"A REALLY INTELLIGENT INTERVIEWER." -- Lance Henriksen "QUITE SIMPLY, THE BEST HORROR-THEMED BLOG ON THE NET." -- Joe Maddrey,Nightmares in Red White & Blue
"My mother was a housewife, but she was also an artist. My father was an electrical engineer."
--James Cameron
Much has been made of the sexual imagery of Ridley Scott's Alien. Stylistically based as it is on the work of H.R. Giger, it would be difficult for it not to be--after all, Mr. Giger has traditionally been fixated on all things genital-related. I won't even get into what those alien heads really look like. No doubt about it, sexual and birth-related imagery abound in the film.
But when it comes to Aliens, James Cameron's 1986 actionized sequel, that symbolism has been taken to its next logical stage (biologically speaking, anyway): Parenthood. In particular, motherhood. Aliens is preoccupied with maternalism, and I would go so far as to say that it is far and away the central theme of the movie.
To be sure, motherhood plays a certain role in Scott's film, as well. After all, the Nostromo's central computer is called "MOTHER"--it doesn't get any more blatant than that. And the manner in which the main characters rebel and rail against their cold, unfeeling, even treacherous "Mother" throughout the film has "mommy issues" written all over it. This culminates, of course, in Ripley's desperate attempts to escape before Mother destroys the ship, as she refers to the disembodied ship's voice as "You bitch!"
However, it's in the second film that this theme, merely touched on in the first, comes to full fruition. And it all centers on Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo. In the first film, Ripley is a decidedly asexual character. In fact, she isn't even feminized with the first name Ellen until the sequel. The fact that the character was originally written to be a man, and that not a single word of the script was changed following the decision to cast a woman, speaks volumes. In short, Ripley's womanhood is irrelevant to the plot. She is a protagonist who just happens to be a woman--albeit a very strong and resourceful one who's more fit for command than any of the men on the ship. But that part could've been played--as it was originally intended--by a man, and no one would've batted an eye.
"A-ffirmative."
When we get to the second film, though, Ripley's womanhood comes front and center. The Ripley of Aliens could not have been played by a man. Being a woman is essential to the character. In that film, James Cameron did something remarkable--he created cinema's first truly viable mainstream female action hero. (Considering Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, the female action hero seems to be something of a preoccupation for the director.) Not only is being a woman essential to Ripley's character, but being a mother in particular.
Cameron's genius here is in giving us a character who is not a strong protagonist despite her femininity--as in Scott's film--but rather because of her femininity. Cameron grafts all the tropes of the action movie hero--particularly the 1980s action movie hero--onto the image of the woman in her most traditional social role, that of the mother. And it works--because Cameron knows something most of us instinctively know, that mothers, as positively characterized, can be among the most determined, strong-willed, and powerful forces in all of fiction (as well as real life). Driven to protect their young, as well shaping who they grow up to become, the limits of their heroism are nearly boundless, and it could only be in a heavily paternalized culture as our own that this role would ever be demoted into something lesser than.
Cameron knows better, and succeeds in making a character simultaneously maternal and decidedly kick-ass in a stereotypically "masculine" sort of way. In the era of Predator and Rambo, Ripley stands out as a subversion of that macho ideal. Cameron has the vision to take the trope to places other filmmakers were too close-minded to go--or perhaps where they feared their audiences wouldn't follow.
If you've only seen the theatrical version, you're missing a big piece of the puzzle. In one of the worst examples of a movie being somewhat hamstrung in the editing process and much better served by the director's cut, there is a scene--included in the latter but missing from the former--in which we learn that Ripley was a mother. Tragically, because she was trapped in hypersleep for nearly 60 years, she has missed out on her daughter's entire adult life, and learned that she lived to a ripe old age and died just a couple of years before Ripley was recovered in deep space. It's a shocking moment for her and for us, and informs the character so greatly for the rest of the film. It's mind-boggling to me why it would've been removed, thus removing an important part of the movie's impact.
Knowing that Ripley was a mother who lost her child changes the way we look at Ripley's relationship with Newt, the little girl who is the only survivor of the ill-advised colony on planet LV-426. It is that loss which colors the rest of the movie, and their interaction in particular. Ripley has suffered the greatest trauma an adult can suffer--the loss of a child--and she'll be damned if she's about to let it happen again. For her, Newt represents not just a surrogate for her own biological daughter, but a second chance to indirectly "make up" for what happened the first time. Ripley was powerless to change anything about what happened to her own child, but she has the power to make a difference in this little girl's life, to substitute for her lost parents, and protect her from harm in a way she couldn't do for her daughter.
The growing bond between Ripley and Newt is quite touching to watch, as she begins to care for the child, gradually filling the parental role in a very real and emotionally invested way. It represents the heart of a film that is often consumed with macho, militaristic sci-fi. Or is it? Perhaps one of Cameron's greatest tricks is to subvert this macho ideal. All is not what it seems here. Rather, the Space Marines are portrayed more or less as ineffectual cartoon caricatures (with the exception of Hicks as well as Vasquez--the toughest soldier in the squadron who is, quite tellingly, a woman). Also, they are unable to stop the alien threat and properly protect the civilians Ripley and Newt. It falls to Ripley, in the role of "warrior-mother", to stand up and do the job herself. And she does it better than her militarized compatriots, unencumbered as she is by testosterone-driven hubris. Rather, she channels her maternal instincts and becomes the most formidable of them all.
In the process, she becomes cinema's first bona fide feminine action hero. She's not a woman posing in a traditionally "masculine" way, as a character who could either be a male or female, but just so happens to be a woman. Rather, her womanhood is tied directly into her action role. This is not to say that womanhood is only defined by motherhood; but rather, it is to say that, as written, the Ripley of Aliens must be a woman.
Make room for Mommy!
For the film's final conflict, Ripley is forced to do battle with another mother. But this is a very different mother--an "anti-mother" if you will. Of course, I'm talking about the Alien Queen. It's interesting to note that this creature would appear to be created for Cameron's sequel. As conceived in the original Alien, there's no indication given whatsoever that there is such a being. In fact, given what we know now about Ridley Scott's mythos with the expansion of last year's quasi-prequel Prometheus, it seem as if the eggs on that ship weren't necessarily laid by a mother at all, but rather, genetically engineered. Given the evidence we have, it's reasonably to argue that the "Alien Queen" device was invented specifically to further drive James Cameron's maternal themes in Aliens.
