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!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
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.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING - Sorry Charlie!
I was too young to really grock the whole Vietnam thing - born in 1969 means that I missed the bulk of the festivities and had no concept about what was being reported on the news. I think I vaguely remember Nixon on television and some references to 'Nam in a state of the union, but that's about as far as my hands on experience goes.
On the other hand, being a teenager in the eighties meant that I was in the prime demographic for the fallout of the war, and the cathartic need the nation had to finally win in media: Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Rambo, the A-Team and of course Missing in Action were all there on hand to rewrite history and make things all better for the vets of the world. I had no real grasp on the politics, but I loved the Big Dumb Action Movies That Went Boom.
While the politics and impact of the war are best left argued by men far more scholarly and versed in history than I, I am however qualified to tell you that this is some Prime Ground Chuck!
This time out, we start in the early seventies. The previous film mentioned that Colonel Braddock had been captive for 8 years, and had been away from prison for one, so assuming that the date of the first movie was more or less the time of release, we must be about 1975. Braddock is hitching a ride on a chopper for some reconnaissance with four other solders when they receive a distress call from some troops under heavy enemy fire. The pick-up goes all wrong, the chopper gets hit by a missile launcher, and everyone bails out - and promptly gets captured.
Fast forward a number of years, to some stock footage of Reagan (in what I guess counts as his last screen appearance) at a press conference, his famous "We wont close the book, wont write the last chapter" speech from the opening of the Vietnam Memorial Wall (that bit I do remember). Meanwhile, Braddock and his buddies have been guests of Charlie, under the tender mercies of Colonel Yin (played to mustache twirling perfection by Hollywood oriental stock player Soon-Tek Oh) and his goons.
While one might think that a ton of high grade military hardware and an army of heavily armed men is a bit overkill for keeping five Americans locked up, it turns out that Yin also has a booming business on the side growing, manufacturing and smuggling opium. And so it goes, every day is a new adventure in rock moving and torture for Braddock and his men while their captors get off playing mind games on the Americans.
When a nosey Aussie newspaper reporter stumbles on the camp, looking for sequestered away POWs, a wealth of resources unexpectedly land Braddock (well, beyond the bamboo poles and dirt that Braddock had to work with up to this point). So Now it's up to Braddock to somehow escape captivity, find his way out of the booby trapped jungle hell, rescue his comrades and put a first class beatdown on Colonel Yin for all his hospitality over the years.
Needless to say, much ass kicking ensues.
You know, I've always wondered why Chuck never got a higher standing in the Action Hero pantheon. He's certainly no better or worse an actor than Stallone or Schwarzenegger, and his Kung Fu is certainly above reproach. As far back as Return of the Dragon where he got a first class beatdown from Bruce Lee up all the way up through The Octagon and Good Guys Wear Black, what Chuck may not have had for acting chops, he more than made up for in raw power and sheer grace. And yet he was never able to break out of the second tier of action stars like Van Damme and Segal and into the Big Time. (Well, I guess a television series for nine seasons counts as big time - but I mean commanding multi-bazillion dollar paychecks like Ah-nold did).
It's a damn shame, I tell you.
Apparently Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (hereby known as MIA2 henceforth) was shot at the same time as the first MIA, but producers Golan/Globus decided that MIA was the stronger film and opted to release that one first, and I can see why. In MIA:2, Chuck dials back the action pretty much until the final reel and punps up the drama and the pathos in the meantime. Not that Chuck is unable to carry the film with his stoic "grin and bear it" demeanor - and it is a intense film - but it's more character building and introspective than the other chapter. I can see why an audience hungry to see Norris deliver a Charlie get his ass handed to him in two fisted manner would sell better.
