The Fine Art of Tactical Retreat

05:07 pm - The Science!? 20: Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: Crash of the Moons (1954)

When I started my long and exhausting Mill Creek box binge, I promised myself to blog about each and every single one of the movies on them I'd watch. I can't let the special magic of Rocky Jones stop me now.

So, this is a feature cut of two or three episodes of a short-lived American TV show about the Space Ranger Rocky Jones, his side-kick Winky, his boy-side-kick Bobby, his scientist-side-kick Professor Newton, and his girl-side-kick (don't know if she is supposed to be a love interest, all I can say is that she dresses exactly like an early Legion of Super Heroes member) Vena Ray. The DVD package claims that Rocky was canceled because "the costly special effects made it unprofitable". Since most of the special effects I saw looked worse than one can expect from a serial twenty years older than Rocky, we can happily put the claim into the realm of the myth.

My own theory explains the show's early demise much more neatly and fits the known facts. I think (wait for it) Rocky Jones was canceled when it turned out nobody wanted to see something this boring.

And it must be really boring to have put a veteran of boring and bad movies like me to sleep as fast and as easily as it did. Just half an hour of the adventures of Rocky and his friends left me snoring.

I'm not planning on returning to Rocky anytime soon, so you'll have to take my snoring as a review.

Current Mood: sleepy

08:02 pm - The Science!? 19: The Phantom Planet (1961)

The future. It is the 1980 and mankind has made its first small steps into space. A newly established moon base acts as base for all space operations.

But something is wrong - one of the station's ships has gone missing. It has probably been destroyed by something its crew described as a wandering planet. The following rumors even endanger the soon to be launched manned mars mission (now, this is a future I want to live in!).

So the Americans send out their best man, Captain Frank Chapman (Dean Fredericks, whose face I know from more old western shows than can be good), to find this "Phantom Planet" or their missing ship.

As it turns out, the rumors have been completely on the money, and after a small space walk that costs Chapman's navigator his life, his ship too collides with the asteroid everyone will continue to call a planet.

Chapman at least has the luck to survive and is soon confronted by the inhabitants of the asteroid, some very human looking aliens who just happen to be as small as the astronaut's hands. But some unscientific mumbo jumbo about differing gravitation and atmosphere of different planets brings him down to the aliens' size very fast.

Shortly after the Captain is more or less alright again, he is put on trial for harming one of their citizens, only to be found guilty and allowed to join the alien society in spite of that. Aliens, a strange lot. He may even roam the planet (now I'm using that word, too) freely, but may never return to Earth again, lest he betray the secret of his captors' existence. Additionally, he has to choose a wife out of two available girls, Liara (Coleen Gray), the daughter of the planet's leader/chieftain/whatever Sessom (Francis X. Bushman), and the mute Zetha (Dolores Faith).

Liara at once leeches onto Chapman, to the wrath of unmarried and temperamental Herron (Tony Dexter) and to Zetha's obvious regret.

During the following days Chapman learns something of the history of his new people. They were once a technologically highly developed race who grew complacent and bored with their existence. Instead of trying to achieve the Singularity, they chose to give up most of their technology, with the exception of their knowledge about gravity control and their ability to "chemically produce food". How exactly one gives up most scientific advancements, while keeping others, is never explained. I guess different parts of nature just have nothing at all to do with each other. Be that as it may, they now live a much more interesting life without paper, books, furniture, different clothes for different people and so on.

Chapman is understandably underwhelmed and neither his wish to return to his home nor the open antipathy Herron is showing him help to improve his mood.

After Herron witnesses a little sweet talk between the Captain and Zetha, in which he confesses his feelings for Zetha and that he just can't bring himself to tell Liara the truth because he is afraid to hurt her, Herron challenges him to a duel in the belief that his only hope in winning Liara back lies in the earthman's death. As it goes with things like this, Chapman wins the duel but decides to spare Herron's life. Liara's actions during and after the duel make quite clear that the person she loves most is herself and she just likes the attention of two men, so Chapman has no problems of saying "I don't love you" to her anymore.

The following night Herron shows up in the Captain's room with the offer to help him sneak back to Earth. Against all traditions, his offer his genuine.

But before the Captain can return home, a space battle against the terrible Solaroids, a "bug-eyed-monster kidnaps the damsel" scene and the return of Zetha's voice are still to come. Then at last, our hero can forsake his one true love forever and return home to be just another top pilot again.

The Phantom Planet is a surprisingly effective film, if you are willing to overlook its flaws: most unscientific science, cheap production design (especially in the interiors, space and spaceships are looking nice enough) and a shoddy BEM-suit.

Fortunately, the movie has its nice sides too. The script might be cliched, but the writers made some interesting, even successful efforts to pull the clichés together into a coherent story. The characters' motivations are developed much more believable than SF films in the late 50s and early 60s usually bothered with.

