Keep Watching The Skies!

Keep Watching the Skies - American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties by Bill Warren is a massive two-volume set of tomes which give summaries and opinions of most every movie you can think of from the relevant era between 1950 and 1962. These are not just movies which were released in America, so Toho among others gets great coverage. The three flickers featured this month -- Konga, Gorgo and Reptilicus -- are included as well. My goal this month (and perhaps a bit beyond) is to try and see as many of these movies again. It's a mammoth, but exceedingly fun task. 

These books have been published, revised and published again over the years. Above you can see the delightfully delicate artwork for the first editions. 

Here is the magnificent art by Kerry Gammill which graces both volumes in the set. Being able to identify every single creature, invader, robot, and mutation in this image is a badge of honor or arguably a sign of a too cloistered existence. I plead guilty. Take a closer look and see how you do. 

Rip Off

Banzai Buckaroo!

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai - Across the 8th Dimension! is a movie I desperately want to like more than I actually do. I well remember seeing this clever little science fiction adventure flick when it hit theaters in the 80's, playing one of the best art houses in the city I was centered around at the time. It's got all the elements of a wacky adventure, perfectly designed for my wheelhouse. Sadly, it falls short in a number of ways despite its best elements.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai - Across the 8th Dimension! is a movie which I have like always but which has aged with me rather well. I remember seeing this clever little science fiction adventure flick when it hit theaters in the 80's, playing one of the best art houses in the city I was centered around at the time. It's got all the elements of a wacky adventure, perfectly designed for my wheelhouse. 

The pulp roots of this movie are all too evident. Peter Weller is a dandy actor portraying a modern "Renaissance Man" in this story, a sensitive noble genius expert in medicine, physics, and the secrets of a woman's heart. Weller brings a twinkle to the part, a gleam which helps sell what could be a load of crap for a lesser talent. This is a Doc Savage of sorts for the then modern and self-aware hipster world of the MTV generation. It's got all the parts right, and Weller almost pulls it off.

(Buckaroo, the Cavaliers and More)

The Hong Kong Cavaliers are the Fab Five (and more) of course, featuring a fine array of second banana talent (Clancy Brown - who I always like, Jeff Goldblum - who is always dorky and entertaining, and other blokes whose faces are better known than their names alas). They help Banzai battle the threats to mankind when they aren't doing their Huey Lewis and News imitation in a local night club.

(The Red Lectroids)

The threat to Earth this time are the "Red Lectroids" who came to our luckless planet from the 8th Dimension way back in 1938 and convinced media phenom Orson Welles to help them cover it all up as a Halloween prank. Hidden among us all this time as hideously stiff white men (Christopher Lloyd and Vincent Schiavelli are fun), these aliens are led by Lord John Whorfin (John Lithgow) who took over the body of a great scientist named Lizardo some years before. Now they want to return to their own planet and take over with the spaceship they've constructed here. Their enemies the "Black Lectroids" want to stop them and engage Banzai to help.

It's a whirlwind of activity from that point on, and not all of the furious motion pays off especially well. A reasonably sexy Ellen Barkin shows up as a sort of love interest for Banzai but seems hard pressed to find a role in the plot save as obligatory damsel in distress. There's much jumping and mugging and lots of overly wrought ironic dialogue for everyone. The downside with this movie is it's too aware of itself for its own good. The smarmy not-so-subtle commentary on then modern life is a shade too heavy handed to be as incisive as the creators' desire. The irony drips, but not always where they'd like and often in way too much quantity. The movie is hurt too by a limited budget which saddles it with local discovered real-world sets that don't really convince. Running around peculiar factories was de rigueur in 80's movies and there's plenty of that here.

Having said that about the movie, I am much impressed with the novelization by Earl Mac Rauch which adds a great deal of texture and depth to the proceedings. The story is told from the point of view of Reno, one of the Cavaliers who plays a moderate role in the film, but is not necessarily central. The larger universe in which Buckaroo operates is hinted at with mentions of Hanoi Xan, a villain of the first order and Buckaroo's arch nemesis. We get little about him, but he is certainly connected to the primary tale we know from the movie in that he assisted the Red Lectroids in their scheming. The end of Buckaroo Banzai promises a sequel in which the team confronts The World Crime League. 

