SEE - astounding beasts walk the Earth!
THRILL - at sights never before seen by man!
Overwhelming!
Stunning!
Baffling!
CAN YOUR HEART STAND THIS MUCH TERROR?
I loves me them trailers! And how could you not? A trailer (in theory) takes all the good stuff - in this case, all the monster bits - and trim away all the fluff and fat - in this case, the endless People Talking scenes, tepid romance and the completely illogical science. While this may be counter intuitive when you get suckered into watching a dreadful movie on the basis of a cool trailer, if you have a disc full of nothing but this coolness, you cant help but win.
That's what we have here - All Day Entertainment following up their Horror of Hammer (a disc devoted to all those gothic horror classics from Hammer Studios), Tales of Frankenstein (odds and sods from Frankenstein flicks over the years) and The Pulp Cinema Trailer Collection (hard boiled Edward G. Robinson crime and detective trailers) releases with All Monsters Attack. Instead of horror or film noir, we get some of the best classic monster movies from the fifties and sixties.
As with the 42nd Street Forever series, there are way too many trailers to get into one-by-one. So instead, here's the huge list, and I'll get into a couple of highlights later on:
* King Kong
* Son of Kong
* Mighty Joe Young
* Konga
* The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
* The Beast From Hollow Mountain
* The Giant Behemoth
* Dinosaurus!
* The Lost World
* Gorgo
* Reptilicus
* Valley of Gwangi
* Godzilla King of the Monsters
* Varan the Unbelievable
* Rodan
* Mothra the Monster God (2 versions)
* King Kong vs. Godzilla
* Godzilla vs. the Thing
* Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster
* Gammera the Invincible
* Atragon
* King Kong Escapes
* Destroy All Monsters
* Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster
* Yog Monster From Space
* The Mysterians
* Robot Monster
* It Conquered the World
* Kronos
* Caltiki the Immortal Monster
* The Blob
* Beware! The Blob
* It Came From Beneath the Sea
* Attack of the Crab Monsters
* Attack of the Giant Leeches
* The Giant Gila Monster
* The Killer Shrews
* Night of the Lepus
* Them!
* Tarantula
* Monster From Green Hell
* Beginning of the End
* The Deadly Mantis
* The Spider
* The Cyclops
* Attack of the Puppet People
* Giant From the Unknown
* The Colossus of New York
* Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
* 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock
* The Amazing Colossal Man
* War of the Colossal Beast
* The Three Worlds of Gulliver
* Village of the Giants
* The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (2 versions)
* Goliath and the Dragon
* Atlantis the Lost Continent
* Jason and the Argonauts
As you can see, there's a collection of really cool trailers, with a little something for everyone. King Kong, Godzilla and Ray Harryhausen all in one place? You'll only get a better selection of giant beasts if you have a year's subscription to Famous Monsters of Filmland.
And you have to admire the way the credits were constructed back then - instead of hiding behind other people like "Roger Ebert says 'This Movie is the best of the year!'", they just come straight out and proclaim "This is the best movie EVER!" with bigger and bolder hyperbole. "Running wild in a terrible orgy of destruction!" or "A cast of thousands, at the mercy of the most terrifying monster that ever lived!" or "Incredibly huge, with incredible urges for love - and vengeance!"
Some of these trailers have already been released on their own separate discs, but getting them together in one place is a real treat. The Ray Harryhausen trailers look as good as their respective movies, quick paced and of course showcasing the always amazing Dynarama technique - Jason and the Argonauts being a personal favorite of mine from when I was a wee lad. The movie was great and the trailer is fun.
Toho films are well represented too, with 15 out of the 60 trailers devoted to Kaiju eiga. The Godzilla trailers are a special treat, since these tend not to show up on their respective DVD releases (like Destroy All Monsters, which was hamstrung thanks to contractual obligations with Toho). While this trend is being corrected with some of the newer Godzilla releases, I'm still happy to get them here.
THE DVD -
Being from a wide range of print sources from over several decades, the video quality is understandably all over the map. Some of the older trailers - Son of Kong for instance - suffer from splices and damage. A couple of the trailers - Gorgo and The Lost World - are faded and dull and some are just downright poor over all, like Earth versus the Spider. On the other hand, some look downright fantastic (Rodan or Destroy All Monsters) and the rest are generally in fairly good shape.
THE EXTRAS -
Well, for starters, it's a small thing, but it's a nice touch - All Day Entertainment designed the DVD case to look like the package of one of the old school Aurora Movie Monster kits from the sixties.
On noveltly side of things, we get a short documentary about the dangers of radiation (very useful), the This is Dynamation short on the making of the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (recycled from the Seventh Voyage DVD a couple of years back), a short about the making of The Land That Time Forgot, which - as near as I can tell - doesn't appear anywhere else. Finally, there's a six minute black & white short called Mega-Morphisis.
So not quite as cool as the running commentary on 42nd Street Forever 3, but it's still pretty keen.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Shrinking people, growing people, giant apes, giant dinosaurs, aliens from space, monsters from mythology, and horrible undead beasts - it doesn't matter what form your favorite monster takes - if you like creature features, you'll love this DVD.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE - Eighties sleaze!
While I didn’t like the Planet Terror/Death Proof Grindhouse double feature that came out last year, I do have to admit that I'm really liking the fallout from that failed project. Suddenly every DVD studio and their brother are releasing Drive-In schlock and B-Movies by the truckload. Brentwood, Alpha Video, Koch and some studios I've never heard of all shoveling out public domain releases as fast as they can - in true grindhouse style - to cash in on Rodriguez/Tarantino flick before the fad cools. The best of the bunch however has to be BCI with their Welcome to the Grindhouse series.
For the uninitiated (and if that’s the case, why are you reading this?) the term Grindhouse comes from the era of B-movie theaters famous for cranking out exploitation double-bills in the 1970’s. The prints were decrepit and worn out, the chairs hurt your ass, and the interiors were cleaned maybe twice a year - but you would consistently get your money’s worth in over-the-top sleaze, splatter and thrills. BCI Eclipse gives you all that in a double feature disc, but without the dirty old men and seats that smell funny.
The first movie up for discussion is Don't Answer The Phone, released in 1980. Kirk Smith (played astoundingly by Nicholas Worth, who also appeared in other B-movie greats such as Hell Comes to Frogtown with Roddy Piper, Wes Craven's Swamp Thing, and the blaxploitation classic Scream Blacula Scream, just to name a few) is a deranged war veteran from Vietnam vet - although I'd guess that he wasn’t right in the head before getting some quality time with Charlie. Kirk spends his free time stalking raping and then murdering women, either posing as a photographer or just out and out lurking the bushes and jumping them when they're alone.
In his free time, Kirk either rants about his abusive old man or makes frequent calls to daytime radio show host Doctor Lindsay Gale (Flo Gerrish, who's only other real film of note is the Sly Stallone arm wrestling flick Over the Top), taunting her with all kinds of sordid details of his personal life - but never quite incriminating himself, but clearly getting his jollies that way.
On the Law-and-Order side of the fence are homicide detectives Lt. McCabe and Sgt. Hatcher (played by respectively James Westmoreland and Ben Frank), heading up the Strangler case and getting nowhere - until Doctor Lindsay shows up at the police station with some vital information that could crack the case. Of course, being a 70's exploitation flick, the cop and the doctor fall in love (well, lust) and get it on. Of course it's not before long when our sweaty Strangler has kidnapped the good Doctor, and now it's up to McCabe to save the day.
Don't Answer The Phone has very little to do with a "Phone Call=Death" motif, other than the talk show doctor becoming the Strangler's main target, (the title was probably changed to cash in on the late seventies fad of movies called Don't Go in the Woods, Don't Go in the House, Don't Look in the Basement and so on.) but is a surprisingly effective and very disturbing flick. Being a exploitation film, of course everything goes and we get plenty of sex, violence and sex and violence - and while we don't see the actual rapes, this is still a really uncomfortable film to watch. Like when The Strangler hires a hooker, but instead of getting down to business once back at the hotel room, he asks her to phone the radio station. This chilling sequence has Denise tell Doctor Gail that her frequent caller is beside her, but before she gets much further Kirk slowly strangles her so that the screams are broadcast citywide through Dr Gail’s show.
In perhaps the film’s most disturbing scene, when The Strangler attacks one of the victims - who was molested as a child - she gives in to him, clutching a teddy bear and calling him “daddy” while crying like a child. Meanwhile, he calls her baby and fondly strokes her hair while treating her like she was really a child.
Holy smokes! And this coming from a hard boiled veteran of years of exploitation!
As you can imagine Nicholas Worth is the best thing in this picture. Not only is he a big intimidating dude, his demeanor is just damn disquieting - and that's when he's got his public face on. In private, he weeps, he cackles insanely, he gives talks endlessly to himself and his (apparently deceased) stepfather about him "measuring up", he puffs up his chest about strength and superiority above everyone else and goes on a bigoted rampage about a pimp he had cracked over the head just the scene before.
The problem with the film is that it's kind of schizophrenic. When The Strangler isn't on screen doing his thing, we get a standard police procedural movie with comedy bits thrown in. Just as one example: while in the course of the investigation, our two cop heroes arrive at a whorehouse. The staff mistakes the cop's completely unrelated investigation as a bust - and of course all hell breaks loose. Suddenly the hallways are filled with weirdoes in drag, Nazi dominatrixes, gimps and fags, skimpily attired patrons and deviants of all sizes and colors while our two cops look on in bemusement. Oh look, the guy tied up in the fetish gear can't get off the bed - that's Komedy!
This bizarre humor is lumped right alongside some genuinely brutal psychological violence, giving Don’t Answer the Phone feel a very uneven feel.
And I should point out that James Westmoreland is as shallow and as Nicholas Worth is awesome. He's got no personality to speak of and zero charm. Coupled with love intrest/leading lady Flo Gerrish not exactly burning up the set and Robert Hammer's rather pedestrian direction means that while Don't Answer The Phone is okay, it could have been so much better.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 7
EXPLOSIONS: 0
ROUNDS FIRED: 14
PUNCHES THROWN: 9
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 0
CAR CHASES: 0
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
AFROS: 1
F BOMBS DROPPED: 7
SEVENTIES FASHION SENSIBILITIES: 13%
BEST LINE: "Adios, creep"
THE DVD -
Both films are presented in a widescreen ratio of 1.78 and while generally in overall less than stellar shape, Don't Answer the Phone (and Prime Evil, for that matter) looks reasonable for a low budget b-movie cheapie. There were some audio artifacts on Don't Answer the Phone - kind of a hollow, tinny sound in places - but those were due to the nature of production and a flaw inherent in the master than a problem with the disc.
THE EXTRAS -
There are no extras on the Welcome to the Grindhouse double feature disc, save for one: the Grindhouse Experience. As with other discs of the series, you can either watch each feature by itself or in the Grindhouse Experience. Watching that way, we start off with a Coming Attractions bumper, a trailer for Horror High and Werewolf vs the Vampire Women before Don't Answer the Phone runs. After Phone, we get another set of bumpers, the trailer for Blood Mania and Night of the Werewolf before the second feature starts.
As I understand it, there are extras on the stand-alone non-grindhouse disc - a commentary, an introduction, and an interview with Nicholas Worth, a photo gallery, a couple of Crown International trailers and an Easter egg. Worthwhile if you want to see out more on the film - but me? I'm happy with the super cheap double feature picture show.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
With names like Hammer and Castle, one would think this movie has some kind of horror pedigree. Sadly we get nowhere near Hammer Film Productions or William Castle territory here. Instead we get a serviceable if not outstanding film with some really disturbing moments.
For the uninitiated (and if that’s the case, why are you reading this?) the term Grindhouse comes from the era of B-movie theaters famous for cranking out exploitation double-bills in the 1970’s. The prints were decrepit and worn out, the chairs hurt your ass, and the interiors were cleaned maybe twice a year - but you would consistently get your money’s worth in over-the-top sleaze, splatter and thrills. BCI Eclipse gives you all that in a double feature disc, but without the dirty old men and seats that smell funny.
The first movie up for discussion is Don't Answer The Phone, released in 1980. Kirk Smith (played astoundingly by Nicholas Worth, who also appeared in other B-movie greats such as Hell Comes to Frogtown with Roddy Piper, Wes Craven's Swamp Thing, and the blaxploitation classic Scream Blacula Scream, just to name a few) is a deranged war veteran from Vietnam vet - although I'd guess that he wasn’t right in the head before getting some quality time with Charlie. Kirk spends his free time stalking raping and then murdering women, either posing as a photographer or just out and out lurking the bushes and jumping them when they're alone.
In his free time, Kirk either rants about his abusive old man or makes frequent calls to daytime radio show host Doctor Lindsay Gale (Flo Gerrish, who's only other real film of note is the Sly Stallone arm wrestling flick Over the Top), taunting her with all kinds of sordid details of his personal life - but never quite incriminating himself, but clearly getting his jollies that way.
On the Law-and-Order side of the fence are homicide detectives Lt. McCabe and Sgt. Hatcher (played by respectively James Westmoreland and Ben Frank), heading up the Strangler case and getting nowhere - until Doctor Lindsay shows up at the police station with some vital information that could crack the case. Of course, being a 70's exploitation flick, the cop and the doctor fall in love (well, lust) and get it on. Of course it's not before long when our sweaty Strangler has kidnapped the good Doctor, and now it's up to McCabe to save the day.
Don't Answer The Phone has very little to do with a "Phone Call=Death" motif, other than the talk show doctor becoming the Strangler's main target, (the title was probably changed to cash in on the late seventies fad of movies called Don't Go in the Woods, Don't Go in the House, Don't Look in the Basement and so on.) but is a surprisingly effective and very disturbing flick. Being a exploitation film, of course everything goes and we get plenty of sex, violence and sex and violence - and while we don't see the actual rapes, this is still a really uncomfortable film to watch. Like when The Strangler hires a hooker, but instead of getting down to business once back at the hotel room, he asks her to phone the radio station. This chilling sequence has Denise tell Doctor Gail that her frequent caller is beside her, but before she gets much further Kirk slowly strangles her so that the screams are broadcast citywide through Dr Gail’s show.
In perhaps the film’s most disturbing scene, when The Strangler attacks one of the victims - who was molested as a child - she gives in to him, clutching a teddy bear and calling him “daddy” while crying like a child. Meanwhile, he calls her baby and fondly strokes her hair while treating her like she was really a child.
Holy smokes! And this coming from a hard boiled veteran of years of exploitation!
As you can imagine Nicholas Worth is the best thing in this picture. Not only is he a big intimidating dude, his demeanor is just damn disquieting - and that's when he's got his public face on. In private, he weeps, he cackles insanely, he gives talks endlessly to himself and his (apparently deceased) stepfather about him "measuring up", he puffs up his chest about strength and superiority above everyone else and goes on a bigoted rampage about a pimp he had cracked over the head just the scene before.
The problem with the film is that it's kind of schizophrenic. When The Strangler isn't on screen doing his thing, we get a standard police procedural movie with comedy bits thrown in. Just as one example: while in the course of the investigation, our two cop heroes arrive at a whorehouse. The staff mistakes the cop's completely unrelated investigation as a bust - and of course all hell breaks loose. Suddenly the hallways are filled with weirdoes in drag, Nazi dominatrixes, gimps and fags, skimpily attired patrons and deviants of all sizes and colors while our two cops look on in bemusement. Oh look, the guy tied up in the fetish gear can't get off the bed - that's Komedy!
This bizarre humor is lumped right alongside some genuinely brutal psychological violence, giving Don’t Answer the Phone feel a very uneven feel.
And I should point out that James Westmoreland is as shallow and as Nicholas Worth is awesome. He's got no personality to speak of and zero charm. Coupled with love intrest/leading lady Flo Gerrish not exactly burning up the set and Robert Hammer's rather pedestrian direction means that while Don't Answer The Phone is okay, it could have been so much better.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 7
EXPLOSIONS: 0
ROUNDS FIRED: 14
PUNCHES THROWN: 9
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 0
CAR CHASES: 0
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
AFROS: 1
F BOMBS DROPPED: 7
SEVENTIES FASHION SENSIBILITIES: 13%
BEST LINE: "Adios, creep"
THE DVD -
Both films are presented in a widescreen ratio of 1.78 and while generally in overall less than stellar shape, Don't Answer the Phone (and Prime Evil, for that matter) looks reasonable for a low budget b-movie cheapie. There were some audio artifacts on Don't Answer the Phone - kind of a hollow, tinny sound in places - but those were due to the nature of production and a flaw inherent in the master than a problem with the disc.
THE EXTRAS -
There are no extras on the Welcome to the Grindhouse double feature disc, save for one: the Grindhouse Experience. As with other discs of the series, you can either watch each feature by itself or in the Grindhouse Experience. Watching that way, we start off with a Coming Attractions bumper, a trailer for Horror High and Werewolf vs the Vampire Women before Don't Answer the Phone runs. After Phone, we get another set of bumpers, the trailer for Blood Mania and Night of the Werewolf before the second feature starts.
As I understand it, there are extras on the stand-alone non-grindhouse disc - a commentary, an introduction, and an interview with Nicholas Worth, a photo gallery, a couple of Crown International trailers and an Easter egg. Worthwhile if you want to see out more on the film - but me? I'm happy with the super cheap double feature picture show.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
With names like Hammer and Castle, one would think this movie has some kind of horror pedigree. Sadly we get nowhere near Hammer Film Productions or William Castle territory here. Instead we get a serviceable if not outstanding film with some really disturbing moments.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
FACES OF DEATH - Schlockumentary!
Despite being a fan of all kinds of bad exploitation cinema, I was never really into the Mondo films. Oh, sure - I've seen trailers for Secret Africa , Mondo Cane, and Shocking Asia before - but as a genre it never really floated my boat. In fact, I can only recall ever seeing one: Faces of Death.
Oh, before we roll, I should explain Mondo. A mondo film is a documentary film, usually depicting sensational topics and scenes - Mondo of course being an itilan word literally means "world". Typical mondo would try and pump up the shock value as much as possible - cruelty to animals, accidents, tribal initiation rites and primitive surgeries are a common feature of a typical mondo, with much of the action staged for the filmmaker's benefit. If Michael Moore included some gratuitous titty shots and a cow being sliced open or two, he would be making a mondo film.
Anyway, Faces of Death is probably the most well know, most infamous Mondo film around. The name was whispered in hushed tones around the schoolyard, with it's most taboo of taboos for subject matter: an actual real life SNUFF film! Nobody had ever dared to watch it though - it was always a big brother or a friend of a friend who had rented it. "Did you hear that they clubbed a monkey to death with hammers and ATE IT'S BRAINS FOR DINNER!"