Especially Chapman may be square-jawed, but he is neither an irritating fool nor an all-knowing blow-hard, his wish to return home is all too believable. And when was the last time you saw the hero of one of these films trying not to hurt another person's feelings? Or (as happens in an early scene) admit that he is afraid? Even the obligatory "hero spares his duel opponent's life" scene works nicely, since it is underplayed and not presented as a grand gesture of a great man, but as something grounded in simple humanity. Fredericks surely was no great actor, but the way he lays his hand on Herron's shoulder when he decides not to kill him nobody could have done better.

The Phantom Planet's tight plotting is also deserving of a mention - the more B-movies I watch the more I learn to hate typical filler scenes and the happier I am with films that simply don't have any.

So I am able to forgive the film's suspect idea of marriage and its other flaws and have a fun time with it.

Current Mood: satisfied

01:40 am - The Science!? 18: Sons of Hercules: In The Land of Darkness (1963)

The Peplum-Plot-O-Matic 2000 produced one of its most generic scripts when activated to write SoH: ITLoD.

To make a short story shorter and less boring, Hercules (Dan Vadis) just happens to be around when Telca (Spela Rozin), daughter of "King" Tedaeo (Ugo Sasso) is attacked by a lion, whose incredible dangerousness is more than proven by the necessity of being played by two different lions, one male, the other female. After a short round of wrestling and rock-throwing, the lion is dead and Hercules falls into unconsciousness(!). When he awakes, he is greeted by the people of the kingdom known as Whatever-its-name-may-be, all twenty of them.

Herc is of course absolutely delighted to hear that the local way of rewarding the rescuer of an unmarried woman is marriage (the Greek shotgun wedding). To Herc's and Telca's regret, this rule does not apply to the King's daughter, probably because it's a prince's duty to count all eight of the village's huts, and you never know if your prospective son-in-law is clever enough to count at all. But, since Hercules is soo heroic and soo strong, there might be a way for him to marry the woman he doesn't know at all - he just has to kill one little dragon.

So off the hero goes, meets an oracle, kills a dinosaur, returns to the village only to find it burned to the ground by the Demulus, a race of at least thirty people who live in an underground city and lighten up their diets by eating the flesh of their slain enemies. The only living soul he finds is Babar (John Simons), an odious comic relief so unfunny, even the Demulus didn't dare killing him.

With his new friend Hercules ventures into the land of the Demulus, wrestles a bear, fights some soldiers, gets caught, is nearly quartered by elephants (the thing that saves him is not his brawn or his brains, but an appeal to "the Lord of the Sun" to break his chain), saves the evil queen of the Demulus from her own elephants and blah-dee-blah.

Later on we see treachery, a slave revolt, the underground city destroyed by lava and a happy end.

Nothing of this is the least bit entertaining.

There are many puzzling things about this movie, but the most puzzling of them all may well be the decision of its American distributors to change its original hero from Hercules into a certain Argoles, Son of Hercules. Although, the longer I think about it, the less puzzling it gets: Do we really want the glorious epitome of manliest manliness we know as Hercules to be presented as a wimp, someone who wins his battles by whining to the Gods?

But the doubtful character of its hero is just one of the movies problems. I have seldom seen a peplum featuring a less charismatic or appealing cast. I don't expect all that much from actors in these films but Dan Vadis is a charisma-free zone and only comes to life in the melee combat scenes against human enemies, his love interest is utterly forgettable, the comedic relief someone I try very hard to forget and the villains much too laid back to be of any interest.

The special effects are as dire as usual and filmed with real talent for showing off all their shortcomings.

The direction is especially disappointing anyway - where most peplums get their energy from creatively designed sets and strangely colored lighting as well as from absurd feats of strength, this movie just sits there not even trying do something, anything interesting or strange or entertaining.

Current Mood: bored

07:24 pm - The Science!? 17: Death Warmed Up (1985)

You probably know the drill by now. See, there is this evil genius of a scientist, Dr. Howell (Gary Day), who is working on a way of making people immortal by poking around in their brains. But his colleague Professor Tucker (David Weatherley) doesn't like his methods and threatens to be even less nice to him than he already is. Dr. Howell can't accept that, so he brainwashes Howell's son Michael (Michael Hurst) to kill his parents and the lamp on their nightstand.

Seven years later the good doctor has a private institute on a barely populated island. His experiments are progressing well. Sure, we never see anyone who is immortal, but that most of Howell's subjects end up as psychopathic mutants whose fashion sense is derived from watching Mad Max surely is worth something.

Unknown to Howell, Michael, now a peroxided thug who looks as if he belongs in the Hitler Youth, his even more thuggish friend Lucas (William Upjohn) and their girlfriends, visit the island. How much the others initially know of Michael's story and his plans for revenge is (of course) never made clear. As far as I could make out, not everyone knows everything and even Michael doesn't know what he is planning. Or something.

Soon our "heroes" meet said mutants, and much bloodshed, running around and screaming ensues.

After hours of fun, everyone but Michael and his girlfriend Sandy (Margaret Umbers) is dead. Finally, Michael is inexplicably struck by a power supply line. The end.