That story would take forty years to appear and it's a whopper. I haven't read the story as of yet as it clocks in at well over six hundred pages. Rauch luxuriates in the details, almost to a fault. I'll get there one day...I hope Buckaroo. 

Rip Off

When Tomatoes Attack!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes from 1978 is a delightful romp in movie making by folks who knew only some of what they need to know to make it a fully professional show and didn't have the money to do it anyway.  The show is a send-up of most every invasion and monster movie you've ever seen while taking time to potshot then recent hits like Jaws and Superman. The movie has three sequels, the first in 1987 and sadly by that time despite an earnestness of purpose and talented folks, the movie looks a whole lot like most other ironic monster movies which filled the VHS racks to supply the endless need of the home video user. There is a abundant use of sex to sell a show that is essentially cynical about its subject. That's not the case with the original. There is a genuine exhilaration at just making a movie which keeps this cheap little number from falling into the same ditch so many of its kind discover in the end.

The premise is pretty simple -- mutated tomatoes of our own making have attacked their creators and it's up to a few brave public servants to discover the full nature of the threat and stop it. The film has pros in it like Jack Riley and Eric Christmas, but the bulk of the story is carried forward by essentially amateurs. One of those amateurs is Stephen Peace who goes on to appear in other of the Tomato movies and who became a  California legislator for a time.

The show's biggest moment comes early when a helicopter crashes with a stunning realism. The reason it was real, a helicopter did crash in the middle of a scene and the camera kept rolling. No one was hurt, but it was hard to watch it and not thing someone did. The filmmakers just used it and it became a famous enough scene to get Jack Riley onto the Tonight Show and got Attack of the Killer Tomatoes some free publicity it could have never afforded otherwise. I imagine most folks have seen this one. But if you've only ever seen one of the sequels, I beseech you to seek out and enjoy the original. It's shoddy but filled with enthusiasm and more than a few laughs. It, unlike its descendants has a heart, a great big juicy red heart.

In 1988, the same team that created the first movie attempted a sequel titled Return of the Killer Tomatoes, and this time they had money. They also unwittingly had a budding superstar in George Clooney, who doesn't even play the romantic lead but his sidekick. 

The movie shows a world reeling still from the tomato wars and tomatoes are forbidden. But John Astin is a mad scientist named "Professor Mortimer Gangreen" who was at least in part responsible for the first attack. He's at it again, but this time he can make tomatoes into a people, or at least imitations. 

One such creation is "Tara Boumdeay" who rebels and takes her little tomato buddy F.T. (for Fuzzy Tomato) with her when she escapes. She finds comfort in the arms of "Chad Finletter", the nephew of the hero of the first tomato war. They fall in love and the rest is madness. The movie breaks the fourth wall often and even stops at one point to fund raise by using product placement. Clooney is Chad's best bud Matt, who is a lady killer of the first order. The old team from the first movie return as well to foil the schemes of Gangreen. 

In 1991 we are treated to the third installment in the series titles Killer Tomatoes Strike Back. The absurdity is dialed up even more, if that's possible. I really enjoyed this one as the story got weirder and the performances got broader in response. By the climax of the movie, the story has reached Warner Brothers cartoon parameters with logic giving way to visual gags over and over again. The story starts in a world again threatened by tomatoes, but this time they are rather like the Gremlins in that movie series, the size of softballs and hungry. 

Our hero is a cop played by Rick Rockwell who is a fool from the beginning, and he eventually teams up with a "Tomatologist" played by Crystal Carson. They are battling Professor Gangreen yet again, but this time he is using television to hypnotize the world to follow his orders. To do that he has created the identity of "Geronahew" ( Geraldo and Donahue blended to together) to take control by using a daytime talk show to spread his message. It's a crazy movie, but I have to say I enjoyed it, especially the after-movie reports. 

