If you watch the following and say to yourself, “What a waste of time and effort,” you’re not.

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Post tags: a capella, close encounters of the third kind, e.t. the extra-terrestrial, harmony, Jaws, john williams, moosebutter, Music, raiders of the lost ark, star wars, superman

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It has taken about sixty years for our political culture to catch up to our pop culture, more or less.

We have just now elected our first President who is not famous for any actual accomplishments, but is simply famous for being famous.

I, for one, welcome President-elect Zsa Zsa Gabor.

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He was only 66.

Jurassic Park was the best of his novels that I read, and The Andromeda Strain was probably the best movie adapted from one of his books.

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Post tags: andromeda strain, Jurassic Park, michael crichton, RIP

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The main reason to see it is John Barrymore’s performance as the two titular characters. While saying that he pulls off Hyde without benefit of makeup is absurd (the shape of his head changes, fer pete’s sake!), it is nevertheless a marvel of performance. And he does effect the first transformation in a single shot, using only ACTING! to transition from one to the other. It is a bit overwrought, but it is also impressive, because you have no trouble believing that there are two completely distinct characters.

The other reason, if you have a taste for ladies, and especially if you have a taste for ladies of this period, is Nita Naldi, who has a small role as the woman who tempts Dr. Jekyll to explore his evil side.

The copy of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the Mill Creek collections is slightly truncated and, from what I understand, some bits of the film are, in fact, considered lost completely. However, given that it is not only Public Domain, but also silent, the condition of what I watched was pretty good.

The story follows the book and adds to it. The additions are not as successful as they might be. They attempt to “explain” Jekyll a bit more. He is, you see, a totally self-sacrificing altruist, the very model of sainthood. And his motivation in devising the drug that effects the alteration is that he wants to give into temptation without “staining his soul”. (Oy.)

The moral theory of the film is about what you would expect from the time it was made, if you assumed that it was scripted by a temperance union or the like. “Good” is pure and unremitting self-denial, and any pleasure of the flesh is “evil”. The surrender to temptation in even the smallest degree is doom, and nothing else. Insofar as its premises, the film is a horror-show without any need of an on-screen monster.

However, taking that into consideration, Barrymore’s performance is excellent, particularly in the closing scenes, when his Jekyll works feverishly to isolate himself from everyone and everything he loves in order not to harm them. (And, as noted above, his Hyde is remarkable as a physical performance — the two characters are completely different.)

Worth seeing? Yes, at the very least simply for Barrymore. It’s not the best silent horror film (I would say that Nosferatu takes that prize if you watch it in context, or the Lon Chaney-starring Phantom of the Opera if you want something without experiments that failed the test of time), but it is definitely worth watching.

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Post tags: ACTING, altruist, distinct characters, dr jekyll and mr hyde, drug, horror, horror film, horror show, john barrymore, makeup, Mill Creek, nita naldi, performance, pleasure, premises, public domain, self denial, silent movie, soul, surrender, temperance, temptation, transformation, woman

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Many years ago I had a friend who was a combat pilot in Vietnam. He would tell the story about his old fight commander (let’s call him Frank), who had been one of the pilot the military loaned to Republic for the production of “Flying Tigers”. During one of the flying sequences Frank’s plane developed engine trouble causing an emergency landing. After a very rough touchdown, Frank jumped out of the smoking plane, stumbled away as fast as possible and collapsed on the side of the landing field. Onlookers came running up to check on his condition. As Frank looked up a tall figure leaned down and said, “Are you all right, son?” Say the line with a John Wayne voice and you have the picture.

Twenty–five years or so later in Vietnam, Frank is returning to base, his plane develops engine trouble causing an emergency landing. After a very rough touchdown, Frank jumped out of the smoking plane, stumbled away as fast as possible and collapsed on the side of the landing field. Onlookers came running up to check on his condition. As Frank looked up a tall figure leaned down and said, “Are you all right, son?” Wayne was visiting the base as part of a USO tour or maybe prepping for Green Berets, I don’t recall. True story? I have no idea. But it makes for a good story.