And so the urban legends grew
Being that this is the most infamous of exploitation movies, it was inevitable that I'd eventually get around to seeing it. Renting, mind you, not buying. Of course seeing it again decades later, out of the subculture of the schoolyard, the movie is - and I hate to break this to you - painfully, obviously fake. Not all of it - there's still quite a bit of natural disaster stock footage, the concentration camp scene and the mortuary stuff was probably quite authentic. But the "Man getting eaten by an alligator" scene or the "Protester setting themselves on fire" bit or the aforementioned "Monkey getting hammered to death before the feast" are all clearly staged, and in some instances (like the monkey) the effects are not very convincing.
Oh sure there are a ton of scenes where folks died BEFORE the camera got there, and there are loads of genuine animal slaughters, but as a snuff film - by the strictest sense of the word - it is not.
Okay, now that we've stripped away any of the false pretence of realism, how does the movie stand up? Surprisingly well - provided that you have a stomach for this sort of thing. The film is still interesting, in a morbid sort of way - we as a species are naturally fascinated by this stuff, or why else would everyone slow down on the freeway for an accident? So even beyond the drinking game of picking out what is fake and what isnt, it's still a - well, I hesitate to call it a good movie. Perhaps entertaining is a better word.
THE DVD -
Being a direct to video release (I don't think it ever saw a domestic theatrical release) Faces of Death is a fullscreen effair. Of course thanks to the wide range of source material used for stock footage, video quality is dubious at best. Surpsingly enough, some of the newly shot stuff looks clean and pretty good. Actually, if anything, the clarity of the disc works against Faces of Death. The 6th generation VHS bootleg made it much easier to conceal the fakeness of the monkey heads and the like.
THE EXTRAS -
As far as extras go, the only thing of note is a psudo-documentary called Faces Of Death - Fact of Fiction? . I say psudo because it's done in a very tongue in cheek style with bad puns and stock footage. While it may not be a hard hitting expose on the film, at least it's entertaining - and short.
Documentary aside, we get a handful of trailers including Faces Of Death and some other similar films like The Strange And The Gruesome and Beyond Bizarre - and they all look to be about the same production level and quality of Faces of Death
THE BOTTOM LINE -
A classic of exploitation cinema? I wouldn’t go that far - but there is no denying that Faces of Death has made a mark on movie history. Even folks who don't know anything about Mondo or grindhouse or drive-in flicks know the name. Whether or not it's any good, well that I leave as an exercise to the gentle reader.
Oh, before we roll, I should explain Mondo. A mondo film is a documentary film, usually depicting sensational topics and scenes - Mondo of course being an itilan word literally means "world". Typical mondo would try and pump up the shock value as much as possible - cruelty to animals, accidents, tribal initiation rites and primitive surgeries are a common feature of a typical mondo, with much of the action staged for the filmmaker's benefit. If Michael Moore included some gratuitous titty shots and a cow being sliced open or two, he would be making a mondo film.
Anyway, Faces of Death is probably the most well know, most infamous Mondo film around. The name was whispered in hushed tones around the schoolyard, with it's most taboo of taboos for subject matter: an actual real life SNUFF film! Nobody had ever dared to watch it though - it was always a big brother or a friend of a friend who had rented it. "Did you hear that they clubbed a monkey to death with hammers and ATE IT'S BRAINS FOR DINNER!"
And so the urban legends grew
Being that this is the most infamous of exploitation movies, it was inevitable that I'd eventually get around to seeing it. Renting, mind you, not buying. Of course seeing it again decades later, out of the subculture of the schoolyard, the movie is - and I hate to break this to you - painfully, obviously fake. Not all of it - there's still quite a bit of natural disaster stock footage, the concentration camp scene and the mortuary stuff was probably quite authentic. But the "Man getting eaten by an alligator" scene or the "Protester setting themselves on fire" bit or the aforementioned "Monkey getting hammered to death before the feast" are all clearly staged, and in some instances (like the monkey) the effects are not very convincing.
Oh sure there are a ton of scenes where folks died BEFORE the camera got there, and there are loads of genuine animal slaughters, but as a snuff film - by the strictest sense of the word - it is not.
Okay, now that we've stripped away any of the false pretence of realism, how does the movie stand up? Surprisingly well - provided that you have a stomach for this sort of thing. The film is still interesting, in a morbid sort of way - we as a species are naturally fascinated by this stuff, or why else would everyone slow down on the freeway for an accident? So even beyond the drinking game of picking out what is fake and what isnt, it's still a - well, I hesitate to call it a good movie. Perhaps entertaining is a better word.
THE DVD -
Being a direct to video release (I don't think it ever saw a domestic theatrical release) Faces of Death is a fullscreen effair. Of course thanks to the wide range of source material used for stock footage, video quality is dubious at best. Surpsingly enough, some of the newly shot stuff looks clean and pretty good. Actually, if anything, the clarity of the disc works against Faces of Death. The 6th generation VHS bootleg made it much easier to conceal the fakeness of the monkey heads and the like.
THE EXTRAS -
As far as extras go, the only thing of note is a psudo-documentary called Faces Of Death - Fact of Fiction? . I say psudo because it's done in a very tongue in cheek style with bad puns and stock footage. While it may not be a hard hitting expose on the film, at least it's entertaining - and short.
Documentary aside, we get a handful of trailers including Faces Of Death and some other similar films like The Strange And The Gruesome and Beyond Bizarre - and they all look to be about the same production level and quality of Faces of Death
THE BOTTOM LINE -
A classic of exploitation cinema? I wouldn’t go that far - but there is no denying that Faces of Death has made a mark on movie history. Even folks who don't know anything about Mondo or grindhouse or drive-in flicks know the name. Whether or not it's any good, well that I leave as an exercise to the gentle reader.
Friday, March 28, 2008
PRIME EVIL - -Satanism never looked so boring!
During the sixties and seventies, inner city theaters - like their rural Drive-in kin - were forced to turn to more and lower budget fare to survive. Where the Drive-In tended to focus on wild teen movies, Rock 'N Roll musicals, beach movies and hot rod flicks, Grindhouses tended to run towards your rougher films - blaxploitation, sexploitation, splatter films, biker flicks, mondo, chambara epics, spaghetti westerns, women in prision films, and Shaw Brothers kung fu all packed with sensational elements designed to appeal to baser human emotions. Joe Bob Briggs said it best with the three Bs: Breasts, blood and beasts. Theater managers would operate around the clock, serving up all manner of taboo shattering smut and sleaze - a modern equivalent of the games at the Roman coliseum. The popcorn stale, the seats smelly, the company was. . . dubious at best and the prints were run down and faded from use.
As the VHS rose in popularity, both the Drive-in and the Grindhouse quickly became obsolite. While you can still occasionally find a drive-in or two around, the Grindhouse is all but extinct these days.
Well except for, ironically enough, home video.
BCI Eclipse's Welcome to the Grindhouse series serves up a double feature of dubious quality, a handful of trailers all at a ridiculously low price.
Prime Evil is the second half of this double header, and is young enough that it might not actually be considered Grindhouse material (its of a 1988 vintage, well after the decline of the Grindhouse). But it's on the disc anyway, so there you are.
As the Black Plague ravaged Europe in the 14th century, a group of monks decide that they've had enough with this whole God thing and break away from the church, throwing their lot in with Satan (of course), who then bestows wealth and immortality and all that other good stuff that you usually get in these deals. The downside is that their Dark Master demands a sacrifice every 13 years.
Fast forward to the present (well, the present as we knew it in 1988), with the cult still around and going strong - and of course coming up on the thirteenth year pretty darn quick. Enter Sister Angela (Mavis Harris), who gets the assignment from The Bishop to go undercover and infiltrate the satanic group and somehow stopping their black mass, and hopefully destroy it once and for all.
***BAD PUN ALERT***
When forced to undergo the satanic ritual initiation, Sister Angela throws her nun's uniform into a fire. She remains loyal to the Lord, proving it was a hard habit to break. Thank you - I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Meanwhile across town, we meet Cathy, a college graduate prostitute with a law degree. Her councilor Alexandra has just set her up with a job interview over on Wall Street - but she gets kidnapped by a strong-armed goon in army fatigues, working for The Cult.
Alexandra has issues of her own. She confesses to her fiance Bill that she was molested and photographed as a child (a theme on this disc, it seems), and she's been messed up in the head ever since her grandfather George told her that pappy was "going away" (apparently cast into The Abyss, according to conversations later in the film). George, on the other hand is looking to be a very spry young eighty - not too surprising, considering he's one of the top dogs of The Cult.
Anyway George has been instructed to bring his granddaughter to the group's next sacrifice as the guest of honor! But first, she needs the "special attention" of cult leader Father Seaton and some extra special quality time with The Dark Lord. And so it goes, characters aimlessly drifting in and out of the storyline until the cultists have a big orgy, when Sister Angela believe she stabs a statue of the devil in the crotch and all the Satanists burst into fire and die. The end.
Um. . . what?
To say that Prime Evil is a confusing mess would be like saying that the Titanic had an accident. While both statements are true, they so vastly underestimate the problem it's comedic. The script is so crammed with characters that it's tough to keep track of who is who without a scorecard and flowchart. The plot moves along briskly, which is good, but the secondary characters keep piling up until I'm on the verge of exploding from information overload. This wouldn’t be so bad if these stories were coming together in a nice neat bundle at the end, but some just fizzle out and go nowhere, and some just get dropped only to re-emerge later on
Wow - never thought I'd say this about exploitation cinema, but there's just too much damn plot!
As far as acting goes, it's really no better or no worse than your average low grade eighties horror flick. The bad guys are EeeeeVIL, the cops are exceptionally goofball-ish, the boyfriend is maniac obsessive and the females are useless. Like I said, the performances are pretty much run of the mill for this sort of thing.
The film is directed by Roberta Findley, the bulk of her resume is hard core porno and cheap exploitation flicks like Snuff, The Oracle and the amazingly, horrifically bad Shriek of the Mutilated. As she has a track record of movies as long as my arm (and Prime Evil was one of the last films she did), you would think we'd at least get something creative, if not necessarily good. And while some of her scenes and setups have a nice shadowy film noir-ish look to them, the bulk of the movie is shot flat.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 1
EXPLOSIONS: 0
ROUNDS FIRED: 6
PUNCHES THROWN: 4
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 1
CAR CHASES: 0
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
AFROS: 0F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
THE DVD -
Both films are presented in a widescreen ratio of 1.78 and while generally in overall less than stellar shape, Prime Evil (and Don't Answer the Phone for that matter) looks reasonable for a low budget b-movie cheapie.
THE EXTRAS -
There are no extras on the Welcome to the Grindhouse double feature disc, save for one: the Grindhouse Experience. As with other discs of the series, you can either watch each feature by itself or in the Grindhouse Experience. Watching that way, we start off with a Coming Attractions bumper, a trailer for Horror High and Werewolf vs the Vampire Women before Don't Answer the Phone runs. After Phone, we get another set of bumpers, the trailer for Blood Mania and Night of the Werewolf before Prime Evil starts.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
With a plot overflowing with characters and double dealing and stuff, there's just no focus in Prime Evil, and despite a (laughable) severed head sequence in the prologue this one is largely gore and nudity free. If it were all alone, I'd probably give it a miss - life is too short to waste on boring Bad Movies,
As the VHS rose in popularity, both the Drive-in and the Grindhouse quickly became obsolite. While you can still occasionally find a drive-in or two around, the Grindhouse is all but extinct these days.
Well except for, ironically enough, home video.
BCI Eclipse's Welcome to the Grindhouse series serves up a double feature of dubious quality, a handful of trailers all at a ridiculously low price.
Prime Evil is the second half of this double header, and is young enough that it might not actually be considered Grindhouse material (its of a 1988 vintage, well after the decline of the Grindhouse). But it's on the disc anyway, so there you are.
As the Black Plague ravaged Europe in the 14th century, a group of monks decide that they've had enough with this whole God thing and break away from the church, throwing their lot in with Satan (of course), who then bestows wealth and immortality and all that other good stuff that you usually get in these deals. The downside is that their Dark Master demands a sacrifice every 13 years.
Fast forward to the present (well, the present as we knew it in 1988), with the cult still around and going strong - and of course coming up on the thirteenth year pretty darn quick. Enter Sister Angela (Mavis Harris), who gets the assignment from The Bishop to go undercover and infiltrate the satanic group and somehow stopping their black mass, and hopefully destroy it once and for all.
***BAD PUN ALERT***
When forced to undergo the satanic ritual initiation, Sister Angela throws her nun's uniform into a fire. She remains loyal to the Lord, proving it was a hard habit to break. Thank you - I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Meanwhile across town, we meet Cathy, a college graduate prostitute with a law degree. Her councilor Alexandra has just set her up with a job interview over on Wall Street - but she gets kidnapped by a strong-armed goon in army fatigues, working for The Cult.
Alexandra has issues of her own. She confesses to her fiance Bill that she was molested and photographed as a child (a theme on this disc, it seems), and she's been messed up in the head ever since her grandfather George told her that pappy was "going away" (apparently cast into The Abyss, according to conversations later in the film). George, on the other hand is looking to be a very spry young eighty - not too surprising, considering he's one of the top dogs of The Cult.
Anyway George has been instructed to bring his granddaughter to the group's next sacrifice as the guest of honor! But first, she needs the "special attention" of cult leader Father Seaton and some extra special quality time with The Dark Lord. And so it goes, characters aimlessly drifting in and out of the storyline until the cultists have a big orgy, when Sister Angela believe she stabs a statue of the devil in the crotch and all the Satanists burst into fire and die. The end.
Um. . . what?
To say that Prime Evil is a confusing mess would be like saying that the Titanic had an accident. While both statements are true, they so vastly underestimate the problem it's comedic. The script is so crammed with characters that it's tough to keep track of who is who without a scorecard and flowchart. The plot moves along briskly, which is good, but the secondary characters keep piling up until I'm on the verge of exploding from information overload. This wouldn’t be so bad if these stories were coming together in a nice neat bundle at the end, but some just fizzle out and go nowhere, and some just get dropped only to re-emerge later on
Wow - never thought I'd say this about exploitation cinema, but there's just too much damn plot!
As far as acting goes, it's really no better or no worse than your average low grade eighties horror flick. The bad guys are EeeeeVIL, the cops are exceptionally goofball-ish, the boyfriend is maniac obsessive and the females are useless. Like I said, the performances are pretty much run of the mill for this sort of thing.
The film is directed by Roberta Findley, the bulk of her resume is hard core porno and cheap exploitation flicks like Snuff, The Oracle and the amazingly, horrifically bad Shriek of the Mutilated. As she has a track record of movies as long as my arm (and Prime Evil was one of the last films she did), you would think we'd at least get something creative, if not necessarily good. And while some of her scenes and setups have a nice shadowy film noir-ish look to them, the bulk of the movie is shot flat.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 1
EXPLOSIONS: 0
ROUNDS FIRED: 6
PUNCHES THROWN: 4
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 1
CAR CHASES: 0
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
AFROS: 0F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
THE DVD -
Both films are presented in a widescreen ratio of 1.78 and while generally in overall less than stellar shape, Prime Evil (and Don't Answer the Phone for that matter) looks reasonable for a low budget b-movie cheapie.
THE EXTRAS -
There are no extras on the Welcome to the Grindhouse double feature disc, save for one: the Grindhouse Experience. As with other discs of the series, you can either watch each feature by itself or in the Grindhouse Experience. Watching that way, we start off with a Coming Attractions bumper, a trailer for Horror High and Werewolf vs the Vampire Women before Don't Answer the Phone runs. After Phone, we get another set of bumpers, the trailer for Blood Mania and Night of the Werewolf before Prime Evil starts.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
With a plot overflowing with characters and double dealing and stuff, there's just no focus in Prime Evil, and despite a (laughable) severed head sequence in the prologue this one is largely gore and nudity free. If it were all alone, I'd probably give it a miss - life is too short to waste on boring Bad Movies,
Thursday, March 27, 2008
GRINDHOUSE: DEATH PROOF - for the love of god Quentin, SHUT UP!
Sorry guys - while I love exploitation cinema, horror, schlock, cheese, drive-in flicks, B-movies, blaxploitation and Kung Fu - I hated Planet Terror and Death Proof, collectively known as Grindhouse. Actually more accurately, I hated the second half of the combined entity known as Grindhouse.
For those of you just joining us, the Grindhouse premise is this: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez love bad, trashy 70's and 80's schlock. For the bulk of his career, it's been clear that Tarantino loves movies that shock, titillate and otherwise have no redeeming values or features. And so the two set out to make intentionally bad, schlocky movies and then releases them together as if it were a double bill playing in a 42nd Street theater back in the '70s right down to the advertisements, film trailers, missing reels, projector mishaps and prints so scratchy and flawed they're close to deterioration.
In Death Proof, Tarantino unrolls a story about three Fine Young Thangs as they unexpectedly find themselves on a collision course with a charming stranger named Stuntman Mike - only to fall to a wicked end. Later, the tables are turned when Mike finds another group of girls to follow, it turns out that sometimes girls fight back!
The problem with Planet Terror, the first half of the Grindhouse double feature, is that Robert Rodriguez turns the action and blood and gore and gunfights up to 11 at the start and leaves the knob there for the remainder of the movie, bludgeoning you into a state of numbness. However while it's beating you over the head with a blood soaked baseball bat, at least it moves briskly along. And I'm fine with that - in a proper grindhouse flick, absolutely anything goes - except for the one prime directive that you must never, ever break: don't bore the audience.
The problem with Death Proof is that Tarantino has two settings: Warp Speed and Dead Stop. When the movie is running at the Warp Speed setting it's really good, but we have to suffer through nearly an hour and a half of Dead Stop to get there. Instead of pus oozing zombies being vaporized by a million rounds of ammunition, we're suffering through watching four completely interchangeable women going on endlessly about drugs and sex and pop culture without ever establishing anything close to credible or likable characters.
I have always contended that a strong editor would improve any Tarantino flick by at least 75%. The man has an inability to shut the hell up! He loves the sound of his own voice (or in this case his endless "witty banter") and can't bear to cut one second of it. Here, let me sum up Death Proof for you: Foot Fetish shot, F-Bomb, F-Bomb, lengthy conversation on an obscure 80's pop song, F-Bomb, More pop-culture, Gratuitous Cameo, F-Bomb, F-Bomb, name-check old movie, F-Bomb, Car Chase, end credits.
That's pretty much the problem that the whole project labors under - self-indulgent twaddle. Rodriguez doesn't restrain himself from going too far over the top, and here Tarantino lets the characters ramble on and on and on and on about random stuff we just don't care about until we've forgotten what the point was or have given up completely on the punch line.