And they would be right - the first MIA went on to clean up at the box office. The prequel did pretty good money too - at least enough to warrant a third movie. So while it's jingoistic and about as deep as a teaspoon of water in regards to America's involvement in the Vietnam war, MIA:2 is a reasonable way to kill 91 minutes. Chuck is a compelling enough action star to carry the movie, Soon-Tek steals the show as the bad guy and the third act is satisfying enough to make the hard core brutality worth sitting through.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 4
EXPLOSIONS: 126
ROUNDS FIRED: 4,102
PUNCHES THROWN: 87 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 1
CAR CHASES: 0
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
BEST LINE: You really didn't think I'd leave. . . .without making sure you were dead?
THE DVD -
Sadly we get a full frame edition - although not necessarily pan and scan. As I understand it, most of Cannon's output was matted into a wide screen format on 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. I noticed all kinds of instances of scratches and print damage - and of course there was grain in the stock footage intermittently used throughout that stood out. 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 -
We get . . . wait for it. . . . a trailer. Not even a promotional booklet insert!
THE BOTTOM LINE -
While it takes a while to get to the meat of the action, Missing in Action 2 manages to be compelling enough to hold you till the final reel.
On the other hand, being a teenager in the eighties meant that I was in the prime demographic for the fallout of the war, and the cathartic need the nation had to finally win in media: Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Rambo, the A-Team and of course Missing in Action were all there on hand to rewrite history and make things all better for the vets of the world. I had no real grasp on the politics, but I loved the Big Dumb Action Movies That Went Boom.
While the politics and impact of the war are best left argued by men far more scholarly and versed in history than I, I am however qualified to tell you that this is some Prime Ground Chuck!
This time out, we start in the early seventies. The previous film mentioned that Colonel Braddock had been captive for 8 years, and had been away from prison for one, so assuming that the date of the first movie was more or less the time of release, we must be about 1975. Braddock is hitching a ride on a chopper for some reconnaissance with four other solders when they receive a distress call from some troops under heavy enemy fire. The pick-up goes all wrong, the chopper gets hit by a missile launcher, and everyone bails out - and promptly gets captured.
Fast forward a number of years, to some stock footage of Reagan (in what I guess counts as his last screen appearance) at a press conference, his famous "We wont close the book, wont write the last chapter" speech from the opening of the Vietnam Memorial Wall (that bit I do remember). Meanwhile, Braddock and his buddies have been guests of Charlie, under the tender mercies of Colonel Yin (played to mustache twirling perfection by Hollywood oriental stock player Soon-Tek Oh) and his goons.
While one might think that a ton of high grade military hardware and an army of heavily armed men is a bit overkill for keeping five Americans locked up, it turns out that Yin also has a booming business on the side growing, manufacturing and smuggling opium. And so it goes, every day is a new adventure in rock moving and torture for Braddock and his men while their captors get off playing mind games on the Americans.
When a nosey Aussie newspaper reporter stumbles on the camp, looking for sequestered away POWs, a wealth of resources unexpectedly land Braddock (well, beyond the bamboo poles and dirt that Braddock had to work with up to this point). So Now it's up to Braddock to somehow escape captivity, find his way out of the booby trapped jungle hell, rescue his comrades and put a first class beatdown on Colonel Yin for all his hospitality over the years.
Needless to say, much ass kicking ensues.
You know, I've always wondered why Chuck never got a higher standing in the Action Hero pantheon. He's certainly no better or worse an actor than Stallone or Schwarzenegger, and his Kung Fu is certainly above reproach. As far back as Return of the Dragon where he got a first class beatdown from Bruce Lee up all the way up through The Octagon and Good Guys Wear Black, what Chuck may not have had for acting chops, he more than made up for in raw power and sheer grace. And yet he was never able to break out of the second tier of action stars like Van Damme and Segal and into the Big Time. (Well, I guess a television series for nine seasons counts as big time - but I mean commanding multi-bazillion dollar paychecks like Ah-nold did).
It's a damn shame, I tell you.