The Alien Queen represents the negative side of the mother--whereas we think of mothers bringing life, this mother, in a sense, brings death. Her offspring are killing machines, and her purpose for existing is solely to destroy and to breed others to destroy. She is the poisonous, cancerous mother. Nevertheless, it's worth noting that despite her ugly traits, she still retains that primal aspect of motherhood--the desperate need to protect her young. We can palpably feel her horror when Ripley torches the eggs in her chamber.
In order to truly save Newt in the end, Ripley must protect her from this evil maternal force which also seeks to possess her. And so, one of the watershed action films of the 1980s--if not of all time--culminates in a battle of Mother vs. Mother. And finally, it is the good that triumphs, the nurturing mother driven by altruism. Ripley redeems herself and achieves catharsis. In her final scene, she has become the surrogate mother, figuratively embracing Newt in the womb-like sanctuary of hypersleep.
Yes, this maternal triumph is heart-breakingly nullified by the opening scenes of the next film, David Fincher's Alien 3, when we learn that Newt dies when her hypersleep chamber malfunctions. In my opinion, this creative decision was destructive from a storytelling point of view. However, this need not diminish Cameron's achievement in Aliens, and when taken as a film on its own, as it should be, it remains one of the most impressive accomplishments of '80s cinema. Disguised as a traditional action sci-fi flick, James Cameron gave us one of film's most enduring odes to the nurturing power of motherhood.
It's been the most talked-about genre film event of the year. Ridley Scott returned to the scene in a big way this month with Prometheus, the sort-of prequel thingy to his 1979 magnum opus Alien. And since it's release, the web has been abuzz with everyone and their Mother (heh, get it?) trying to dissect, analyze and explain the movie. Well, I'm not here to do that today (although I do have no shortage of theories by any means...) No, rather, I decided to do something rather novel, which you may not have been seeing nearly as much of.
I'm going to review the movie.
Is Prometheus a great science fiction film? Yes, it is. It is also a pretty damn terrifying horror film, as well--two things its predecessor also was. Scott is in full form here, returning to play in the universe he first lured us into some 33 years ago. And while many were puzzled by the narrative detour he took, I for one really enjoyed how the film tangentially ties into the Alien mythos, while also being detached enough to completely stand on its own, as a very strong work of horror sci-fi.
I admired the guts it took for Ridley Scott to make an intelligent, thoughtful piece of sci-fi in the year 2012, when science fiction has come to be almost synonymous with action--such a far cry from its pre-Star Wars form. I also admired the guts it took for Scott--as well as screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof--to make a movie that doesn't feel the need to explain everything. And I don't just mean in a lazy way, as if they honestly don't know which way they're going (a la Lost or Heroes, for example), but rather, it's very clear that Scott and company know exactly how everything fits together--they're just leaving a lot of it for us to sort through. Which we've all been doing ad nauseum for the past few weeks.
Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?
And while it may be a bit cynical to craft a film which can only be explained by its inevitable sequels, I for one will be sure to be on line to see them. In many ways, Scott seems to have taken his lead from Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also a film in which humanity ventures into space to meet an alien intelligence instrumental in its own development, 2001 asked more questions than it had the definitive answers too. And much like Prometheus, it also looked great doing it. Plus, Guy Pearce as the elderly Weyland is a dead ringer for the aged Keir Dullea, and the resident android happens to be named David--the same name as Dullea's character in 2001.
Speaking of David, it is Michael Fassbender's enthralling portrayal of this character that steals the show. What would a movie in the Alien universe be without a captivating android, and just like Ian Holm and Lance Henriksen before him, Fassbender (looking astonishingly like a young Laurence Olivier) is the standout of a solid ensemble cast. At times sinister, at others sympathetic, yet strangely vain and Pinnocchio-like in his interest in human culture, David epitomizes the film itself: complex, with no easy answers.
Also worth noting is the lovely Noomi Rapace, who, in the role of Elizabeth Shaw, is a very worthy successor to Sigourney Weaver in the strong-female-lead department. Her "childbirth" scene is easily the most intense in the entire film. The always engaging Idris Elba is in top form as the captain of the Prometheus--the Tom Skerritt role, if you will, albeit far more decisive and effective a leader than Skerritt's Dallas ever was.
Also like 2001, Prometheus is a true feast for the senses. The production design work by Arthur Max, whose past credits include the likes of Gladiator and Seven, take the original designs of H.R. Giger that inspired the whole Alien mythos in the first place, and translate them effortlessly into this tangential narrative. Yet all the while, Giger's heavy influence is there. This is even true of the very humanoid Engineers (a.k.a. Space Jockeys) who are, as their xenomorph predecessors were, like Giger illustrations literally come to life. Amazing work here by costume designer Janty Yates and a crack makeup design team.
So is it scary? Does it work as a horror film? I can certainly say that it's the most frightening "Alien" film since the original, and it's no wonder why. Ridley Scott brings the same "haunted house in space" sensibility he brought to his 1979 masterpiece, and it pays off once again. The man is a master of generating thick atmosphere and an overall sense of weirdness, and his aim is further aided by the very talented Dariusz Wolski of Pirates of the Caribbean fame behind the camera.
Just as Alien did, so does Prometheus work well as both a horror and science fiction film--although this one might be tilted more in favor of sci-fi, whereas Alien was more horror-centric. One doesn't get much really intelligent sci-fi in theaters these days, and I usually jump on it when it's out there, much as I did with Moon some years ago. This is a film that isn't afraid to think big thoughts and ask big questions about the nature of man, the nature of life, and the nature of the universe. That's what great science fiction has always been about, going back to the classic days of pulps like Amazing Stories and Astounding. I enjoyed the way it delves into the whole alien astronaut concept of the origin of life on Earth. It's just as much Chariots of the Gods as it is 2001.
And for the record, I applaud the studio's decision to go with Lindelof's notion of taking the script in a different direction from being a pure Alien prequel. It works better for it. Let's face it, the xenomorphs have been overexposed thanks to those god-awful Alien/Predator flicks, and it was wise to put them into the background. By turning it into a completely different story that happens to take place in the Alien "universe", the filmmakers allowed the picture to work completely on its own terms. It tells its own story, and you absolutely do not need to have seen any of the Alien films to appreciate it on its own. The fact that it still contains teasing elements of prequel-ness is just acidic icing on the cake.
It's a very thought-provoking film--some might even say frustrating. But it is a great pleasure to watch, and represents genre filmmaking at its best, as far as I'm concerned. Does it leave you hanging in a big way? Yes. Does it provide you with nice, pat, satisfactory answers? No. But what else would you expect from the guy who gave us Blade Runner?
"Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and three hundred great stories.