As my love of Italian exploitation movies proves, I don't have a problem with films that try to shovel every damn thing that comes to mind into their running time, disregarding puny things like sense, logic, or tradition. But a good Italian exploitation film works with these things and obtains a peculiar sense of wholeness and a style all of its own through it.

New Zealand's Death Warmed Up on the other hand, stops at throwing shovels full of shit at the wall (or the viewer). Director David Blyth seems to be afraid of connecting one scene of his film to the next. The second half would be incomprehensible if not for the fact that it consists only of (boring) gore and (not much more exciting) explosions. The many, many action scenes are filmed in a way that predates modern fast cut styles in its unwillingness to show anything that happens clearly. Oh, someone got something red ripped out by some guy we didn't see, but who must have been standing directly in front of him.

All this is my long-winded way of saying: Boring.

Current Mood: bored

05:13 pm - The Science!? 16: Ring of Terror (1962)

An irritating, but at least cat-loving, undertaker sprouts some nonsense until his cat gives him the idea to tell his unlucky viewers a story about the inhabitant of a grave.

Medical student Lewis Moffitt (George E. Mather, in the first half of his Forties at the time, a typical age for students in this movie) seems to be a man without any fear. In truth, a very unpleasant childhood experience with his grandfather's corpse and darkness has left him deeply afraid of (you'll never guess) corpses in darkness. The wacky young people with the receding hairlines who comprise a fraternity he wishes to join, have the bright idea to torture him to death with a supposedly living corpse. In darkness.

The End.

As my plot synopsis demonstrates, Ring of Terror just doesn't have enough plot to fill its whopping running time of 62 minutes. The whole set-up could have worked as the episode of a TV series or one story in an anthology film, as a full feature it's somewhat hard to bear. I could even imagine some ways to make it work as a full length movie, turning it into a psychological horror film by deepening the characterization of our "hero" (from non-existing to shallow), or actually motivating anything that happens. Or having something, anything happen.

The producers of Ring of Terror of course give us half an hour (and I'm generous here) of filler. Watch the wacky fat comic relief people dance! Watch the wacky fat comic relief people be totally wacky! They're not thin, so they have to be funny, right!? Wait, where are you going?

Oh, look, the students are waiting for a call. The phone rings! A student answers. The student repeats all that is said. Then the student repeats all that was said again. They have to assemble the others for the autopsy! Let's listen how the plan to assemble them! A cut, a cut!

Now we can watch the students standing in front of their university. They are repeating the address of the local morgue. They are actually getting into their cars! Look! I am so thrilled! They are driving away!

And the autopsy is even better. Look at the students' crows-feet! My, the professor may even be older than some of his students! What an interesting clock this room has! And so on, and so on.

And of course there are great moments of "emotional intensity", when Moffitt's girlfriend Betty wants to leave him because they say he's strange, wanting to become a doctor and not fainting during an autopsy being his deepest offense. It makes as much sense as you think, while I am quite sure that it's even more boring and affectlessly acted than you could think.

Did I already mention that there just isn't anything happening in the movie?

Current Mood: bored

07:13 pm - The Science!? 15: The Fury of the Wolf Man (1972)

Famous doctor Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) has a small problem. Since he returned as the only survivor of some expedition or the other (you'll have to live with never hearing or seeing any details about anything when watching a Paul Naschy movie) he is cursed with The Curse of the Werewolf (no, what Tibet and werewolves might have to do with each other is never explained either).

Up until now, he has been able to suppress his transformation by pure manly awesomeness (Naschy wrote the script, too, as usual in his body of work), but when he learns that his wife his having an affair, he transforms into a weird looking ape a werewolf and kills them both. To this viewer's glee, Waldi is as clumsy as he is silly looking and has never learned to keep away from electrical current. Which ends his killing spree prematurely.

But don't cheer too soon. His ex-girlfriend Dr. Ilona Elmann (Perla Cristal) is an honest to God mad scientist, and so has nothing better to do than to revive him and use him for experiments involving mind control.

She acts out her hobbies in the cellar of her ancestral home, where she also hides a lot of freaks and semi-freaks.

Of course the dog-faced boy escapes, goes on a very sedate killing spree, returns again(!) and is experimented on and tortured a little longer.

My comments here are for the six minutes shorter, dubbed version of the film contained in one of my Mill Creek box sets, so some of the films faults may not be Paul Naschy's fault alone. Although the uncut Naschy vehicles I have seen aren't a base for optimism.

Most of actor/screenwriter and sometimes director Paul Naschy are talking of the palpable love for classic monster movies that his work exudes like a geeky odor. I can't disagree with that. Actually I think the man loved his classic monster movies so much that all he did was take their important and useless elements, threw them all in a bag and then started to randomly draw them out and write them, with the addition of a bit more blood and sex, down just like he found them, without any thought for sense or style, and without ever trying to do more with them than to reproduce them. In many cases this would lead to movies that at least are exciting or stupidly charming, but somehow Naschy's films always walk the line between the boring and the annoying. I'm not sure why.