Apparently Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (hereby known as MIA2 henceforth) was shot at the same time as the first MIA, but producers Golan/Globus decided that MIA was the stronger film and opted to release that one first, and I can see why. In MIA:2, Chuck dials back the action pretty much until the final reel and punps up the drama and the pathos in the meantime. Not that Chuck is unable to carry the film with his stoic "grin and bear it" demeanor - and it is a intense film - but it's more character building and introspective than the other chapter. I can see why an audience hungry to see Norris deliver a Charlie get his ass handed to him in two fisted manner would sell better.
And they would be right - the first MIA went on to clean up at the box office. The prequel did pretty good money too - at least enough to warrant a third movie. So while it's jingoistic and about as deep as a teaspoon of water in regards to America's involvement in the Vietnam war, MIA:2 is a reasonable way to kill 91 minutes. Chuck is a compelling enough action star to carry the movie, Soon-Tek steals the show as the bad guy and the third act is satisfying enough to make the hard core brutality worth sitting through.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 4
EXPLOSIONS: 126
ROUNDS FIRED: 4,102
PUNCHES THROWN: 87 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 1
CAR CHASES: 0
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
BEST LINE: You really didn't think I'd leave. . . .without making sure you were dead?
THE DVD -
Sadly we get a full frame edition - although not necessarily pan and scan. As I understand it, most of Cannon's output was matted into a wide screen format on 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. I noticed all kinds of instances of scratches and print damage - and of course there was grain in the stock footage intermittently used throughout that stood out. 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 -
We get . . . wait for it. . . . a trailer. Not even a promotional booklet insert!
THE BOTTOM LINE -
While it takes a while to get to the meat of the action, Missing in Action 2 manages to be compelling enough to hold you till the final reel.
Friday, March 14, 2008
DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. - Daleks on the big screen!
The sixties - the United Kingdom was in the grip of an invasion: DALEKS! Doctor Who mania was sweeping the land, and of course everyone was there to jump on the bandwagon. While a shameless attempt to cash in on the craze, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 does have something to offer, too.
For those of you just catching up - from 1963 to 1989 (and a couple of false starts thereafter) the BBC ran an immensely popular family program called Doctor Who. The main character is called The Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He travels the universe in the TARDIS, a wondrous spaceship that can go anywhere in time and space - provided that the Doctor can steer it correctly. During his adventures, he and his companion (usually a young human female with weak ankles and good lungs) combat evil and injustice wherever they find it. Key to the longevity of the series - Doctor Who can do what the James Bond movies have done several times. When fatally injured, Time Lords have the ability to regenerate, totally changing their faces and personalities, allowing the ability to swap out the lead roll when the actor wants to leave the series. So there have been several Doctors with different faces (ten, so far), but all of them the same character.
Oh, and the name of the show is Doctor Who. The main character is simply called The Doctor.
Okay, all that stuff I just told you? Forget it. The two Dalek movies operate under their own continuity and their own rules outside of the television show. Dr. Who (Peter Cushing, trying to get some breathing room from his numerous Hammer classics such as The Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein) is an eccentric time traveling human scientist, and creator of TARDIS, a British Police Box that has been modified so that it is able to travel through time and space.
We open with Police Constable Tom Campbell (played by Bernard Cribbins, who returned to the television show in the 2007 Christmas special Voyage of the Dammed and returns in the upcoming series 4 / Season 30) fails to stop a smash-and-grab robbery and runs to a police box for help from the station. Unfortunately for him, the box is actually Dr. Who’s TARDIS and he’s about to take off into the future with his nieces Susan (Roberta Tovey returning again from Dr. Who And The Daleks) and Louise (Jill Curzon, who had a bunch of bit part rolls in the Saint and Adam Adamant, but this is her biggest thing by far)
When the TARDIS lands in the year 2150, Dr Who and his associates find the Earth invaded by DALEKS! The bad boys of Skaro have subjugated the entire planet, forced the remnants of humanity to eke out an existence underground and are digging to Earth's core for mysterious (and obviously insidious) reasons. Falling in with a ragtag group of rebels, the TARDIS crew is forced to separate and make their way to Bedfordshire to thwart the Daleks and save the human race from extermination!