One of the latter was called 'A Sound of Thunder.' The sound I hear
today is the thunder of a giant's footsteps fading away. But the novels
and stories remain, in all their resonance and strange beauty." - Stephen King
"The landscape of the world we live in would have been diminished if we had not had him in our world." - Neil Gaiman
If you're a genre fan, chances are you've been reading a lot of obituaries of Ray Bradbury over the past few days since last Tuesday, June 5, when the titan of science fiction literature was taken from us at the age of 91. There can be no doubt that he was one of, if not the single greatest creator of speculative fiction produced by the 20th century, and along with the likes of Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein, one of the unassailable legends of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. And he was the last of them, which made his passing that much more painful.
I'm not going to cover all the ground that's been covered by so many others in the past week. For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to talk a little bit about Bradbury's ventures into the realm of horror in particular. Although best known for his sci-fi, the author did indeed also have a great love for its more visceral, emotion-based cousin genre. In fact, it was from the works of Edgar Allan Poe that a very young Bradbury was first opened up to the power of genre fiction while nurturing his love of reading in the public library of Waukegan, Illinois. Yet another defining moment was his parents taking him to see Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a small child.
Like Victor Hugo, Bradbury would also come to have his works adapted for the screen in later years--both big and small. Some of the more prominent adaptations would be derived from his works of horror--most notably the 1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was turned into one of the most chilling horror films of the 1980s. But his relationship with the movies began even earlier, in 1953, and was connected with his horror dalliances more than anything else.
A scene directly inspired by Bradbury's short story.
It was in that year that not one, but two Bradbury-related projects would be brought to the movies. Both could be termed sci-fi horror, tying back into the writer's area of true expertise. The first would his film treatment, "Atomic Monster", which producer William Alland developed into the 3-D classic, It Came from Outer Space. A mere three weeks later, Bradbury's dear friend Ray Harryhausen would make a name for himself with the release of the seminal giant monster flick, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, based loosely on Bradbury's 1951 short story, "The Fog Horn".
The Bradbury/Harryhausen friendship would become the stuff of genre legend (the two first met at the age of 18 at the home of none other than Forrest J. Ackerman), as would the sci-fi scribe's early association with comic strip icon Charles Addams. Before there was an Addams Family, Bradbury and Addams collaborated in the 1940s on a series of comically macabre stories revolving around a family called The Elliotts--collected in the 2001 volume, From the Dust Returned.
One of the EC issues featuring Bradbury's work.
In the early 1950s, more than 20 Bradbury stories would be adapted in the pages of EC Comics such as Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear. One short story in particular, "I Sing the Body Electric," would become the basis for the 100th episode of The Twilight Zone, aired in May 1962. He also directly wrote the screenplays for a total of five episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Ray Bradbury was a shining light in the firmament of sci-fi, fantasy and horror. He was one of the last living connections to a truly amazing era in speculative fiction, and as The New York Times observed, may have been the one author most responsible for bringing science fiction into the mainstream. A giant of imaginative literature, he will be missed by fans of horror who have come to love and be inspired by his many fascinating forays into our genre.
It's one of those movies that is on just about every serious horror fans favorites list. John Carpenter's The Thing is one of the most debated and dissected films of all time, and so is certainly fertile ground for lengthy discussion. So when I wanted to discuss, debate and dissect the movie, I contacted one of my longest-running Vault contributors, and someone who has been kind of silent as of late.
I've known RayRay for more than two decades now, and I can tell you that he knows The Thing in a way that few people know any movies. He lives, eats and breathes it. So what better reason to drag Ray out of parental mothballs than to talk ad nauseum about this true masterpiece of genre cinema? The result was a Vaultcast that went far longer than most, so I hope you'll forgive our long-windedness.
If, however, long-windedness is what you're looking for, then you've come to the right place. When was Blair assimilated? What does the Thing really want? How does it work? And what the hell happened to Fuchs? Ray and I discussed the weighties, and generally rambled on and on for nearly an hour and a half, so if that's your bag, then go ahead and take a listen to this very special "You Gotta Be Effin' Kiddin' Me" edition of Conversations in the Dark. You can either listen directly to the embedded player below, or proceed to the Vaultcast page to download for listening at your leisure...
And for more from RayRay, here are some of the gentleman/scholar's finest posts:
The Vault of Horror has led to a whole lot of unusual experiences over the years, and certainly my love for horror in general has led to some fascinating discoveries. There was the time I got a chance to review the script for See No Evil while working for WWE (sort of painful, but a privilege nonetheless.) There was the time I wound up editing copy at Wine Enthusiast magazine with one of the staff members of the old Famous Monsters of Filmland. Most recently, The Vault of Horror did more than bring me an interesting experience--it actually helped open up a career door for me. It was one of those times I was grateful to be a horror blogger.
As you can imagine, when going on a job interview, I'm never really sure if bringing up The Vault would be a good idea, or a bad idea. It does represent some of the writing of which I am most proud, so there's always the temptation to show it off to prospective employers. But naturally, there's also the fear that they're going to look down their collective noses at my little online ode to blood and guts. So it's usually a crap shoot, and I like to feel them before I cart out the ol' VoH.
It just so happened, last year, that while interviewing for a prominent position with Juran Institute, an industry-leading quality management consultancy firm here in Connecticut, that I found myself sitting across the conference table from a CEO who seemed like he just might be interested in checking out what I was really capable of doing as a writer and also in terms of managing a blog. After all, a large portion of the job's responsibilities would be the writing and maintenance of the company blog. So as you can imagine, I wanted to give him a glance at what yours truly could really do when given the reigns of an online domain.
And so, going for broke, I decided to show him what I can do. I punched up The Vault of Horror on his laptop and held my breath. Either he would be impressed at my creation, or he would take one look at The Human Centipede vs. The Very Hunrgy Caterpillar and have me shown to my car. I waited as he scanned the page, my fingers crossed under the table. Would he find it totally unprofessional?
"Hey..." he said, as his eyes moved up and down the screen. "Have you ever seen Night of the Living Dead?"
It was right then and there that I knew that showing him the blog was the right thing to do. He got it. Not only did he get it, but he informed me that there was actually a connection between his company and the genre. As it turned out, Dr. Joseph Juran, the founder of Juran Institute and one of the most respected gurus of the quality management business, was the brother of Nathan Juran--the director of such films as Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Deadly Mantis, as well as the Ray Harryhausen classics 20 Million Miles to Earth and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
The Oscar-winning art director for the 1941 classic How Green Was My Valley, Nathan Juran carved out a niche for himself as a journeyman director of westerns and sci-fi cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, later transitioning to TV with shows like Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel. The fact that I was interviewing to work for a company founded by his big brother was just another one of those surreal moments in the life of a horror blogger.