So that's the bad news. What's the good news? The car chase at the end of the movie is the best god damned thing committed to film in 15 years. Sadly, the art of the car chase is lost in Hollywood. The last good - I mean really, really good - car chase that was all 100% cars and raw steel and stunt people in peril was Terminator 2. You might occasionally get a Gone In 60 Seconds or The Fast And The Furious, but compared to the classics like Bullitt or the Blues Brothers or the truck chase from Raiders of the Lost Ark, you just don't get that tire squealing, hubcap flying, muscle car goodness these days. Well, Death Proof delivers about 20 minutes of hard core old school stunt work devoid of any CGI trickery whatsoever (plus about another six minutes towards the start of the film). Fantastic!
Again, I'll put forth the hypothesis that Death Proof (and Planet Terror) would have worked better as a trailer. Take the whole movie, compress it down into five minutes and add in some of that 42nd Street hyperbole in the form of a voice over. You know, something like "Soldiers of fortune who shoot for loot, slay for pay, and slash for cash! Two masters with a thousand ways to kill! Back to back, they face Sudden Death! Molten madness erupting in a vicious vortex of violence! Sudden Death comes screaming out of the skies! The savage struggle for survival? Unleashed! Unchained! Uncontrollable! and Death Proof would have been Pure Unrefined Awesome.
THE DVD -
How do you evaluate a movie like this? On one hand, Death Proof looks horrifically bad - dust, grain, cigarette burns and scratches all over the place - everything that would normally be a big black mark against the DVD - but since they're intentional, I wont hold it against the film. The thing I *WILL* hold against it is that it's not as effective as in Planet Terror, where the manufactured scratches are on the film throughout its running time. In Death Proof, Tarantino eventually tires of the joke and the missing frames and fake blemishes vanish half way through.
THE EXTRAS -
While there's two discs, there isn't a commentary anywhere to be found. The only trailers we get are ones for Death Proof, Planet Terror, 1408, Black Sheep and Feast. The fake trailers for Machete, Werewolf Women of the S.S., Don't and Thanksgiving are nowhere to be seen on either disc. Considering that they were the best things about the Grindhouse double feature, it's a damn shame to see them left off.
At the very least they could have dug up some Public Domain trailers actually from the Grindhouse/Drive-In era and thrown them on. At least they would have fit thematically!
Disc two gets a documentary focusing on the film, more about the great stunt drivers, both old and new. Featured here are stunt co-coordinator for Death Proof Jeff Dashnaw, and his team Buddy Joe Hooker, Steve Davidson, Tracy Dashnaw, Chrissy Weathersby and Terry Leonard.
Next is a short piece about stuntwoman in general and Zoe Bell in particular. Following that is a small segment on Kurt Russell, where pretty much everyone says how cool he is (which, as a statement of fact, I have a hard time arguing against). Then there's a short with Tarantino discussing his female casting choices.
There's the uncut version of Baby It's you, performed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead of Burt Bacharach's song for Smith. There's another casting short, focusing on the guys this time around, and a section on Tarantino's editor since Reservoir Dogs, Sally Menke (who really needs to be fired).
All in all, I'd wait for the inevitable two movie box set with Planet Terror that is sure to have some great extras and the missing fake trailers.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Well, if Tarantino set out to make a bad grindhouse style 70's flick, then he succeeded famously (and I mean that both as an insult and a compliment at the same time). Yet again Tarantino's weakness for rambling pointless dialogue nearly scuttles the movie and the horribly slow pace almost makes you fall asleep. Still, if you just skip to the last couple of chapters of the disc and the amazing car chase, you should be in good shape.
(An aside, you know the really sad thing? For the budget of just ONE of these sections, Roger Corman or Canon Films could have made a dozen films, and at least 50% of them would have been better than this! William Castle would have given his right arm for this kind of money!)
For those of you just joining us, the Grindhouse premise is this: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez love bad, trashy 70's and 80's schlock. For the bulk of his career, it's been clear that Tarantino loves movies that shock, titillate and otherwise have no redeeming values or features. And so the two set out to make intentionally bad, schlocky movies and then releases them together as if it were a double bill playing in a 42nd Street theater back in the '70s right down to the advertisements, film trailers, missing reels, projector mishaps and prints so scratchy and flawed they're close to deterioration.
In Death Proof, Tarantino unrolls a story about three Fine Young Thangs as they unexpectedly find themselves on a collision course with a charming stranger named Stuntman Mike - only to fall to a wicked end. Later, the tables are turned when Mike finds another group of girls to follow, it turns out that sometimes girls fight back!
The problem with Planet Terror, the first half of the Grindhouse double feature, is that Robert Rodriguez turns the action and blood and gore and gunfights up to 11 at the start and leaves the knob there for the remainder of the movie, bludgeoning you into a state of numbness. However while it's beating you over the head with a blood soaked baseball bat, at least it moves briskly along. And I'm fine with that - in a proper grindhouse flick, absolutely anything goes - except for the one prime directive that you must never, ever break: don't bore the audience.
The problem with Death Proof is that Tarantino has two settings: Warp Speed and Dead Stop. When the movie is running at the Warp Speed setting it's really good, but we have to suffer through nearly an hour and a half of Dead Stop to get there. Instead of pus oozing zombies being vaporized by a million rounds of ammunition, we're suffering through watching four completely interchangeable women going on endlessly about drugs and sex and pop culture without ever establishing anything close to credible or likable characters.
I have always contended that a strong editor would improve any Tarantino flick by at least 75%. The man has an inability to shut the hell up! He loves the sound of his own voice (or in this case his endless "witty banter") and can't bear to cut one second of it. Here, let me sum up Death Proof for you: Foot Fetish shot, F-Bomb, F-Bomb, lengthy conversation on an obscure 80's pop song, F-Bomb, More pop-culture, Gratuitous Cameo, F-Bomb, F-Bomb, name-check old movie, F-Bomb, Car Chase, end credits.
That's pretty much the problem that the whole project labors under - self-indulgent twaddle. Rodriguez doesn't restrain himself from going too far over the top, and here Tarantino lets the characters ramble on and on and on and on about random stuff we just don't care about until we've forgotten what the point was or have given up completely on the punch line.
So that's the bad news. What's the good news? The car chase at the end of the movie is the best god damned thing committed to film in 15 years. Sadly, the art of the car chase is lost in Hollywood. The last good - I mean really, really good - car chase that was all 100% cars and raw steel and stunt people in peril was Terminator 2. You might occasionally get a Gone In 60 Seconds or The Fast And The Furious, but compared to the classics like Bullitt or the Blues Brothers or the truck chase from Raiders of the Lost Ark, you just don't get that tire squealing, hubcap flying, muscle car goodness these days. Well, Death Proof delivers about 20 minutes of hard core old school stunt work devoid of any CGI trickery whatsoever (plus about another six minutes towards the start of the film). Fantastic!
Again, I'll put forth the hypothesis that Death Proof (and Planet Terror) would have worked better as a trailer. Take the whole movie, compress it down into five minutes and add in some of that 42nd Street hyperbole in the form of a voice over. You know, something like "Soldiers of fortune who shoot for loot, slay for pay, and slash for cash! Two masters with a thousand ways to kill! Back to back, they face Sudden Death! Molten madness erupting in a vicious vortex of violence! Sudden Death comes screaming out of the skies! The savage struggle for survival? Unleashed! Unchained! Uncontrollable! and Death Proof would have been Pure Unrefined Awesome.
THE DVD -
How do you evaluate a movie like this? On one hand, Death Proof looks horrifically bad - dust, grain, cigarette burns and scratches all over the place - everything that would normally be a big black mark against the DVD - but since they're intentional, I wont hold it against the film. The thing I *WILL* hold against it is that it's not as effective as in Planet Terror, where the manufactured scratches are on the film throughout its running time. In Death Proof, Tarantino eventually tires of the joke and the missing frames and fake blemishes vanish half way through.
THE EXTRAS -
While there's two discs, there isn't a commentary anywhere to be found. The only trailers we get are ones for Death Proof, Planet Terror, 1408, Black Sheep and Feast. The fake trailers for Machete, Werewolf Women of the S.S., Don't and Thanksgiving are nowhere to be seen on either disc. Considering that they were the best things about the Grindhouse double feature, it's a damn shame to see them left off.
At the very least they could have dug up some Public Domain trailers actually from the Grindhouse/Drive-In era and thrown them on. At least they would have fit thematically!
Disc two gets a documentary focusing on the film, more about the great stunt drivers, both old and new. Featured here are stunt co-coordinator for Death Proof Jeff Dashnaw, and his team Buddy Joe Hooker, Steve Davidson, Tracy Dashnaw, Chrissy Weathersby and Terry Leonard.
Next is a short piece about stuntwoman in general and Zoe Bell in particular. Following that is a small segment on Kurt Russell, where pretty much everyone says how cool he is (which, as a statement of fact, I have a hard time arguing against). Then there's a short with Tarantino discussing his female casting choices.
There's the uncut version of Baby It's you, performed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead of Burt Bacharach's song for Smith. There's another casting short, focusing on the guys this time around, and a section on Tarantino's editor since Reservoir Dogs, Sally Menke (who really needs to be fired).
All in all, I'd wait for the inevitable two movie box set with Planet Terror that is sure to have some great extras and the missing fake trailers.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Well, if Tarantino set out to make a bad grindhouse style 70's flick, then he succeeded famously (and I mean that both as an insult and a compliment at the same time). Yet again Tarantino's weakness for rambling pointless dialogue nearly scuttles the movie and the horribly slow pace almost makes you fall asleep. Still, if you just skip to the last couple of chapters of the disc and the amazing car chase, you should be in good shape.
(An aside, you know the really sad thing? For the budget of just ONE of these sections, Roger Corman or Canon Films could have made a dozen films, and at least 50% of them would have been better than this! William Castle would have given his right arm for this kind of money!)
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
BREAKIN' - The Eighties personified!
For those of you paying attention to my content here, you'll know that I'm huge into the eighties. Flock of Seagulls, the Atari 2600, Mister T, feathered hair - and of course Breakdancing. While I could never master such tricky moves (it was only a year or two ago when I got ahold of a "You can Breakdance" video that I finally learned to moonwalk), I do remember fondly the breakers at school with their cardboard mats and gigantic boom boxes poppin' and lockin' every day after school.
And where there are huge fads to be exploited, there are folks like Roger Corman and Menahem Golan and his cousin Yoram Globus were there, ready to spring into action. Oh sure, it was shamelessly capitalizing on the trends of the day, and the movies were the lowest of the low budget productions, but they were also generally entertaining and fun to watch. Cannon films seemed exceptionally adapt at tapping into what the youth of America wanted to see - Ninja, breasts, gunplay, swordplay and Chuck Norris bringing a bucket full of pain to Commies and Arabs.
Now Breakdancing wasn't quite as whored out as the other trends of the eighties, but Cannon did go to the Hip-Hop well three times: Breakin', the infamously subtitled Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo and the Mario Van Peebles vehicle Beat Street. Where Beat Street was more dour and gritty and realistic, the two Breakin' movies were light and colorful and much more idealistic - which is why I probably favor them over the heavier tone of Beat Street.
The plot to Breakin' is nothing new - in fact the story goes back to the forties and the Mickey Rooney "Lets put on a show and save the orphanage" shows like Babes in Arms or Strike Up the Band, where the plot is really nothing more than a basic framework to hang a bunch of song and dance numbers on.
Meet Kelly (played by Lucinda Dickey, who would go on to star in another Cannon classic: Ninja III: The Domination), a waitress at a local burger joint in LA who dreams of becoming a dancer on Broadway. The problem is, she just can't seem to catch a break, and needs something new and fresh to break out of her rut. Enter Ozone and Turbo (Played by Shabba-Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp, sporting far cooler real life names than their in-film characters), the baddest street dancers down on the boardwalk. Oh sure, chumps like Electro-Rock are always getting up in their grill trying to start something, but much like MC Hammer, they cant touch Ozone and Turbo.
Kelly becomes captivated by the pair's funky fresh moves, and begs them to teach her how to Breakdance. Her agent, however, isn't so down with the street. Kelly has potential, but if she really wants to make it, she'll have to abandon these low brow street dancers and commit fully to the more accepted dance methods.
Meanwhile, Ozone has a similar problem. His friendship with Kelly means that he could quit his day job sweeping out the corner supermarket and dance professionally - if he gives up the street. As much as he wants a shot at the big time, Ozone doesn't want to compromise his look and his roots by selling out. Can Ozone and Turbo convince the narrow-minded The Man that breakin' is a legitimate form of art? Will Kelly help Ozone gain success while staying true to his ideals? And what of the evil Electro-Rock gang, looking to bring down the pair in a dance off to end all dance offs?
Okay, so the story is basically Flashdance, but with Breakdancing, the premise is goofy as hell and the whole production is very firmly trapped in the eighties in both look and style, but I couldn’t help get won over by the movie's innate charm, it's positive energy and optimistic tone. The world of Breakin' is a world where the weather is always perfect, the colors are vivid, the cultural diversity is accepted without blinking an eye and conflicts between rival gangs are settled with a breakdance battle instead of knives and guns.
But what Breakin' lacks in realism it more than makes up for with enthusiasm. None of the main cast was veteran actors when Breakin' was made, more familiar with dancing than the thespian arts - and yet they manage to carry themselves through sheer energy and natural charm and stunning good looks. Not that it matters anyway since the real star of the movie is the dancing - and on that front Breakin' acquits itself nicely. From Breakdancing to bits of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire routines, Breakin' is full of lively, energetic dance and musical numbers and some great eighties pop music.
Breakin' was directed by Joel Silberg, who up until this point had worked primarily as a director on movies over in Israel. He would go on to direct a couple more films for Cannon: Lambada: The Forbidden Dance and the fairly forgettable Rappin'. But for now, Joel manages to keep things lively and interesting. Shabba-Doo went on to serve as a choreographer for artists such as Lionel Richie, Madonna, and Luther Vandross - just to name a few. Meanwhile Shabba-Doo managed to spin his carrer into parts in Naked Gun 33 1/3, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Dudley Do-Right and a spot on an episode of Family Matters. Not exactly a stellar career, but better than I've done. Lucinda did a couple more films before retiring and marrying the co-producer from Survivor.
So they didn’t exactly set the film world on fire after this. But we get at least one more Breakin' movie out of them (and, as I hear) rumors of a third one going into production. More importantly, despite what you might have heard, this actually isn't a bad movie. Sure it looks dated, but what's wrong with that? The movie was a product of it's time and culture. Yeah the plot is simple - but then does everything have to be a twisty, turny labyrinth of story telling? Not everything has to be heavy, angry and angsty
In short, Breakin' is simple, harmless, entertaining fun.
THE DVD -
The DVD is presented in a full frame format - but it's not pan and scan. As I understand it, most of the Cannon films in the eighties were shot open-matte format and cropped down to widescreen for release. So of course I'd prefer a widescreen anamorphic print, at least we're not losing any information from the sides - crucial to a movie that has choreography featured so prominently.
THE EXTRAS -
Sadly, the only extra is just the theatrical trailer. There is a box set with both Breakin' movies and Beat Street that comes with a fourth disc full of documentaries and whatnot - but the set came out after the individual releases, so I don't have that and cant tell you anything more about it other than it exists.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Is Breakin' a good movie? No, not really. Is Breakin' a fun movie? Hell yes - and anyone who knows me knows that fun and entertaining trumps well made and "good" any day of the week (and twice on Sundays).
And where there are huge fads to be exploited, there are folks like Roger Corman and Menahem Golan and his cousin Yoram Globus were there, ready to spring into action. Oh sure, it was shamelessly capitalizing on the trends of the day, and the movies were the lowest of the low budget productions, but they were also generally entertaining and fun to watch. Cannon films seemed exceptionally adapt at tapping into what the youth of America wanted to see - Ninja, breasts, gunplay, swordplay and Chuck Norris bringing a bucket full of pain to Commies and Arabs.
Now Breakdancing wasn't quite as whored out as the other trends of the eighties, but Cannon did go to the Hip-Hop well three times: Breakin', the infamously subtitled Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo and the Mario Van Peebles vehicle Beat Street. Where Beat Street was more dour and gritty and realistic, the two Breakin' movies were light and colorful and much more idealistic - which is why I probably favor them over the heavier tone of Beat Street.
The plot to Breakin' is nothing new - in fact the story goes back to the forties and the Mickey Rooney "Lets put on a show and save the orphanage" shows like Babes in Arms or Strike Up the Band, where the plot is really nothing more than a basic framework to hang a bunch of song and dance numbers on.
Meet Kelly (played by Lucinda Dickey, who would go on to star in another Cannon classic: Ninja III: The Domination), a waitress at a local burger joint in LA who dreams of becoming a dancer on Broadway. The problem is, she just can't seem to catch a break, and needs something new and fresh to break out of her rut. Enter Ozone and Turbo (Played by Shabba-Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp, sporting far cooler real life names than their in-film characters), the baddest street dancers down on the boardwalk. Oh sure, chumps like Electro-Rock are always getting up in their grill trying to start something, but much like MC Hammer, they cant touch Ozone and Turbo.
Kelly becomes captivated by the pair's funky fresh moves, and begs them to teach her how to Breakdance. Her agent, however, isn't so down with the street. Kelly has potential, but if she really wants to make it, she'll have to abandon these low brow street dancers and commit fully to the more accepted dance methods.
Meanwhile, Ozone has a similar problem. His friendship with Kelly means that he could quit his day job sweeping out the corner supermarket and dance professionally - if he gives up the street. As much as he wants a shot at the big time, Ozone doesn't want to compromise his look and his roots by selling out. Can Ozone and Turbo convince the narrow-minded The Man that breakin' is a legitimate form of art? Will Kelly help Ozone gain success while staying true to his ideals? And what of the evil Electro-Rock gang, looking to bring down the pair in a dance off to end all dance offs?
Okay, so the story is basically Flashdance, but with Breakdancing, the premise is goofy as hell and the whole production is very firmly trapped in the eighties in both look and style, but I couldn’t help get won over by the movie's innate charm, it's positive energy and optimistic tone. The world of Breakin' is a world where the weather is always perfect, the colors are vivid, the cultural diversity is accepted without blinking an eye and conflicts between rival gangs are settled with a breakdance battle instead of knives and guns.
But what Breakin' lacks in realism it more than makes up for with enthusiasm. None of the main cast was veteran actors when Breakin' was made, more familiar with dancing than the thespian arts - and yet they manage to carry themselves through sheer energy and natural charm and stunning good looks. Not that it matters anyway since the real star of the movie is the dancing - and on that front Breakin' acquits itself nicely. From Breakdancing to bits of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire routines, Breakin' is full of lively, energetic dance and musical numbers and some great eighties pop music.
