Warrior of the Lost World (1983)

The post-nuclear wasteland (comes, as any good wasteland, complete with luscious woodland areas and competently maintained roads) is dominated by the worse-than-fascist-so-they-must-stand-in-for-communists uniformed goons of Prossor (Donald Pleasance, looking for all the world like frigging Doctor Evil and acting accordingly).

Fortunately, the smarmy and disgusting charismatic Professor McWayne (Harrison Muller) leads a resistance group against Prossor's evil. Too bad the Professor is held captive in Prossor's capital. His two or three co-resistance fighters, Fred Williamson in a cameo that doesn't afford him to do anything and the Professor's daughter (Persis Khambatta) aren't enough to rescue him, they desperately need a Chosen One.

As Destiny will have it, The Rider (Robert Ginty, with the kind of performance that lets me think wistfully of more charismatic leads in post-apocalyptic films. Like Mark "I can't talk or act but I sure can pout" Gregory. Ginty really is that disinterested.), some permanently bored looking and comatose sounding guy driving a "super sonic speed cycle" - featuring the most annoying computer voice ever (and again, letting me think wistfully of the witty banter in Knight Rider. It really is that painful) - crashes into the mountain where the rebels' allies are living.

Those guys are known as the Elders, are middle aged, ugly and run around in Ghandi's worn-out clothes. Oh, they also have magic powers and can heal wounds with the flashlights they have hidden in their sleeves. Anyway, the Rider is of course very excited to be the Chosen One to save the Professor, so it takes only the daughter's promise not to shoot him in the crotch if he goes to the rescue to convince him to be fulfill his destiny.

After some boring adventures (look, loud spiders! a snake! zombies/mutants!, Daughter and Rider rescue the Professor, but the insane incompetence of everyone involved (which presumably mirrors the things that happen behind the camera) gets Daughter kidnapped while her father goes free.

So Rider and Professor go to the meeting place of the local post-apocalyptic tribes (the Shirtless Kung Fu Dudes, the Guys in Nazi Uniforms, the Hitting Hookers, the New Wave Persons and the Redneck Truckers) to get themselves an army.

A little fistfighting and an annoying, stupid rousing speech of the Professor later, they have one. It's only consisting of about fifteen people, but hey, at least Rider is the Chosen One.

Off to the rescue they go. Will they save Daughter before Donald Pleasance has photocopied her whole body? Do I sound like I care?

I know, I know, all this sounds like the sort of film that should be right up my alley, what with its post-apocalyptic nonsense and Fred Williamson and Donald Pleasance cameos. The sad and tragic truth is that this might be the least fun post-apocalypse film our friends in the USA and Italy have ever made.

Director David Worth (who'd later go on to make the incredible Shark Attack 3: Megalodon) does everything in his power to make even the most awesome elements of his film terribly boring. I'm not sure how he does it, but he succeeds admirably. Is it Worth's inability to get anything even out of people like Pleasance and Williamson whose presence usually is enough to lift everything they appear in to the level of "at least watchable"? Is it the excellent way in which he keeps the action scenes completely unexciting through framing and editing exemplary in their boring ineptness (which you shouldn't confuse with fun ineptness)? Is it the fight scenes in which nobody ever seems to touch his foes? The toy weapons with the toy soundeffects? The fact that I wanted to punch the film's hero in the face whenever he opened his mouth and mumbled something?

Who knows?

So, let this be a warning not to delude yourself into a "with all this crap going on, this has to be awesome, right!?" state of mind concerning Warrior of the Lost World. Also keep in mind that the person who is warning you away here has been known to call Donald G. Jackson's post-apocalyptic roller skate epics "mandatory watching".

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,fred williamson,donald pleasance,post-apocalypse,italian movies,reviews

Specters (1987)

The vagaries of archeology are a well-known theme of modern horror. Take the work of Professor Lasky (Donald Pleasance) as an example: Excavations in the catacomb system below Rome lead him to the exciting discovery of an up to this point undiscovered part of the necropolis. It seems to have been sealead off from the rest of the tunnels for some reason. Lasky thinks this tomb is part of the legend about bloodthirsty pagan deities that are resting inside of the catacombs, cut off from sustenance by their own former worshippers.

Might it be possible that Lasky's excavations are awakening an Ancient Evil? Well, to be fair, the Evil is already starting to make itself known before the Professor even unseals the tomb. Typical demonic manifestations like strange lights, fog, exploding champagne bottles and ghastly wind in closed spaces are breaking through from the underground, even costing a life or two. Especially Lasky's assistant Marcus (John Pepper) and his girlfriend singer/actress Alice (Trine Michelsen) are haunted by strange occurrences that start to seem rather minor when the thing down in the tomb starts to take corporeal form and slaughters the archeologists one by one.

 

Specters is a minor but fine Italian horror film that mostly works through mood and a very long built-up that turns out to be a lot more interesting and effective than the thing it is building up to.

The first hour is a nice enough example of some of the virtues that make Italian horror fun: A sense of rhythm, color and very neat sets, as well as a very appropriate disregard for those pesky things called coherence or logic. The final third of the film is less effective - for the gore hound it lacks in tempo and exploding guts, while the friend of more subtle charms will find the usual slaughter just a little bit boring. Until it comes to the obvious (and of course nonsensical) end, that is.

At that point the film has already earned itself a lot of slack through the atmospheric parts before, though, and it still has a few neat moments to offer. When was the last time you saw a film in which someone dies of looking evil in the eye(s)?

While lighting, camera work and synthie droning are of the highest Italian standard, the acting isn't much to talk about here. Most of the actors are there - no more and no less. Only Donald Pleasance gives an expectedly good performance; from time to time I could even talk myself into seeing psychological nuance in his character.

The devil suit is a rather dire looking thing - there is a reason why we are mostly seeing its hands and a lot of coloured fog when it appears.

All in all Specters is far from being a masterpiece, but as a friend of cheap and terrible films, one should be able to appreciate its finer points.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,horror,donald pleasance,reviews

Re-watching Escape From New York

John Carpenter's Escape From New York (1981) has been one of my favorite movies seen I first saw it on German cable TV about twenty years ago.

There wouldn't be much sense in reviewing it - me using six hundred words to squee "I love it, I love it" looks like a waste of perfectly good blog space to me.

So I'm just going to list some of the details that made me especially happy this time:

• Parts of the music sound like further reduced E.S.G.!
• The relative disinterest the film takes in Snake's little gladiatorial match, which fits its anti-hero's poise perfectly. (And is exactly the thing some of Carpenter's later macho-fests like Vampires are missing)!
• The pure joy of having just about every single role cast with a b-movie hero(ine)!
• An ending that still says "Fuck you!" as beautifully as a perfect punk single!

Darling of the Day: "Snake Plissken!? I heard you were dead!"

Technorati-Tags: american movies,gushing,thoughts,action,post-apocalypse,kurt russell,lee van cleef,donald pleasance,adrienne barbeau,ernest borgnine,harry dean stanton,isaac hayes,tom atkins,john carpenter