(Edited lightly for punctuation, spelling, and clarity.)

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Post tags: combat pilot, emergency landing, engine trouble, flying tigers, green berets, John Wayne, touchdown, true story, twenty five years, uso tour, vietnam

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“To go on about acting as art is ridiculous. You don’t have to be gifted just to hit a mark and a line. As far as I’m concerned that’s 90 per cent of the job. Anyone who finds acting difficult just shouldn’t be doing it.”

No metrosexual whining from him. No angst. No melodrama. Yes, okay, he’s underselling his craft, but it’s sure a nice counter to the usual pretentious carrying on.

1. And proves that he wouldn’t care, in any event.

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Post tags: actors studio, angst, art, craft, job, kurt russell, line, mark, melodrama, metrosexual, real man

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So, how would you go about sending it and ensuring that it didn’t cause anybody any trouble?

If you said you’d send it locked in biohazard containers, and make sure nobody on the ride had the key, and further make sure that you send along more than one guy (like, oh, say, an army squadron) to watch over the stuff so that the stupid hick of a train engineer can’t go poking around when the single guard is asleep, then congratulate yourself — you are smarter than this movie.

It’s not that this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, nor even the worst one this Spook-a-Thon. Heck, it probably doesn’t break the bottom five, given that I’ve watched not only The Beast of Yucca Flats, but also a slew of Poverty Row cheapies. It’s just that the premise of The Alpha Incident depends so much on stupidity, and there’s so little actual story once the premise takes hold, that I couldn’t help focusing on it.

At least, I couldn’t help it when the girl was offscreen.

It is, if you haven’t noticed, a low-rent knockoff of The Andromeda Strain. But where Andromeda followed a group of scientists during four tense days in a top-secret underground complex while they tried to figure out what the heck they were dealing with and how to stop it, The Alpha Incident follows five people stuck in a room in a rural train station as they wait for scientists to figure out what the heck they’re dealing with and how to stop it.

And none of the people is very interesting. First, there’s the hillbilly engineer, played by “Buck” Flower. He’s a real actor, and a real annoying one the few times I’ve noticed him. Now, in this case, that’s sort of the point. He’s a guy who can’t shut up, can’t take a hint, and basically gets himself a big honking Darwin Award before the movie’s half over. And when he did, I almost cheered, so happy was I to see (well, “hear”) him die. But that leaves another bombastic, obnoxious talker in the station, and two taciturn men (one of whom was once Mike Hammer — Ralph Meeker, whom I only really know from Kiss of Death), and the girl.

Ah, the girl.

She is believable as a small town girl. Attractive, but not perfect. But, um. Well, she’s one of the prime reasons some men refer to bosoms as “racks”. Not stupendously large (though certainly not small), but impossible to ignore. And while there’s no frontal nudity, she does change, which we see from behind and a bit to the side, and she wears no bra. And she jiggles. So, yes, while she was onscreen, I could distract myself from the total lack of story. (She also gets a bit of story and backstory, too, more than the other characters do. It’s not especially satisfying, but hey, an effort was made.)

There are all kinds of logical lapses in the film, and you can’t help noticing them, because the “story” isn’t a story at all. It’s a bunch of people sitting around, trying to stay awake (if they sleep, they die), and… waiting. And then, in the end… well, I’ll just say that this is a 1970s film, and has a Romero-esque conclusion. Or, put another way, don’t get to liking anyone too well in the film (not that any of them are likeable), because none of them are coming home for dinner tomorrow.

I got all the way through it. But it sucked.

