts Can't Do It (1989); John Derek died in 1998 at the age of 71 while Bo has appeared in a handful of films and TV since.

Honestly, some movies are so dull you can actually feel your body focusing on anything other than what is occurring in front of you. I have to confess that sometimes I write reviews for one film when watching a different film, mainly for attempts at "efficiency". You can imagine how this might get odd with a movie that strives for steamy passion but has the execution of a 78-year-old virgin. With a crap flick, sometimes one just feels the need to pause the movie to just breathe with the stupidity you are watching and sometimes you pause because you get distracted trying to wonder how you got on a tangent reading about the last non-practicing lawyer to win a Supreme Court case (Sam Sloan, for those asking). Other times you wonder how the hell George Kennedy could be involved in such a wide spectrum of movies in quality (you might remember the Academy Award winning actor tried his hand at singing with Lost Horizon along with all of those Airport movies). I wonder how my perception of the Dereks would be if I had checked out that Tarzan film (which somehow got Richard Harris to co-star), which also had nudity. Nothing will really prepare you for Bolero and its bizarre qualities in trying to make a love story that has no actual substance to it. The Dereks sure must have had fun making films as a couple, but I can't imagine many viewers had that same experience. You could probably write a better script of sexual awakenings with crayons, but I don't know if you would be able to get your spouse to shoot the film (seriously, how many movies are there where a husband is directing his wife going through love scenes and being the cinematographer?). I kid you not, the climatic lovemaking sequence takes place amid a great deal of fog meant to make one believe they are looking at clouds while an "ecstasy" sign is briefly seen in the background. All of this is far more interesting to talk about than the acting of the film, which is the type you might find in a bad *parody* of romance movies, particularly from Derek, who has no sense of believability in terms of "awakening" beyond seeming like she is doing a crappy home movie. Occhipinti actually is more known as a producer/distributor more than his acting, and it is easier to give credit for someone making a living rather than simply talking about how a crappy movie's chemistry between its lead actors stinks. Kennedy may be struggling to contain himself in rigid weirdness for a movie that gives him lines such as musing about the last time he saw a certain person naked (the context isn't any better) and so on that makes one hope he got to have some sort of vacation with the experience. In general, the movie strains at times with leaps in logic, even forgetting to show how one escapes a plane in the air (seriously she just is out the plane right there) amid the general lack of sexual tension that would be fodder for several puns (the movie sure is limp when coming to the point, you might say). One feels dirty watching this movie in a way that exploitation directors would shudder to think about in ways that you honest to God would not see nowadays (Olivia d'Abo was 14 when she did this film and no, do not Google what that means).  In conclusion, Bolero is the movie one thinks The Room (2003) is when it comes to terrible vanity projects, failing to achieve any sort of charm beyond making you realize that some married couples really can be the most insufferable people you know. In a sea of bad movies, there is very little to redeem in this flaming heap of crap.

Overall, I give it 0 out of 10 stars. 

Next up: Familiar actors and the 1970s clash in Laserblast.

The Astro-Zombies.

Review #2314: The Astro-Zombies.

Cast: 
Wendell Corey (Holman), John Carradine (Dr. DeMarco), Tom Pace (Eric Porter), Joan Patrick (Janine Norwalk), Tura Satana (Satana), Rafael Campos (Juan), Joseph Hoover (Chuck Edwards), Victor Izay (Dr. Petrovich), and William Bagdad (Franchot) Produced and Directed by Ted V. Mikels.

Review: 

"Something that is hard to teach is creativity. You can teach people the technical things, how to cut, when to cut, why to cut, what to cut to and what to cut from. But if they don't have that creative touch, it may not work. They like to think that because they took a long time making a shot they ought to use it in the edit. It doesn't work that way."