Professor Gangreen (John Astin again) and his assistant Igor (Steve Lundquist who has played the role in all three sequels) are up to no good again in 1992's Killer Tomatoes Eat France! This time they are assisted by tomatoes the size of soccer balls, each with a malicious look on his mug. The biggest difference is that the tomatoes can talk this time and have distinct personalities, all bad save for the F.T. who is once again on the side of right. Zolton, Viper and Ketchuk are the three main baddie tomatoes and according to sources are largely borrowed from the cartoon series derived from the movies at this point. 

The plot draws from the barest outlines of Alexander Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask. Our hero is an American named Michael (Marc Price), and a French young woman named Marie (Angel Visser). As much as they try to recreate manic madness of the previous movie they fall short, though it does quite hectic. This is my least favorite of the four movies in the "Killer Tomato Trilogy". 

Rip Off

Jack H. Harris Presents Dinosaurus!

Dinosaurus is one of those movies I've always wanted to see since I learned of it but somehow never found on TV nor ever ran across otherwise. It's the third collaboration between producer Jack H. Harris and director Irvin Yeaworth, the first two being the very famous The Blob and the less famous 4D Man.

With the success of two movies, one a blockbuster, Harris was getting much bigger money for his projects, which meant much larger effects. According to Harris the idea for 1960's Dinosaurus came from a confab Harris had with Alfred Bester who didn't want to bother writing the screenplay and mostly gave the story to Harris. He then got Algis Budrys to write the screenplay (which he'd never done before), and Budrys delivered a six-hundred-page monster of a document which was trimmed to make the movie. Harris claims the Willis O'Brien gave some technical advice on the movie. 

The cast is literally no one you've ever heard of. As I watched the cast show up at the beginning of the movie, I recognized not a single save maybe perhaps for supporting actor Paul Lukather who had a role in This Island Earth I think. But the actors aren't the show here, it's the dinosaurs which are given life of sorts by means of the tried-and-true stop-motion techniques refined to an art form by Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen. Neither is on this show, and the dinos are minimal at best and wisely used rather sparingly.

(Greg Martell)

Some screen time is taken by Greg Martell who portrays a caveman who is incredibly revived alongside the dinos themselves. He's funny and tragic and all sorts of things and arguably the best performance in the show. The sight of him and a young boy (who you want to strangle every other minute) riding atop a Brontosaur immediately made me think of Dino Boy from Hanna-Barbera.

(The Dell Comics adaptation featuring interior art by Jesse Marsh.)

The movie attempts to offer a blend of danger and humor and I give it credit. But the plot is so daft that there's little to hang onto here. While poking under a Caribbean island some guys find two intact dinosaurs which they drag to shore and leave there until lightning just so happens to revive them. Also, a caveman floats ashore and starts to investigate his new world. A lot of time is spent talking about a fort and then we have construction equipment being used to fend off a T-Rex. That's what I think the movie was about, getting to that delightful scene, but the getting there could be ragged.

To read the Dell Comic check out this World of Monsters link. 

Next time we see Jack Harris move from making movies to packaging other people's movies with a little gem titled Masters of Horror. 

Rip Off

Jack H. Harris Presents 4D Man!

Jack Harris follows up The Blob with the same team which made us all believe that Steve McQueen was a teenager (not really). After the success of The Blob, Harris had more sway in getting his next movie off the ground and found funding a bit more easily. He says the story was inspired by a cover of Weird Tales, but I can't find a cover that he describes and at around the time 4D Man was being produced, the long published Weird Tales was in suspension I think, so it may have been another magazine. 

This 1959 movie boasts a grand cast led by Robert Lansing who lights, smokes and tosses aside cigarettes as fast he can in an hour and half. Lee Meriwether is her gorgeous self as she unknowingly (perhaps) pits two brothers against one another for her affections. The object of her desire is James Congdon who has invented a way for things and people to pass through solid material.

Lansing, a man losing his girl and his reputation is desperate and finds the ability a convenient way to get what he wants. The side effect is that he ages swiftly and ends up needing the lifeforces of those he touches to keep him running. The shenanigans are weird as the police for once seem to accept the impossible premise though it doesn't make them more capable to stall the threat.