"Did you do all this yourself?" he asked me. And I was proud to say that I had. We got to talking about Nathan Juran's amazing films, as well as other horror flicks.
I landed the job with Juran Institute, and was proud to serve them as Communications Director, helping to get their social media presence off the ground, and working to advance the company blog, both visually and content-wise. From that point on, I became known as the "horror guy" in the office, and it wouldn't be unexpected, for example, for me to be asked my opinion of Let the Right One In just before a big board meeting. It was a gratifying experience, and I wouldn't say it's an exaggeration to say that I very well might not have gotten the opportunity if it hadn't been for The Vault of Horror. Not bad a for a guy who just wanted to write about scary movies.
The Second World War had been won. America seemed to be driving off into the proverbial sunset, leaving its Depression worries far behind and emerging as a shiny, happy world power. And yet, underneath that perfect Brill Cream surface, there was just as much turmoil as ever--only now it was buried down deep where no one could see. Eisenhower-era America was a very paranoid, nervous place, but to really understand and perceive that, you had to look in the place where the nation's zeitgeist so very often resided--the movies.
In particular, as they did in so many other periods in our history, genre films best epitomized the mood of the times. In the wake of World War II and the dawn of the Atomic Age, the public was inundated with a plethora of sci-fi based horror cinema. No longer were we being terrorized by fantastical and mythological figures out of folklore--rather, this time around, the dangers came from science, whether that meant man-made or from beyond the stars. The devastating powers of science unleashed were made known to us that fateful day in August 1945, when the city of Hiroshima, Japan was reduced to rubble in a flash.
Add to this the all-encompassing fears engendered in us by the burgeoning Cold War, with the whole nation caught up in a panic of potential Red infiltration, and you have a perfect storm of sorts, which would result in a golden age of science-fiction horror. Technology could not be trusted; the strange, the unknown, the outsider, could not be trusted. It was a time of rabid paranoia, and filmmakers were more than happy to step up and take advantage.
Filmmakers like New Haven's own Jack Arnold, who took his first step into the genre arena in 1953 with the 3-D groundbreaker It Came from Outer Space. At the vanguard of Universal Studios' horror renaissance of the early 1950s, Arnold would go on to direct both Creature from the Black Lagoon and its sequel, Revenge of the Creature, as well as the acclaimed 1957 adaptation of Richard Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man. But he set the tone with this, his initial foray into sci-fi horror, and one of the seminal pictures of its kind.
Arnold's screenwriter was Harry Essex, the same man who would deliver the script to Creature from the Black Lagoon to him the following year. Arnold also had as his star the earnest and intense Richard Carlson, who also starred in Creature, as well. And although that latter film gets all the press when it comes to Universal in the 1950s, it's entirely possible that this is the better film.
Playing on those inescapable Cold War fears, It Came from Outer Space tells the tale of an amateur stargazer (Carlson) who stumbles upon a crashed spacecraft in the Arizona desert and soon becomes the only one aware of the threat once the craft is totally covered in rubble. No one in his small town believes him, and it only gets worse when he begins to see his friends and neighbors being taken over by the inscrutable alien influence of which only he and his put-upon girlfriend (played by the doe-eyed Barbara Rush) are fully aware.
It's a classic formula, and one that delivers in spades. Part of the 3-D craze of the early 1950s that also gave us the likes of House of Wax (vying for audiences in the summer of 1953) and Creature the following summer, It Came from Outer Space is engagingly shot by Clifford Stine, who would go on to shoot such epics as Spartacus and Patton. Yes, the 3-D effects are often forced and contrived, as is so much of the 3-D of that era, but it's a testament to the forethought of both Arnold and Stine that the movie works just as well in 2-D.
Carlson and Rush give us performances typical of genre B-movies of this era, but it isn't for greating acting that audiences flocked to films such as this. We also get familiar character actors like Charles Warren as the incredulous sheriff, Joe Sawyer as a philosophical telephone technician and Russell Johnson, a.k.a. The Professor from Gilligan's Island, as his assistant and the first one to be co-opted by the aliens.
And speaking of aliens, my what a gruesome and glorious creature design we get here. The story goes that the original design for the aliens was rejected and would later be used for the Metaluna mutant of This Island Earth two years later. No matter, because the one-eyed, slime-caked, snail-like behemoths created by Milicent Patrick (designer of the the Gill-Man), are far more terrifying. These aliens would have to be among the most memorable of 1950s science fiction cinema, including the unique point-of-view photography that accompanied their scenes, executed by encasing the camera in a clear rubber bubble.
The plot, conceptualized by Ray Bradbury, is innovative for its time, portraying the aliens as misunderstood by a mistrusting and primitive human populace--it's the kind of progressive sci-fi thinking that would later give rise to the likes of Star Trek and other such thoughtful, hopeful, utopian sci-fi entertainment. The movie also has so much of what we've come to expect from genre pictures of the 1950s--an exasperated, dire protagonist; a constantly screaming leading lady; and of course, lots of lots of theremin, played by the legendary master of the instrument, Samuel Hoffman.
Captain Cruella and I recently had the pleasure of hosting this film as part of The Avon Theatre's Cult Classics series, and despite the poorly reproduced 3-D, it was an experience I very much enjoyed. It Came from Outer Space is something of a time capsule--a summation of a very paradoxical time in our history, mixing optimism and hysteria, delivering thrills and chills while also making us stop and think. Universal of the 1950s may have been a shadow of what it was in the 1930s, but this picture is still a whole lot of fun, and proves that the studio could still be counted on to deliver a rollicking good monster movie. Amongst the massive sci-fi horror movement that took the decade of Elvis and Lucy by storm, it is one of the best.
He was best known to most Americans as Marshall Matt Dillon, the lead character of Gunsmoke, a TV show he starred in for an unparalleled 20 years. But to those reading this blog, and to horror fans in general, it is likely that he is most remembered for two motion pictures in particular: the giant ant epic Them! (1954) and of course, Howard Hawks' classic The Thing from Another World (1951), in which he memorably portrayed the titular Thing. Arness was an American original, going from the wartorn battlefields of Europe, to Hollywood, to television immortality. He passed away earlier this month, just a week after his 88th birthday, but to genre fans he remains just as awe-inspiring as ever.
A big part of the awe probably came from his sheer size. The man stood 6-foot-7, which no doubt helped him land more than a few choice parts in Westerns and action films in general. Unfortunately, it also prohibited him from fulfilling his dream of serving as a naval fighter pilot in World War II, since the height limit was 6-foot-2. Nevertheless, he did serve his country gallantly, as a rifleman with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division. In fact, he was severely wounded in battle in Anzio, Italy in January 1944, capping off a tour of duty that resulted in the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, Victory Medal and Combat Infantryman Badge.