When you cover watch over a thousand directors at least once in going through the road of movies, maybe eventually you will land on the road of Ted V. Mikels. He had been born in Minnesota but mostly raised in Oregon with Croatian & Romanian heritage that liked to do amateur photography as a youth before taking on the stage in the late 1940s. He started making his shorts and educational documentaries in the 1950s with his own film company while in Bend, Oregon before making his debut as a feature filmmaker with Strike Me Deadly (1963). He apparently decided after that to move to Glendale, California and move to a place decorated to look like a castle (for a few years, Mikels would have several women live in said castle, as they were aspiring filmmakers that I'm sure has no other implications). The development of what became his sixth film (after movies with such illustrious titles like Dr. Sex [1964] and The Black Klansman [1966]) apparently started around the time of his first movie, with Mikels writing this with Wayne Rogers (who he had worked with in the aforementioned Dr. film before becoming more known for his role in M*A*S*H). Mikels plugged away at directing/writing/producing movies (the next movie made after Zombies? The Corpse Grinders, which was about cats liking human flesh while one subsequent videotaped movie apparently featured Mikels casting himself as someone to get beaten up by women), which would include sequels to Astro-Zombies in 2004, 2010, and 2012. He was even the subject of a book (called "Film Alchemy") and a documentary in his lifetime prior to his death in 2016 at the age of 87.

It isn't easy to make an ugly puddle where barely anything of note happens with such "name" actors, but Mikels sure has accomplished it here. This is a movie that has a title sequence featuring toy robots and gunfire noises (the ending does just as much). The most interesting person to view is Satana, who you might recognize from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). It is a divine experience in boredom, languishing with little for one to really focus on in coherence that basically makes one want to yell at the clouds for having tried to spend 94 minutes of life on this. You get shots of a lady in a bikini that is tied up on a table that somehow never gets out of the table to go along with the schlock you might see coming from an opening that gives you that first shot of what the title character looks like: a guy in a mask and weird sounds. The best thing about the movie might be the portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson you can see in the background (he was the best President of the 1960s, what's not to respect?). This actually was the last film for Corey (who died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1968), who had appeared in a handful of character roles such as The Search (1948) and Rear Window (1954). It's sad to see him go out like this with a film that basically lets him go by the wayside in such flattering detail in camerawork and words to say into the ether. Pace may be the "lead" presence, but you might as well just replace him with a broomstick. At one point, one of the creatures holds a flashlight to his head to charge his cells, because of the solar power and stuff. Things just happen in the film with little to really draw it together until it actually happens on screen in a manner that doesn't have coherence. The movie may call itself "Zombies" but it basically cribs from Frankenstein with the whole digging for body parts and demented brain stuff to go along with some sort of spy plot fiddles around with Satana commanding the screen more so for the costume stuff (one time you see her in pink) than the actual character stuff. Carradine is a pro at just being there to say lines for the paycheck at an age where if you're going to be the evil scientist, you can say anything and it'll sound spooky enough. As a whole, this is a magnificently terrible movie that serves as the equivalent of watching static, filled with little promise and little reward.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.

Next up: another new name joins the club with a movie all about love and weirdness with name actors...

....mother of God, Bolero.

Pass Thru.

Review #2313: Pass Thru.

Cast: 

Neil Breen (A.I. / Thgil), Kathy Corpus (Amanda), Abraham Rodriguez (Boy Astronomer), Taylor Sydney (Girl Astronomer), Taylor Johnson (Girl Astronomer), James D. Smith (Professor), Jason Morciglio (Jose - Smuggler), Chaize Macklin (Kim - Immigrant), Donna T. Rogers (Dana - Smuggler), and Tom Bonello (Tim - Guard) Written, Produced, and Directed by Neil Breen (#1767 - Fateful Findings, #1925 - Double Down, #2146 - I Am Here....Now)

Review: 

"Artificial Intelligence from far into the future arrives to immediately CLEANSE the human species of millions of humans who are harmful to other humans. A VISIONARY, REVOLUTIONARY FILM which pushes the human species to the limits of controversial, thought-provoking actions."