Actually, truth told this movie takes a dang long time to get rolling with exposition upon exposition holding forth in the first thirty minutes. Then things get interesting and sadly the ending sort of falls apart. I don't know this to be true, but it seems they might've forgotten to film some crucial scenes, and we get some strange off-screen demises. I'm all for movies that keep you in suspense and I also believe that less is more, but less ain't nothing and this movie goes there at least once.

For fans of The Blob this one is interesting if only for its style. Next time it's more from Jack H. Harris with Dinosaurus! 

Rip Off

Heavy Metal - A Step Beyond Science Fiction!

Heavy Metal is absolutely a movie of its time. The attitudes about sex and drugs are right out of the 70's. The use of rock and roll songs in the soundtrack is fundamental, but I was struck on this viewing how little those songs really contributed for the most par to the storytelling. The soundtrack was very quiet, and often disappeared as I focused on the stories. Heavy Metal of course purported to offer more "adult" themes and images to a comic audience looking for some fresh material. How "adult" the magazine was, is an open question, but it sure wasn't for kids. The artwork was lush and published on bright paper really which sizzled off the stands. I won't even pretend I grokked it all at the time. The drug references often were lost on me, and much of the material hailing from Europe just sailed right over my benighted parochial noggin.

But it was different, and it was compelling. The movie gives us material derived from the works of Rich Corben, Berni Wrightson, Angus McKie, and the late Dan O'Bannon. The Loc-Nar, a green globe/gem is pure evil, and its incarnate voice tells of times and places when man fell victim to its evil. Those times included the "Neverwhere" of Rich Corben's ultra-muscular and over-sexed Den, and the outer space of Bernie Wrightson's morally bankrupt Captain Stern. The voices are to a great degree supplied by Second City comedy actors like the late John Candy who plays Den, and Eugene Levy. John Vernon's voice shows up. 

The behind-scenes commentary which is actually keyed to a preliminary print of the movie is made up of early animation attempts, storyboards, and whatnot gives a lot of great info about the movie and its development. For instance, the contributions of Mike Ploog, Howie Chaykin and Neal Adams are identified. I didn't know Adams had anything to do with this movie.

There's also some stuff that got cut out of the original, and it's pretty interesting in its own right. The movie is probably most famous today for the parade of voluptuous women who take off their clothes but there's more complexity to this show than that. The EC story about a WWII bomber that is overcome by zombies is a great little tale, as is the adventure of Tarna, a silent woman evocative of Clint Eastwood's Man-With-No-Name who seeks revenge and justice for a fallen society.

The old-style animation is fun, and in our modern world of computers it's always refreshing to hear how they solved these problems in more hands-on ways. Rotoscoping is used quite a bit in the movie, and to mostly good effect. Also, on the disk is a gallery of Heavy Metal covers and lots of production art as well as a behind-the-scenes documentary. All in all, a good movie, and a very excellent DVD, especially for less than the price of a modern movie ticket.

To get a glimpse of the Den section of the movie check out this link.

More on Rich Corben's Den tomorrow. 

Rip Off

Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow!

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is truly a work of love and a product of unrealistic enthusiasm. That's what makes it such fun to watch. Despite big names like Jude Law, Angelina Jolie, and Gwynneth Paltrow in the flick, the real power behind this flicker is director Kerry Conran who put together a six-minute proof-of-concept movie that impressed all those who saw it. If you'd like to see it, check out this link. Built on the basis of that, producer Jon Avnet got involved and the film slowly but surely got bigger and bigger, though never monstrous like some of the digital films of the time. This is an underground movie that got above ground just a tiny bit. 

The movie was inspired by a lot of things, but most directly by the Superman cartoon "The Mechanical Monsters" from the Fleischer Studio in the 1940's. Those remarkable cartoons seem to leave a lasting impression on most everyone who sees them, and Conran was no different. The six-minute movie is in fact titled "Chapter 1 - Mechanical Monsters" and show how in an alternate 1939 the Hindenberg III docks at the Empire State Building delivering a scientist who immediately goes missing. This is cover by Polly Perkins, a reporter who finds out there is more to the scheme. Then giant robots invaded NYC and the call goes out to the mysterious airman named Sky Captain (real name Joe Sullivan). Those robots look a lot like the Superman robots. 