Breakin' was directed by Joel Silberg, who up until this point had worked primarily as a director on movies over in Israel. He would go on to direct a couple more films for Cannon: Lambada: The Forbidden Dance and the fairly forgettable Rappin'. But for now, Joel manages to keep things lively and interesting. Shabba-Doo went on to serve as a choreographer for artists such as Lionel Richie, Madonna, and Luther Vandross - just to name a few. Meanwhile Shabba-Doo managed to spin his carrer into parts in Naked Gun 33 1/3, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Dudley Do-Right and a spot on an episode of Family Matters. Not exactly a stellar career, but better than I've done. Lucinda did a couple more films before retiring and marrying the co-producer from Survivor.
So they didn’t exactly set the film world on fire after this. But we get at least one more Breakin' movie out of them (and, as I hear) rumors of a third one going into production. More importantly, despite what you might have heard, this actually isn't a bad movie. Sure it looks dated, but what's wrong with that? The movie was a product of it's time and culture. Yeah the plot is simple - but then does everything have to be a twisty, turny labyrinth of story telling? Not everything has to be heavy, angry and angsty
In short, Breakin' is simple, harmless, entertaining fun.
THE DVD -
The DVD is presented in a full frame format - but it's not pan and scan. As I understand it, most of the Cannon films in the eighties were shot open-matte format and cropped down to widescreen for release. So of course I'd prefer a widescreen anamorphic print, at least we're not losing any information from the sides - crucial to a movie that has choreography featured so prominently.
THE EXTRAS -
Sadly, the only extra is just the theatrical trailer. There is a box set with both Breakin' movies and Beat Street that comes with a fourth disc full of documentaries and whatnot - but the set came out after the individual releases, so I don't have that and cant tell you anything more about it other than it exists.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Is Breakin' a good movie? No, not really. Is Breakin' a fun movie? Hell yes - and anyone who knows me knows that fun and entertaining trumps well made and "good" any day of the week (and twice on Sundays).
Monday, March 24, 2008
DELTA FORCE 2 - Just say no.
In the Eighties, there were only movie three villains of any note: Dirty Nasty Godless Communists, Evil Towel Wearing Terrorists and Slimy Drug Dealers. You'd occasionally get some crossover, Slimy Drug Dealers that were working for Dirty Nasty Godless Communists (The Living Daylights), or Evil Towel Wearing Terrorists working for the Dirty Nasty Godless Communists (Rambo III) but for the most part it was one or the other.
Since Chuck had taken out the Evil Towel Wearing Terrorists in the first Delta Force, it was time for head south of the border to Costa Unspecifidia to Just Say No.
After taking out a DEA hit team, the government sends Delta Force to snatch Ramone Cota (played by the ever fabulous Billy Drago) and drag his sorry butt back to the united states for trial. Chuck and his ethnically appropriate partner Bobby Payne grab Cota onboard a plane as it passes over international waters, haul him down to the cargo bay and throw him out sans parachute, millions of dollars streaming from his briefcase as he falls. Chuck, being the badass that he is, leaps after him and hauls Cota to safety before he goes splat in international waters.
Faster than you can say "Violated Miranda Rights", Cota is out on bail - but not before Billy gives him a good right hook for his efforts. Unfortunately that just means that Cota now has to extract vengeance from Billy by killing his lovely wife and son (who we met several scenes before, and they had the stink of the walking dead the second I laid eyes on them).
Billy, now obsessed with Cota's death, flies to Costa Unspecifidia to personally extract a pound of flesh, despite Chuck's warnings that vengeance isn’t the right thing to do. Of course when Billy is gassed to death by Cota not but a few scenes later, Chuck abandons his zen buddist stance and delivers a first class beatdown in revenge for killing his partner. Much ass kicking ensues.
Movies like Invasion U.S.A. or Rambo or Delta Force live or die by the action sequences they can deliver. The plots are often nonsense, the acting is poor to non-existent and the character development consists of two lines of exposition, and we're willing to put up with all that just so long as the movie delivers on the visceral thrills. The problem with Delta Force 2 is that it fails to deliver on the ass-kicking. There are a couple of good sequences here and there, but for the most part these are broken up by waaaaaay too many scenes of people talking.
Even worse, there's an extended Rock Climbing sequence as Chuck infiltrates the enemy stronghold. As any bad movie fan knows, Rock Climbing is second only to Scuba Diving as an sure fire excitement killer. And ten minutes of Chuck climbing is about nine minutes too long.
I'm probably earning myself a roundhouse kick from the Beard Himself, but the film's director Aaron Norris (yes, Chuck's brother) is lackadaisical and pedestrian. He just has no visual flare or sense of pacing, and the film suffers for it.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 0
EXPLOSIONS: 64
ROUNDS FIRED: 2,831
PUNCHES THROWN: 213 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 1
CAR CHASES: 1
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 5
BEST LINE: " You're nothing but a chickenshit weasel who thrives on the misery of others. And when death calls, you'll be screaming like a baby."
BEST KILL Chuck impales a guy on an Aztec statue.
THE DVD -
Sadly we get a full frame edition - although not necessarily pan and scan. From my reading, I think that Cannon shot all their films in open-matte format, meaning that they cropped the top and bottom for later release, so I don't think we're losing any picture. The framing doesn't seem tight or cropped like you would normally get in a pan and scan print. Not the most desirable outcome, but it could be worse.
Like the rest of the Chuck Norris collection, this print is passable but not outstanding. There were some scratches here and there, but not anything that would detract too badly.
THE EXTRAS -
Sadly, like all the other Cannon Film releases, all we get is a trailer - and that’s it.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Delta Force 2 sags and droops like a 50 cent prostitute in Thailand. There is too much rock climbing and planning and strategy in-between the good bits we all came to see: chuck kicking mucho grande ass and blowing things up really good. Billy Drago does some typically wonderful acting, but he alone is unable to carry the film.
Sorry Chuck, but it t'aint working for me.
Since Chuck had taken out the Evil Towel Wearing Terrorists in the first Delta Force, it was time for head south of the border to Costa Unspecifidia to Just Say No.
After taking out a DEA hit team, the government sends Delta Force to snatch Ramone Cota (played by the ever fabulous Billy Drago) and drag his sorry butt back to the united states for trial. Chuck and his ethnically appropriate partner Bobby Payne grab Cota onboard a plane as it passes over international waters, haul him down to the cargo bay and throw him out sans parachute, millions of dollars streaming from his briefcase as he falls. Chuck, being the badass that he is, leaps after him and hauls Cota to safety before he goes splat in international waters.
Faster than you can say "Violated Miranda Rights", Cota is out on bail - but not before Billy gives him a good right hook for his efforts. Unfortunately that just means that Cota now has to extract vengeance from Billy by killing his lovely wife and son (who we met several scenes before, and they had the stink of the walking dead the second I laid eyes on them).
Billy, now obsessed with Cota's death, flies to Costa Unspecifidia to personally extract a pound of flesh, despite Chuck's warnings that vengeance isn’t the right thing to do. Of course when Billy is gassed to death by Cota not but a few scenes later, Chuck abandons his zen buddist stance and delivers a first class beatdown in revenge for killing his partner. Much ass kicking ensues.
Movies like Invasion U.S.A. or Rambo or Delta Force live or die by the action sequences they can deliver. The plots are often nonsense, the acting is poor to non-existent and the character development consists of two lines of exposition, and we're willing to put up with all that just so long as the movie delivers on the visceral thrills. The problem with Delta Force 2 is that it fails to deliver on the ass-kicking. There are a couple of good sequences here and there, but for the most part these are broken up by waaaaaay too many scenes of people talking.
Even worse, there's an extended Rock Climbing sequence as Chuck infiltrates the enemy stronghold. As any bad movie fan knows, Rock Climbing is second only to Scuba Diving as an sure fire excitement killer. And ten minutes of Chuck climbing is about nine minutes too long.
I'm probably earning myself a roundhouse kick from the Beard Himself, but the film's director Aaron Norris (yes, Chuck's brother) is lackadaisical and pedestrian. He just has no visual flare or sense of pacing, and the film suffers for it.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 0
EXPLOSIONS: 64
ROUNDS FIRED: 2,831
PUNCHES THROWN: 213 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 1
CAR CHASES: 1
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 5
BEST LINE: " You're nothing but a chickenshit weasel who thrives on the misery of others. And when death calls, you'll be screaming like a baby."
BEST KILL Chuck impales a guy on an Aztec statue.
THE DVD -
Sadly we get a full frame edition - although not necessarily pan and scan. From my reading, I think that Cannon shot all their films in open-matte format, meaning that they cropped the top and bottom for later release, so I don't think we're losing any picture. The framing doesn't seem tight or cropped like you would normally get in a pan and scan print. Not the most desirable outcome, but it could be worse.
Like the rest of the Chuck Norris collection, this print is passable but not outstanding. There were some scratches here and there, but not anything that would detract too badly.
THE EXTRAS -
Sadly, like all the other Cannon Film releases, all we get is a trailer - and that’s it.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Delta Force 2 sags and droops like a 50 cent prostitute in Thailand. There is too much rock climbing and planning and strategy in-between the good bits we all came to see: chuck kicking mucho grande ass and blowing things up really good. Billy Drago does some typically wonderful acting, but he alone is unable to carry the film.
Sorry Chuck, but it t'aint working for me.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE - Dolph Lundgren Has the Power!
You have to admire Cannon Films. Producers Yoram Globus and his cousin Menahem Golan had an ability to tap the pulse of the movie going audience of the eighties and deliver some of the best low budget B-movie fare of the decade. They pretty much sparked the Ninja craze with Nine Deaths of the Ninja and American Ninja, they were able to jump on the blossoming breakdancing and hip-hop craze with the two Breakin' movies Rappin' and Beat Streat, and pretty much re-wrote history when Chuck Norris single handedly won the Vietnam War in Missing in Action 1-3.
Is it any surprise then that they jumped onto one of the biggest fads of the eighties: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe? Not really.
Let me bring you up to speed, in case you're unaware of the franchise: Adam, prince of Eternia, is a cowardly, blond muscleman playboy who loves the easy life of royalty. However it's all a scam, because Adam possesses the Power Sword, and when he holds it aloft and says the magic words "By the Power of Grayskull! I have the Power!" he is transformed into He-Man, the strongest, most powerful man on Eternia.
Together with his close allies, Cringer/Battle Cat, Teela, Man-At-Arms and Orko, He-Man uses his powers to defend Eternia from the evil forces of Skeletor and his many colorful minions. Skeletor badly wants to conquer Castle Grayskull and possess that fabulous power for himself allowing him to not dominate only Eternia, but the whole universe.
The movie tweaks things slightly - we never see He-Man as Adam, which doesn’t necessarily mean he cant turn back or anything, just that we don't see the playboy poofdah side of things. Also gone are Cringer and Orko, He-Man's friend/mount and comic relief. A giant green tiger and a flying hooded magician would have been far too expensive and difficult to do convincingly with 1980's technology.
Instead we get the dwarf inventor Gwildor (played by famouse short person Billy Barty in one of his better rolls), who has invented a Cosmic Key, a MacGuffin that allows the possessor to open a portal to anywhere in the universe. Skeletor, being Skeletor, wants The MacGuffin badly - and as his troops close in to capture it, Gwildor randomly opens a doorway. And so He-Man, Man-at-Arms, Teela and Gwildor escape Skeletor's men. Of course having the entire time/space continuum to choose from, what are the odds that He-Man will land in Southern California, circa 1986?
Damn near 100% if you ask me.
Anyway, as He-Man and his companions land in Southern California, circa 1986, the Key falls into the hands of a teenage couple who think that it's some kind of Japanese synthesizer and plan to incorporate it into their band's upcoming gig. Unfortunately for the band, Skeletor and his goons are going to be the opening act. . . .
Headlining the movie (sorry, I'll stop with the concert references) is Dolph Lundgren, fresh from his Ivan "I vill break you" Drago roll on Rocky IV. And honestly, I cant think of a better choice of eighties action movie star to play He-Man. He's buff, he's ripped and he's blond. Ok, Dolph wasn't (isn't?) the best actor in Hollywood, but he was able to sell the physical demands of the roll convincingly. In fact it's him through all the movie, since there wasn't a stunt-man big and ripped enough to double for Dolph.
The flip side of Dolph's He-Man coin was of course Frank Langella's Skeletor. The man loves to hear his own voice, letting loose with all kinds of lengthy monologues and stomping around Grayskull shouting at minions in a way that only an actor covered in a ton of latex shaped like a skull head could. There is no subtlety here - but then the animated Skeletor wasn’t exactly subtle either - but he does do a damn good job of it.
The man in the directors chair, Gary Goddard, had been previously responsible for really dreadful soft core Bo Derek Tarzan the Ape Man a couple of years previous and had helped Joe Straczynski on the vastly underrated Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future delivers a rather pedestrian take on He-Man. The action is okay, but everything else is pretty functional - and that's about it. The set design and costumes are really good - kudos to the art department - but despite having a huge budget lavished upon the production, it's not very engaging.
At the end of the day, the film was pretty much a flop. Between Masters of the Universe, the Stallone vehicle Over the Top, and the financial train wreck that was Superman IV: The Quest for Peace a shift in the industry economics to favor the major studios instead of the smaller independent film-makers, and an increasingly crowded direct-to-video market, this was pretty much the end of the line for Cannon Films.
The Go-Go boys would break up their partnership with notable animosity and form their own independent studios (oddly enough producing two competing Lambada movies at the same time), before eventually sinking beneath the waves of cinema history.
And with them went a decade of excess and glitz, where an action movie could be jingoistic and loud and dumb and still gain acceptance, where the big studios didn't micro-manage the film into a test-marketed demographic targeted homogenized mess. Where directors didn't have to rely on this god-awful "Shaky Action Cam" that has all but destroyed action movies these day.
And that's a damn shame.
THE DVD -
Masters of the Universe is one of Warner Brothers' early releases, and comes in a snap-case (Blech!). The video is pretty good, if not outstanding. We get a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that isn't isn't too bad - although it seems to run a bit darker than I remember when I saw this in the theater, and the colors aren't as bold as I remember them either. But then this could be just my memory playing tricks on me.
THE EXTRAS -
Only a couple of extras of note, beyond the text-only cast and crew bios and character profiles, is a commentary from Goddard, who proves himself to be pretty knowledgeable and quite engaging. We also get the theatrical trailer to round things out. Not a lot of stuff, but better than some of the other Cannon films on DVD so far.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Masters of the Universe is not a good movie, but it is a fun movie. Okay, the story (such as it is) slows down towards the middle bit, as everyone runs around trying to find the Key, but it picks right back up again at the end. And of course some of the fans will go "Oh, it’s not He-Man! Where is the theme? Where is Cringer? Where is Orko? Change is BAD!", I'll point out that the original cartoon wasn't all that good either (again, it was bad but fun, just like the movie). Cast aside your preconceptions and just enjoy!
Is it any surprise then that they jumped onto one of the biggest fads of the eighties: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe? Not really.
Let me bring you up to speed, in case you're unaware of the franchise: Adam, prince of Eternia, is a cowardly, blond muscleman playboy who loves the easy life of royalty. However it's all a scam, because Adam possesses the Power Sword, and when he holds it aloft and says the magic words "By the Power of Grayskull! I have the Power!" he is transformed into He-Man, the strongest, most powerful man on Eternia.
Together with his close allies, Cringer/Battle Cat, Teela, Man-At-Arms and Orko, He-Man uses his powers to defend Eternia from the evil forces of Skeletor and his many colorful minions. Skeletor badly wants to conquer Castle Grayskull and possess that fabulous power for himself allowing him to not dominate only Eternia, but the whole universe.
The movie tweaks things slightly - we never see He-Man as Adam, which doesn’t necessarily mean he cant turn back or anything, just that we don't see the playboy poofdah side of things. Also gone are Cringer and Orko, He-Man's friend/mount and comic relief. A giant green tiger and a flying hooded magician would have been far too expensive and difficult to do convincingly with 1980's technology.
Instead we get the dwarf inventor Gwildor (played by famouse short person Billy Barty in one of his better rolls), who has invented a Cosmic Key, a MacGuffin that allows the possessor to open a portal to anywhere in the universe. Skeletor, being Skeletor, wants The MacGuffin badly - and as his troops close in to capture it, Gwildor randomly opens a doorway. And so He-Man, Man-at-Arms, Teela and Gwildor escape Skeletor's men. Of course having the entire time/space continuum to choose from, what are the odds that He-Man will land in Southern California, circa 1986?
Damn near 100% if you ask me.
Anyway, as He-Man and his companions land in Southern California, circa 1986, the Key falls into the hands of a teenage couple who think that it's some kind of Japanese synthesizer and plan to incorporate it into their band's upcoming gig. Unfortunately for the band, Skeletor and his goons are going to be the opening act. . . .
Headlining the movie (sorry, I'll stop with the concert references) is Dolph Lundgren, fresh from his Ivan "I vill break you" Drago roll on Rocky IV. And honestly, I cant think of a better choice of eighties action movie star to play He-Man. He's buff, he's ripped and he's blond. Ok, Dolph wasn't (isn't?) the best actor in Hollywood, but he was able to sell the physical demands of the roll convincingly. In fact it's him through all the movie, since there wasn't a stunt-man big and ripped enough to double for Dolph.
The flip side of Dolph's He-Man coin was of course Frank Langella's Skeletor. The man loves to hear his own voice, letting loose with all kinds of lengthy monologues and stomping around Grayskull shouting at minions in a way that only an actor covered in a ton of latex shaped like a skull head could. There is no subtlety here - but then the animated Skeletor wasn’t exactly subtle either - but he does do a damn good job of it.
The man in the directors chair, Gary Goddard, had been previously responsible for really dreadful soft core Bo Derek Tarzan the Ape Man a couple of years previous and had helped Joe Straczynski on the vastly underrated Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future delivers a rather pedestrian take on He-Man. The action is okay, but everything else is pretty functional - and that's about it. The set design and costumes are really good - kudos to the art department - but despite having a huge budget lavished upon the production, it's not very engaging.
At the end of the day, the film was pretty much a flop. Between Masters of the Universe, the Stallone vehicle Over the Top, and the financial train wreck that was Superman IV: The Quest for Peace a shift in the industry economics to favor the major studios instead of the smaller independent film-makers, and an increasingly crowded direct-to-video market, this was pretty much the end of the line for Cannon Films.
The Go-Go boys would break up their partnership with notable animosity and form their own independent studios (oddly enough producing two competing Lambada movies at the same time), before eventually sinking beneath the waves of cinema history.
