Omega Doom (1996)

Revenge of the Nerds, it’s stunning to imagine, is a divisive film.  Primarily, its critics tend to call up the film’s questionable sexual politics as the reason why it’s so awful (and, yes, they are problematic).  I’m sure that, when it was released back in 1984, there were still plenty of people who detested this aspect of the movie.  It’s just that the internet wasn’t around for everyone and anyone to vent their spleen and instigate a hip, mob mentality that usually comes and goes so fast, the people complaining rarely even remember what it was they were decrying, having moved on to the next outrage du jour.  Having now vented my own spleen, no, I have never particularly cared for the crass, assaultive way that women are treated in the film, but it also never stopped me from mildly liking the film for what it is: a crass, assaultive sex comedy.  It was never meant to be anything else, the same as gore films are filled with gore.  To expect otherwise is missing the point (or maybe it’s just me).  Call me crazy, but I always preferred the second film, Nerds in Paradise more, and either way, I don’t hold these films up as favorites by any stretch.  So why in Green Hell am I talking about Revenge of the Nerds in my introduction to Albert Pyun’s Omega Doom?  Because every time I think of the title and the titular character (as essayed by Rutger Hauer), I can’t help but think of the big song number from Jeff Kanew’s magnum opus, just changing the lyrics to amuse my juvenile self.  “We’re Lambda Lambda Lambda and…Omega Doom…”  Don’t try and tell me you didn’t start singing along to that.

During the big human/robot war, robo-soldier Omega Doom (cue music) is shot in the back of the head, wiping away his memories and prime directives (which we can only assume were counter to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, anyway).  Doom wanders the wasteland doing stuff, while the various remaining robot factions feud over a legendary arsenal (which they call treasure) that will give them the ability to defeat not only their automaton enemies but also the humans who have been crawling back to prominence.

It amazes me how many times Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Yojimbo have been remade, retooled, re-envisioned, etcetera (I get the why of it; they’re outstanding films outstandingly crafted, and imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that), and Omega Doom (cue music) is yet another stab at the latter of the two.  Doom comes to town, befriends the local put-upon robot who literally always loses his head (named The Head, played by Norbert Weisser), does good for the local put-upon female robotic saloon owner (named The Bartender, played by Anna Katarina), and kind of sort of pits the local robot gangs (The Roms and The Droids) against each other, though really, he just picks them off.  The difference is that, instead of Ronin or gunslingers, these are robots in a post-nuke, post-human/robot-war world, get it?!  Sure, Doom tries to talk the other robots to death before throwing down with them, but eventually that’s what it all ends up being.  I can understand Pyun’s desire to put his spin on Kurosawa’s classic (and Pyun has surely made some classic Action films [Cyborg, Nemesis, Dollman to name but three] in his own right), but I cannot for the life of me fathom how he managed to make this one so confusing and dull. 

The robots all act like humans whenever it’s convenient.  For example, why the hell do robots need to or want to drink water?  Why would a robot open a saloon to serve same?  Why would a robot derive any sort of pleasure from kicking around a disembodied robot head (or derive any sort of pleasure from anything at all)?  Why would robots express feelings like regret or hope?  At least with Omega Doom (cue music) it’s semi-logical.  He was changed by the shot to his melon.  It would make more sense and work better dramatically to have Doom be the only one with emotions, needs, wants and to have him bring these things to the other robots, to change them through their interactions.  The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that Pyun wanted to show that robots are as bad as people.  And again, I have to ask why?  It doesn’t play with the setup of the narrative, and it’s needless window dressing that robs the film of any resonance it could have had (although I suppose it’s gangbusters as an “elevator pitch”).

Omega Doom (cue music) has a purpose, and it’s this that he ostensibly bestows to his android brethren.  He’s there to save them in messianic fashion (the ones he doesn’t destroy).  What’s interesting about this is that his purpose came about due to damage caused by a human.  If anything, his peaceful goals are a defect (or, I suppose, free will, but that’s not nearly as intriguing to me).  One of the first robots he talks to and befriends is The Head, the part of Doom that was impaired.  This is the direction that Pyun should have taken the film, that Omega Doom (cue music) is a brain damaged robot with a messiah complex.  Instead, The Head recalls that he was a teacher (along with providing tons of painfully unfunny comic relief), The Bartender recalls that she serves water (as well as the lyrics to Joy to the World [the Handel version, not the Three Dog Night one]), and Zinc (Jill Pierce) decides to join the good bots for no real reason.