In the movie which sprang from this six-minute seed not only do we get giant robots, but we get other kinds as well, some like giant bats and others more or less humanoid in appearance. The Sky Captain and his Lost Legion occupy an island not dissimilar to the Blackhawk and his gang. When that base is attacked, the search begins properly to find the villain Totenkopf, a deadly menace who threatens to destroy the whole world. We then follow the intrepid duo of Sky Captain Joe and Polly as they seek to find the enemy and those kidnapped by his forces. Those forces turn out to be more strange and more tragic than we know. Before they find the enemy though there is a stop in Shangri La, a paradise which has been ruined by Totkenkopf's ambitions. To face the final enemy an old ally of Joe's is summoned, and we get a flying fortress and scuds of lovely flying machines before it's all over. 

This is a fun diversion, a wonderful homage to the old serials and cartoons of decades gone by. The movie is remarkable as it was among the earliest to make use of exclusively digital sets, a practice we are all too familiar with in this century. Being something of a relic now itself, the digital renderings must be forgiven for being of their time as we do with all films which make use of the best technology of their eras. 

But what does all this have to do with Norvell Page's The Spider? Return later today and find out. 

Rip Off

The Old Blade Runner!

Blade Runner was a remarkable movie for its time. In 1982 science fiction had fallen almost completely under the spell of Star Wars and as successful as that had been it wase getting very tired. A smart dystopian sci-fi movie like Blade Runner injected subsequent films with the ability to get darker which they did with some gusto. Harrison Ford is remarkable in this movie, evoking as much as he ever did that Humphrey Bogart vibe he was able to tap into from time to time. Rutger Hauer was a revelation to me in this movie, stealing the last half of the movie completely with his idiosyncratic presentation of "Roy Baty". Others do wonderful jobs in demanding roles. The biggest star was the world of Blade Runner itself, a grim projection of a future ruled by diminished expectations and besotted with endless rain and gloom. 

The movie was based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I gave this 1968 classic science fiction novel another read before diving into the latest watch of the movie which made it famous. It's mostly here of course, our protagonist Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter and he does seek out and kill wayward androids in a world which is largely left behind as humanity has abandoned the planet to seek its future in space. But in the novel he's married and his later attractions to an android named Rachael have much more grim consequences. The one thing the novel pushes forward which the movie largely ignores is the role of animals in this future society. Much more is made of the fact that the animals have all but expired and they have become strange fetish items which not only are there for mental stability (like today's emotional support animals I suppose) but they are wildly expensive and so have become symbols of financial success. There's a whole religious aspect called "Mercerism" which is not at all mentioned in the movie that's a good thing since it's very hard to fathom at places in Dick's book. 

The director Ridley Scott does a fine job of honing down the story into a noir thriller which the novel is not. He takes the chase and focuses on that aspect, allowing the possible "humanity" of the androids to become the central issue. There has been more than a few revisions and hot debate about the ending of Blade Runner and the version I saw this time was the "Final Cut" which ends with Deckard and Rachael leaving his apartment and then a quick cut to credits. This ending is the one which is best in keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie. I have seen the others and to my mind they undermine the atmosphere of the movie's darkness. Will Deckard and Rachael survive? We don't know, but that's for another movie. And as it turns out, decades later they made another movie.  

Blade Runner 2049 is a deeply flawed movie, but a stunningly beautiful one. The visual gimmicks in this one are more than a match for the original, though the accomplishment in the original is greater since the tools used were more primitive. In the sequel we follow an android "Blade Runner" named "Joe" (eventually) played with typical flat affect by Ryan Gosling who has a holographic girlfriend played by the beautiful Ana de Armas and memories he cannot account for. After a tremendous beginning featuring Dave Batista as an android named Sapper, the movie steadily loses steam over its immense nearly three-hour running time. By the time we get to the denoument, it's hard to care because you're just so eager for it all to end. It's no secret that Harrison Ford shows up in this one as a weary Deckard and the secrets which motivate the movie are good ones. But sadly, the movie just lollygags along and seems to fall in love with its own imagery, allowing the focus to fade too often.