The Fury of the Wolf Man itself is even worse. The editing is senseless, most plot points are not thought through in the less, everyone acts so far away from basic human reactions that it is just astounding.

Obviously, the missing scenes in this version don't make these problems any better, but most things here happen only because they have also happened in other (better) films, so comprehensibility wasn't high on the list of priorities for anyone responsible here anyway.

Naschy himself tends to the sort of slightly smug overacting I normally explain as the result of an ego bigger than the actor's talent (see also Tom Cruise, Robin Williams), but here he is the only person not completely made of wood, and I am too thankful to be snarky.

Lastly, and definitely something I can't blame poor Naschy for, the dubbing is quite bad. As if the bored delivery of the dubbing actors wasn't damaging enough, we are also granted one of those dubbing scripts that permanently don't quite make sense. Most of the time you can imagine what is supposed to be meant by the things people say, but it never is what they actually say.

Darling of the Day:

"If there's a killer, there must also be a victim. Our problem now is to find them both."

(See, it's just like a Zen koan. It makes less sense the longer you think about it.)

Current Mood: annoyed

08:36 pm - The Science!? 14: The Lost World (1925)

Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery), an eccentric scientist with a big anger management problem, starts an expedition into the depth of the Amazon basin to proof his theory of the survival of some dinosaur species on a difficult to reach plateau.

After he and his companions reach this Lost World and survive some adventures, they are able to return to their home in London, bringing a mighty big Brontosaur with them. The dinosaur turns out to be a true pioneer and starts a mild monster rampage.

This first screen adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book is mainly of historical interest as a relatively early work of stop-motion pioneer Willis O'Brien (eight years before King Kong). If you just fast forward through the human interest parts to the dinosaur footage, you won't really miss anything of interest. And even the effects are not completely up to O'Brien's standards.

In this The Lost World shows itself to be a precursor of the modern blockbuster, which also deals in a combination of sentimentality and spectacle.

But hey, at least there is a rampaging giant monster.

Current Mood: sleepy

10:54 pm - The Science!? 13: UFO: Target Earth (1974)

A communication technics scientist (or something) accidentally finds the trail of a crashed (landed?) UFO. Together with a medium (or something), and later some university colleagues, he tries to solve the mystery of its existence (I think).
Um, U:TE is what happens when the director/writer of a cheap UFO movie tries to be clever and philosophical. A barely watchable mess of people reciting pseudo-philosophical nonsense in such a bored tone that even hardened viewers like myself have a hard time of not getting as bored as the characters obviously are. The direction tends towards the non-existent.
The only moments of note are two or three scenes featuring the medium. She can't act any better than the rest of the people on screen, but at least she's trying for moments of sweet, sweet laughable overacting.
Agents Scully and Mulder to the red courtesy phone, please.

Current Mood: bored

07:59 pm - The Science!? 12: Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977)

Captain Kirk Hamilton is a man's man. In an age when most of humanity loves peace, he solves interpersonal difficulties with fisticuffs. In an age when most of humanity doesn't like all that icky touching their ancestors used when having sex, he prefers the old fashioned approach. In an age when most of humanity lets their thinking be done for them by machines, he hates those gigantic things with their blinking lights. Still, when an alien signal disrupts the communication systems of Earth and two or three small alien vessels attack, his ship is the one closest to the signal's origin, so he and his crew are mankind's only hope. After crash-landing on the source planet, the intrepid adventurers learn that it was once the home of a thriving civilization, until the civilization's machines rebelled and made their creators their slaves. Later, an atomic explosion seems to have destroyed most of the machines and started the natives on their way of genetic regression to a point where it seems sensible for them to eschew the use of all clothing except loincloths. (And no, they don't seem to have any women, sorry.) This is the point when the movie's plot becomes more or less impenetrable, but I am relatively sure that the terrible machines consist of one killer robot that the production designers of early Doctor Who would have been ashamed of and a computer who really likes to use the word "Earthlings" a lot. Also, there is a kind of twist ending.
Of course, words can hardly describe the singularity of the SF work of Alfonso Brescia. War of the Planets starts quite innocently and linear, though soon silly and unnecessary details, circumcisious scenes that don't seem to belong where and when you are seeing them, important plot points that are never explained and leave the viewer with the vague, uneasy feeling of having fallen asleep for a few minutes without realizing it, the slapshot and deeply strange production design and the puzzling and hysterically funny dubbing, push the film into the realm of the deeply unfathomable.
A possible explanation for all this is another theory I have about Brescia's work: In truth he was a member of a secret order of avantgarde film makers who effectively infiltrated the Italian filione production system and unleashed their experimental works on an innocent viewership. This makes War of the Planets a highly metaphorical work about a man named Alex Hamilton (or is even his name a delusion inspired by space opera writer Edmund Hamilton?), who cannot cope with the alienation and automatization that sets the tone of modern life and tries to escape from his troubles into a better life, in which he is a helpless cog in a machine, but a man of action who is able to cope with anything life throws at him. But even in his fantasies Alex can't escape a reality that slowly conquers even them.