For the longest time, while I was a fan of Doctor Who, I never saw much of the first three Doctors. The local UHF networks around here pretty much exclusively ran from Doctor Four onwards, skipping the earlier black and white shows entirely. So I was never familiar with the original William Hartnell story for many years, only knowing the story through the Target novelizations and the various showings of Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 on the late Saturday night Thriller-Chiller Theater.
Peter Cushing is always wonderful in whatever he's playing, and it's clear that he's having a blast playing against type and getting to do the Kindly Old Grandfather instead of a being in yet another vampire slaying roll. He does an eccentric Dr Who quite well, playing it not at all like the irritable crotchety old man that William Hartnell played the Doctor as.
The film is much darker than its predecessor, it's not graphic or anything - just much more heavy. Unfortunately the Komedy pratfalls and antics that Bernard gets stuck with really stand out because of it, and those moments really seem out of place and annoying. The film is also much larger in scope than the first studio bound movie. UFO attacks high over London, Daleks everywhere, and loads of action scenes make the movie move along briskly. Okay, the plot still doesn't make a lick of sense, but it didnt in the original version either!
The other problem with the story is that it speaks in shorthand. The original episode that the movie was adapted from was six half hour episodes long, and while it did suffer from padding and dragged in places, the upside is that Terry Nation had lots of room for character building moments. The ending moment between Susan and the Doctor is heartfelt and emotional, and one of the better scenes of the show's 40 year long run. The movie's ending is . . . not nearly as good.
THE DVD-
Just like Dr. Who and the Daleks, Anchor Bay serves up a nice copy of the film in 16x9 anamorphic and it looks great. The colors are vivid and sharp and there's no damage at all to speak of.
Not everything is perfect mind you - there is one HUGE flaw to the source master that Anchor Bay used. In the original film, the opening went something like this: Pre-credit robbery, Tom passes out on the TARDIS floor, credit sequence, movie begins. The copy that Anchor Bay mastered from goes: Credit Sequence, pre credit robbery, tom passes out, fade to black, fade up to movie begin. It ruins the "cliffhanger" moment and throws the pacing of the film off. It's not a big deal, but it is very, very annoying since the opening was one of the better moments of the film.
THE EXTRAS -
Anchor Bay uses the same Peter Cushing bio and the same "History of Dr. Who" informational text that were present on the Dr. Who And The Daleks disc. There's also a trailer, a small collectors booklet with some basic information. Sadly no commentary track this time out. Still, if you're looking to pick this disc up, you'd do well to get the box set that comes with the two Dalek movies and a third disc with the documentary Dalekmania, that goes into the frenzy surrounding the show in the sixties and the making of the two movies. That's a much better deal than just the one disc by itself.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Even with its problems, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 is still a great slice of sixties science fiction entertainment. Even if you can't tell a TARDIS from a Time Loop or an Auton from a Sontaran, you'll still enjoy this charming and fun science fiction romp.
For those of you just catching up - from 1963 to 1989 (and a couple of false starts thereafter) the BBC ran an immensely popular family program called Doctor Who. The main character is called The Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He travels the universe in the TARDIS, a wondrous spaceship that can go anywhere in time and space - provided that the Doctor can steer it correctly. During his adventures, he and his companion (usually a young human female with weak ankles and good lungs) combat evil and injustice wherever they find it. Key to the longevity of the series - Doctor Who can do what the James Bond movies have done several times. When fatally injured, Time Lords have the ability to regenerate, totally changing their faces and personalities, allowing the ability to swap out the lead roll when the actor wants to leave the series. So there have been several Doctors with different faces (ten, so far), but all of them the same character.
Oh, and the name of the show is Doctor Who. The main character is simply called The Doctor.