Admittedly, Turkey Week is an occasion to possibly pick low-hanging fruit in terms of low-scale "films". But it is a fun tradition, and it is worthwhile to seek just what kind of insanity can come around from Neil Breen here with his fourth film, one that was first shown in 2016. You might wonder just how any of these films differ from the last one, and, well, that quote you see on top is actually on the poster. Apparently, the film had a bit of crowdfunding for post-production. As was the case earlier, Breen is behind a few other things beside directing that you can find in the credits, such as production design, casting, wardrobe, craft services and so on (in the credits, Breen gets cute by listing companies with "N" or "B" that actually are just him). The next Breen movie to grace a film screen was Twisted Pair (2018), for which I'm sure folks enjoyed paying for the movie to order from Breen himself to come through in a few weeks (remember that in his film posters, the screentime is even advertised to you).

You might remember that Breen's previous film before this one was Fateful Findings (2013), which involved a climax that had politicians admit to their crimes before killing themselves en masse. His first film Double Down (2007) had him wear a cut-off vest with medals on it (which appears here, somehow). You might wonder just how Breen handles the looming problems of evil smugglers terrorizing immigrants or other terrible things such as bankers, bankers, and politicians. Well, it is plain simple for the AI: he just makes them vanish (or in one truly strange instance, our lead character puts on a suit to be a part of green screening someone's place to listen to them admit their evildoing and then walk out after blowing it up). Amid various shots involving a red dot or Breen being green-screened with a tiger (take a drink anytime you see either on screen, seriously) is a movie where Breen takes several minutes to tell people about the people he just made disappear so they can make their own revolution, since apparently just making "bad people" go away is not enough to just have a better society. The best thing to say about the movie is that Breen's strange messiah ideas do not drag beyond 95 minutes here and you get plenty of moments that are lucid in the Breenest sense of the word. Trying to make sense of the actors here is as futile as trying to catch rainwater with a harmonica. The one part with children involves kid astronomers and a professor that they help wheel out to check out the hubbub. I think the biggest curiosity about Breen the filmmaker is that Breen the actor seemingly never changes in terms of his presence on screen beyond making himself a would-be messiah. He emotes and says his lines in a straight-line manner that is such a strange thing to watch because one knows he really does seem to believe what he communicates in terms of distrust for certain lobbies and other things, such as in one instance his character stating his cure for a guy's PTSD (remember back in Fateful Findings that a Breen character tried to cure a girl's cancer). He goes around telling folks to be a leader (not a follower) while in the same sentence telling them to go back to where they came from. The fact that the poster for the film is from the last scene of the film (involving several people being pasted over and over again to make it look like a pile of bodies in the desert because [REASON NOT FOUND]) is the cherry on top of this ridiculous cake. As a whole, one might say if you've seen a Breen movie, you've seen them all, but the diggers of amusement and the curious might have something to chuckle at with a movie that wears its beliefs on a sleeve (that may or may not be dirty) for familiar ridiculousness. He earns a star mostly because at least one doesn't see a lazy filmmaker involved, merely just finding one with, well, Breen-ese. There may just be a bit of Breenlish in all of us when it comes to self-important visions but I sure as hell don't want to see what that would mean for me, where trying to understand which of these first four movies is the standout is like comparing a kick to the knee to a kick of one's groin.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.

Come one, come all for Turkey Week Five, an occasion to mark Thanksgiving with reviews every day of the holiday week from November 24 to November 30. I can't reveal all of my surprises but I'm sure you'll enjoy the works of filmmakers such as Ted V. Mikels, Bob Clark, and more.

Redux: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

Redux #474: A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Cast: 

Heather Langenkamp (Nancy Thompson), Robert Englund (Fred "Freddy" Krueger), Johnny Depp (Glen Lantz), Ronee Blakley (Marge Thompson), John Saxon (Lt. Donald "Don" Thompson), Amanda Wyss (Christina "Tina" Gray), Nick Corri (Rod Lane), Leslie Hoffman (Hall Guard), Joseph Whipp (Sgt. Parker), Charles Fleischer (Dr. King), and Lin Shaye (Teacher) Written and Directed by Wes Craven.

Review: 

Editor's note: while the original review was roughly on point for 257 words (as opposed to the usual "not great" reviews that I have slowly re-done over the past few years), it is obvious this one needed a re-doing anyway after eleven years. Enjoy.