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Post tags: 1970s, Alpha Incident, andromeda strain, backstory, boring, buck flower, cheapie, girl, government, government operation, hazardous material, hick, hillbilly, jiggle, low rent, Mars, pressure changes, Ralph Meeker, real actor, scientist, station, tense days, train, train engineer, train station, viking probe

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I think I’m going to take some time on at least one of the posts. I intend on re-watching and re-reviewing Night of the Living Dead, using the Objectivist aesthetic theory as a lens, possibly shedding light on the movie itself (though, considering how much has been written on this one, probably nothing new), but also on horror as a genre, and the aesthetic theory as well, which I have publicly had some problems with.

In all, there will be 33 reviews in this year’s Spook-a-Thon (if not a few more), come hell or high water. The marathon is simply going to bleed well into November, after which I will not try to do a movie every single day ever again. I’ll probably restrict myself to three movie reviews a week, but I haven’t made a decision on that, yet. While I love watching as many movies as possible, the writing part is tough, especially at a one-per-day rate. And, as you no doubt have noticed, I like to go in-depth, which rather increases both the time and the energy invested in a particular post. The few short posts have been almost entirely unsatisfactory to me.

Here are the movies I have actually watched, and not reviewed, at this point:

• The Alpha Incident
• Atom Age Vampire
• The Bat
• Don’t Look In The Basement
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave
• Return of the Living Dead
• White Zombie

And I have at least one I know for sure I’m going to watch and review:

• Trauma

Which would be my first Italian giallo film. It looks interesting and trashy, but I know for sure it has nudity, and not just a flash either.

Which leaves four more slots to fill. We’ll see if I can wrap this up in another week and a half or not.

Anyway, once the horror movies are wrapped up, I’ll probably do a singing cowboy movie or three¹, and go back to my occasional run at spaghetti westerns.

1. OK, at least three, because I should do one each of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Tex Ritter; but possibly not all in a row.

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… but a true ninja cannot be photographed.

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This film was interesting, and would make an excellent companion piece to Roger Corman and Charles B. Griffith’s Bucket of Blood. They were produced the same year, a continent apart (Bucket in Los Angeles, Brood in Toronto), and both examine the beatnik life in a very critical way. But their approaches are different. Corman’s is the better movie, but this has the best single performance.

And let me make clear that this is a crime film, and not a horror film. I didn’t know that going in, but it made for a nice palate-cleanser considering how much horror I’ve gorged on this month, and how I still have a fair bit to work through.

The Bloody Brood begins with some very Saul Bass-style titles, with jazz playing under, very definitely pinning the film to its era. Then the story begins.

“The Digs” is a beatnik cafe, lorded over by Nico, a very reserved, very intelligent man in a decidedly non-beatnik suit. (In fact, there is only one stereotypical beatnik in the whole movie, and most of the other characters are remarkably well individuated.) Nico is played by young Peter Falk, and damn is he good. You will see no glimmer of Columbo here. He is cool, observant, and just about always in control. Falk underplays the role, using stillness to viscerally convey Nico’s intelligence and power.

In the opening scene, an old man enters the cafe and sells Nico a newspaper. As the old man is leaving, he collapses and seems to be having a heart attack. Everyone else in the cafe (including the owner, I think) asks Nico what they should do. He looks down on the old man, and says that they should enjoy the show, that a real death would be very entertaining, a “kick”. The old man struggles to say something, and Nico asks him what his last words will be, but he dies before he can get anything out. “Too late,” Nico says.

The next night, at a party, Nico tells the tale about the fine entertainment of the old man dying, and everyone seems quite amused. After that, he gets one of his friends aside, a TV director, and convinces him that they should commit a murder — “Death is the last great challenge to the creative mind.” A knock at the door to the apartment (whose owner is out of town) reveals a messenger boy trying to deliver a telegram. After he marks the telegram as “unable to deliver”, Nico invites him in. Seeing a voluptuous young lady inside, he allows himself to be convinced, and the door closes behind him.

The movie now shifts to Cliff, who gets a call from his brother. The messenger boy. Who is calling from a payphone, and who is in intense pain, and in fact drops dead during the call.