He was born James Aurness (he would later drop the "u" for Hollywood) to German and Norwegian parents on May 26, 1923 in Minneapolis. Far from the glitz and glamor of Tinseltown, his youth was spent unloading railway boxcars and logging. It was only after being honorably discharged from service in World War II at age 22, permanently injured and suffering chronic leg pain, that he first made his way to Hollywood. By putting out his thumb and hitchhiking.
After the minor name alteration, he made his screen debut in 1947 alongside Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter. Probably due to his size, Westerns were a no-brainer for him right off the bat, his larger-than-life presence being a perfect fit--usually for the part of the heavy. However, it would be in the early 1950s that he would land the two roles that made him into something of a minor horror icon.
In 1951, he was cast as the bizarre and terrifying plant-like creature in Howard Hawks groundbreaking sci-fi/horror gem The Thing from Another World. He doesn't speak a word in the film, and he's covered in elaborate makeup and costuming, but much like Boris Karloff and Glenn Strange before him, he manages to exude terror in spite of--or perhaps because of--these limitations. Although most consider John Carpenter's 1982 remake to have eclipsed the original to an extent, with Rob Bottin's mind-blowing special effects overshadowing the more primitive Arness incarnation of the monster, the film and his performance in it are still cherished to this day by fans of the silver age of horror.
A couple years later, he once again starred in a sci-fi/horror classic, although this time he got to actually speak. Cast as FBI agent Robert Graham, sent to New Mexico to investigate some strange goings on in the desert, his role is one of the more memorable in Gordon Douglas' Them!, a tale of gigantic ants mutated by atomic radiation. Much more frightening than its premise might indicate, Them! is a landmark of 1950s b-movie cinema, perhaps even more highly regarded than The Thing from Another World. Having appeared in both films would be quite the feather in the cap of any B-movie actor, but Arness was only getting started.
A year after Them!, he would land the part that would make him a household name--not on the big screen, but on the burgeoning boob tube. At the recommendation of none other than John Wayne, he was given the lead role in the TV series Gunsmoke. All told, he would play the role of Matt Dillon--a heroic cowboy at last--for 20 years straight, a TV record that still stands. And if you add in TV movie revivals in the 1980s and 1990s, he played Dillon in five different decades.
Arness would ride the Gunsmoke train for the remainder of his career, before finally retiring in his 70s. His legacy firmly established, he would always be known as one of the most beloved of the TV cowboys--perhaps the most beloved of them all. And yet anyone who grew up a horror and sci-fi fan in the atomic era will likely remember him best as that hulking silhouette in the corridors of an antarctic research base. James Arness is no longer with us, but The Thing, as we discovered, never truly dies.
What happens when you combine horror and science-fiction—those two vaunted pillars of genre entertainment? You wind up with some of the most fascinating, challenging, and downright kick-ass pieces of cinematic gold ever created. The key to great horror/sci-fi is maintaining that balance between the horrific and the…well, science-fictiony elements. This week, we here at the Vault, and the crew over at Brutal as Hell, have selected a bunch of films that do just that.
I've always felt that, generally speaking, science fiction's goal is to make you think, and horror's goal is to make you feel. One's intellectual, the other is visceral. Together, they make for a fascination combination, and this week I have a record-setting number of contributors chiming in to give us some prime examples...
B-Sol on Gojira
The absolute high watermark of giant monster movies--and I'm including the original King Kong in that assessment. If you've only seen this film in its watered-down Americanized edit as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, you're doing yourself a major disservice. Seen in its original Japanese version, Gojira is a stark, terrifying vision, a horror film in the truest sense of the word. In fact, if you're wondering why I'm writing about Godzilla on a horror blog, than you've clearly never seen this film.
Not to take anything away from the many films that followed, but Gojira is infinitely better than any of them. This is not a fun popcorn flick, good for a laugh with your buddies. This is cinema--a viewing experience that moves, and provokes thought. From the opening titles--one of the single most powerful openings credit sequences of any movie, for my money--it grabs hold of you, and doesn't let go.
Director Ishiro Honda is masterful at creating this aura of fear, but massive amounts of credit must also go to score composer Akira Ifukube, whose music is inextricably tied to the power of the film. It is hard to imagine the movie without his iconic score, as much a part of Honda's work as Ennio Morricone's compositions are to the work of Sergio Leone. By turns insistently dire, broodingly nightmarish and profoundly sad, Ifukube's masterpiece of a score is among the most effective ever written.
While The Thing was completely unappreciated in its time in the theaters, and roundly panned by critics great and small, over the test of time it has become one of the most beloved and fiercely defended horror films out there. At least this fanboy says so.
The alien creature in The Thing, as presented by two special effects geniuses, Rob Bottin and Stan Winston, is pound for pound, cell for cell, slimy tentacle for slimy tentacle, the scariest, most invasive and probably most dangerous movie monster of all time. It is no man in the "rubber suit." It is a monster of Lovecraftian proportion and perfection, but don't take my word for it... The incredible, pre-CGI effects steal the show, and are superior to much of what we get nowadays. But that is not why this is my favorite horror movie, or one of my favorite films of all time.
No, The Thing is so great because it has it all. The sets, though spare, were effective, especially on location in snowed-in Alberta. The synthesized Ennio Morricone score is simple, but a perfect match to the piano wire-like tension, and also was probably the inspiration for half of the theme songs of the 1980s. The camera work is perfect. The script is executed to near perfection, with each character built rapidly, yet effectively in each sequential appearance. The cast is excellent, with several very accomplished actors, and all in top form.
Unlike most films, much less of the horror variety, The Thing has an onion-like quality. What I mean is that it is a film that keeps on giving upon repeated views, not unlike a film such as The Godfather II, (I know, big comparison). When watched over and over, the significance of the "little things" comes to light, increasing the viewer's joy. An example is the scene when MacReady has been locked out of the compound. Palmer and Norris make statements sowing seeds of doubt about him, and when MacReady breaks in through a supply room window, they silently give each other knowing glances, and Norris says:"All right, all right, we've got no choice now!!" That little sequence gets better every time, and there are others.
Finally, R.J. MacReady is one of the great heroes in cinema, and I don't mean the Han Solo variety. In addition to being a world class drunk--meaning he doesn't let his copious hard drinking get in the way of saving the world--he is smart and ruthless. He rapidly picks up on the threat after only one warning, seizes control, and makes the correct calculation that there is no cost too high to prevail in the battle against the thing[s]. He is uncowed and unbowed by failure, terror and the terrible odds. When his chips are down, he goes all in.