Current Mood: silly

02:25 am - The Science!? 11: Eegah (1962)

Roxy Miller (Marylin Manning) is driving through the desert one night when a gigantic, club-wielding caveman, who -as we'll learn later- is called Eegah (Richard Kiel), appears before her. Only tactical fainting (and believe me, this won't be the last time she's going to faint) and the sound of her car's horn save her from some sweet sweet caveman-lovin'.
To my great surprise both her boyfriend Tom (Arch Hall jr., who can't sing and can't act, just like Jennifer Lopez) and her father (director, writer and producer Arch Hall sr.) believe her, when she tells her story. Her father goes even further. If there is something like a giant still alive, he has to find and see him. So he charters a helicopter to fly him into the desert, where he promptly meets Eegah. Eegah doesn't clobber him, instead he drags the poor bastard into his cave (incidentally a cave in good old Bronson Canyon, the same cave acting as Ro-Man's home in Robot Monster). When the helicopter can't return to the desert at the promised time, Roxy and Tom jump into Tom's dune buggy to come to the old idiot's rescue. Soon Eegah abducts the girl. What follows are scenes of Arch Hall jr. trotting through well known landscapes, spiced up with scenes from Eegah's cave, where Mister Miller and his daughter try their best to distract Eegah from the sweet feelings that are swelling in his breast (at least he brings flowers this time).
After a long, long time father, daughter and useless boyfriend escape and return to the big city.
Not even the mummified bodies of his ancestors can comfort Eegah, so he wanders off into the city (which suddenly seems to be about a minute away from his home) to find the love of his life again. We all know how this must end.
Oh, Eegah, where have you been all my life? This wonderful, wonderful picture really has everything one can ask for from a bad movie: Bronson Canyon! The sweet memory of Robot Monster! Ray Dennis Steckler in a small role! Dialogue so stupid you can't help but be completely enthralled. A script full of those little details (mummified ancestors, sulphuric water as the reason for Eegah's existence etc etc) that make all the difference between a merely bad movie and the kind of bad movie the connoisseur cherishes and loves.
Even better is the acting. I am completely at a loss to decide who gives the worst performance - Junior? Senior? Marylin Manning? The mighty Eegah? Still, no none is lackluster or disinterested, everybody gives his enthusiastic best, even if it may not be all that much.
Junior's musical numbers (and his bizarre face contortions when he performs) are just the icing on this sweet mess of a cake. Why can't every film be Eegah?

Current Mood: amused

12:39 am - The Science!? 10: Alien Species (1996)

Bad computer animations UFOs attack! Some people in an unconvincing lab are concerned! The Professor has to know! But they can't reach him on his car phone! There is a prisoner transport with two Jerky Deputies! The Sheriff stays in town! The men in really bad rubber suits aliens abduct people! Then they suddenly start to destroy houses with their green 'splodey rays! The people in the lab are still worried! The Professor had an accident! Luckily, the transport finds him and his two female companions! The transporter is attacked with green 'splodey rays! The annoying people inside our heroes escape into a cave! Back to the lab! The aliens are now 'sploding a city! The people from the lab flee! Guy With Stupid Glasses from the lab has to find The Professor! Back to the cave! Oh noes! The cave is an alien nest! Psychological drama! Shooting! Much screaming and whining! More rubber suits! Green energy shields! An alien energy shield remote control! The Prisoner With The Heart Of Gold and the terrible action hero one-liners and surviving chicks escape! They make the cave 'splode! The aliens are angry! They try to kill our heroes! What luck! Guy With Stupid Glasses finds them! They flee! Then Guy With Stupid Glasses and his laptop and Prisoner With Heart Of Gold shut down the alien ship's shield! Prisoner With Heart Of Gold shoots ship down with the bazooka Guy With Stupid Glasses found somewhere! The alien invasion fleet retreats, having lost one of their hundreds of ships! The End!
Welcome to the very special hell of shot on video (or is it digital already? It looks terrible anyway) backyard productions! Alien Species is an especially annoying specimen of its kind, because it has the ambition to tell a story of apocalyptic proportions on a budget that isn't even big enough to tell the story of some people screaming a lot and running away from rubber monsters. It's really hard to picture the shabbiness of the proceedings or the ugliness of the production if you haven't experienced it for yourself. Let's just say it makes Robot Monster look like a hundred million dollar film. And in total contrast to that beloved classic, Alien Species isn't even the slightest but entertaining.
If the production design, lighting and camera work aren't enough to make your eyes bleed, there's always more to punish you to find, starting with a cast whose only professional actors (of course in cameo roles) are Charles Napier and a very drunk Hoke Howell (The Professor, whom the titles identify as a "Dr. Chambers"). The rest is one of the most talentless bunches of people that has ever come together in a single room. Bad emoting, bad line delivery, there's nothing these people can't do very very badly.
I think my plot synopsis says enough about the quality of the script, I'll just add that I'll never want to be reminded of the dialogue.
Now, after the viewer's eyes, brain and taste buds are destroyed, Alien Species offers another treat in probably the most annoying bad synthesizer soundtrack I have ever heard (and think about the movies I watch day in, day out). Thankfully this seems to be "composer" Dan Kehler's only movie work. The only other credits IMDb gives him are for the scores of a few late Sierra adventure games. Which weren't all that bad. He still deserves not insignificant amounts of physical violence.

