In short: The Day Time Ended (1979)

Richard Williams (Christopher Mitchum) has built a nice, ultra-modern desert home that looks rather 50s futurist to my eyes, so that he and his family and his grandparents (Jim Davis and Dorothy Malone) can live together. While Richard’s away – expect many a shot of Chris Mitchum driving around and looking confused later on – the rest of the family is hit by a variety of strange occurrences, starting with electrical problems, time slips, the appearance of strange aliens, and finally attacks by various monsters. It’s apparently all on account of a triple supernova 200 lightyears or so away. Eventually, the family will be transported to what may or may not be another planet, until the plot, such as it is, just stops.

And there really isn’t much “plot” The Day Time Ended, as directed by John “Bud” Cardos. Instead this Charles Band (in his Charles Band Productions phase) production is all about the weirdness and the effects work, particularly the weird effects work, so that the film often feels more like a show reel that demonstrates the good and the bad of state of the art (of the day) effects techniques when used on a low budget. Consequently, some of the effects shots look pretty shoddy and awkward, but for every bad back projection, there are half a dozen fun and pleasantly grotesque stop motion monsters, swirly laser stuff and inexplicable nonsense I don’t have the vocabulary to describe but certainly the capacity to enjoy quite a bit.

Also very much speaking to me is the film’s insistence on making not a lick of sense but getting by on just throwing strange visual stuff at its audience, hoping that some of it might stick to our brains enough we can at least pretend the talk about “time space rifts” (and so on) makes an sense whatsoever. If that plan works out, we might even take being transported to a strange new planet with no way home but only a not at all mind-control like feeling that things are gonna be okay in the next alien domed city as well in stride as the protagonists do at the non-sequitur ending of the film. “#lifegoals”, as the youth of today with their Internets and their weird beards would say.

The Dark (1979)

aka The Mutilator

Los Angeles. A mysterious killer stalks the streets at night, ripping heads off, or vaporizing people and/or heads with laser beam eyes.

Roy Warner (William Devane), man slaughterer turned writer and father of the latest victim is rather disappointed in the police work concerning the case and kinda-sorta starts an investigation of his own. For about half of the time, this investigation consists of following the police and staring angrily at them. One can understand this behaviour, however, for Detectives Mooney (Richard Jaeckel) and Bresler (Biff – seriously - Elliot) have investigation techniques very much their own: they love to complain about the press, the public, their moms as well as yours, while looking around confused about why nobody takes them seriously. Mooney also just loves to antagonize everybody he meets while showing not on iota of empathy or understanding: witnesses, victims, reporters, fathers of decapitated girls – you name someone, he’s an asshole to them; Bresler for his part eats, and eats, and then eats some more. Yes, of course donut jokes are involved.

Also on the case is up and coming TV anchor Zoe Owens (Cathy Lee Crosby), getting her teeth into the business in hopes of becoming a proper journalist instead of just a pretty face.

The Dark is another among the considerable number of projects that initially involved the great Tobe Hooper as a director. As it goes with Hooper, he soon found himself released of his duties by one of the producers. Depending on whom you ask, because his lunch breaks were too long, or because he got over budget, or, rather more believable, because a cranky producer simply didn’t like his style. Said producer then proceeded to put John “Bud” Cardos on the director’s chair, re-write the script, and probably do terrible things to the final cut as well.

That story, with its typical mix of rumours and angry mutterings by Hollywood people who were working on the same film together saying completely different things about anyone and anything involved in the production, is a lot more entertaining than the movie that came out without Hooper’s name in the credits. Because for some godawful reason what sounds like a cool monster movie that includes a couple of nice places to insert social criticism into Hooper would probably have had a feast day with is turned into a pretty damn boring police procedural. Most of the film consists of Mooney and Bresler doing little and complaining a lot while Bresler leaves food crumbs in every shot, followed by Warner doing very little as well, followed by Zoe having a discussion or three with her boss (Keenan Wynn). Repeat until runtime is full, add some surprisingly well staged monster attacks with a couple of really bad ideas (laser eyes), and a finale in which the hero just needs to touch the monster once with a torch to let it go up in flames.

It’s just painfully boring, includes no character that isn’t a static stock trope, no developments of plot lines or these characters, and really, no actual plot. Scenes that shouldn’t have started in the first place just go on and on and on, the dialogue is generally bad as well as unfun, and pain don’t hurt, because it’s too boring for it.