I'm not usually one for movie sequels. We all know that they are usually (with some rare exceptions) inferior to the original, and usually just the studio's way of wringing some extra cash out of a successful intellectual property. The original Alien was one of the first four horror movies I had as a kid, when VCRs were a luxury item and movies on VHS were extremely hard to come by and very expensive (the other movies being The Thing, Jaws, and An American Werewolf in London). Alien always held a special place in my heart, mixing sci-fi and horror so seamlessly. So how do you top one of cinema's best sci-fi horror movies?
Enter James Cameron. Cameron took the concept of a vicious alien stalking crew members on a spaceship and just multiplied the horror a thousand-fold. For me, Aliens was a much more terrifying movie than the original because of the sheer number of aliens. I'm not afraid of a zombie. I don't think anyone is afraid of a single zombie. The horror of zombies is that there's dozens or hundreds of them, swarming you with a single-minded mentality. The cocky and technologically superior space marines are quickly overwhelmed by the aliens, who seem to be crawling out of every air duct, around every corner. The motion detectors showing hundreds if not thousands of aliens approaching their location was almost claustrophobic.
But the aliens weren't the only enemy. Paul Reiser turns in an excellent performance as the slimy company puppet Carter Burke, who has his own devious motives. Lance Henriksen, a staple of horror films, plays Bishop, another "unknown" amongst the crew. The android couldn't be trusted in the first "Alien;" could he be trusted now? Of course, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley continues to do an excellent job as the ass-kicking heroine, thus solidifying her place in movie history. Michael Biehn plays Hicks with a tough yet subtle calm. But Bill Paxton steals the show as Hudson, whose "Game over, man!" line has forever been immortalized in popular culture.
It's a shame the franchise went so off-course with the third and fourth movies. But Aliens is still one of my all-time favorite horror movies, and I watch it whenever it's on TV.
Many overlook the upsetting horror of 1997’s Event Horizon. Perhaps he sour taste of Paul W. S. Anderson’s previous effort with Mortal Kombat is to blame. But with Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill as the principle roles, the film has a solid foundation of acting, and its chilling story and visual sensibilities have made it noteworthy among horror fans. Exuding a stylized sense of hyper-violence that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre coupled with Hellraiser, Event Horizon upped the ante, with its graphic depictions of death. There are no laughs or love interest, and there’s no hope to be found.
The story packs in a lot of theoretical elements, and really aims to create a unified vision of future space travel. By creating an artificial black hole, an experimental starship is able to travel vast distances through a gateway in the space time continuum. But this gateway actually opens a portal to another dimension: Hell itself. Unbeknownst to the rescue team that intercepts a distress signal from the missing starship, their boarding of the experimental rig will only trigger their downfall. The starship has returned with a supernatural presence aboard, and it begins to infect and kill the crew members in ghastly ways. With only 20 hours of oxygen, things go from bad to worse when their rescue ship is destroyed, forcing the crew to take shelter on the starship.
The special effects seem all too real, almost like a snuff film from the future. The quick flashes of Hell shown to Laurence Fishburne are almost too much to bear at their formatted speed; woe to those that watch them in slow motion. The film walks a fine line between philosophy and technology, fear and faith, religion and science, offering a solid example of sci-fi horror. But the one universal truth is that life is pain, and you’d wish for death before returning to where the abandoned starship has traveled.
Sadly, test audience research led many studio executives to the opinion t that the initial director’s cut was too unnerving, so they ordered a trimming of 30 minutes from the film, with large snippets to be taken from the graphic violence and gore. Anderson has said he regretted the edits, and one can feel for him, as he turned down the original X-Men to make Event Horizon.
I can’t say for sure when exactly I saw Night of The Creeps for the first time, though I am sure it was around the age of 11. I can tell you that I rewound it and watched it twice more within the same six-hour span. I was smitten. It blew my mind in a way I couldn’t remember a film having blown my mind before. I had seen Alien and I had seen Predator, but here was a straight-up horror film with sci-fi elements. I felt like this was meant for me for some reason. I guess I had never really been a huge fan of sci-fi--hell, I can’t really say I am the biggest one now. But NOTC took me in, sat me down and made it OK to be fully embroiled in a sci-fi mindset.
The film itself focuses on Chris Romero (Jason Lively) and JC Hooper (Stephen Marshall) as they unwittingly unleash an alien-infused zombie epidemic on campus. And if you’re thinking they’re named after George A. Romero and Tobe Hooper, you’re 100% correct. Another great nod comes in the form of classic bad-ass cop, Ray Cameron (yes, named after James Cameron, a friend of Dekker’s) as played by veteran actor Tom Atkins. To this day Tom Atkins says of his storied career, this is his favorite role of all time.
It’s truly remarkable now as an adult when I realize what a feat Dekker’s first film was. When I first saw it I just remember the childlike wonder as I saw the “creeps” slither for the first time, and when I saw the first head explode only to be eviscerated further by a flamethrower. The special effects were done by three hugely talented artists; David Miller of the Nightmare on Elm St franchise, and Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman who would soon go on to KNB EFX along with Greg Nicotero.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting both Fred Dekker and Tom Atkins in person. The T-shirt company I work for, Fright Rags, hosted a double feature of Night of The Creeps and The Monster Squad here in Rochester, New York. I spent an entire weekend with one of my film-making heroes, and a living legend. It was a fangirl dream come true. I have more memories than I can include in one post, but one conversation that I found quite interesting was on the subject of James Gunn’s Slither. I am one person who wholeheartedly looks at it as a rip-off of Creeps . Fred said that James Gunn vehemently denies this, and that he could indeed be telling the truth. Fred said when his film came out, that people accused him of ripping off an old sci-fi film he had never even seen. His message was to simply understand that there is never a definite answer when it comes to those accusations. Maybe he did get ripped off, but so be it, Fred Dekker has far more on his mind than to worry about it. Another sidebar: The line that Atkins delivers, “Good news is your dates are here, bad news is they’re dead,” was from a day of pick-ups, and improvised.
All in all, what do I have to say about Night of The Creeps that hasn’t been said before? Maybe nothing different, but the point to be made is, if I had to choose my favorite sci-fi horror film of all time, I would choose Night of The Creeps. Go ahead, Thrill Me!