At the hospital, Cliff goes a few rounds with Officer McCloud, who initially tries not to tell the man how his little brother died. Eventually it becomes clear — bro ate a hamburger filled with ground glass, which ripped his guts apart.

Cliff then vows to avenge his brother, no matter what, and McCloud the cop pretty much helps him, unofficially, while warning him to be careful.

I don’t want to give away more of the story, because this one is actually good. The plot clips right along, and it never really gets boring. There are no idiot decisions made, either, nothing to serve the writer’s convenience. The only hiccup was in the final act, the last six or seven minutes, when it felt like a scene or two got skipped, leaving at least one offscreen event incredibly unclear (two characters who were supposed to have been killed show up, much the worse for wear, and factor into the climax).

The reason that this movie is inferior, story-wise, to Corman’s film, is that it starts with the assumption that bohemian life is inherently evil, or at least its participants are intensely naive and easily manipulated. The viewpoint character, after the opening sequences, is a complete “square” who has no interest in the lifestyle, and whose introduction to it is from the most prejudicial angle possible. (It killed his brother, after all.)

A Bucket of Blood, contrariwise, focused on Dick Miller’s nerdy cafe waiter, who was simply dying to find acceptance by the beatnik crowd. He wants in, and gets it almost by accident. His character’s position within the story was brilliant, laying bare everyone’s pretensions and blindnesses as the story proceeded. It asked some very interesting questions about not only the bohemian life, but about the nature of art, both in its creation and its critical reception.

The Bloody Brood, on the other hand, doesn’t really ask any interesting questions. The square who wanted into the alternative lifestyle, the lead girl, is a secondary character in the story, and she gets in and out of that lifestyle cleanly. Cliff has no interest at all in the lifestyle of people who mock his life without knowing a thing about him. Can’t blame him, but the story poses nothing interesting in a thematic sense. It’s a pretty straight crime picture, with the revenge element, and doesn’t take any chances, storywise.

Which is not to say that it’s bad. It’s not. And, technically, it is a more accomplished film than I remember Bucket being. The locations are populated well, the extras all seem like people in the scene, rather than performers. The camera work, while not ostentatious, is complex in a way you don’t expect in an obviously low-budget movie. The camera moves from medium to close up to wide in a single shot, and does that more than once, but it’s never flashy, it’s all in service of the story.

And, as I indicated above, Peter Falk’s performance is nothing short of amazing. He’s got the role where everybody in the film is supposed to follow him. Usually, with that kind of role, the performance doesn’t live up to the expectation. But here, the way Falk plays it, you never doubt for an instant that people would follow him. He is both monstrous and mesmerizing. It’s an impressive job.

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Post tags: badass, beatnik, bohemian, bucket of blood, cafe, charles b. griffith, companion piece, control, death, heart attack, horror, horror film, intelligence, jazz, messenger, murder, palate cleanser, peter falk, power, roger corman, saul bass, telegram, Toronto

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One of the major joys of Mystery Science Theater 3000 was the onslaught of Gamera movies (dubbed courtesy of Mr. Sandy Frank) in the third season. I saw every one they did, and have since seen at least one Gamera film that eluded them (the dubbing of that one provided, somewhat more competently, by American International Pictures).

But this, the first release of the first Gamera film to the American market, is a wholly different thing. It goes the Godzilla route, adding in American actors in scenes of no use to the plot at all. The only really good actor, Brian Donlevy, looks embarrassed — at least in those moments when he doesn’t seem to be daydreaming. This was strictly a paycheck gig for him, I’m sure, and it looks like his scenes were done in a day. The other American actors fare even worse, although I do have to say that the actual dubbing is pretty good.

Gamera, if you don’t know, is a giant flying turtle (the “flying” part is a big reveal in this movie, so I just spoiled you; sorry) who, rather than attacking Japan, usually protects Japanese children from other giant monsters that are attacking Japan. The seed for that formula is planted here, but it has not sprouted.