I really don’t enjoy beating up on this film, because it did have a lot of potential, and that’s the reason I’m doing it, though not for too much longer.  The robot gangs just stand around talking to each other or to Doom.  Then they talk some more.  Then there’s a showdown.  Then there are less robots in the gangs.  All this dialogue wouldn’t feel so useless if any of it went anywhere or if it wasn’t all simply wasting runtime until the fights.  And let’s talk about the fights.  There are some bright spots in their execution, but otherwise they are jumbled, scattershot messes.  I can see why Pyun chose to edit them together as he did (whip-fast cuts between awkward closeups and long shots of combatants in silhouette), Hauer not being the most leggiadrous of onscreen fighters (or certainly not by this point in his career).  The director had to find a way to cut to the stunt people as economically as possible.  I can only assume he didn’t cover his leads well enough to allow for longer, clarified shots in these scenarios, or maybe he mistakenly thought this approach would amp up the excitement.  It’s a shame, because I really wanted to like this movie, but neither the story nor the action live up to the title Omega Doom (cue music).

MVT:  Some of the shots in the film look okay.  Unfortunately, they also look so similar as to become nigh-indistinguishable.

Make or Break:  The first scene featuring The Head.  You may feel like you got kicked in yours.

Score:  3/10           

Bleeders (1997)

Incest has always been a go-to subject in the porn industry.  For a period of time in the Seventies and Eighties, it was acceptable and/or desired to watch family members bump uglies.  Entire movies were produced around the subject, and it played an integral plot point in some others (back when porn films actually attempted to have plots that they followed; and to be fair, some still do, but the vast array of what you’ll find out there on the internet is little more than loop scenes, the same as you would have found in a grotty porn theater booth way back when, just with [usually] better production values and a higher likelihood that you won’t stick to your chair afterward).  It’s still a theme in a lot of internet porn, except the producers are very, very careful to explain that incest is a crime in many states in America.  They further backstop this by concocting scenarios where the participants aren’t lineally related.  They are stepdads, stepdaughters, stepsons, stepmoms, et cetera.  Kind of takes the taboo elements out of the equation, doesn’t it?  In line with our focus today, incest is also an aspect of some potent horror films, and therein it doesn’t lose its bite, most likely because commonly there aren’t explicit, intrafamilial sex scenes that exploit that element.  In horror, incest takes on a sad, often abusive aspect, and when well done, it adds impact to the gut punch that horror films try to deliver.  With that said, the inbreeding component in Peter Svatek’s Bleeders (aka Hemoglobin aka The Descendant) does add to the film’s disturbing story, though the film feels like an amalgamation of older, Hammer-esque horror movies and more modern, graphic horror movies.

Back in Victorian times, Eva Van Daam takes up incest with her brother in an attempt to cure the maladies affecting her aristocratic family’s bloodline, like anemia and hemophilia, but bad things develop from this (who could have predicted that?).  Cut to: modern times, where John Strauss (Roy Dupuis) and wife Kathleen (Kristin Lehman) travel to the small island where the Van Daam family went into seclusion in search of answers to why John still has such horrible blood-based issues (I guess inbreeding didn’t do the trick).  Making the acquaintance of local physician/exile, Dr. Marlowe (Rutger Hauer), the couple dig deep into John’s lineage, while something else is digging deep into the flesh of the local populace.

As stated, Bleeders has a very classic structure to it.  There is little seen of the monsters until the end.  The majority of the story is a slow buildup of pieces being slid into place, of a mystery being dragged out into the light.  The focus is primarily on Kathleen and how she deals with her husband (who you would think would be the main character, but he’s not, and there is a significant reason for this) and his behavior.  Further, John is not a nice fellow, and physically he makes Richmond from The IT Crowd look like one of The Wiggles.  The action of the film is handled by Dr. Marlowe (in a redemptive/Van Helsing type of role), a man who is pulled into the story reluctantly.  I think this is a mistake, since it takes the focus off Kathleen, and it feels akin to the Amazing Larry suddenly becoming a prominent participant in the finale of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.  