In his life and career, Wes Craven made twenty feature films as a filmmaker, with all but one that belonged to the horror or thriller genre. The Cleveland native had been raised in a strict Baptist family while studying philosophy and writing at Johns Hopkins University before becoming a filmmaker rather than stay on as a teacher; he stated that seeing To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) was the film that "changed his life". His first major effort came up with The Last House on the Left (1972) that was wildly controversial and successful. The Hills Have Eyes (1977) was mildly successful while his first two features of the 1980s in Deadly Blessing (1981) and Swamp Thing (1982) were deemed fine. But it was this film (his fifth as a filmmaker) that really put him at the forefront. Craven had several inspirations for this film, such as the real-life stories covering "Sudden arrhythmic death syndrome", in which newspapers were covering the sudden death of Hmong refugees who had fled Laos (and other Asian countries) to America in the midst of war that saw them suffer nightmares and die in their sleep. Several studios rejected the screenplay except New Line Cinema (as operated by Robert Shaye), which at the time was mostly known as a distributor. As one already knows, the film (made on a budget of $1.8 million) became a franchise, even though Craven had really intended for it to end on a strange evocative note (apparently, the one they came up, involving a door with effects-use came about after brainstorming ideas with Robert Shaye that was quoted by Craven as having "amused us all so much, we couldn't not use it."). Craven rejected doing the 1985 sequel (which didn't even have a returning cast member besides Englund) but he did return to collaborate on the third film and Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994). Craven died at the age of 76 in 2015. The series even went through the usual cycle of getting "remade" for modern audiences, although that 2010 remake (as directed by Samuel Bayer with Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy) is currently the last movie with the name to be released, even with the rights reverting back to the Craven estate.

It really is a movie all about facing reality, which actually works wonders at the hands of Craven for likely his best directing effort in terms of horror craftsmanship. It is funny, for all the times I've re-watched Halloween (1978) over the years, I forgot how good A Nightmare on Elm Street was in terms of its place among slasher movies, since it features a killer threat that isn't merely a lumbering presence (complete with having a cool supporting presence in an established actor). Sure, the bodycount and characterization of its lead threat would get further complicated in later films, but nothing touches the original in entertaining terror. Imagine being trapped in a dream that just won't end, one that seems very real and very much in one's conscious in terms of boogeymen. For his performance, Englund (cast because David Warner had scheduling conflicts after being cast originally) was inspired by Lon Chaney's monster performances alongside Klaus Kinski in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), which extends to the way he approached using his claw (in one interview, he stated a goal to "be mildly erotic", since we are talking about a dream invader). The strange thing is that the remake strived to have the makeup resemble third-degree burns (as based on photographs seen at the UCLA Medical Center) more closely and yet the first film probably did it best when it comes to terror, which features a few moments in shadows (alongside the other stuff, of course). It is tremendous how a performance can really work so well in making a capable villain, where he moves with theatricality to make a terrifying predator in ways that were not surpassed in the sequels to come. Saxon already was a presence in horror movies such as Black Christmas (1974) after years spent in Italian films and Westerns. Saxon has that familiarity factor where we just go with whatever he is playing, whether that involves authority figures or not (interestingly, he and Englund each wrote their own scripts for a third Nightmare film, which didn't come to pass); Blakely has the other side of the coin in fairly established presences (Nashville, for example) that actually does pretty well in conniving complicity (I roll with that final shot because, well, the hook was going to be weird regardless of how it went). Langenkamp had minimal film/TV experience but fit the bill of what Craven envisioned for basically an every-girl. It just clicks with her in terms of reactive timing and curiosity that is easy to roll with in confronting fear that stands starkly among most of the final folks in a slasher (her subsequent key appearances in the 3rd and 7th film were well deserved, one would say). The rest of the cast may be disposable lambs, but they at least are neat to go along with for a bit (Depp being a future star in the decade must've sure been a hell of a surprise, suffice to say). It manages to do so well with its budget through the execution of its crew and director in crafting an enjoyably spooky time in the play between fantasy and reality that isn't diminished by its subsequent franchising (for example, the gore went beyond blood out of a bed but probably doesn't have a fraction of the enduring power). Craven crafted a damn good classic that seemingly gets better upon re-watching for its craft on display, which is the mark of being one of the best slashers of its time that is a worthwhile statement to muse about four decades later.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

Redux: Godzilla (1954).