Current Mood: annoyed

01:30 am - The Science!? 09: Giants of Rome (1964)

Gaul during the Gallic Wars. Julius Caesar (Alessandro Sperli) is just one step away from being recalled back to Rome and being branded unsuccessful in the conquest of Gaul. He knows he must win a decisive victory against the Gallic forces. The trouble is that a very important mountain pass is blocked by a terrible secret weapon the Druids invented. To remove this obstacle, Caesar sends a small commando unit, lead by a certain Claudius Marcellus (Richard Harrison), behind the enemy lines to destroy the weapon. Of course the troop gets captured, escapes with a few prisoners including the mandatory love interest, fights dangerous battles and is hindered by a cowardly traitor in their midst. There may even be a heroic sacrifice or two.
Antonio Margheriti has, as a typical filione director, made films in every genre imaginable, some of them not suited to his directorial strengths. He was at his best when he worked either on Gothic Horror or war movies (his love for science fiction lead to fun, but very uneven films). Here, he uses a classic war movie formula in a historical setting and the results are quite satisfying. The action is much more dynamic and gruesome than I'm used to in movies (not produced in Asia) of the the first half of the Sixties. This is one of the few cases of Western movies of this time where I would even use the word "choreography" when speaking of the fights.
Story and characters are neither surprising nor original, but Margheriti expertly diverts the viewer's attention by keeping a high tempo and a high body count.
I could now criticize the many historical inaccuracies and stupidities the film contains, but really - who watches these films for the historic truth? Especially when the basic story could take place in any time and any war, just with different weapons.

Current Mood: sleepy

12:48 am - The Science!? 08: Radio Ranch (1940)

Gene Autry (playing himself) is quite brilliant in making enemies. Surprisingly, the people who hate him in this film aren't disgusted by the stupidity of his songs, but have problems with the location of his Radio Ranch, his brand new broadcasting center and a kind of predecessor of Michael Jackson's Neverland. Firstly there are a shady scientist and his henchmen, who are searching for a huge radio deposit and the ruins of the underground civilization of Mu, and won't even stop at framing Autry for the murder of his two main sidekicks' (he has a whole horde) father. Secondly there is the still very much alive underground city of Murania and its elite troop, the Thunder Riders. They want to kill Autry because of his immense popularity that draws the eyes of the world on their home. And nobody would care if they killed him!
Oh well. Radio Ranch is the movie cut of the 1935 serial The Phantom Empire. Very typical serial stuff and relatively fun thanks to its wacky concept.
Your enjoyment will depend on your tolerance for really bad country music. We are not talking Hank Williams here, to be sure, more the Western brother to bad Vaudeville.
Autry is the film's biggest problem anyway. His acting is not just bad, he is also incredibly uncharismatic, making a less than convincing two-fisted hero.

Current Mood: blah

06:33 pm - The Science 07!?: All the Kind Strangers (1974)

Photographer Jimmy Wheeler (Stacy Keach) drives through the American countryside. On his way he meets a little boy struggling with a paper bag of groceries. Since Jimmy is a nice guy, he promises the boy Gilbert (Tim Parkinson) to take him home. "Home" turns out to be a big house far off the main roads and six more children, as well as a woman the children call their mother (Samantha Eggar). Jimmy soon realizes that she isn't her mother, but a friendly soul like himself who wanted to help a child and is now held prisoner by the little psychos. And, since Jimmy is such a nice man, he'll surely have no problem with being their new Dad. If not, he will probably learn what happened to his predecessors as head of family.
All the Kind Strangers turns out to be a very competent and effective little film. It looks surprisingly good for a TV production of the time, probably thanks to director and old workhorse Burt Kennedy, who knew how to make things work on a budget. The basic idea of the movie is weird enough to charm every friend of the American Gothic.
The acting is fine, even the child actors don't annoy. The script is comfortably simple and uses the always effective technique of hinting at certain things more than showing them.
A slight feeling of wrongness runs through many of the scenes, hinting at country life as claustrophobic and not too helpful for one's state of mind.
I can even overlook the much too friendly ending. It still is a TV movie, after all.