And with them went a decade of excess and glitz, where an action movie could be jingoistic and loud and dumb and still gain acceptance, where the big studios didn't micro-manage the film into a test-marketed demographic targeted homogenized mess. Where directors didn't have to rely on this god-awful "Shaky Action Cam" that has all but destroyed action movies these day.
And that's a damn shame.
THE DVD -
Masters of the Universe is one of Warner Brothers' early releases, and comes in a snap-case (Blech!). The video is pretty good, if not outstanding. We get a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that isn't isn't too bad - although it seems to run a bit darker than I remember when I saw this in the theater, and the colors aren't as bold as I remember them either. But then this could be just my memory playing tricks on me.
THE EXTRAS -
Only a couple of extras of note, beyond the text-only cast and crew bios and character profiles, is a commentary from Goddard, who proves himself to be pretty knowledgeable and quite engaging. We also get the theatrical trailer to round things out. Not a lot of stuff, but better than some of the other Cannon films on DVD so far.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Masters of the Universe is not a good movie, but it is a fun movie. Okay, the story (such as it is) slows down towards the middle bit, as everyone runs around trying to find the Key, but it picks right back up again at the end. And of course some of the fans will go "Oh, it’s not He-Man! Where is the theme? Where is Cringer? Where is Orko? Change is BAD!", I'll point out that the original cartoon wasn't all that good either (again, it was bad but fun, just like the movie). Cast aside your preconceptions and just enjoy!
Saturday, March 22, 2008
BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS - Most fun you'll ever have with a flying uterus!
You really have to hand it to Roger Corman - the man knows how to deliver a product. Over the course of the last fifty years - he started as co-producer on Highway Dragnet in 1954 - Roger has proven himself time and again that he is the undisputed king of the B-Movie. Oh, sure his flicks are often tacky and low budget and often known for jumping on whatever bandwagon happened to be passing at the time, but his ability to take a microscopic budget and deliver an entertaining movie on schedule is astounding.
Take Battle Beyond the Stars, a shameless remake of Seven Samurai (or the Magnificent Seven if you prefer) hitched to the rising star (wars) of George Lucas and his space opera that took the world by storm.
For those uncultured illiterates who don’t know the story, let me get you up to speed. Meet Shad, our Luke Skywalker of the film, played by Richard Thomas, stuck yet again playing a innocent farmboy. However, I'm pretty sure the Waltons never had to employ a bunch of hired guns to save the farm from a evil space pirate.
That evil space pirate is Sador, played by patron saint of B-movies John Saxon in full-on scenery chewing glory. He comes with all the stock B-Movie bad guy traits - detachable limbs and a hideous deformity (in this case, a freaky birthmark covering half his face). If he had a mustache, he'd be twirling it. As it is, he has to leave some of the scenery unchewed for the rest of the cast like. . . .
Nanelia played by Darlanne Fluegel (who would go on to have a successful B-movie career with flicks like Scanner Cop and Darkman III), who had lived on a spacestation surrounded by nothing but androids and her father's head in a jar. Never knowing the Touch of a Man, she agrees to come along with Shad on his journey and act as useless love interest.
Next up on the dance card is Space Cowboy, played by George Peppard (Need I really mention George's pedigree? Come on, he's freakin' Hannibal "I love it when a plan comes together" Smith! If you don’t know who he is, then frankly I don’t want you reading my reviews. Go away!). Space Cowboy does exactly what it says on the tin: he's a cowboy in space, complete with confederate flag on his ship, beat-up cowboy hat on his head and a cigar always close at hand. Oh, and he has a wet bar in his belt buckle, complete with ice. How cool is that!
While Shad is off doing line dancing with Cowboy, Nanelia is captured by Cayman of the Lambda Zone. See Cayman is a lizard-man, and a Cayman lizard is a . . . oh never mind. Anyway when Nanelia mentions who they are fighting, Cayman spares her and throws in with her cause. Along with him come Nick and Nack (actually they dong get names, so that's what I'm calling them), two midgets to radiate heat for communication.
Then Shad runs into Nestor - well, more like Nestor captures his ship. Nestor is a collective consciousness hive mind. Since Nestor is bored, he sends units of himself to scour the universe for fun. Imagine if you were bored and lazy and didn’t want to get off the couch to see what was on TV, so you sent your thumb into the living room to watch in your stead. Meanwhile your leg is off surfing the net and your other leg is playing Gears of War on the 360. Creepy, but kind of cool.
Next is she of the huge heaving bosoms, Saint-Exmin the Valkyrie, as played by the Tall, leggy, buxom and very statuesque Sybil Danning (Last seen in the Grindhouse trailer Werewolf Women of the S.S.). Again she does what she says on the tin - coming from a race of fierce warriors who love to fight and fight and make sweet, sweet love.
Lastly, but not least is Gelt, the cold as ice assassin, played by Robert Vaughn who pretty much does exactly what he did in Magnificent Seven, but in space. What scenery managed to escape chewing while Saxon was on screen, Vaughn manages to finish off.
The production is of course cheap like you wouldn’t believe. I've seen more convincing exterior sets on Doctor Who, the effects shots are constantly recycled (although the models, built by James Cameron - yes, THAT James Cameron - look fantastic), and the costume are so cheesy that you'll think you're in Switzerland.
On the other hand, the story is pretty much Seven Samurai, so it's a classic tale. The movie is nice and short, so there's very little padding to get in the way. And script writer John Sayles had some pretty creative moments, thinking through each mercenary and their motivations. Or just coming up with some very strange and interesting characters, like what you might see in a more "hard" science fiction novel. No, the script is still pretty B-movie stuff, but it's got a nice layer of thoughtfulness and creativity to it.
If there is a flaw to the movie it would be James Horner and his score. Horner pretty much used Battle Beyond the Stars part and parcel for Star Trek II, and as such has a tired feel about it - and I know that Battle Beyond the Stars came first, but I'm way more familiar with his Trek work, so I cant help but shake that feeling. I know it's unfair to hold it against Battle Beyond the Stars, so I'll call this one a mulligan and move on.
Battle Beyond the Stars could very easily have slipped into being total camp and cheese. However, Corman knows how to play things straight enough so they don’t start feeding on themselves but not so far that the movie takes itself to seriously. The end result is probably one of the better post-Star Wars knock-offs that you'll likely find.
THE DVD -
Not the best video I have in my collection. There are a lot of scratches and dirt on the print, most evident around the reel changes (you can tell when a cigarette burn is coming up, since the picture turns to total crap). And I don’t remember the movie being this dark when I saw it in the theater 25 years ago - but that might just be me. Still, this is probably the best print you're ever going to get of this flick.
THE EXTRAS -
Some, but not a ton, of extras. We get two commentaries - one from Roger and Sayles (very interesting and filled with all sorts of trivia) and one from Gale Anne Hurd, who got her start as an assistant to Corman on this flick before moving on to movies like Terminator (not bad, but full of dead air). We get a fist full of trailers including Piranha, Saint Jack, Fire on the Amazon, Suburbia, and the theatrical trailer for Battle Beyond the Stars. There's a trivia game (that unlocks a photo gallery), some text bios. Not a bad package for a cheesy Roger Corman flick.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
A stupid, fun flick that's cheesy as hell. Well worth your time.
Take Battle Beyond the Stars, a shameless remake of Seven Samurai (or the Magnificent Seven if you prefer) hitched to the rising star (wars) of George Lucas and his space opera that took the world by storm.
For those uncultured illiterates who don’t know the story, let me get you up to speed. Meet Shad, our Luke Skywalker of the film, played by Richard Thomas, stuck yet again playing a innocent farmboy. However, I'm pretty sure the Waltons never had to employ a bunch of hired guns to save the farm from a evil space pirate.
That evil space pirate is Sador, played by patron saint of B-movies John Saxon in full-on scenery chewing glory. He comes with all the stock B-Movie bad guy traits - detachable limbs and a hideous deformity (in this case, a freaky birthmark covering half his face). If he had a mustache, he'd be twirling it. As it is, he has to leave some of the scenery unchewed for the rest of the cast like. . . .
Nanelia played by Darlanne Fluegel (who would go on to have a successful B-movie career with flicks like Scanner Cop and Darkman III), who had lived on a spacestation surrounded by nothing but androids and her father's head in a jar. Never knowing the Touch of a Man, she agrees to come along with Shad on his journey and act as useless love interest.
Next up on the dance card is Space Cowboy, played by George Peppard (Need I really mention George's pedigree? Come on, he's freakin' Hannibal "I love it when a plan comes together" Smith! If you don’t know who he is, then frankly I don’t want you reading my reviews. Go away!). Space Cowboy does exactly what it says on the tin: he's a cowboy in space, complete with confederate flag on his ship, beat-up cowboy hat on his head and a cigar always close at hand. Oh, and he has a wet bar in his belt buckle, complete with ice. How cool is that!
While Shad is off doing line dancing with Cowboy, Nanelia is captured by Cayman of the Lambda Zone. See Cayman is a lizard-man, and a Cayman lizard is a . . . oh never mind. Anyway when Nanelia mentions who they are fighting, Cayman spares her and throws in with her cause. Along with him come Nick and Nack (actually they dong get names, so that's what I'm calling them), two midgets to radiate heat for communication.
Then Shad runs into Nestor - well, more like Nestor captures his ship. Nestor is a collective consciousness hive mind. Since Nestor is bored, he sends units of himself to scour the universe for fun. Imagine if you were bored and lazy and didn’t want to get off the couch to see what was on TV, so you sent your thumb into the living room to watch in your stead. Meanwhile your leg is off surfing the net and your other leg is playing Gears of War on the 360. Creepy, but kind of cool.
Next is she of the huge heaving bosoms, Saint-Exmin the Valkyrie, as played by the Tall, leggy, buxom and very statuesque Sybil Danning (Last seen in the Grindhouse trailer Werewolf Women of the S.S.). Again she does what she says on the tin - coming from a race of fierce warriors who love to fight and fight and make sweet, sweet love.
Lastly, but not least is Gelt, the cold as ice assassin, played by Robert Vaughn who pretty much does exactly what he did in Magnificent Seven, but in space. What scenery managed to escape chewing while Saxon was on screen, Vaughn manages to finish off.
The production is of course cheap like you wouldn’t believe. I've seen more convincing exterior sets on Doctor Who, the effects shots are constantly recycled (although the models, built by James Cameron - yes, THAT James Cameron - look fantastic), and the costume are so cheesy that you'll think you're in Switzerland.
On the other hand, the story is pretty much Seven Samurai, so it's a classic tale. The movie is nice and short, so there's very little padding to get in the way. And script writer John Sayles had some pretty creative moments, thinking through each mercenary and their motivations. Or just coming up with some very strange and interesting characters, like what you might see in a more "hard" science fiction novel. No, the script is still pretty B-movie stuff, but it's got a nice layer of thoughtfulness and creativity to it.
If there is a flaw to the movie it would be James Horner and his score. Horner pretty much used Battle Beyond the Stars part and parcel for Star Trek II, and as such has a tired feel about it - and I know that Battle Beyond the Stars came first, but I'm way more familiar with his Trek work, so I cant help but shake that feeling. I know it's unfair to hold it against Battle Beyond the Stars, so I'll call this one a mulligan and move on.
Battle Beyond the Stars could very easily have slipped into being total camp and cheese. However, Corman knows how to play things straight enough so they don’t start feeding on themselves but not so far that the movie takes itself to seriously. The end result is probably one of the better post-Star Wars knock-offs that you'll likely find.
THE DVD -
Not the best video I have in my collection. There are a lot of scratches and dirt on the print, most evident around the reel changes (you can tell when a cigarette burn is coming up, since the picture turns to total crap). And I don’t remember the movie being this dark when I saw it in the theater 25 years ago - but that might just be me. Still, this is probably the best print you're ever going to get of this flick.
THE EXTRAS -
Some, but not a ton, of extras. We get two commentaries - one from Roger and Sayles (very interesting and filled with all sorts of trivia) and one from Gale Anne Hurd, who got her start as an assistant to Corman on this flick before moving on to movies like Terminator (not bad, but full of dead air). We get a fist full of trailers including Piranha, Saint Jack, Fire on the Amazon, Suburbia, and the theatrical trailer for Battle Beyond the Stars. There's a trivia game (that unlocks a photo gallery), some text bios. Not a bad package for a cheesy Roger Corman flick.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
A stupid, fun flick that's cheesy as hell. Well worth your time.
Friday, March 21, 2008
BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III - Ground Chuck
Cannon Films, the best studio in the eighties with the ability to latch onto a fad and turn it into a big dumb movie with loads of explosions. If it wasn’t Ninja, it was terrorist commies, or it was rewriting history so America Wins the Vietnam War This Time. Which is what we get here in the latest exploding-bamboo classic from the producers Golan and Globus.
Ok, remember the original Missing in Action, where Chuck had been captured and held by Charlie for ten years? All those moments of torture and mental abuse? Remember the six pack of ass whupping that Chuck delivered on the Cong? All that stuff - forget it. Missing in Action III takes place in a parallel world where Chuck wasn’t captured and tortured and raped and humiliated for ten years, got loose and blew up a bunch of bad guys along the way.
No, here we open in the fall of Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, or whatever the hell they're calling it these days), as the North Vietnamese come pouring southward. As the US Embassy evacuation continues via chopper, Chuck gets separated from his Vietnamese wife, who then gets promptly turned into a charcoal briquette - or so Chuck assumes because the dead woman was wearing his wife's ivory bracelet. So chuck evacuates while the little woman gets left behind in the chaos.
Unfortunately, Chuck was married to a woman so amazingly stupid that she doesn’t know how to work a telephone. And so for the past ten years or so all she does all day is sit around in her Vietnamese hovel with her son and pray that Chuck comes back to save them.
And so one day, a Catholic priest who runs an orphanage full of children left behind by GI Joe finds Mrs. James Braddock and thinks the encounter rather odd. Unfortunately he doesn’t know how to use a telephone either and makes the journey to the United States to find Chuck and tell him of his missing wife's plight.
The CIA promptly tells Chuck to mind his own business, which proves that of course the story is on the up and up. And if you don’t know what happens next, clearly you've never seen a Chuck Norris movie. Chuck borrows a sporty little speedboat from Q-Branch, jets back to the rice paddies and starts kicking a little VC butt. Of course in charge of Charlie's army is a General who has it in for the entire flock of little half breed brats left behind by Joe, and pursues chuck and his young charges across half of Vietnam. Much ass kicking ensues.
If you've ever seen an action movie in the eighties, you know what you get here - balls-to-the-wall fighting, non-stop gunplay and kung-fu, the occasional breast, and nothing but pure, distilled action. You also get zero plot, acting that is either completely over-the-top or completely non-existant and a series of highly implausible events that may or may not have any bearing on reality.
We don’t get rapid fire cutting like the editor had epilepsy and fell against the A-B roll cutter, we don’t get this god-awful "Shaky Action Cam" that has all but destroyed action movies these day (That’s right - I'm looking at you, Transformers), we don’t get any extended artsy-fartsy music video doubling as a fight. We get raw, straight and undiluted action. In short, they don’t make them like this anymore.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 2
EXPLOSIONS: 25
ROUNDS FIRED: 4,831
PUNCHES THROWN: 2,273 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 2
CAR CHASES: 3
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 2
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
BEST LINE: "I don’t step on toes - I step on necks!"
BEST KILL Chuck impales one of the VC guards on his bayonet, and then fires the rocket launcher, blowing Charlie through the hut wall about 400 feet. Seconds later after landing, Charlie explodes, leaving a fine red mist lingering in the air.
THE DVD -
Sadly we get a full frame edition - although not necessarily pan and scan. From my reading, I think that Cannon shot all their films in open-matte format, meaning that they cropped the top and bottom for later release, so I don't think we're losing any picture. The framing doesn't seem tight or cropped like you would normally get in a pan and scan print. Not the most desirable outcome, but it could be worse.
The print used is fair, but not outstanding. There were some scratches here and there, but not anything that would detract too badly. It's not a perfect release, but considering I paid about 3 bucks for it, I don't have a lot of room to complain.
THE EXTRAS -
Sadly, like all the other Chuck Norris releases, all we get is a trailer - and that’s it.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Chuck should have been a bigger action star than he was. He carries himself with elegance and power that easily matches Ah-nold or Sly in their most ripped, muscle bound days. The action is really good, non-stop and really explosive. The story may not be the best ever put down to paper, but why are you going to a Chuck Norris flick from Cannon Films if you're wanting a story?
Ok, remember the original Missing in Action, where Chuck had been captured and held by Charlie for ten years? All those moments of torture and mental abuse? Remember the six pack of ass whupping that Chuck delivered on the Cong? All that stuff - forget it. Missing in Action III takes place in a parallel world where Chuck wasn’t captured and tortured and raped and humiliated for ten years, got loose and blew up a bunch of bad guys along the way.
No, here we open in the fall of Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, or whatever the hell they're calling it these days), as the North Vietnamese come pouring southward. As the US Embassy evacuation continues via chopper, Chuck gets separated from his Vietnamese wife, who then gets promptly turned into a charcoal briquette - or so Chuck assumes because the dead woman was wearing his wife's ivory bracelet. So chuck evacuates while the little woman gets left behind in the chaos.
Unfortunately, Chuck was married to a woman so amazingly stupid that she doesn’t know how to work a telephone. And so for the past ten years or so all she does all day is sit around in her Vietnamese hovel with her son and pray that Chuck comes back to save them.
And so one day, a Catholic priest who runs an orphanage full of children left behind by GI Joe finds Mrs. James Braddock and thinks the encounter rather odd. Unfortunately he doesn’t know how to use a telephone either and makes the journey to the United States to find Chuck and tell him of his missing wife's plight.
The CIA promptly tells Chuck to mind his own business, which proves that of course the story is on the up and up. And if you don’t know what happens next, clearly you've never seen a Chuck Norris movie. Chuck borrows a sporty little speedboat from Q-Branch, jets back to the rice paddies and starts kicking a little VC butt. Of course in charge of Charlie's army is a General who has it in for the entire flock of little half breed brats left behind by Joe, and pursues chuck and his young charges across half of Vietnam. Much ass kicking ensues.
If you've ever seen an action movie in the eighties, you know what you get here - balls-to-the-wall fighting, non-stop gunplay and kung-fu, the occasional breast, and nothing but pure, distilled action. You also get zero plot, acting that is either completely over-the-top or completely non-existant and a series of highly implausible events that may or may not have any bearing on reality.