Redux #167: Godzilla (1954)

Cast: 

Akira Takarada (Hideto Ogata), Momoko Kōchi (Emiko Yamane), Akihiko Hirata (Dr. Daisuke Serizawa), Takashi Shimura (Dr. Kyohei Yamane), Fuyuki Murakami (Dr. Tanabe), Sachio Sakai (Hagiwara), with Ren Yamamoto (Masaji Yamada) and Haruo Nakajima & Katsumi Tezuka (Godzilla) Directed by Ishirō Honda.

Review:

"Having seen the terror of the atomic bomb in real life, it is most important to weave this element into the film well, so that everyone will understand."

From my review on June 16, 2012:

This is the first world cinema film to come from Japan [on Movie Night]. Gojira (also known as Godzilla) is a film franchise over 50 years old with 28 films in exactly 50 years (1954-2004). This film is chilling, with good atmosphere, with some night scenes that are genuinely frightening. The effects look good to this day, giving you a scare and two. The setting in Japan with the black and white color of the film make it even more threatening as the effects could be hide any mistakes visible in color. Setting it in Japan after the devastation from World War II only adds to it more. The scene that is chilling is at the near end is with the choir girls singing as the city is in peril. This film may be a bit slow at times, but it is still an achievement in filmmaking to this day after 58 years.

I had been waiting to look back at the original Godzilla (known in the Hepburn romanization as Gojira and occasionally released on home media as such) for a long time. After all of these years, I looked forward most to covering it again probably more than seeing the follow-up films that came in its wake. But to know it is to understand how it came together so curiously: Tomoyuki Tanaka had first come up with a idea to do a giant monster film after the failure to make a film in Indonesia (set during the Japanese occupation the previous decade, incidentally). He was flying back on a plane, and it came to him to basically take inspiration from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and the Daigo Fukuryū Maru incident, in which a boat had suffered from contamination after the Bikini Atoll was going through nuclear testing in March of 1954 (one crew member died from radiation sickness, the others survived). Shigeru Kayama was hired to do the initial treatment (which had ideas such as featuring footage of the Maru that went by the wayside) before Takeo Murata and Ishirō Honda wrote the screenplay; Honda had been hired to direct after people such as Senkichi Taniguchi declined. Teizō Toshimitsu and Akira Watanabe designed the creature under the supervision of Eiji Tsuburaya while two performers would be in the suit. Toho actually had a radio drama air during the summer in order to try and build interest for audiences before eventually showing photos of the monster in newspapers prior to release. The movie was first released in one city (Nagoya) on October 27, 1954 before getting a nationwide showing on November 3, 1954, to profound success in its native country. As people already know, an Americanized version of the film was released in 1956 that was trimmed and re-edited, although Toho would later use the "King of the Monsters" label to refer to the character to go along with even showing the edit as "Monster King Godzilla (Kaiju o Gojira)" in theaters. While he didn't direct the 1955 sequel, Honda would direct various other productions for Toho, such as the color monster movie Rodan (1956) and seven of the follow-up Godzilla films from King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) to Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975).

 