Not long after Gammera the Invincible begins, some soviet fighter jets stray into US territory near the arctic, and one crashes, accidentally detonating the atomic bomb it was carrying.

Now, okay, incredibly dumb things happening in a Gamera movie¹ is more or less par for the course, but still. Flying near enemy territory that’s thinly populated (at best) with a LIVE FREAKING NUKE? What would be the point? Disrupting the Iditarod? Okay, anyhow.

The detonation awakens Gamera, who comes from a past age of the Earth, according to the dubbing he comes from the Precambrian Era(!!!). First, there is no way anyone could possibly have established a possible date of origin, given how little chance anyone has to study the big shell-guy. Second, nobody remarks at all on what consequences such a dating would have for evolutionary theory. A turtle the size of a small town would be, to put it mildly, just a tad more dispositive than a pre-cambrian rabbit.

Anyway, Gamera flies around the world a couple of times (getting mistaken for a flying saucer), and meanwhile, the movie follows the intimate drama of a young boy (not named Kenny, amazingly) who lives in a lighthouse with his sister and father, and has just been made to set free his beloved pet turtle.

The seed for the “Gamera is a friend to all children” theme is planted when Gamera messes up the lighthouse, and not-Kenny ends up hanging from a railing near the top, as the whole structure is about to crumble. Gamera saves the boy, gently putting him back on the ground. Not-Kenny decides that Gamera is really his best friend, and persists through the rest of the movie, even though he’s not really involved in it, he and his family just observe the rest of the goings-on.

Since Gamera keeps mucking up infrastructure, and is resistant to shells and missiles (not to mention that nuke that simply woke him up and put him in a sour mood), a plan is put in place to…

OK, remember how that nuke being armed was silly? Hang onto your hat, because this really, really outdoes that.

They entrap Gamera in the cone of a (gigantic, apparently) rocketship, and shoot him off towards Mars.

Everybody’s happy, Gamera’s still alive for a sequel, the end.

You’ll notice that I’ve only used the title’s spelling in the title, and otherwise have referred to Gamera with one “r”. I don’t have any real justification for that, except that every other Gamera movie does it that way, and I did not see this first.

Even as Gamera movies go, this wasn’t all that entertaining. No other monster, the Kenny is a subplot, at best (and a maudlin one). No funky kaiju Olympics. No Gamera theme music (though that might just be for this release; the original film may have the theme, and I don’t remember whether the Sandy Frank dubbing had it or not). It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t all that satisfying either. It was, at best, cinematic comfort food, since I do love the other Gamera flicks, but it was low-grade even by that standard.

1. At least in the original run of Gamera films — there was a reboot of the series in the 1990s which was, apparently, spectacular.

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Post tags: american actors, atomic bomb, bad movie, brian donlevy, detonation, Evolution, fighter jets, flick, gamera films, gamera movies, giant monsters, Japan, japanese children, kaiju, lighthouse, Mars, Monster, mystery science theater 3000, precambrian era, sandy frank, soviet fighter, turtle

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If not, then allow me to clue you in. It means that the movie is probably entertaining, but in not good in any respect.

And that’s almost right, on both counts.

It’s almost entertaining, insofar as it’s a Roger Corman monster movie. Except that the monster movie scenes are the least interesting in the film. And they clash, rather badly, with what has gone before.

And it’s almost not good, except that the central performance is subtle, nuanced, and remarkably well-played. (It’s also actress Susan Cabot’s valedictory movie role.)

As The Wasp Woman opens, Dr. Zinthrop is visited in his office on a bee farm by an accountant from the company that owns the farm. The accountant rebukes the doctor for not performing his job, finding better ways of extracting queen bees’ royal jelly. Dr. Zinthrop counters that he has made some (frankly amazing) discoveries about the uses of royal jelly from queen wasps¹, and demonstrates them. The accountant, despite having evidence of a product that could make his company insanely wealthy (the royal jelly has kept a dog a puppy, while its sibling is full grown), fires Zinthrop for failing to do his job.