Even a seasoned sci-fi fan wants something different once in awhile. Moon is one of those films. While at first it seems like you may be watching a rehash of 2001: A Space Odyssey, you soon realize things are not as they seem. And if I do say so, Sam Rockwell really puts on a tour de force performance here, carrying nearly the entire movie by himself. Written by Duncan Jones, Moon tells the story of one Sam Bell, an employee of Lunar Industries, Inc. who is nearing the end of a three-year contract in which he is alone on the moon, extracting helium-3 to be used as energy for Earth. His only companion for the long venture is GERTY (voiced by the wonderfully monotone Kevin Spacey)--think HAL, but less controlling. Sam is anxious to get back to his family, a wife and daughter which he can only see through long distance video hookup pre-recorded transmissions that are far and few between.
The scares here are mostly psychological, which to me is more than just creepy when you're the only one on an entire planet. But then again, is he?
Moon succeeds on so many levels. The feeling of complete and utter isolation is so tangible here, so frightening, that you can't help but to be a bit anxious. GERTY, while certainly Sam's only friend and confidant, still has us curious if "he" knows more than he is letting on. The movie keeps you wondering--you'll be guessing, and you'll be wrong. Confusion abounds, but not in a Memento kind of way. It's a good confusion, one you will be thinking about long after the final few moments.
I'm not your average sci-fi fan. I love Alien, The Thing, and am a huge X-Files fanatic, but I'm not as well-versed in the sub-genre as many others. But Moon comes highly recommended. It's one of my favorite films of the last year.
Hardware was the last of the post-nuke films to get a theatrical release. Audiences didn't get it. Critics were all over the place on their feelings for the film. As a result, the film flopped at the box office and the post-nuke genre died down after soaring with films like Mad Max and The Running Man. Hardware takes place during the Christmas season in the post-nuke future, as a scavenger (Dylan McDermott) presents his artist girlfriend (Stacy Travis) with some robot parts. After a passionate night together, the robot reassembles itself to continue on with its life mission--population control.
I was lucky enough to catch this back when it was released in theaters. I was only 8 or 9 at the time, but it was a breathtaking experience for me. The visual aesthetic of the film captivated me. The film's pulsating techno score by Simon Boswell added to the excitement of the film's on-screen carnage and gore (which had to be trimmed to avoid an X rating). A shocking death about two thirds into the film added to that breathtaking factor for me.
As I got older, I was able to appreciate to an even greater degree that Hardware was one film that didn't play by genre rules and was willing to take chances. From director Richard Stanley's claustrophobic, voyeuristic atmosphere. To his willingness to try out experimental camera angles and to commit to one of the bleakest portraits of the future ever portrayed on screen. The colorful supporting cast included the likes of character actors John Lynch and William Hootkins, mixed with musicans like Iggy Pop, Carl McCoy of the goth band Fields of Nephilim, and Lemmy of Motorhead. The use of religious iconography and references contrasted against the film's strong use of sexuality and violence gives it a bit of a sense of irony.
Hardware went pretty much ignored during the '90s, but luckily for us, the film gained a cult following over the years and went on to receive both a DVD and Blu-Ray release. Hardware is hands down my favorite film to mix elements of science fiction with horror. It also ranks as one of my top five favorite films of the '90s.
From my point of view, the most plausible dystopias are the most menacing ones, and Soylent Green (1973), set a mere twelve years on from the time I’m writing this, seems increasingly, uneasily recognizable. The 2022 of the film--riddled with environmental damage, grotesque overpopulation, hunger and an increasing gap between rich and poor--could so easily be our own legacy, and Detective Thorn’s final discovery speaks a familiar language of corruption, bleak utilitarianism and desperation. ‘Desperation’ is the single word I’d choose to sum up Soylent Green: it runs through the film like a seam; in its malnourished masses, its non-status women and its euthanasia depots (the latter providing one of the film’s most poignant--and most appalling--scenes).
But, for all that palpable desperation, all that horror, there’s a real sense of humanity here, too. Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) has a long-standing friendship with Sol (Edward G. Robinson in his final role). They take a real pleasure in life, in each others' company: when Thorn can get hold of ‘luxury’ food items, he shares them. Thorn also loves Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young), and implores her to ‘LIVE!’, to get any happiness she can, when he is no longer able to protect her. And, of course, Thorn’s determination to get to the bottom of the ‘Soylent Green’ brand mystery comes from his sense of decency and honesty. Ultimately, there’s a grain of hope here that basic humanity can remain intact, can avoid being consumed, even when humans are unwittingly consuming each another. Humanity stands opposite the cold rationale of the Soylent Corporation, so when the tagline declares ‘People are still the same’, perhaps that bleakness has something positive embedded within it, even when a startling and ambiguous ending keeps us wondering.
Profound, clever, with a stellar cast and a pervasive, disturbing atmosphere, Soylent Green derives both its horror and its hope from a hell that might be right around the corner…
Though there's no good reason, from a technical (or even logical) standpoint, that I should call this my favorite film in which the sci-fi and horror genres cross their streams; I'll be damned if I don't have an immense amount of love for Jack Harris & Irvin Yeaworth's production of The Blob. A large reason for this was the impact the film had on me at a young age--it was one of the first monster movies I was allowed to watch on VHS--but time has only helped the film tunnel its way deeper into my heart.
It was the late 1950s, and Harris' idea was simple. Take two of the most popular sub-genres going--Earth-based science fiction and teenage delinquency drama--and put them together in one film. (To the trained viewer, there's no hiding the fact that this movie borrowed more from Rebel Without a Cause than any of the “Watch the Skies!” films of the '50s.) This didn't matter to me when I was a kid. I was too busy pondering how the Blob worked and wondering how big it could get if it kept eating. The kids were running around trying to convince the adults that they weren't just punks, and I was too busy trying to figure out how many people Sir Blob would have to eat to get big enough that he could cover my family's entire house. And I loved it.
But with age, I've come to love the human aspects of The Blob just as much as any of the carnage the gelatinous carnivore starts. Unlike other teen flicks of the era, there's so much hope for humanity at work in this film. These kids fit the same stereotypes that films like Rebel put them in...and still go out of their way to help others. There's no bad guy who's out to settle a petty score, and there's no evil mastermind who we need to hate. As a film, The Blob breaks from dramatic traditions, showing that it understands that people aren't generally as bad as movies paint them to be.
Of course, I wouldn't be ranting about this sentimental favorite if it didn't have one of the most fun monsters ever put on screen and a slew of horror and sci-fi staples. They were the hooks that got me to watch the film, and they still bring me back to it frequently. But when I look past those hooks, and remember how much I love the film's ability to spread hope alongside its camp and fear, I'm reminded why The Blob still stands as one of the most beloved flicks I've ever known.