We don’t get rapid fire cutting like the editor had epilepsy and fell against the A-B roll cutter, we don’t get this god-awful "Shaky Action Cam" that has all but destroyed action movies these day (That’s right - I'm looking at you, Transformers), we don’t get any extended artsy-fartsy music video doubling as a fight. We get raw, straight and undiluted action. In short, they don’t make them like this anymore.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 2
EXPLOSIONS: 25
ROUNDS FIRED: 4,831
PUNCHES THROWN: 2,273 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 2
CAR CHASES: 3
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 2
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
BEST LINE: "I don’t step on toes - I step on necks!"
BEST KILL Chuck impales one of the VC guards on his bayonet, and then fires the rocket launcher, blowing Charlie through the hut wall about 400 feet. Seconds later after landing, Charlie explodes, leaving a fine red mist lingering in the air.
THE DVD -
Sadly we get a full frame edition - although not necessarily pan and scan. From my reading, I think that Cannon shot all their films in open-matte format, meaning that they cropped the top and bottom for later release, so I don't think we're losing any picture. The framing doesn't seem tight or cropped like you would normally get in a pan and scan print. Not the most desirable outcome, but it could be worse.
The print used is fair, but not outstanding. There were some scratches here and there, but not anything that would detract too badly. It's not a perfect release, but considering I paid about 3 bucks for it, I don't have a lot of room to complain.
THE EXTRAS -
Sadly, like all the other Chuck Norris releases, all we get is a trailer - and that’s it.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Chuck should have been a bigger action star than he was. He carries himself with elegance and power that easily matches Ah-nold or Sly in their most ripped, muscle bound days. The action is really good, non-stop and really explosive. The story may not be the best ever put down to paper, but why are you going to a Chuck Norris flick from Cannon Films if you're wanting a story?
Thursday, March 20, 2008
THE BLACK HOLE - Does it suck?
There was a little movie you may have heard of that came out in the late seventies. I understand that it made quite a splash at the time. This obscure flick of which I speak is called Star Wars and apparently went on to make a little bit of money at the box office. In the resulting science fiction land rush, it seemed that everyone was coming out with a space opera or fantasy flick. Disney, of course wanted their share of that pie, resulting in their first PG flick (oh I remember the controversy surrounding that): The Black Hole.
Meet the crew of the SS Palomino, returning home from a deep space exploration mission. Under the command of Captain Dan Holland (Robert "Me and Pam Grier ripped off a million bucks from Samuel L Jackson" Forster), we have Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony "Oh god, mother! Blood!" Perkins), Harry Booth (Ernest "I ride shotgun on Airwolf" Borgnine), and a robot named V.I.N.CENT. (voiced by Roddy "Get yer paws off me you damn dirty ape" McDowall). As the ship cruses along uneventfully, they encounter one of the biggest black holes on record. More intriguing - they find a ship parked just on the edge of the enormous swirling mass.
Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the ship is the USS Cygnus, which was believed to have been lost in space some 20 years ago. The ship isn't quite as deserted as it seems when the lights suddenly come on, allowing the Palomino to land. There, they meet the only human on the ship - Doctor Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian "I'm not Max Von Sydow, but I try" Schell) and an army of robots. And of course as these things tend to go, Reinhardt is not just a scientist, but a MAD scientist intending on taking his ship into the black hole and beyond. Of course being a mad scientist, Reinhardt is up to all kinds of nefarious deeds in the pursuit of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know - and now the crew of the Palomino have to escape before they join Reinhardt on his potentially one way journey.
Oh, and Slim Pickins plays a robot. No, really.
Ok, so the story is essentially 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with robots, and the ending attempts to totally ape the metaphoric and trippy ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey but for kids - but it's not all that bad of a flick.
The brightest point of the movie is probably the look. The effects are really well done, with a combination of blue screen, miniatures and some good old fashion wire work. Even nearly thirty years on now, the matte paintings and black hole effects work look amazing. The set design is brilliantly futuristic and yet somehow seventies retro with long, sweeping corridors, high vaulted ceilings and a several levels high command tower with more a feeling of a Gothic cathedral than a bridge. And of course I'd be remiss if I didn’t mention exactly how mindblowingly cool Maximilian (the big red robot, and not the actor) is. While R2 and 3PO were great and had personality and I loved 'em as a kid - Maximilian was downright the most badass 'bot on the block. Come on - he had razor blades for hands!
The cast ranges from fair to adequate, with Maximilian Schell standing heads and shoulders above everyone else. His quietly psychotic obsessive Captain Nemo mad scientist could have been mustache twirling-ly over the top, but he makes it compelling and interesting and believable.
The other really strong point of the movie? The Music. While not quite as cool as John Williams and his work on - well, pretty much anything from the seventies: Superman, Close Encounters and of course Star Wars - John Barry's score, especially the overture and opening-credits music, is big and bold and brassy and does a ton for making the movie very atmospheric. It does tend to sound kind of Goldfinger-ish in places as Barry goes back to any one of his James Bond scores for some themes. And in the more action orientated scenes, Barry goes too bombastic - but for the most part, John holds his ground and delivers nicely.
Okay there are logical problems with the plot - running around in what would be the hard vacuum of space without any kind of protection, asteroids that glow orange, and a the ending shoots for the transcendental ending of 2001 with a whole bunch of surreal images, colors and sounds. Where Kubrick presented a metaphor for evolution (depending on how stoned you were at the time), the Black Hole goes for a metaphor of good and evil, heaven and hell, angels and devils all living beyond the event horizon.
Well, that or everyone actually did die at the end, crushed by the Black Hole. But that's a depressing end for what is essentially a kids movie. (Although I will point out that Reinhardt does pretty much get the depressing ending, spending an eternity of Man-on-Bot love with Maxililian in a homoerotic grasp in hell. Subtlety, thy name is Disney).
THE DVD -
There's a couple of versions of the Black Hole out on DVD. The one from 1999 is letterboxed, but not anamorphic. The second release from Anchor Bay is wide screen anamorphic (plus a pan and scan side of the disc as well). My copy is the earlier version, and looks really good. The picture is clear, vibrant, and sharp, and the 5.1 soundtrack was surprisingly robust.
I should warn you that one of the earliest pressings has a broken soundtrack. The front right channel is dead silent, making the soundtrack, in essence, a 4.1 surround. Finding one of these on the shelves is probably slim, but if you get the disc used, you might be in for a surprise.
THE EXTRAS -
What we get for extras is light years ahead of what we normal get for a back release from Disney (which is pretty much nothing), but we're still not exactly swimming in features. There's a short documentary that interviews matte-effects supervisor Harrison Ellenshaw going into detail about the special effects for the film Informative, but kind of dry. Then we get the really cool theatrical trailer, that also give you a look at how the bad the print could have looked.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
The Black Hole was Disney's first (and last) big budget science fiction flick with space opera trappings. Tron would come along a couple years later (and enjoy the same level of success as The Black Hole), but this was their only robots and lasers outing. The movie gets a lot of stick from people - and while it may not be the most sophisticated of stories - it is at least genuinely and consistently entertaining.
Meet the crew of the SS Palomino, returning home from a deep space exploration mission. Under the command of Captain Dan Holland (Robert "Me and Pam Grier ripped off a million bucks from Samuel L Jackson" Forster), we have Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony "Oh god, mother! Blood!" Perkins), Harry Booth (Ernest "I ride shotgun on Airwolf" Borgnine), and a robot named V.I.N.CENT. (voiced by Roddy "Get yer paws off me you damn dirty ape" McDowall). As the ship cruses along uneventfully, they encounter one of the biggest black holes on record. More intriguing - they find a ship parked just on the edge of the enormous swirling mass.
Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the ship is the USS Cygnus, which was believed to have been lost in space some 20 years ago. The ship isn't quite as deserted as it seems when the lights suddenly come on, allowing the Palomino to land. There, they meet the only human on the ship - Doctor Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian "I'm not Max Von Sydow, but I try" Schell) and an army of robots. And of course as these things tend to go, Reinhardt is not just a scientist, but a MAD scientist intending on taking his ship into the black hole and beyond. Of course being a mad scientist, Reinhardt is up to all kinds of nefarious deeds in the pursuit of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know - and now the crew of the Palomino have to escape before they join Reinhardt on his potentially one way journey.
Oh, and Slim Pickins plays a robot. No, really.
Ok, so the story is essentially 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with robots, and the ending attempts to totally ape the metaphoric and trippy ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey but for kids - but it's not all that bad of a flick.
The brightest point of the movie is probably the look. The effects are really well done, with a combination of blue screen, miniatures and some good old fashion wire work. Even nearly thirty years on now, the matte paintings and black hole effects work look amazing. The set design is brilliantly futuristic and yet somehow seventies retro with long, sweeping corridors, high vaulted ceilings and a several levels high command tower with more a feeling of a Gothic cathedral than a bridge. And of course I'd be remiss if I didn’t mention exactly how mindblowingly cool Maximilian (the big red robot, and not the actor) is. While R2 and 3PO were great and had personality and I loved 'em as a kid - Maximilian was downright the most badass 'bot on the block. Come on - he had razor blades for hands!
The cast ranges from fair to adequate, with Maximilian Schell standing heads and shoulders above everyone else. His quietly psychotic obsessive Captain Nemo mad scientist could have been mustache twirling-ly over the top, but he makes it compelling and interesting and believable.
The other really strong point of the movie? The Music. While not quite as cool as John Williams and his work on - well, pretty much anything from the seventies: Superman, Close Encounters and of course Star Wars - John Barry's score, especially the overture and opening-credits music, is big and bold and brassy and does a ton for making the movie very atmospheric. It does tend to sound kind of Goldfinger-ish in places as Barry goes back to any one of his James Bond scores for some themes. And in the more action orientated scenes, Barry goes too bombastic - but for the most part, John holds his ground and delivers nicely.
Okay there are logical problems with the plot - running around in what would be the hard vacuum of space without any kind of protection, asteroids that glow orange, and a the ending shoots for the transcendental ending of 2001 with a whole bunch of surreal images, colors and sounds. Where Kubrick presented a metaphor for evolution (depending on how stoned you were at the time), the Black Hole goes for a metaphor of good and evil, heaven and hell, angels and devils all living beyond the event horizon.
Well, that or everyone actually did die at the end, crushed by the Black Hole. But that's a depressing end for what is essentially a kids movie. (Although I will point out that Reinhardt does pretty much get the depressing ending, spending an eternity of Man-on-Bot love with Maxililian in a homoerotic grasp in hell. Subtlety, thy name is Disney).
THE DVD -
There's a couple of versions of the Black Hole out on DVD. The one from 1999 is letterboxed, but not anamorphic. The second release from Anchor Bay is wide screen anamorphic (plus a pan and scan side of the disc as well). My copy is the earlier version, and looks really good. The picture is clear, vibrant, and sharp, and the 5.1 soundtrack was surprisingly robust.
I should warn you that one of the earliest pressings has a broken soundtrack. The front right channel is dead silent, making the soundtrack, in essence, a 4.1 surround. Finding one of these on the shelves is probably slim, but if you get the disc used, you might be in for a surprise.
THE EXTRAS -
What we get for extras is light years ahead of what we normal get for a back release from Disney (which is pretty much nothing), but we're still not exactly swimming in features. There's a short documentary that interviews matte-effects supervisor Harrison Ellenshaw going into detail about the special effects for the film Informative, but kind of dry. Then we get the really cool theatrical trailer, that also give you a look at how the bad the print could have looked.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
The Black Hole was Disney's first (and last) big budget science fiction flick with space opera trappings. Tron would come along a couple years later (and enjoy the same level of success as The Black Hole), but this was their only robots and lasers outing. The movie gets a lot of stick from people - and while it may not be the most sophisticated of stories - it is at least genuinely and consistently entertaining.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL - a Masterpiece of Evil
Before we get started, let me get something out of the way first. In no way am I excusing or condoning anything the Nazis did in World War II. Now I know this may sounds like a no-brainer of a disclaimer, but as I go through this review, I will make some positive statements. I just don’t want anyone confusing praise for the movie as condoning Adolf, his actions or Nazism in general. Adolf Hitler was, is, and always shall be a complete and utter fucking asshole, and I can only hope that he is burning in the deepest, darkest pit of hell.
Now, with that out of the way - let us turn our attentions to Triumph des Willens otherwise known as Triumph of the Will.
This is probably one of the hardest films I've had to review, and certainly one of the hardest ones I've had to watch in a long, long time (for a number of reasons, and mind you not just the obvious one). It's a movie that is very well done, with all kinds of inventive cinematography tricks that were pretty revolutionary in the mid-thirties. Triumph of the Will shows off Leni Riefenstahl's considerable talent as a filmmaker, with really powerful shots, some elaborate setups and really effective story telling.
As a production, Triumph of the Will is gargantuan. Riefenstahl had new bridges built specially in Nuremberg, with all the camera and lighting gantries erected to her exact specifications. She used 30 cameras and 120 technicians to film the rallies and spent six months in the editing suite. The two hour running time is only three percent of the entire footage shot for the rally. Her inventiveness and willingness to experiment is really, really impressive.
The problem is, of course is that Triumph of the Will is a film made for and about the Nazis. More specifically, it documents (although I’d hesitate to call it a documentary) the 1934 rally at Nuremberg, a seven day festival that was held to celebrate Hitler’s rise to power. For the next two hours, we get Hitler presented as a godlike being, or as a loving, caring father figure.
The film opens with Adolf flying into Nuremberg (the imagery of him descending from the clouds like a savior is undeniable) and his trip through city streets crowded with his cheering, loyal supporters. After a night rally outside the Hitler's hotel, we tour a tent city full of Hitler Youth recruits as they go about their day eating breakfast, washing up playing games and having a grand old time. While of course there is no symbolism in this part I couldn’t help think that the part where the Youth are stoking the huge boiler to cook their food unintentionally creepy.
We then get Hitler presiding over an honorary harvest tribute from German farmers dressed in their traditional clothes, and then Hitler and Dr. Robert Ley inspecting some of the troops of the German Labor Front. Okay, I'm not down with the Nazi ideology, but I have to hand it to them - they have that whole drill thing down pat. They may be monsters, but they look real snappy with goose-stepping around.
We then move inside to the Congress Hall in Nuremberg, where Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess talks about how cool Hitler and the National Socialist movement is, followed by quick remarks from Robert Ley, propaganda minister Goebbels, justice minister Hans Frank, press chief Dr. Otto Dietrich, and a handful of other big shots in the Reich.
Then we get a scene of Hitler inspecting some 52,000 troops from Reich Labor Service, fresh from working on the Autobahn highway (probably the only good thing to come out of the Third Reich. Well, that and giving us the perfect bad guys for Indiana Jones to fight against). They sing the official anthem and then memorialize the fallen German veterans of World War I.
There's another night rally held in the Main Stadium - with some really effective and gorgeous silhouettes with some very stark lighting effects, and another speech from Victor Lutze, the head of the Storm Troopers. This is followed by a massive daytime rally with thousands of members of the Hitler Youth participating, and with another speech by Hitler. Afterwards, Hitler and army chief General Walter von Blomberg watch German infantry and cavalry performing training maneuvers, followed by one more night rally with thousands of troops parading with Nazi flags by torchlight.
The next day, a memorial service is held for the deceased President von Hindenburg. This scene, with Hitler, flanked by Himmler and Lutze, marching toward a memorial flame at the other end of the stadium, might be familiar to you even if you've never seen Triumph of the Will before. This was the shot that Lucas used for the ending of Star Wars, as Luke, Han and Chewie walk the center isle to the dais with Leia, surrounded by thousands of rebels to either side. It's a very powerful, effective shot, and I could totally see why George used it.
We get another speech from Victor Lutze reassuring the members of the SS that everything is going hunky-dory, and then Hitler talks about how the Party won't be destroyed or purged again, what with the Night of the Long Knives just a few months previous. The film climaxes with a massive parade through the streets of Nuremberg, with various members of German military organizations and Hitler's own personal SS bodyguard regiment making guest starring appearances. Finally, Hitler concludes the event with a passionate speech at the Congress Hall.
As I said earlier, I hesitated to call this a documentary. While all documentaries are constructed in a way to lead the viewer to the filmmakers way of thinking - and Triumph of the Will certainly fits that bill to a tee - the movie was also constructed from the ground up, with retakes and staged shots and a level of clean up that a normal documentary wouldn’t get. And I will admit that as a propaganda piece, it's very effective - but two hours of saluting crowds, marching uniformed Nazis and Hitler going on and on and on about how the man was keeping him and his home-boys down and my eyes started to glaze over. Not only is the subject matter repulsive, it's boring as hell too.
However, for at least a little bit - and I have to apologize in advance, this is one of those statements that my Good Taste Filter probably should have caught - but I could totally see how this film would get the German people fired up. Hitler is an amazingly charismatic speaker and is a really compelling and mesmerizing dude to watch. Couple that with Riefenstahl's stellar cinematography and this is one hell of a good movie (and I mean good as in the very well done artistic sense of the word, and not good in regards to the subject matter). Even 70 years later, with politicians and big business coming up with all new and innovative ways to lie to us, Triumph of the Will stands out as a visually amazing piece of work.
And the scary thing is? It works. Now, here I am a reasonably savvy film school geek that can spit out 2,480 words about how Piranha II: The Spawning was a pretty good flick and even I got caught up in the moment from time to time. I'd lose myself and think "Awww - he likes kittens, he's not such a bad guy!" before coming to my senses and going "Wait a second, that's Adolf-fucking-Hitler I'm talking about!" It's that compelling a movie.
But you know the really sad thing about this? Due to her Nazi connections and the repulsive subject matter of her work, Leni Riefenstahl's gift for filmmaking was never fully developed or appreciated. I would have loved to see her do some non-Nazi propaganda projects, out from under Hitler's shadow. But it's not to be.
Finally, I think that Triumph of the Will should be required viewing for one simple reason - it's a textbook example on how easy it is to manipulate and distort images to suit whatever truths you wish to put forth. The art of propaganda is very alive and well this very day, with politicians from both sides of the fence mud slinging and gearing their campaigns to fear monger and tap the worst in man. Big business operates with secret agendas in an effort to get your dollar. The media - both liberal and conservative - filter information with the intent to getting you to think their way.
If any good can come from this evil man and his Nazi propaganda machine, hopefully it's this lesson: no matter where you go or what you do, someone somewhere is trying to manipulate you and the way you think. Forewarned is forearmed.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch Ray Muller's 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.
THE DVD -
Synapse films is rapidly becoming my favorite independent studio, and deserves a round of applause for having balls enough to bring us this potentially volatile and extremely controversial release. They also get kudos for doing such a good job with it too.
For starters, the film is nearly seventies years old now, and has a very long and checkered past. Considering everything it's been through, we're damn lucky to have gotten something that looks as good as it does. There are all kinds of source defects - scratches, grain, cigarette burns and actual writing on the film in black sharpie (or the 1940's equivalent) in places, so expecting a film of this vintage to be perfect without some very extensive restoration is folly.