The novel by Philip K. Dick is a great read. The original Blade Runner is a must-see movie which like another apocalyptic movie titled The Road Warrior, transformed the sci-fi cinema of the era. The sequel is for hardcore fans alone. There's nothing missing from the first movie, so there's nothing essential revealed in the second. Time watching it is time lost like "tears in rain". 

Rip Off

The Day The Earth Stood Still!

Movies don't get much better than The Day the Earth Stood Still. I thought for a moment I should qualify that statement with "Science Fiction movie", but I resist. This one is just that good. Unlike much of the sci-fi that followed this 1951 masterpiece, this movie is an "A" picture and was treated as such by the studio that made it. The cast is first rate and that of course includes Michael Rennie in his first significant role as the alien "Klaatu". Based on the Harry Bates short story "Farewell to the Master" this movie offers up a conundrum to its audience -- what if a flying saucer landed in the middle of Washington DC and a perfectly normal looking human walked off it. No little green men in this one. But as the movie demonstrates our response might not be any different as Klaatu is shot within minutes. 

That doesn't go down too well with Gort, the eight-foot tall robot who came to Earth with him and who we learn has the power and arguably the authority to destroy the Earth. Gort is a great creation, played in parts by a mannequin and a man named Lock Martin who was a fragile giant in real life. Patricia Neal is on board as a woman who is sympathetic to the alien and her son played by Billy Gray wants to be friends with him right away. This movie does a grand job of capturing the fear which drives and informs modern society, which always seems ready to fight and respond to some menace, even if there is not much menace. Sam Jaffe plays a scientist meant to be Einstein, who is eager to listen to the alien who can teach the Earth great things, mostly how to not kill ourselves off. 

The story is famous for its Christ allusions and they real. Klaatu goes by the name of "Carpenter" when he seeks to hide in plain sight among us. He descends from the heavens and ascends in the same manner. He is killed and brought back to life, all in an attempt to save mankind from its darker aspects. But these references don't hamper the film, but only add luster. 

They remade The Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves as Klaatu, and he does a dandy job. This one has amazing special effects, but for my money they can never top the 1951 classic which made us all look up with wonder. 

Rip Off

The Thing From Another World!

In my opinion movies don't get better than The Thing from Another World! Based on John C. Campbell's novella "Who Goes There?"" (also released recently under the title The Frozen Hell) this epic 1951 B-movie tells of a group of stalwart soldiers and scientists at the top of the world in the frozen Arctic who repel a deadly invader from the depths of space. 

James Arness, who would go on to portray Marshall Matt Dillon for decades in the television show Gunsmoke plays the titular "Thing". Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, and Margaret Sheridan headline one of the strongest casts I've ever seen in a movie of this kind. Dewey Martin is ideal as an airman who despite not being an officer proves to be of great value to the defense effort. Douglas Spencer as an eager reporter adds just the right small smidge of light-heartedness to this spare story of death in the cold. So many good parts and great actors just slinking in the background of every scene. 

Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks create a spare movie without a single wasted frame. Every line communicates something necessary for the audience, speaking to story or character or both. The pace and momentum of the story is just right, no sense of panic or rushing, but good speed all along. The story never drags, even in the quietest moments. Dimitri Tiomkin's score is punchy and dark in all the right places, adding drama to an already drama-laden yarn. 

This movie is a wonderful depiction of the American ideal, men (and some few women I'll admit) of all stripes working in concert for a noble goal. This is a smart military unit, which values life though ready to take it if necessary. There's very little bitterness in this movie, which is filled with civility. When asked to identify my favorite movie the answer is either The Thing from Another World or The Maltese Falcon, another classic I love for almost all the same reasons. 

The story has been famously adapted to film on two other occasions, the first in 1981 by John Carpenter in which he cleaves a bit closer to John Campbell's original story with a shape-shifting monster from deep space. The other serves as a prequel of sorts to the Carpenter film and was made in 2011. These are wonderful flicks and do their job of scaring the viewer quite well, especially the Carpenter outing. But for me, I'll take the original The Thing from Another World in all its floral glory every time. 

Rip Off