Current Mood: satisfied

02:32 am - The Science!? 06: Warriors of the Wasteland aka The New Barbarians (1982)

The year is 2019. Some years ago the world finally ended with a big atomic bang. Now small bands of survivors roam the European wastelands, trying to eke out a living. To make a bad situation worse, a group of men calling themselves "The Templars" try to purify the world. If I followed the mad ravings of their leader The One (George Eastman) correctly, the only way to achieve this purification is to kill every single survivor. Sounds like a plan to me. All works out well for the Templars until they cross paths with the semi-heroic wanderer Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete) and his part-time friend Nadir (Fred Williamson).
This is as good as Italian post-apocalyptic action movies get. Sure, most of the film consists of people in very silly costumes (a moment of silence for poor Fred Williamson and his disco Robin Hood outfit) driving around or killing each other in interesting ways (or both) or Eastman foaming at the mouth, but the art of making it interesting lies in the execution. And as his cop movies with people like Maurizio Merlo and Franco Nero proved, director Enzo G. Castellari was a fantastic director for action scenes, as well as a certain kind of melancholic machismo you can also find in Warriors of the Wasteland. Add to this a cheap and effective soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, some very inspired cutting (sometimes in the rhythm of the music) and some brilliantly stupid ideas like the small child that helps Scorpion out as a mechanic and kills about a dozen bad guys in the showdown and you have a tight and mean little film that probably cost next to nothing.

Darling of the day:
"They are people from a sect. They believe in something called...[long pause] 'God'"
"Ah."

Current Mood: excited

12:14 am - The Science!? 05: Hercules Against The Moon Men (1964)

Some time ago (could be decades, could be centuries) a part of the moon fell onto Earth, making a nice new mountain in Greece near the city of Samar. As is customary, the rock is home to a race of aliens who press the Samarians into regular sacrifices of young women and men. Now, an unspecified time later, the townsfolk are finally ready to rise up against their tormentors, especially since they are able to summon the help of unflappable hero Hercules (Alan Steel) (Maciste in the original version of the film).
Unfortunately their queen Samara (Jany Clair) doesn't agree. She can't resist the aliens' promise to become queen of the world when their plans finally come to fruition. To achieve this goal she will even kill her family and sacrifice her sister Bilis (Delia D'Alberti) to the invaders.
One cannot measure a peplum's quality the same way one measures the quality of a common movie. Logic, characterization and acting quality are as dust in the eyes of the Greco-Italian gods. To still be able to ramble on about them, I have invented the Herculean Five Part Formula.
The first part is of course the Herculean People Throwing Scale. Since I sometimes lost count during the course of the movie, I have to go with eleven of ten points.
Part two is the Herculean Manly Bellylaugh Scale, a very weak point of ...against the Moon Men that leaves me no other choice than to award only two points.
Part three is the Herculean SM Kink Scale. I computed a very solid eight here.
Part four is the Herculean Man In Rubber Suit Scale, an aspect that made me at first fear the worst for the poor little movie in question. A very rubber-suity second half lead to six points, though.
The last and absolutely not least part of my formula is the Herculean Strange Colors & Artificial Sets Scale. An eight seems more than justified to me.
After ignoring the lowest scale, I calculate 33 of 40 possible points - a very commendable achievement.
Leaving all scientific objectivity aside - the grand finale of the movie is a gorgeous mixture of color, beautiful artificiality (and rubber suits) that more than makes up for some slower moments in the first and second act. I was not at all surprised when I learned that director Giacomo Gentilomo left the movie business for the painting world soon after finishing ...Against the Moon Men. (What exactly is it with Italian directors and painting anyway? Mario Bava was a painter too and Dario Argento is obviously highly influenced by the art form. Something to keep in mind, I think.)

Current Mood: awake

12:18 am - The Science!? 04: Star Odyssey (1979)

An alien overlord named Cobol/Cobor (don't ask me about exact names here, the English dub is terrible) buys Earth in an auction. He soon appears in his invulnerable flying saucer near a futuristic Earth, attacks it and starts to take as many slaves as possible. Humanity's only hope is a dubious professor with psychic powers and a band of misfits he very slowly starts to assemble. For some reason somebody probably knows, the world government won't give him official help, so he has to use highly unconventional and illegal ways to capture his dream team. After about an hour, things happen. Then more things happen. Why? How? I don't know. Later even more things happen. There are fights. Finally, our heroes attack the enemy mothership. They win, as far as I'm able to tell. There's a promise to outfit the two odious comic relief robots with genitalia, so they can "proof their love for each other" - a clear foreshadowing of director Brescia's sf pornos (please, don't ask). A Happy End, I think.
On the seventh day George Lucas created Star Wars. Five minutes later, the Italian film industry heard about its success and started to churn out dozens of bizarre copies, clones and wannabes. For some of Italy's directors, like Star Odyssey's Alfonso Brescia, a long held dream of making space operas came true.
As my failure to produce a plot synopsis above shows, this film, as well as everything else Brescia touched was troubled by a complete disregard for things like logic, taste and sense. I don't want to sound pretentious, but the only word that really describes the Brescia experience for me is "dadaist". It makes more sense the more I think about it. If I am following Greil Marcus' logic in Lipstick Traces (and why shouldn't I) there is a spiritual/intellectual line that can be drawn from medieval flagellants and heretics to the Paris Commune to Dada to Surrealism to Punk Rock. Why not draw a line from Surrealism to bad Italian movies, when their hatred of order and sense itself is so obviously connected. Punk Rock and Italian SF films even started at the same time!