John Carpenter immortalized this one by making it a part of Tommy Doyle and Lindsay Wallace’s Halloween night monster movie marathon in 1978, but it was always destined to be a classic. Few films manage to capture a dread sense of isolation and paranoia as well as The Thing From Another World; released at the dawn of McCarthyism and the UFO craze in a post-atomic world, the film conceptualizes all of these very real fears into a horrifying story (as good science fiction often does). The mysterious, single-minded monster that’s “devoid of morality” represents anti-Communist rhetoric that no doubt was frightening Americans from coast to coast.
Even stripped of its historical and allegorical contexts, it’s still a great, suspenseful monster movie. The titular creature is brought to life by James Arness, and the hulking monster tears apart everything in its path. The isolated, arctic setting intensifies the suspense by creating no escape for the protagonists. However, in typical fashion, these characters might be more of a threat to each other than the monster is; though the creature isn’t a shape-shifter like in Carpenter’s redux, the situation still creates a natural dissension and paranoia among them all. It’s a standard horror motif that’s been used countless times since: a group of survivors trying to keep itself from unraveling while fending off something hideous (George Romero has practically made a career out of this plot).
In particular, The Thing From Another World presents a divide among military and scientific lines, with each side battling to determine the fate of “The Thing.” Captain Hendry wants to destroy it, while Dr. Carrington wishes to study it to learn from it, no matter how deadly the results. This conflict might be the film’s ultimate legacy, because it’s one that’s shown up a number of times since, with each side taking their share of the blame over the years. Here, Carrington, the meddling scientist, is the untrustworthy character that reminds us of how dangerous unbridled scientific ambition can be.
At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t matter who comes out on top because the movie preys on the fear of the unknown to the end. For a '50s monster movie, it’s rather ominous and plays well as a spookfest on Halloween or any other cold, dark night. Even as the film comes to a close, we’re warned to “keep watching the skies,” because something might still be out there, waiting…
Planes, trains, and extraterrestrials… Horror Express is not your average alien-goes-amok story. After hearing about this film a few years back, I finally took the time to sit down and watch it on one of those glorious 50-film packs that you can find in the dusty recesses of the bargain bin. I was astounded by what I had seen; for all the typical trappings of a Eurotrash feature with cheesy, rubber-suited monsters, this little chiller was quite effective. I have subsequently re-watched and resoundingly enjoyed this film more than some may think it deserves.
The story is entertaining in and of itself. Sure, the science may be hokey and totally off-the-wall, but the craziness only serves to make the film that much more enjoyable. You can’t help but grin as the scientists calmly reason the possibility of an intergalactic mental vampire sucking passengers dry on the very train they’re on.
With the added benefit of having Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the film, it’s guaranteed to serve as a full evening of entertainment. The duo’s chemistry is spot-on as always, both of them playing rival scientists here. While they may be a bit competitive and pushy towards one another, they actually stick together and work as a team for the majority of the film. It’s a delight to see them as partners instead of being at opposite ends of a wooden stake. Lee goes about with his usual somber and demanding presence, while Cushing lightens things up with his ever-affable and charming personality. He also gets probably the best line in the entire film. When accused of being possible hosts for the galactic monster, Cushing responds with genuine shock: “Monsters? We’re British you know!” Telly Savalas pumps some sadistic energy into the piece when he shows up later as the iron-fisted Captain Kazan, rounding out an already impressive cast.
Upon viewing the film recently, I was also taken by how astounding some of the musical pieces are. Especially awesome is the heavy bass that plays every time the creature’s eyes glow that ominous red as it prepares to kill. The pacing of the film is just perfect, each minute growing with more tension as the alien stalks about the claustrophobic aisles of the train. It all builds and climaxes in an appropriately fiery finale that caps off this terror from beyond the stars in a most satisfying manner. If you haven’t already heard of this film, it comes with my highest recommendation. You may be prone to just throw it away as another cheapie feature, but Horror Express is probably the most exciting and charming ride you’ll take into the dark realms of sci-fi madness for a while.
Originally, I was set to write a love letter to Ridley Scott's Alien--until yesterday when I found myself trying to explain to a skeptical friend of mine why Forbidden Planet is so cool. If you were to make a venn diagram of horror and science fiction, the crossover would be ridiculous. The human race, in general, has a strange fear and fascination with technology, so there's not a lot of sci-fi out there that doesn't have at least one foot in horror territory. Forbidden Planet is no different. Inspired, at least a little bit, by Shakespeare's The Tempest, a spooky favorite or writers looking to add horror and mystery to their scripts, the film easily qualifies as my favorite sci-fi horror flick, as well as my favorite flying saucer movie.
A crew of astronauts are dispatched to the planet Altair to investigate the disappearance of an expedition lost some 20 years earlier. What they find is that the missing Dr. Morbius has set up a permanent home on Altair with his daughter Altaira and robot servant. There he survives using the amazing technology left behind by a long dead race called the Krell; but a powerful and invisible force keeps them there, and intruders out.
It's a killer flick from top to bottom. I can't find a single negative criticism to level against it while I explore it. Forbidden Planet is a seriously broad vision at the height of the flying saucer phase in Hollywood. In 1956, everyone was still aping every move from The Day The Earth Stood Still, and the era produced some of the shoddiest, crappiest science fiction in the entire history of Hollywood. But Forbidden Planet took a different route and chose to eschew the entire notion of the red scare in favor of something a little more classic hidden beneath a slick science fiction veneer.
The cast is absolutely astonishing, featuring Leslie Nielsen, better known for his zany comedies, in a serious role as the ship captain, and the flamboyant Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Morbius. Anne Francis is beautiful and hypnotic in every scene, and her costuming covers just enough of her to keep the censors at bay. To top it all off, we're treated to a set of stunning special effects and amazing sets and props. The C-57D flying saucer and the iconic Robby the Robot suit go on to make many appearances on The Twilight Zone, and this fantastic setting is rounded out with some amazing matte paintings that convey the sheer size and anthropology of Altair. It's amazing, I tell you! But we're not done. Often mistakenly believed to have a full-on theremin score, Forbidden Planet is scored by musique concrete masters, Louis and Bebe Baron. A multi-layered soundtrack of circuitry modulation that sounds alien and psychedelic at all times, Forbidden Planet's score is the first all-electronic score.
I really can't say enough about this piece of classic sci-fi. Afficionados celebrate it until the cows come home, but I have such a hard time selling your average movie viewer on it. Forbidden Planet is timeless!
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Now head over to Brutal as Hell to see what Marc Patterson and his crew have come up with. And if you're interested in taking part in the FINAL installment, just give Marc or myself a holler.