Admittedly, it is a movie that is more historical for what it spawned in its wake more than just being a perfect movie. It is easy to see where the American edit found the 96-minute runtime something to try and edit down for some sort of idea of standards in getting to the point, and one might wonder what the fuss is in that buildup to destruction. But admirers (such as the one I grew up with) see those composite shots mixed with miniatures and can enjoy the craftsmanship anyway for a movie that is sobering in its spectacle and depiction of sacrifice that is moody and capably made in a manner that set a blueprint worth cribbing from in the years to pass. In the seven decades since its release, technology has improved in making a movie monster look more "real" and for some there have been some quality follow-up Godzilla films (perhaps in story or otherwise), but the power of the original still manages to strike a nerve in terms of the sheer curiosity it generated in how it all came to be. Even trying to make an American rendition (1998, 2014) only shows that big money isn't everything (I say this as someone who likes some of those films in selective ways). The acting works with the bleak atmosphere in sheer confidence for what its director wanted to do in humanism, working its main triangle (Takarada-Kochi-Hirata) to worthwhile drama, particularly with Hirata in terms of conflict for what is most important when it comes to technology and the face of danger. Shimura just provides the established presence of worried curiosity that makes the mark handily. Sure, you would see some of these actors again in other Godzilla films, but they really did just hit out of the park in tension on the first try in ways that is easier to celebrate rather than replicate. The movie has carefully dedicated angles, as worked on by Masao Tamai with the cameras of the time (namely old ones) to go alongside a dazzling musical score by Akira Ifukube to accentuate the terror. It just manages to balance the fine line of showing terror (mostly in the reactions rather than directly interacting with the creature) without testing one's patience for the matters at hand. The prayer-for-peace sequence is especially startling in its sincerity. The climax itself is carefully curated in a way that you don't always see in impactful decision-making without needing bombast to drive it all home, particularly in those last moments musing about the nature of where nuclear testing or war may go if left to certain hands. Far from exploitive, there is real passion at hand from Honda and company in what we end up celebrating as a whole rather than simply going right in on just the effects. Metaphor or monster, the power of Godzilla is in just how enduring it all is as the years go on in humanistic filmmaking that made for worthwhile entertainment in ways that we still marvel at to this day.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

The Fog (1980).

Review #2312: The Fog (1980).

Cast: 

Adrienne Barbeau (Stevie Wayne), Tom Atkins (Nicholas "Nick" Castle), Jamie Lee Curtis (Elizabeth Solley), Hal Holbrook (Father Patrick Malone), Janet Leigh (Kathy Williams), Nancy Loomis (Sandy Fadel), Ty Mitchell (Andrew "Andy" Wayne), Charles Cyphers (Dan O'Bannon / Dan the Weather Man), James Canning (Dick Baxter), John F. Goff (Al Williams), George Buck Flower (Tommy Wallace), Regina Waldon (Mrs. Kobritz), Darwin Joston (Dr. Phibes), Rob Bottin (Blake), and John Houseman (Mr. Machen) 

Directed by John Carpenter (#068 - Halloween (1978), #634 - Escape from New York, #712 - The Thing (1982), #732 - Escape from L.A., #1221 - Dark Star, #1298 - They Live, #1479 - Big Trouble in Little China, #1605 - Starman, #1874 - Assault on Precinct 13, #2130 - Vampires)

Review: 

"I think the primary reason I'm making movies is to get a response from the audience, is to get the audience to go with me down on whatever path I'm trying to take them with, whether it's to make them laugh or make them jump."

Admittedly, it does feel nice to inquire further into the works of John Carpenter. The Fog was the fourth feature film of his after the broadcast of Someone's Watching Me! (1978) and Elvis (1979). Of course, the genesis for what became The Fog came a few years prior around the time of Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which had featured Debra Hill as a script supervisor and assistant editor in her first collaboration with Carpenter (with whom he wrote Halloween [1978] with). Apparently, the inspiration came when the two were promoting Assault in England and saw Stonehenge in the mist. This would collide with inspirations such as Val Lewton's films such as Isle of the Dead or I Walked with a Zombie to go along with the 1958 film The Trollenberg Terror, the Tales from the Crypt books, and the wreck of a ship called the Frollic. The Fog was written by Carpenter and Hill, who produced the film as part of a two-movie deal with AVCO Embassy Pictures, which was then followed the following year with Escape from New York (1981). The manner in which Embassy did a deal with Carpenter and Hill irritated Irwin Yablans, who apparently had a verbal agreement to produce the film and did a lawsuit. The result of this was that Carpenter and Hill wound up on working with an eager Yablans for Halloween II (1981). Prior to release of The Fog, Carpenter oversaw reshoots of the film because the original version apparently didn't work in his eyes to go along with needing to compete with horror films that would be released around the same time (with their levels of gore). The prologue alongside certain moments of gore to go with tinkering with the nature of the climax (such as showing the top of the lighthouse) are the most significant things that were done in these re-shoots. The movie was made for roughly $1.1 million and was a relative success with audiences. A remake was directed by Rupert Wainwright in 2005 (with Carpenter and Hill being producers) to tremendous failure.