Presented in a windowboxed format (that means black bars on all sides of the frame) in it's original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, Triumph of the Will is a relatively crisp looking movie with some very nice looking blacks with solid contrast. While not comparable to the Fritz Lang's restored Metropolis or movies that were cared for by the studio like Carl Laemmle's Dracula, Triumph of the Will still looks damn good.
There are also two versions of this DVD - one with a black cover and a red swastika on it, and the one pictured here, a yellow background with a helmeted Nazi on it. I have the Black and Red version, and it seems the only difference between the two is that the Yellow one has a better, more restored picture quality. So if you get one, get the one with Jerry on the cover.
THE EXTRAS -
If there's a flaw with the disc, I am sad at the squandered potential for extras - considering the history behind Riefenstahl and the Nazis and the colored background of the film, oh so much more could have been done with this disc, so much more I wanted to see and learn. We could have gotten a feature looking at the film on an artistic level or perhaps some interviews with film and history scholars, or perhaps a discussion of the ethical issues surrounding Riefenstahl.
Still, what we get here is pretty darn informative and vital for some context.
We get a commentary from Doctor Anthony R. Santoro, who goes on to explain all kinds of basic facts, a play-by-play of who is on screen (and what happened to them), explains the methodology of camera placement and shooting styles, makes mentions of the re-shoots and staged bits, and delivers all kinds of emotionless (as in not biased) information.
Then we get another of Riefenstahl's films called Days of Freedom. This one, about 17 minutes long, is not nearly as good as Triumph of the Will but provides another look at the style and methodology behind Riefenstahl's filmmaking.
THE BOTTOM LINE - Your first impulse might very well be "Why the hell would I want to watch a buttnugget like Hitler talk for two hours?", or perhaps believing that viewing the film is in someway supporting Nazism or encouraging hateful rhetoric. But if it somehow inspires the modern viewer to question and think about what passes for news and entertainment these days, allowing one to see the bias inherent in today's media, I think that's worth spending two hours of your life with a raving madman, don't you?
Now, with that out of the way - let us turn our attentions to Triumph des Willens otherwise known as Triumph of the Will.
This is probably one of the hardest films I've had to review, and certainly one of the hardest ones I've had to watch in a long, long time (for a number of reasons, and mind you not just the obvious one). It's a movie that is very well done, with all kinds of inventive cinematography tricks that were pretty revolutionary in the mid-thirties. Triumph of the Will shows off Leni Riefenstahl's considerable talent as a filmmaker, with really powerful shots, some elaborate setups and really effective story telling.
As a production, Triumph of the Will is gargantuan. Riefenstahl had new bridges built specially in Nuremberg, with all the camera and lighting gantries erected to her exact specifications. She used 30 cameras and 120 technicians to film the rallies and spent six months in the editing suite. The two hour running time is only three percent of the entire footage shot for the rally. Her inventiveness and willingness to experiment is really, really impressive.
The problem is, of course is that Triumph of the Will is a film made for and about the Nazis. More specifically, it documents (although I’d hesitate to call it a documentary) the 1934 rally at Nuremberg, a seven day festival that was held to celebrate Hitler’s rise to power. For the next two hours, we get Hitler presented as a godlike being, or as a loving, caring father figure.
The film opens with Adolf flying into Nuremberg (the imagery of him descending from the clouds like a savior is undeniable) and his trip through city streets crowded with his cheering, loyal supporters. After a night rally outside the Hitler's hotel, we tour a tent city full of Hitler Youth recruits as they go about their day eating breakfast, washing up playing games and having a grand old time. While of course there is no symbolism in this part I couldn’t help think that the part where the Youth are stoking the huge boiler to cook their food unintentionally creepy.
We then get Hitler presiding over an honorary harvest tribute from German farmers dressed in their traditional clothes, and then Hitler and Dr. Robert Ley inspecting some of the troops of the German Labor Front. Okay, I'm not down with the Nazi ideology, but I have to hand it to them - they have that whole drill thing down pat. They may be monsters, but they look real snappy with goose-stepping around.
We then move inside to the Congress Hall in Nuremberg, where Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess talks about how cool Hitler and the National Socialist movement is, followed by quick remarks from Robert Ley, propaganda minister Goebbels, justice minister Hans Frank, press chief Dr. Otto Dietrich, and a handful of other big shots in the Reich.
Then we get a scene of Hitler inspecting some 52,000 troops from Reich Labor Service, fresh from working on the Autobahn highway (probably the only good thing to come out of the Third Reich. Well, that and giving us the perfect bad guys for Indiana Jones to fight against). They sing the official anthem and then memorialize the fallen German veterans of World War I.
There's another night rally held in the Main Stadium - with some really effective and gorgeous silhouettes with some very stark lighting effects, and another speech from Victor Lutze, the head of the Storm Troopers. This is followed by a massive daytime rally with thousands of members of the Hitler Youth participating, and with another speech by Hitler. Afterwards, Hitler and army chief General Walter von Blomberg watch German infantry and cavalry performing training maneuvers, followed by one more night rally with thousands of troops parading with Nazi flags by torchlight.
The next day, a memorial service is held for the deceased President von Hindenburg. This scene, with Hitler, flanked by Himmler and Lutze, marching toward a memorial flame at the other end of the stadium, might be familiar to you even if you've never seen Triumph of the Will before. This was the shot that Lucas used for the ending of Star Wars, as Luke, Han and Chewie walk the center isle to the dais with Leia, surrounded by thousands of rebels to either side. It's a very powerful, effective shot, and I could totally see why George used it.
We get another speech from Victor Lutze reassuring the members of the SS that everything is going hunky-dory, and then Hitler talks about how the Party won't be destroyed or purged again, what with the Night of the Long Knives just a few months previous. The film climaxes with a massive parade through the streets of Nuremberg, with various members of German military organizations and Hitler's own personal SS bodyguard regiment making guest starring appearances. Finally, Hitler concludes the event with a passionate speech at the Congress Hall.
As I said earlier, I hesitated to call this a documentary. While all documentaries are constructed in a way to lead the viewer to the filmmakers way of thinking - and Triumph of the Will certainly fits that bill to a tee - the movie was also constructed from the ground up, with retakes and staged shots and a level of clean up that a normal documentary wouldn’t get. And I will admit that as a propaganda piece, it's very effective - but two hours of saluting crowds, marching uniformed Nazis and Hitler going on and on and on about how the man was keeping him and his home-boys down and my eyes started to glaze over. Not only is the subject matter repulsive, it's boring as hell too.
However, for at least a little bit - and I have to apologize in advance, this is one of those statements that my Good Taste Filter probably should have caught - but I could totally see how this film would get the German people fired up. Hitler is an amazingly charismatic speaker and is a really compelling and mesmerizing dude to watch. Couple that with Riefenstahl's stellar cinematography and this is one hell of a good movie (and I mean good as in the very well done artistic sense of the word, and not good in regards to the subject matter). Even 70 years later, with politicians and big business coming up with all new and innovative ways to lie to us, Triumph of the Will stands out as a visually amazing piece of work.
And the scary thing is? It works. Now, here I am a reasonably savvy film school geek that can spit out 2,480 words about how Piranha II: The Spawning was a pretty good flick and even I got caught up in the moment from time to time. I'd lose myself and think "Awww - he likes kittens, he's not such a bad guy!" before coming to my senses and going "Wait a second, that's Adolf-fucking-Hitler I'm talking about!" It's that compelling a movie.
But you know the really sad thing about this? Due to her Nazi connections and the repulsive subject matter of her work, Leni Riefenstahl's gift for filmmaking was never fully developed or appreciated. I would have loved to see her do some non-Nazi propaganda projects, out from under Hitler's shadow. But it's not to be.
Finally, I think that Triumph of the Will should be required viewing for one simple reason - it's a textbook example on how easy it is to manipulate and distort images to suit whatever truths you wish to put forth. The art of propaganda is very alive and well this very day, with politicians from both sides of the fence mud slinging and gearing their campaigns to fear monger and tap the worst in man. Big business operates with secret agendas in an effort to get your dollar. The media - both liberal and conservative - filter information with the intent to getting you to think their way.
If any good can come from this evil man and his Nazi propaganda machine, hopefully it's this lesson: no matter where you go or what you do, someone somewhere is trying to manipulate you and the way you think. Forewarned is forearmed.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch Ray Muller's 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.
THE DVD -
Synapse films is rapidly becoming my favorite independent studio, and deserves a round of applause for having balls enough to bring us this potentially volatile and extremely controversial release. They also get kudos for doing such a good job with it too.
For starters, the film is nearly seventies years old now, and has a very long and checkered past. Considering everything it's been through, we're damn lucky to have gotten something that looks as good as it does. There are all kinds of source defects - scratches, grain, cigarette burns and actual writing on the film in black sharpie (or the 1940's equivalent) in places, so expecting a film of this vintage to be perfect without some very extensive restoration is folly.
Presented in a windowboxed format (that means black bars on all sides of the frame) in it's original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, Triumph of the Will is a relatively crisp looking movie with some very nice looking blacks with solid contrast. While not comparable to the Fritz Lang's restored Metropolis or movies that were cared for by the studio like Carl Laemmle's Dracula, Triumph of the Will still looks damn good.
There are also two versions of this DVD - one with a black cover and a red swastika on it, and the one pictured here, a yellow background with a helmeted Nazi on it. I have the Black and Red version, and it seems the only difference between the two is that the Yellow one has a better, more restored picture quality. So if you get one, get the one with Jerry on the cover.
THE EXTRAS -
If there's a flaw with the disc, I am sad at the squandered potential for extras - considering the history behind Riefenstahl and the Nazis and the colored background of the film, oh so much more could have been done with this disc, so much more I wanted to see and learn. We could have gotten a feature looking at the film on an artistic level or perhaps some interviews with film and history scholars, or perhaps a discussion of the ethical issues surrounding Riefenstahl.
Still, what we get here is pretty darn informative and vital for some context.
We get a commentary from Doctor Anthony R. Santoro, who goes on to explain all kinds of basic facts, a play-by-play of who is on screen (and what happened to them), explains the methodology of camera placement and shooting styles, makes mentions of the re-shoots and staged bits, and delivers all kinds of emotionless (as in not biased) information.
Then we get another of Riefenstahl's films called Days of Freedom. This one, about 17 minutes long, is not nearly as good as Triumph of the Will but provides another look at the style and methodology behind Riefenstahl's filmmaking.
THE BOTTOM LINE - Your first impulse might very well be "Why the hell would I want to watch a buttnugget like Hitler talk for two hours?", or perhaps believing that viewing the film is in someway supporting Nazism or encouraging hateful rhetoric. But if it somehow inspires the modern viewer to question and think about what passes for news and entertainment these days, allowing one to see the bias inherent in today's media, I think that's worth spending two hours of your life with a raving madman, don't you?
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yes - fantastic!
If you are going to steal, steal from the best I always say. A Fist Full of Dollars? Kurosawa. Magnificent Seven? Kurosawa. Star Wars? Kurosawa. In fact the influence of Kurosawa sensei runs so deep through Hollywood that it's impact is bloody well incalculable.
Stop me if you've heard this story before: a poor village is besieged by a group of bandits who takes their food and anything else they need or want. The villagers are willing to fight, but lack weapons or training. To compensate for this deficiency, several farmers head to the other side of the border, where they set about finding help. The gunfighter they first encounter agrees to help, and find some hired guns to stop the bandits.
Recruiting a colorful band of characters - including the hard as nails (yet soft on the inside) vet, the green and eager kid, the laconic loner who speaks very little, and the man who has lost his nerve and is trying to regain it - these seven warriors for hire must face down an enemy ten times their number!
Yeah, that summary could be Battle Beyond the Stars, Dune Warriors, Return of Scorpion, or in today's example: the Magnificent Seven, one of the best western movies ever committed to film.
I don’t throw around such pronouncements lightly - but there you go. Man With No Name trilogy not withstanding, The Magnificent Seven is the biggest, best example of the genre ever, better than High Noon, better than The Wild Bunch, Unforgiven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Quick and the Dead and Blazing Saddles. Period, full stop, end of story.
The cast is amazing. Yul Brynner was at the height of his powers, fresh from The King and I, and not yet doing low budget drive-in schlock like Westworld yet. Steve McQueen wasn’t famous - yet - but he shows off mad acting skilz. Want to see why he got big? Watch this movie. Of course, we can't forget James Coburn or Charles Bronson were fantastic as always - Bronson hadn’t slipped into doing his Death Wish money grab yet, and Coburn is good in anything he touches. Robert Vaughn gets some great moments and even the fairly unknown Horst Buchholz - probably the weakest link of this Magnificent cast - gets some good stuff to work with. While this is the Yul and Steve show, the rest of the cast carry themselves well too.
Of course it has been said that you judge a man by the quality of his enemies, and if that's the case, I judge the seven to be Magnificent! Eli Wallach does a superb job of playing Calvera with far more than just your one not bad guy that you usually get in these things. Flamboyant, nasty, dirty and intelligent - not something you usually get with a villain of this vintage.
The story is nice and tight - as one would expect when adapting Kurosawa and John Sturges has a nice eye for directing, using the fantastic (sorry - Magnificent) landscape to great effect. And the score - while not quite, in my mind, as good as Ennio Morricone's work, still rocks the house with a big, bold and heroic score. Elmer Bernstein does some great memorable work here. And the action, while the movie takes it's time setting everything up, once the hot lead starts flying, you cant take your eyes away. The pacing is . .. well, Magnificent.
Sorry, I'll stop now.
So - memorable characters with a top notch cast and a great story. I fail to see how this movie isn’t a classic in every sense of the word.
THE DVD -
We get an amazing looking anamorphic transfer from MGM - a great failing on some of their older titles. The colors are rich and the picture is bright and clear, with no print damage that I could see. The sound leaves me wanting though - I had to turn the home theater up a bit further than where I normally set it to and wasn’t blown out of the room. I guess a lot of that is probably due to the age of the source elements, so what you doing to do?
THE EXTRAS -
I'm usually down on MGM for their budget discs, where we're lucky if we get a trailer. Fortunately we score big here. In addition to a pair of anamorphic trailers, we get a commentary from producer Walter Mirisch, actors Eli Wallach and James Coburn, and assistant director Robert E. Relyea. Then there's the documentary Guns for Hire: The Making of The Magnificent Seven, a 46-minute thorough look at how the film was made and about remaking Seven Samurai with interviews from most of the surviving cast. Then we get a photo gallery, and a handful of production notes in a insert. Very nicely done, MGM - well played.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
While this might seem like blasphemy, but I think the Magnificent Seven is a stronger film than Seven Samurai. Now, now - put the pitchforks down and let me explain. Seven Samurai is an all time, untouchable classic - but it is a very, very long film. Magnificent Seven takes that four hours, trims away all the fat, and leaves behind a unbelievably tight story that is free of any padding or slow bits. For that reason alone, I think that the American remake edges out the Japanese just slightly.
Stop me if you've heard this story before: a poor village is besieged by a group of bandits who takes their food and anything else they need or want. The villagers are willing to fight, but lack weapons or training. To compensate for this deficiency, several farmers head to the other side of the border, where they set about finding help. The gunfighter they first encounter agrees to help, and find some hired guns to stop the bandits.
Recruiting a colorful band of characters - including the hard as nails (yet soft on the inside) vet, the green and eager kid, the laconic loner who speaks very little, and the man who has lost his nerve and is trying to regain it - these seven warriors for hire must face down an enemy ten times their number!
Yeah, that summary could be Battle Beyond the Stars, Dune Warriors, Return of Scorpion, or in today's example: the Magnificent Seven, one of the best western movies ever committed to film.
I don’t throw around such pronouncements lightly - but there you go. Man With No Name trilogy not withstanding, The Magnificent Seven is the biggest, best example of the genre ever, better than High Noon, better than The Wild Bunch, Unforgiven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Quick and the Dead and Blazing Saddles. Period, full stop, end of story.
The cast is amazing. Yul Brynner was at the height of his powers, fresh from The King and I, and not yet doing low budget drive-in schlock like Westworld yet. Steve McQueen wasn’t famous - yet - but he shows off mad acting skilz. Want to see why he got big? Watch this movie. Of course, we can't forget James Coburn or Charles Bronson were fantastic as always - Bronson hadn’t slipped into doing his Death Wish money grab yet, and Coburn is good in anything he touches. Robert Vaughn gets some great moments and even the fairly unknown Horst Buchholz - probably the weakest link of this Magnificent cast - gets some good stuff to work with. While this is the Yul and Steve show, the rest of the cast carry themselves well too.
Of course it has been said that you judge a man by the quality of his enemies, and if that's the case, I judge the seven to be Magnificent! Eli Wallach does a superb job of playing Calvera with far more than just your one not bad guy that you usually get in these things. Flamboyant, nasty, dirty and intelligent - not something you usually get with a villain of this vintage.
The story is nice and tight - as one would expect when adapting Kurosawa and John Sturges has a nice eye for directing, using the fantastic (sorry - Magnificent) landscape to great effect. And the score - while not quite, in my mind, as good as Ennio Morricone's work, still rocks the house with a big, bold and heroic score. Elmer Bernstein does some great memorable work here. And the action, while the movie takes it's time setting everything up, once the hot lead starts flying, you cant take your eyes away. The pacing is . .. well, Magnificent.
Sorry, I'll stop now.
So - memorable characters with a top notch cast and a great story. I fail to see how this movie isn’t a classic in every sense of the word.
THE DVD -
We get an amazing looking anamorphic transfer from MGM - a great failing on some of their older titles. The colors are rich and the picture is bright and clear, with no print damage that I could see. The sound leaves me wanting though - I had to turn the home theater up a bit further than where I normally set it to and wasn’t blown out of the room. I guess a lot of that is probably due to the age of the source elements, so what you doing to do?
THE EXTRAS -
I'm usually down on MGM for their budget discs, where we're lucky if we get a trailer. Fortunately we score big here. In addition to a pair of anamorphic trailers, we get a commentary from producer Walter Mirisch, actors Eli Wallach and James Coburn, and assistant director Robert E. Relyea. Then there's the documentary Guns for Hire: The Making of The Magnificent Seven, a 46-minute thorough look at how the film was made and about remaking Seven Samurai with interviews from most of the surviving cast. Then we get a photo gallery, and a handful of production notes in a insert. Very nicely done, MGM - well played.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
While this might seem like blasphemy, but I think the Magnificent Seven is a stronger film than Seven Samurai. Now, now - put the pitchforks down and let me explain. Seven Samurai is an all time, untouchable classic - but it is a very, very long film. Magnificent Seven takes that four hours, trims away all the fat, and leaves behind a unbelievably tight story that is free of any padding or slow bits. For that reason alone, I think that the American remake edges out the Japanese just slightly.