There is also a Gothic atmosphere that the filmmakers use to its fullest extent.  The locales are dreary.  The island is remote and haunting, like the forested settings of a great many vampire films.  The buildings the Strausses investigate are constructed of cobbled stone and creepy as hell.  The local cemetery looks like it was transplanted from a blasted heath in Britain, and the coffins supplied by local exploitress Byrde Gordon (Joanna Noyes) are the plainest of old school pine boxes imaginable (that the damage done to them gives them an added texture is just gravy).  In the Hammer films of yore (by which I do believe the makers of this film were heavily influenced), there was a sensuality, and, for their time, they were considered quite lurid.  This film mirrors the feel of (early) Hammer, but makes more straightforward the more unseemly components (somewhat like later Hammer).  Bleeders is also daring enough to not only put children in peril but actually knock them off (and not just once for the sake of shock), and once the third act kicks in, the action and tension ratchet up, becoming a siege film with cannibalistic horrors in place of savages.

It’s intriguing to me, this idea of developing from incest to cannibalism.  Both are taboo things in civilized society, but that one could lead to the other is kind of fascinating.  It is as if the Van Daams have cursed themselves for transgressing against the natural order, damning what they intended to save.  The bloodline they had hoped to purify has not only been further degraded but has also produced monsters.  Blood became the means of survival for them, though the blood they need can’t be pure (or that’s what I got from the narrative), because they are no longer pure (or as pure as they ever could have been).  In some respects, these creatures appear like children; their heads are large and bald, they are short-statured, they are non-verbal.  Yet they also externally embody the consumption of flesh (familial and non-familial, sexual and culinary) which created them: they have multiple noses, multiple eyes, and hare lips.  They are gestalts of the piling up of evils which engendered them and which they then propagate across the island.  What has been passed down the family tree is equal parts curse and punishment; transforming from one into the other while simultaneously being both is the ironic tragedy of the story.  All of this began in order to cure an ill, but the laws of both man and nature were broken in the attempt, and this is why the family in total is penalized.  Sure, the creatures may be unwilling participants (we can assume), but their alternatives are non-existent.  Surrounding them is a sort of fear of difference taken to a novel level.  Incest is certainly not the norm in most civilized communities, and its public exposure turns the islanders against the Van Daam clan, who they likely didn’t care for due to their wealth regardless (especially since we get the heavy implication that the Van Daam’s were both arrogant and uncaring, and this is carried on with John).  The islanders (working class) are different from the Strausses (moneyed) are different from the monsters (literally dirt poor), so that all of the inter-relationships create a circle, in addition to the one about social mores (heteronormative to incestuous to cannibalistic).  That there is some thought going on beneath the film’s surface is admirable, and the movie overall succeeds more than it fails.  Why it isn’t talked about more than it is confuses me, not because it reinvents the wheel or anything (it doesn’t), but because it’s better than its title and cover pic let on (its VHS cover was one of the great gimmicks of the medium, consisting of a layer of blood-colored liquid over a photo of the film’s beasties).

MVT:  I love the dark, grim tone of Bleeders.  It works for the subject and distinguishes itself from other horror films of the time (and even, arguably, today).

Make or Break:  There is a grave robbing scene which hits splendidly, even though you can see what’s coming a mile away.  It’s a very well-constructed, well-directed sequence.

Score:  6.5/10 

Split Second (1992)

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

I have held my fair share of jobs over the years, but to the best of my recollection, there was only one boss I ever had that I just didn’t get along with.  Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but even when I was toiling away in the grill area of a local McDonald’s (a job from which I was expunged for reasons I won’t get into today, but no, it has nothing to do with contaminating food or equipment with my body parts or bodily fluids, so relax), I got along fairly well with my superiors.  Anyway, the guy I didn’t get along with was a manager at a supermarket where I worked as a bagger during high school and part of college.  I couldn’t stand being a bagger (and if you ever were one, I think you understand where I’m coming from), and I wanted to be a stocker.  Man, those guys sure had the life (from my perspective then).  So, every time that I asked this guy if I could get to be in said lofty department, I was told in no uncertain terms that I didn’t have “the eye of the tiger.”  Let’s never mind that it was a job stocking fucking supermarket shelves, not competing in a decathlon.  This is like being picked last for dodgeball (a game I was actually pretty good at) or football (a game I was abysmal at), and it consistently elicits a response from me of, “are you fucking kidding?”  If memory serves, I may have even said that when told about my substandard stock boy potential (most likely minus the expletive).  Consequently, I never jibed with this Type A jerkoff of a supervisor (am I being unfair?  You bet).  It doesn’t bother me so much today, but it is something that stuck with me.  Whether that’s because of his conflation of stock boy status with being chosen for NASA’s space program or my bewilderment at his asinine statement, I couldn’t say (and if I’m being totally honest with myself, I think he actually denied me due to my part time status at the store).  But whenever I think of the cliché police captain chewing the ass out of his subordinates in films, like Alun Armstrong’s Thrasher does to Rutger Hauer’s Stone in Tony Maylam’s Split Second, I think of this relationship most adversarial, and one young man’s crushed ambitions to arrange cans of cut green beans on a grocery store’s shelves.  I could’ve been a contender.