 

It's interesting that the movie starts with a quote from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “A Dream Within a Dream" ("Is all that we see or seem/But a dream within a dream?"). The faceless horror that arises from a strange ghost story (well, aside from the climax that sort of feels like a zombie film when they try to board up the church), complete with Houseman being the perfect voice to sell the opening in gentlemanly fashion. A. & A. Special Effects (as operated by Dick Albain Jr) were behind the fog effects, which they did on soundstages with fog machines that combined with various uses of dry ice, fog juice and optical effects (in one instance, a miniature of rocks, black velvet and dry ice to combine later) for what you see here. Barbeau had considerable television experience (most notably on Maude) but this was her film debut, one in which her character doesn't even share a scene physically on-screen with anybody other than her on-screen son. She still manages to pull off a strong performance here, charming and strong enough to carry the tension for sights and sounds. Holbrook is the logical choice for sobering truth in such carefully curated time on screen, one wracked with unnerving energy at seeing cracks form in his faith at the hands of a terrifying discovery (namely coordinating death). Curtis and Atkins are as familiar to us as bread with their warm presences, but (to me, anyway) that is a fun thing to have when seeing people get wrapped in terror. You do get your moments of slashing every now and then, but it mostly is a film trying to roll along with atmosphere (such as an expected on-point music score from Carpenter) and a threat of fog that can in some ways work out for suspense, by the time it gets most of its characters in line for the climax. The 90-minute runtime does end a bit abruptly, but it is still strange but enduring horror experience in which one gets bit of shock and gore at the revenge-plot play out ("six must die", as one sees). As a whole, Carpenter's fourth effort as a filmmaker managed to make an old-fashioned ghost story work out with eerie enjoyment and a solid cast that makes for a pretty good time to see play out all the way to its end. A neat little gem that ranks firmly in the second tier of Carpenter films, you won't miss with this one when it comes to calmly-built terror. 

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Well, that is a wrap on Halloween: The Week After VI. We had plenty of fun going through a historic October (45 reviews, because I just had to look for as many "different" films as possible) to go along with some useful loose ends fulfilled for this first week of November. Anyway, here is the list of candidates that just missed out on the cut of October 1 - November 7:

The Monster, The Man Who Changed His Mind, The Collector, The Gorgon, The Last Broadcast, Torture Garden, The Wolfman (2010), Quatermass 2, The Bride, The Thing That Wouldn't Die, Vampire in Brooklyn, Amazing Mr. X, Underworld 2, Friday the 13th Part 3, Frankenstein 1970, Alraune, The Plague of Florence, The Student of Prague (1926), The Bat, One Exciting Night, Wizard of Gore, Mary Reilly, Color out of Space, The Invasion, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Final Destination 3, The People Under the Stairs,  The Fly II, Van Helsing, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, It's Alive, Martin, Monkey Shines, I Vampiri, The Abominable Snowman, The Aztec Mummy, From Hell It Came, The House on Sorority Row, Vampire in Venice, Blood for Dracula, Scream Blacula Scream, Planet of the Vampires, Ravenous, The Grudge, Hellraiser II, 

Death Line, Squirm,...

...As for what might be next, well, I do have one surprise up my sleeve.

The Lords of Salem.

Review #2311: The Lords of Salem.

Cast: 

Sheri Moon Zombie (Heidi LaRoc / Adelaide Hawthorne), Bruce Davison (Francis Matthias), Jeff Daniel Phillips (Herman "Whitey" Salvador), Judy Geeson (Lacy Doyle), Meg Foster (Margaret Morgan), Patricia Quinn (Megan), Dee Wallace (Sonny), Ken Foree (Herman "Munster" Jackson), María Conchita Alonso (Alice Matthias), Andrew Prine (Reverend Jonathan Hawthorne), Richard Fancy (A.J. Kennedy), Camille Keaton (Doris Von Fux), Bonita Friedericy (Abigail Hennessey), and Nancy Linehan Charles (Clovis Hales) Written and Directed by Rob Zombie (#743 - Halloween (2007), #1590 - House of 1000 Corpses, #1751 - Halloween II (2009), #1756 - The Devil's Rejects, #1920 - 3 from Hell, #2090 - The Munsters)