The only thing that’s actually remarkable – apart from the stalking scenes that really should have been in a better movie – is that the quality of the photography (DP John Morrill) is pretty great throughout in a late 70s/early 80s Dean Cundey sort of way. Alas, too many of the shots done so prettily are focussed on Richard Jaeckel looking constipated.

In short: Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

What starts with the mysterious death of the prize calf belonging to farmer Walter Colby (house favourite Woody Strode) quickly turns out to be the spiderpocalypse in a rural US small town. Apparently, humanity’s love for nuking insects with poison has killed off the main food sources of spiders. Tarantulas have moved habitats and have developed new and rather exciting habits, now swarming together instead avoiding each other, making tactical strikes, and killing humans.

Will local vet Rack Hansen (William Shatner) and quickly called-in arachnologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) solve the little spider problem, or will they waste valuable time on a romance so horrible, even 50s monster movie romances may suddenly feel swoon-worthy to a viewer?

Well, they certainly will do the latter, but stuntman turned director John “Bud” Cardos’s Kingdom of the Spiders doesn’t seem to put much stock into their efforts of fighting off those pesky arachnids in more than skirmishes anyway. This is a 70s animal attack movie, after all, so chances of winning out against an angry nature are slim to non-existent. Which, even more so from today’s perspective, seems like the proper way to treat these things. This of course doesn’t make the bizarre “romance” between people who’d rather kill each other than fuck in real life more believable or less squirm-inducing to watch, but it does explain it as an attempt (emphasis on “attempt”) to make us sad to see humanity go. Even if the result may very well lead to the opposite.

Though, to be fair, the rest of the character work is good enough. Cardos clearly puts effort into making the audience care for the characters, at least enough not to want to see them get eaten by spiders.

The first act is a little slow for my tastes, but the small town apocalyptic business in the rest of the movie does make up for it rather well, with the effectively shot panic in the spider-infested streets of the town late in the movie and the final, absurd yet utterly awesome, shots of the film being particular favourites of mine.

Tonally, Kingdom is a very 70s movie, having a rather bleak outlook on humanity’s place in the world even while keeping inside of the lines drawn by silly monster movies (that’s a good thing) and clearly having a lot of fun with all the tropes this suggests. Apparently, not even William Shatner (here in a comparatively controlled mood) can save us all.

Before the Shat fails, Cardos sets quite a bit of unobtrusively fine filmmaking in front of the audience, the film pretty much having all the visual and stylistic hallmarks of the sort of lived-in US 70s film that looks less carefully made than it actually is. It’s the filmmaking version of classic working class values, and it’ll make you happy (or unhappy, if you prefer humanity to tarantulas) just fine without making a lot of fuss about how good it is at what it does. Doesn’t mean it isn’t good at it, obviously.

In short: Night Shadows (1984)

aka Mutant

After a road encounter with the least pleasant human inhabitants of a small rural community, city-slicker brothers Josh (Wings Hauser) and Mike (Lee Montgomery) find themselves a bit stranded there, at least for a night and a day or so. Alas, they’ve picked quite the wrong time for their inadvertent stay, for the toxic waste an Evil Corporation has been dumping in the area is causing a peculiar sickness in many people around. Mike disappears quite early, and soon Josh finds himself teaming up with the local doctor (Jennifer Warren), the alcoholic sheriff (eternal sheriff Bo Hopkins), and romance-ready school teacher Holly (Jody Medford) against a whole bunch of blue-faced zombies with acid-bleeding, blood-sucking hands.

On a good day, Night Shadows’ director John ‘Bud’ Cardos was a perfectly decent man of his profession, filming straightforward plots in a straightforward manner, the unflinching professional of cinema. He had one of those days when he shot the film at hand, and while the result won’t win any originality prizes, it is an entertaining little variation on the eternal Night of the Living Dead shape.

Not surprisingly, this doesn’t have much – if any at all – of the political resonance of Romero’s film, but it goes through most of the expected zombie movie plot beats with a neat sense of pacing, doesn’t overstay its welcome, and generally knows how to be a fun time. Additionally, it features a lot of silly yet pleasing blue-faced zombie make-up, and does from time to time manage a fright scene or two archetypal enough to make the long-suffering horror fan look up with interest. There’s a really surprisingly ruthless mass child zombie scene in here, as well as a neat little monster under the bed variation early on – as long as you don’t stop to think about the practicalities of both of them, of course. But when has the stuff nightmares are made of ever cared about practicality?

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,john bud cardos,wings hauser,bo hopkins,jody medford,horror