Torrential rains have all but submerged the futuristic London of…2008.  Maverick copper Harley Stone (who loves his first name so much he has scads of Harley Davidson logos and even a motorcycle in his apartment) is possessed by the ghost of a past failure and the unseen killer who orchestrated it.  Out of the blue, the murderer, who rips his victims’ hearts out and eats them, reappears, and Stone knows that his nightmare won’t end until this madman (or mad thing) is brought down.

One of the strongest elements of this film is the concept that Stone and the monster share a psychic connection.  Stone can feel when the creature is around, and he can even tell if someone else has seen it (a child, a dog, et cetera).  Nevertheless, it brings him no closer to capturing it.  All it does is places him in proximity to where the thing is.  If there is more to their symbiosis, we are never made privy to this information visually, which is disappointing since Stone tells his partner Dick (Alastair Duncan) that he “sees things” (and this is, after all, a visual medium).  It’s a great set-up, but I don’t feel that it was utilized quite as well as it could have been.  I also liked that said link was forged through traumatic contact.  Not only is Stone scarred mentally by his past with the killer, he is also scarred physically.  This relationship is represented by an almost constant heartbeat on the soundtrack, speeding up and slowing down, and anyone injured by the beast can hear it (though this is only addressed in an offhand comment).  In some way, this also gives the viewer some motivation for Stone’s obsession with coffee and sugar.  His vehicle is littered with cardboard coffee cups and empty candy wrappers.  Nonetheless, we are never told this is because he feels the need to be alert every moment of the day now, or if it’s simply some form of addiction he fell into after the tragic events that befell him, or if it’s a replacement for the alcoholism he fell into after his partner’s demise.  At several points, we are shown the toll these dietary habits have taken on Stone’s body, and we are lead to expect this will be paid off by the end.  It isn’t.  Sorry.

Hence, this was the big bone I had to pick with the film.  It has some very strong concepts going on.  It has a great, biblical/religious angle.  It has a cop who is unhinged and truly eccentric.  It has a compelling game of cat and mouse between the hero and the villain.  It has the idea of the bonding of villain and victim/hero.  It has a love interest (and Kim Cattrall no less, who at least does the audience the courtesy of getting naked a few times) where sparks should absolutely be flying, considering their history.  It has great production design and a lot of production value onscreen.  But it’s all treated insouciantly.  It’s all pissed away almost as soon as it’s introduced.  Further, the film’s climax simply falls apart, with characters suddenly behaving like completely different characters, rules being made up and discarded within seconds (the inspiration for the film’s title, perhaps?), and a showdown resolved with a facility that threatens to make utterly inconsequential the time spent with the rest of the story.  Worse, the finale of the film, which should tie everything up and pay off on all this (including finally giving us a decent glimpse of the killer; a design which is pretty solid, considering the production stills I’ve seen), doesn’t.  Almost everything in the film remains unexplained (I’m still unsure if this is a positive or a negative for me), though several intriguing theories are floated here and there like smoke rings.  Most perplexing of all is that the antagonist we are left to deal with at the finish simply doesn’t match the antagonist that has been teased and built up for over an hour.  One is an intelligent, devious, cruel psychopath.  The other is (again, from what we’re shown) nothing more than a blunt instrument (with really sharp claws).  So, yes, Split Second is most definitely a mess of a film.  However, I have to say that I did like it, and I would even recommend it despite my grievances with it.  True, it never fully surmounts the humongous problems that it has.  But it has an off-kilter charm that I couldn’t resist, so even if I was ultimately letdown, I really enjoyed the ride, so it all panned out.  After all, it’s not the fall the kills you.  It’s the sudden stop at the end.

MVT:  Hauer does his damnedest playing (by turns) crazed, haunted, and hardassed.  And he mostly pulls it off.  If nothing else, I was always interested to see what he would do next.

Make or Break:  The scene with the first kill Makes the film.  It’s graphic enough for gorehounds and intriguing enough to compel any audience through the rest of the runtime.  Plus, Rutger Hauer questioning a Rottweiler is priceless.

Score:  6.75/10