Current Mood: weird

05:48 pm - The Science!? 03: Killers From Space (1954)

Doug Martin (Peter Graves) is a scientist working on the American H-Bomb project. One day while he observes the atomic cloud from a bomb test from out of a plane, his plane crashes and his pilot and he are presumed dead. Until Martin reappears a few days later without a memory of the incident and with a fresh and very unusual scar on his chest. His bosses are suspicious and order him to spend an extended leave at home. Nonetheless Martin is able to steal the exact time and date of the next bomb test. If only his colleagues knew that he is neither an evil Commie spy from hell nor just plain mad. In truth, he is the mind controlled slave of a group of alien invaders who have painted golf balls instead of eyes and plan to utilize the energy released in the next test to mutate and multiply their army of archive footage insects and reptiles. Yes, their base is located in the Bronson Caves.
It is still not a widely known fact that Billy Wilder had a brother who also worked in the film business, W. Lee Wilder. It's probably not that surprising if you keep in mind that W. Lee's films were mostly more or less workmanlike pieces of Fifties B-Pictures like Killers From Space.
Actually, Killers is one of his better films. Its first half has something I can actually call pacing without damning myself to much time in hell. The paranoid parts (all in the first half) work reasonably well, too.
But as soon as our alien would-be invaders appear the movie makes a hard turn in the direction of the inept but at least mildly hilarious. Did it really have to be golf balls!? The highpoint of the latter half is of course Doc Martin's hilarious flight from badly used archive footage (my personal favorite is the "giant" grasshopper), which overshadows the supposed climax like the giant rabbits in Attack of the Lepus overshadow every other animal in giant monsterdom in cuteness.
But hey, I've seen worse.

Current Mood: hungry

08:48 pm - The Science!? 02: Eternal Evil (1985)

Meet Paul Sharpe (Winston Rekert), failed documentarist, now director of commercials, father of one son and still in a not very happy marriage. Also, he's a jerk. The only way he can cope with his oh-so-terrible life is through his nightly exploits in astral dreaming, something he had dabbled in years ago without much success. That changed when he met Jannis (Karen Black), a dancer who now acts as something like his spiritual mentor. Soon though, Paul's dream self starts to kill people he knows in real life in painful ways. As if this wasn't weird enough, his son starts to talk to a strange being he calls "The Blue Man". Will police detective Kaufman (Paul Novak) and Paul find out what is really happening before it's too late?
Eternal Evil aka The Blue Man is a Canadian TV movie, and quite a conundrum. One seldom sees such a strange mixture of the cheesy (hello terrible child actor! Hello French woman! Hello death faces! Hello soundtrack! Hello non-surprising surprises!) and the surprisingly good in the form of obvious, but not often used plot points, some really neat and very atmospheric camera work and really rather good acting. Even, if you can believe it, effective moments of idea-based horror.
Since its cheesiness is more amusing than annoying, Eternal Evil is a nice little surprise.

05:30 pm - The Science!? 01: Unknown World (1951)

Dr. Morley is a far sighted, if not incredibly optimistic scientist. For him the invention of the H-bomb guarantees the self-destruction of humankind and the complete uninhabitability of the planet's surface. But he has a plan: To find a habitable place deep under the Earth's surface as a haven for humanity. After the US government (who was obviously as science-hating then as it is now) rejects his plans, the vapid, but adventurous son of a millionaire, promises to finance the project, if he will be part of the explorative mission. The scientist and his team agree and they soon start to use one of those underground drilling vehicles movies love so much to search for a better place for mankind. Although not much is going to happen along the way, not every intrepid explorer will survive.
Unknown World makes reviewing very difficult. On one hand it is clearly a boring and slow piece of work, neither very well acted nor in any way exciting. On the other hand, I doubt that it was meant to be exciting. Clearly someone in the production (director? writer? producer?) had the idea to make a filmic version of hard SF and tried his hardest to stay as plausible and earnest as possible, avoiding everything exciting and totally unrealistic Fifties SF excelled in. The end product shows how difficult it is to avoid the stupid without losing the fun, too. I watched without any emotional relation to the proceedings.
Another failure, probably the one most destructive for the kind of movie this is trying to be, is its lack of sense of wonder. If you are trying to show us something relatively mundane, show us how beautiful and strange the seemingly mundane can be. Instead we get to see the (ineffectively lit) Bronson Caves.
The last failure of Unknown World is again rooted in an attempt to be different and better than its contemporaries. I saw obvious signs of interest in a deeper and more realistic characterization let down by equally obvious signs of the ability to think character arcs through to their logical end. Instead the writings uses lazy short cuts to push the characters back into the usual clichéd positions.
So, is the movie boring? Yes, very much so. Do I recommend it? Not really, no. Is the wish to make something different commendable? Yes, absolutely. 

Current Mood: thoughtful