Then we get to see a board meeting of Janice Starling Enterprises, headed by Miss Starling herself (Susan Cabot). For the last quarter, revenues have been falling, and she wants to know if anyone knows why. They all do, but only one boor says it, and bluntly — since removing herself as the face of the company’s products, the public no longer trusts them. Starling tells them that nobody can be young forever, not even herself, but no solution is offered.

Miss Starlin, of course, has a possible solution, which she is meeting Dr. Zinthrop about. He demonstrates his discovery (changing a guinea pig into a rat [?!?]), and she signs him on, under the condition that she be the first human subject of his experiments.

And I pause in thumbnailing the plot here to point out a few things that this movie does differently than you might expect.

Dr. Zinthrop is no mad scientist. He has morals and scruples and a conscience. He is wary of using human subjects as yet, and instead of pushing the pace of his experiments forward, he does his best to reign in. He also is a perceptive man — he accepts Janice Starling’s word and handshake, saying that there’s no need for a contract, because he sees that she is a good woman. He sees beneath her surface, almost instantly, in a way that the people who have worked with her for twenty years never have.

Janice also is not an out of control capitalist megalomaniac. She is trying to save her company, and there is, at no point in the movie, an intimation that her clinging to youth is narcissistic. She is the one who crosses the boundary that leads to her becoming a monster, but she does it out of desperation, to protect the company she has spent her life building, not because she is shallow.

Once the monster movie aspects kick in, it becomes far less interesting. For one thing, the monster outfit is ridiculous. It’s a head mask and a pair of gloves (and black bodystocking, I guess). The gloves are obviously gloves, the head mask is obviously a head mask, and it is in no way, no how convincing. Plus, people keep disappearing, yet nobody gets really curious about where they might have gone. I had the impression that she kept hiding the bodies, but given that there’s dialogue early on about queen wasps devouring their mates, that might have been the intended inference. In which case, it’s nonsense on stilts, because she doesn’t gain an ounce — and one of the folks she kills is Bruno Ve Sota².

Oh, another nice touch — it’s left completely ambiguous whether Starling has any knowledge of her monsterly activities. She seems to know something, but it could just be that she’s doing the math, rather than actually remembering her homicidal acts.

All in all, this is substandard Corman, but it has some very interesting stuff going on in it. Can’t recommend it, but I enjoyed it more than I probably ought to have.

1. No, queen wasps do not make royal jelly, so the entire movie is premised on a mistake.
2. Who, if you are not a bad movie nut like me, was an actor who easily massed twice what Ms. Cabot did, if not three times.

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Post tags: amazing discoveries, bad movie, bee farm, board meeting, monster movie, quarter revenues, queen bees, roger corman, royal jelly, scientist, susan cabot, wasps

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Murder Mansion is, in essence, a Gothic expliqué. It does manage to imbue the proceedings with a fair amount of mood and spookiness, but not much else. The characters are more or less interchangeable, the women, while stunningly attractive (mostly), don’t doff kit at any point, there is little forward momentum to the narrative, and, once the expliqué kicks in, it epicly fails to actually explain things. Like: how did those behind the proceedings manipulate everyone, independently, into getting lost, but all in the same exact area? If the explanation were supernatural, then that would make sense. But it isn’t, so it doesn’t. At all.

The opening manages to be moderately interesting, as it is done without any dialogue. A guy who looks like Elvis Costello in his hairier moments tries to run a motorcyclist (who, in his goggles, looks a bit like Zalman King from Trip with the Teacher) off the road, and they contest for a pretty young hitchhiker. The whole bit runs nearly nine minutes, but until the end, it’s wordless.

Not much to say about this one beyond that, alas. It wasn’t wretched, but at the end, all I could ask myself was “why?”

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Post tags: fog, gothic, graveyard, italian, mansion, narrative, personal lives, vampire, village, zombies

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It’s just… wow.

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