Review: 

"50% of you will think this is the greatest thing ever, and 50% will hate it...I think I wanted to let everyone there know that it's OK to feel that way about a film like Lords. It's meant to make you unsure about what you just saw. That's the way the things that I like are—they're not for everybody. People have this delusion that everything has to be for everybody at all times. Every album must be liked by everybody, and every TV show must be liked by everybody, and every movie must be liked by everybody. Everything then becomes bland."

Those with a familiarity with history involving witches or Salem might know that people accused of being witches were not actually burned at the stake. In fact, of the hundreds accused of doing witchcraft in 1692-1693, the thirty that were found guilty suffered the hands of hanging or for the small few, torture (one was pressed until they succumbed to their wounds...and was an 81-year-old man) or death by filthy prisons. Naturally, there have been dozens of books and films that have used the trials as a key topic, whether that involves comedy such as I Married a Witch (1942) or allegories such as The Crucible (play or film). But I suppose it makes sense that one would go and make a film that plays around with the idea that yes, witches really could just be as real as you or me through the old tricks. It was reported in 2010 that Zombie, fresh off the debacle of Halloween II (2009) would get around to writing and directing this film while on his concert tour circuit for shooting in 2011. He apparently had came up with the premise a few years beforehand, but it eventually was tinkered with by Zombie in order to make a "strange, dreamlike movie" (as noted in interviews here, he took inspiration more so from European trials of witches than Salem, which he was misinformed about). He did the film in collaboration with Haunted Movies (so basically, Blumhouse), which at the time had done Insidious and The Bay, particularly because he had total control over the script and casting for a fairly low budget movie. The next Zombie production would come across with 31 (2016), which would go through crowdfunding for certain financing.

I sometimes wonder if I give Zombie a bit too much slack as a filmmaker for all of the fairly average stuff he does. What we have here is a slow burn movie that shows fascination with what Zombie finds interesting about both witchcraft and in "Satanic Panic" that is grim and unforgiving. It may be disjointed; it may not be all that one might think when it comes to the previous Zombie films in terms of stark strangeness in the unfinished cycle of violence but "mixed bag" seems aptly appropriate to try out once if you know what you are getting into. Some might find it basically cribbing from Rosemary's Baby (1968), but given how "fine" that movie was, sometimes you really can just crib from fine movies as long as you don't insult my patience with attempts at simplicity. As before, S.Zombie headlines a R.Zombie film. This time around, there is a passive nature to a character with such a strange and stunted job (it's a radio gig where they hang out about the same level as a couple of inebriated folks) before one eventually sees the logical conclusion of a downward withdrawn spiral. She handles the affair with subdued grace that is probably her most compelling performance for the films I've seen of her. Geeson, Wallace, Quinn play along in weird neighborly charm that is fun to see play out from scene to scene that has fun with self-help in the name of a certain kind of worship. Interestingly, Davison had previously been featured in The Crucible (1996); he was cast when Bruce Dern dropped out of this film due to scheduling conflicts. His curiosity (which went from being a shill for himself to actual curiosity) in the face of impending dread is entertaining to see play out, needless to say. Rounding out the cast is folks such as an unnerving Quinn along with understated presences in Phillips and Foree, who work out fine. The movie has some interesting imagery eventually play out through its trek of dread (such as strange visions or priests) that at least looks like the kind of movie Zombie wanted to just go out and do in having cruelty and uncertainty (for the audience) be the point. As a whole, it might not play well for everyone, but there is promise shown by Zombie in terms of odd duck dread that has a worthy enough cast to carry the waters for a cruel experience that might just work for those that know where to go with a director interested in making a movie to leave you unsure of what you just saw. I ended up going with it enough to say it is fine for one patient viewing, which is more than enough when trying to branch out for horror movies down the road.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next up: We close out our sixth week after Halloween with John Carpenter's The Fog.