Monday, March 17, 2008
COMMANDO - The Terminator's Greatest Hits!
Ah, the eighties - long has it been my contention that this decade was the golden age of action movies. Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Conan, Rambo, Delta Force, Total Recall, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China - they just don’t make Big Dumb and Loud Movies like these any more.
One of Ah-nold's lesser flicks. While it only made 30 million - which is no slouch, it was no Predator (60 million) or Terminator (78 million and change) , and quietly slipped to Ah-nold's B-list of movies. Good, but not quite the powerhouse that we've come to expect from the Big Lug at this stage of the game.
We open with a peaceful, tranquil mountain home, where John Matrix (Here, Ah-nold obeys the 80's Action Hero Naming Convention that dictates that the star's last name must be a verb or a Noun. See Cobra, Megaforce and Invasion U.S.A. for further examples of Prime Directive #1) lives with his 13-ish year old daughter in peace. Being an Ah-nold action flick, this will inevitably last about as long as the opening credits.
And yes it does - as soon as the Old Army Buddy comes to warn Matrix that some old enemies are on the warpath, does said old enemies descend upon the mountain vista house and snatch his daughter. Mayhem ensues as Matrix pushes his disabled 4-by-4 over a cliff and gives chase. He would have caught the braggarts too, if it not been for Prime Directive #2: any vehicles involved in a wreck will roll and instantly explode into a ball of flame.
Getting the drop on Matrix, they tell him the bad news: assassinate the president of Unspecifiedistan so that one of his generals (The mastermind behind the kidnapping) can swoop in and seize power for himself, or his little girl will suffer the consiquences. Matrix responds by killing his handler while boarding the jet plane to Unspecifiedistan, working his way into the cargo hold, climbing out onto the landing gear and freakin' jumping from the plane into a swamp! Not only is it a badass sequence, they actually get Ah-nold hanging off a prop landing strut moving along at a full head of speed. It's badassed AND it's exciting!
Anyway, Matrix follows Sully, the goon who saw him off on the plane, to the Galleria Mall (fer sure!) where he gets kidnap victim/sidekick Cindy (played by Rae Dawn Chong, daughter of the famous stoner Tommy Chong) to lure him over in a trap. Things go all wrong, of course and suddenly Ah-nold has to brawl the entire mall's rent-a-cop force, rip an entire phone booth out of the wall and swing from a banner hanging from the ceiling to the elevator and the escaping Sully, all amid a hail of gunfire (only in Hollywood would rent-a-cops carry huge hand cannons like that - and open fire in a crowd!).
One vigorous car chase later ("I let him go") and Matrix gets involved in another brawl in a sleazy motel room with another Goon, throwing each other through walls, glass tables, doors (where we get our third 80's Action Movie Prime Directive: Give 'em a glimpse of some great big knockers once in a while!) before Ah-nold impales him on a BIG FREAKING TABLE LEG! This is also where I realized that Ah-nold was going back to the Terminator well again. So far we've had "I'll be back" and "Fuck you, Asshole", and in a few moments we'll get Bill Paxton in a really short scene - it's like it's stealing all his really good bits for Commando. Still, he rammed a table leg through a guys chest, so who am I to argue?
And so Ah-nold proceeds to slaughter and butcher and destroy his way up the chain of command, complete with rocket launcher, heavily guarded prison transport, bulldozer and the most powerful claymore mines ever known to man before getting in The Final Showdown knife fight with the guy from his old squad that sold him out to the El Presidente wannabe. One witty Ah-nold catchphrase latter (Prime Directive 4: Dispatch the bad guy with a quip) and Matrix gets to ride off into - quite literarily - the sunset with his daughter and offspring of a famous stoner.
As you can tell, the script isn't exactly Oscar winning material here. In fact, if you apply any logic to the film whatsoever, the whole damn thing falls apart faster than Ah-nold's shell casings hitting the ground - but then find me an Ah-nold movie that the above DOESN'T apply. So yeah, the conventions of the genre demand that you check your brain at the door (and keep your claim ticket. Getting it back without one is a pain).
That said, this thing is a non-stop action fest. From the opening credits to the final fade out, this thing is constant mayhem. A constant parade of explosions, car chases, gun fights, fist fights, witty one-liners and superficial knife slashes that only rip the shirt and draw a insignificant amount of blood are all on display here. In fact the action is so over the top that we're bordering on being a live action cartoon.
Honestly to give this flick any degree of analysis is an exercise in futility. It's an eighties larger than life Schwarzenegger flick with a reliance big explosions rather than acting to carry the story.
Actually in many ways Commando (and it's eighties kin) is a superior movie than what we get now. There's a lack of computer generated nonsense - every explosion, every squib, every car wreck, every bullet hit was a practical special effect with real life stuntmen in peril. The camera work was straightforward, none of this "Lets shake the camera around violently so the viewer has a sense of chaos and we can cover the fact that our leads don't know how to fight" crap that Hollywood seems to have embraced over the last ten years or so. As I watch more and more eighties action flicks, I'm convinced that the action movie is a vanishing art in film, where muscle-bound men such as Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Segal and Norris could kill a 1,200 men with a single clip of ammunition and we'd be okay with this. Very refreshing!
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 2
EXPLOSIONS: 104
ROUNDS FIRED: 7,801
PUNCHES THROWN: 257
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 5
CAR CHASES: 2
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 6
BEST LINE: "Remember Sully, when I promised to kill you last? I lied."
THE DVD -
Commando gets a first rate treatment, and the video looks downright fantastic. There's a few moments where the ancient film stock shows it's age (mostly in the night scenes), but the disc looks great otherwise. Overall, a quality transfer. The soundtrack is nice and loud and aggressive as you would expect, with a nice 5.1 surround mix.
THE EXTRAS -
Feature one is the inclusion of both a directors cut and the original theatrical release - although the additions to the new cut are negligible. There are like three really short scenes that don't add much - there's a bit more gore flowing in the tool shed scene towards the end, but that's about it of note.
We get a commentary from director Mark Lester who carries the commentary himself (resulting in some dead air), but does a pretty good job filling us in on the behind the scenes details of the shoot. There's a short fifteen minute documentary with some of the crew - Rae Dawn Chong, Vernon Wells, and the screenwriters come back for brand new interviews. And then we get a shorter, in-depth discussion about the one-liners of Commando (or which, I must admit, there are plenty and they are strong). There's a couple of really short deleted scenes that are basically alternate one-liners for Bennett’s demise. Finally we get a really extensive photo gallery.
Damnit all - no trailer! The original DVD release had the trailer included, but not the directors cut. That’s a damn shame, and a pox on you 20th Century Fox, for dropping it!
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Why Commando is one of Ah-nolds B-list films is confusing. The acting is just as good as anything else we get from the Governator in this time, the plot doesn't make any more sense than anything else we got in the eighties and it delivers at the action at a breakneck pace (pun intended). Why this failed to light the screen on fire while Predator went on to fame and fortune is beyond me.
One of Ah-nold's lesser flicks. While it only made 30 million - which is no slouch, it was no Predator (60 million) or Terminator (78 million and change) , and quietly slipped to Ah-nold's B-list of movies. Good, but not quite the powerhouse that we've come to expect from the Big Lug at this stage of the game.
We open with a peaceful, tranquil mountain home, where John Matrix (Here, Ah-nold obeys the 80's Action Hero Naming Convention that dictates that the star's last name must be a verb or a Noun. See Cobra, Megaforce and Invasion U.S.A. for further examples of Prime Directive #1) lives with his 13-ish year old daughter in peace. Being an Ah-nold action flick, this will inevitably last about as long as the opening credits.
And yes it does - as soon as the Old Army Buddy comes to warn Matrix that some old enemies are on the warpath, does said old enemies descend upon the mountain vista house and snatch his daughter. Mayhem ensues as Matrix pushes his disabled 4-by-4 over a cliff and gives chase. He would have caught the braggarts too, if it not been for Prime Directive #2: any vehicles involved in a wreck will roll and instantly explode into a ball of flame.
Getting the drop on Matrix, they tell him the bad news: assassinate the president of Unspecifiedistan so that one of his generals (The mastermind behind the kidnapping) can swoop in and seize power for himself, or his little girl will suffer the consiquences. Matrix responds by killing his handler while boarding the jet plane to Unspecifiedistan, working his way into the cargo hold, climbing out onto the landing gear and freakin' jumping from the plane into a swamp! Not only is it a badass sequence, they actually get Ah-nold hanging off a prop landing strut moving along at a full head of speed. It's badassed AND it's exciting!
Anyway, Matrix follows Sully, the goon who saw him off on the plane, to the Galleria Mall (fer sure!) where he gets kidnap victim/sidekick Cindy (played by Rae Dawn Chong, daughter of the famous stoner Tommy Chong) to lure him over in a trap. Things go all wrong, of course and suddenly Ah-nold has to brawl the entire mall's rent-a-cop force, rip an entire phone booth out of the wall and swing from a banner hanging from the ceiling to the elevator and the escaping Sully, all amid a hail of gunfire (only in Hollywood would rent-a-cops carry huge hand cannons like that - and open fire in a crowd!).
One vigorous car chase later ("I let him go") and Matrix gets involved in another brawl in a sleazy motel room with another Goon, throwing each other through walls, glass tables, doors (where we get our third 80's Action Movie Prime Directive: Give 'em a glimpse of some great big knockers once in a while!) before Ah-nold impales him on a BIG FREAKING TABLE LEG! This is also where I realized that Ah-nold was going back to the Terminator well again. So far we've had "I'll be back" and "Fuck you, Asshole", and in a few moments we'll get Bill Paxton in a really short scene - it's like it's stealing all his really good bits for Commando. Still, he rammed a table leg through a guys chest, so who am I to argue?
And so Ah-nold proceeds to slaughter and butcher and destroy his way up the chain of command, complete with rocket launcher, heavily guarded prison transport, bulldozer and the most powerful claymore mines ever known to man before getting in The Final Showdown knife fight with the guy from his old squad that sold him out to the El Presidente wannabe. One witty Ah-nold catchphrase latter (Prime Directive 4: Dispatch the bad guy with a quip) and Matrix gets to ride off into - quite literarily - the sunset with his daughter and offspring of a famous stoner.
As you can tell, the script isn't exactly Oscar winning material here. In fact, if you apply any logic to the film whatsoever, the whole damn thing falls apart faster than Ah-nold's shell casings hitting the ground - but then find me an Ah-nold movie that the above DOESN'T apply. So yeah, the conventions of the genre demand that you check your brain at the door (and keep your claim ticket. Getting it back without one is a pain).
That said, this thing is a non-stop action fest. From the opening credits to the final fade out, this thing is constant mayhem. A constant parade of explosions, car chases, gun fights, fist fights, witty one-liners and superficial knife slashes that only rip the shirt and draw a insignificant amount of blood are all on display here. In fact the action is so over the top that we're bordering on being a live action cartoon.
Honestly to give this flick any degree of analysis is an exercise in futility. It's an eighties larger than life Schwarzenegger flick with a reliance big explosions rather than acting to carry the story.
Actually in many ways Commando (and it's eighties kin) is a superior movie than what we get now. There's a lack of computer generated nonsense - every explosion, every squib, every car wreck, every bullet hit was a practical special effect with real life stuntmen in peril. The camera work was straightforward, none of this "Lets shake the camera around violently so the viewer has a sense of chaos and we can cover the fact that our leads don't know how to fight" crap that Hollywood seems to have embraced over the last ten years or so. As I watch more and more eighties action flicks, I'm convinced that the action movie is a vanishing art in film, where muscle-bound men such as Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Segal and Norris could kill a 1,200 men with a single clip of ammunition and we'd be okay with this. Very refreshing!
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 2
EXPLOSIONS: 104
ROUNDS FIRED: 7,801
PUNCHES THROWN: 257
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 5
CAR CHASES: 2
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 6
BEST LINE: "Remember Sully, when I promised to kill you last? I lied."
THE DVD -
Commando gets a first rate treatment, and the video looks downright fantastic. There's a few moments where the ancient film stock shows it's age (mostly in the night scenes), but the disc looks great otherwise. Overall, a quality transfer. The soundtrack is nice and loud and aggressive as you would expect, with a nice 5.1 surround mix.
THE EXTRAS -
Feature one is the inclusion of both a directors cut and the original theatrical release - although the additions to the new cut are negligible. There are like three really short scenes that don't add much - there's a bit more gore flowing in the tool shed scene towards the end, but that's about it of note.
We get a commentary from director Mark Lester who carries the commentary himself (resulting in some dead air), but does a pretty good job filling us in on the behind the scenes details of the shoot. There's a short fifteen minute documentary with some of the crew - Rae Dawn Chong, Vernon Wells, and the screenwriters come back for brand new interviews. And then we get a shorter, in-depth discussion about the one-liners of Commando (or which, I must admit, there are plenty and they are strong). There's a couple of really short deleted scenes that are basically alternate one-liners for Bennett’s demise. Finally we get a really extensive photo gallery.
Damnit all - no trailer! The original DVD release had the trailer included, but not the directors cut. That’s a damn shame, and a pox on you 20th Century Fox, for dropping it!
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Why Commando is one of Ah-nolds B-list films is confusing. The acting is just as good as anything else we get from the Governator in this time, the plot doesn't make any more sense than anything else we got in the eighties and it delivers at the action at a breakneck pace (pun intended). Why this failed to light the screen on fire while Predator went on to fame and fortune is beyond me.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN- Hell hath no fury like a 50-foot woman scorned.
This is Spinal Tap is one the best comedy ever and one of my favorite films (well, easily in the top ten, depending on how you let me classify the Star Wars movies). It's witty, sardonic and a perfect commentary on the music and bands and the record industry. It's smart and funny and has a great soundtrack.
I only mention this because director Christopher Guest should have known better than to get within a hundred miles of this dog of a remake.
The story, as if you couldn’t tell from the title, goes something like this: Nancy Archer (played by the blindingly hawt Darrel Hannah) is a wealthy alcoholic wife who suffers greatly at the hands of her abusive, cheating husband. One night, away from the house to escape her crushing life, she encounters a gigantic UFO. When she returns home, she turns into a fifty foot giantess (not a giantess with fifty feet, but one that's fifty feet tall). Suddenly the tables have turned, and now it's time for Nancy to put her (gigantic) foot down on her husband and his antics by going on a rampage.
Yeah, that's same write up I used for the review of the original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Sue me.
The problem here is that the script doesn't bring anything new to the table other than improved special effects (which were still pretty low budget) and a new ending with a more feminist twist. The original was poorly made, but the new one is simply flat and boring.
Oh, and that whole new addition of the feminist theme thing? Thanks for bludgeoning the audience over the head with it. Making the same point over and over and over again about "women growing in power" is sure to win folks over to your side. That's exactly what I want in my "Giant Monster Goes On A Rampage" movie. Christ, even the first Godzilla wasn’t this heavy handed!
The special effects are vastly improved over the fifties version - we get considerably more interaction between the giantess Nancy and the tiny people around her - she uses the backyard pool as a bathtub, she has a romantic dinner with her husband on top of a truck, she grabs oversized props from people and has a pretty convincing rampage through town smashing in balsa wood roofs and stomping in front of model cars. Of course I'll point out that judging by the scale, Nancy is probably closer to 100 feet tall than the 50 feet promised in the title - so I guess we get an extra 50 feet free!
Although Christopher Guest had already co-wrote Spinal Tap and would go on to write and direct Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, he fails to make 50 Foot Woman very compelling at all. Perhaps he didn’t yet have the pull necessary to get a better script, but the whole project is lacking either the spark of cheesy fun or a spark of creativity. In giving the script a new coat of paint and polish, it removed the kitch charm and campy value of the original.
THE DVD -
Originally made for HBO back in 1993 on a low budget, this thing doesn't look very good at all. It was shot on film, so that's a point in it's favor, but it looks grainy and like it was stored under the porch.
THE EXTRAS -
Nothing, no trailer, no commentary - zip.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
I guess I can't really expect too much from a movie with "Fifty Foot Woman" in the title, but is it too much to ask for a sense of fun and a bit o' cheese? Oh well, at least Darrel is hawt.
I only mention this because director Christopher Guest should have known better than to get within a hundred miles of this dog of a remake.
The story, as if you couldn’t tell from the title, goes something like this: Nancy Archer (played by the blindingly hawt Darrel Hannah) is a wealthy alcoholic wife who suffers greatly at the hands of her abusive, cheating husband. One night, away from the house to escape her crushing life, she encounters a gigantic UFO. When she returns home, she turns into a fifty foot giantess (not a giantess with fifty feet, but one that's fifty feet tall). Suddenly the tables have turned, and now it's time for Nancy to put her (gigantic) foot down on her husband and his antics by going on a rampage.
Yeah, that's same write up I used for the review of the original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Sue me.
The problem here is that the script doesn't bring anything new to the table other than improved special effects (which were still pretty low budget) and a new ending with a more feminist twist. The original was poorly made, but the new one is simply flat and boring.
Oh, and that whole new addition of the feminist theme thing? Thanks for bludgeoning the audience over the head with it. Making the same point over and over and over again about "women growing in power" is sure to win folks over to your side. That's exactly what I want in my "Giant Monster Goes On A Rampage" movie. Christ, even the first Godzilla wasn’t this heavy handed!
The special effects are vastly improved over the fifties version - we get considerably more interaction between the giantess Nancy and the tiny people around her - she uses the backyard pool as a bathtub, she has a romantic dinner with her husband on top of a truck, she grabs oversized props from people and has a pretty convincing rampage through town smashing in balsa wood roofs and stomping in front of model cars. Of course I'll point out that judging by the scale, Nancy is probably closer to 100 feet tall than the 50 feet promised in the title - so I guess we get an extra 50 feet free!
Although Christopher Guest had already co-wrote Spinal Tap and would go on to write and direct Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, he fails to make 50 Foot Woman very compelling at all. Perhaps he didn’t yet have the pull necessary to get a better script, but the whole project is lacking either the spark of cheesy fun or a spark of creativity. In giving the script a new coat of paint and polish, it removed the kitch charm and campy value of the original.
THE DVD -
Originally made for HBO back in 1993 on a low budget, this thing doesn't look very good at all. It was shot on film, so that's a point in it's favor, but it looks grainy and like it was stored under the porch.
THE EXTRAS -
Nothing, no trailer, no commentary - zip.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
I guess I can't really expect too much from a movie with "Fifty Foot Woman" in the title, but is it too much to ask for a sense of fun and a bit o' cheese? Oh well, at least Darrel is hawt.
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