Okay, all that stuff I just told you? Forget it. The two Dalek movies operate under their own continuity and their own rules outside of the television show. Dr. Who (Peter Cushing, trying to get some breathing room from his numerous Hammer classics such as The Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein) is an eccentric time traveling human scientist, and creator of TARDIS, a British Police Box that has been modified so that it is able to travel through time and space.
We open with Police Constable Tom Campbell (played by Bernard Cribbins, who returned to the television show in the 2007 Christmas special Voyage of the Dammed and returns in the upcoming series 4 / Season 30) fails to stop a smash-and-grab robbery and runs to a police box for help from the station. Unfortunately for him, the box is actually Dr. Who’s TARDIS and he’s about to take off into the future with his nieces Susan (Roberta Tovey returning again from Dr. Who And The Daleks) and Louise (Jill Curzon, who had a bunch of bit part rolls in the Saint and Adam Adamant, but this is her biggest thing by far)
When the TARDIS lands in the year 2150, Dr Who and his associates find the Earth invaded by DALEKS! The bad boys of Skaro have subjugated the entire planet, forced the remnants of humanity to eke out an existence underground and are digging to Earth's core for mysterious (and obviously insidious) reasons. Falling in with a ragtag group of rebels, the TARDIS crew is forced to separate and make their way to Bedfordshire to thwart the Daleks and save the human race from extermination!
For the longest time, while I was a fan of Doctor Who, I never saw much of the first three Doctors. The local UHF networks around here pretty much exclusively ran from Doctor Four onwards, skipping the earlier black and white shows entirely. So I was never familiar with the original William Hartnell story for many years, only knowing the story through the Target novelizations and the various showings of Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 on the late Saturday night Thriller-Chiller Theater.
Peter Cushing is always wonderful in whatever he's playing, and it's clear that he's having a blast playing against type and getting to do the Kindly Old Grandfather instead of a being in yet another vampire slaying roll. He does an eccentric Dr Who quite well, playing it not at all like the irritable crotchety old man that William Hartnell played the Doctor as.
The film is much darker than its predecessor, it's not graphic or anything - just much more heavy. Unfortunately the Komedy pratfalls and antics that Bernard gets stuck with really stand out because of it, and those moments really seem out of place and annoying. The film is also much larger in scope than the first studio bound movie. UFO attacks high over London, Daleks everywhere, and loads of action scenes make the movie move along briskly. Okay, the plot still doesn't make a lick of sense, but it didnt in the original version either!
The other problem with the story is that it speaks in shorthand. The original episode that the movie was adapted from was six half hour episodes long, and while it did suffer from padding and dragged in places, the upside is that Terry Nation had lots of room for character building moments. The ending moment between Susan and the Doctor is heartfelt and emotional, and one of the better scenes of the show's 40 year long run. The movie's ending is . . . not nearly as good.
THE DVD-
Just like Dr. Who and the Daleks, Anchor Bay serves up a nice copy of the film in 16x9 anamorphic and it looks great. The colors are vivid and sharp and there's no damage at all to speak of.
Not everything is perfect mind you - there is one HUGE flaw to the source master that Anchor Bay used. In the original film, the opening went something like this: Pre-credit robbery, Tom passes out on the TARDIS floor, credit sequence, movie begins. The copy that Anchor Bay mastered from goes: Credit Sequence, pre credit robbery, tom passes out, fade to black, fade up to movie begin. It ruins the "cliffhanger" moment and throws the pacing of the film off. It's not a big deal, but it is very, very annoying since the opening was one of the better moments of the film.
THE EXTRAS -
Anchor Bay uses the same Peter Cushing bio and the same "History of Dr. Who" informational text that were present on the Dr. Who And The Daleks disc. There's also a trailer, a small collectors booklet with some basic information. Sadly no commentary track this time out. Still, if you're looking to pick this disc up, you'd do well to get the box set that comes with the two Dalek movies and a third disc with the documentary Dalekmania, that goes into the frenzy surrounding the show in the sixties and the making of the two movies. That's a much better deal than just the one disc by itself.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Even with its problems, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 is still a great slice of sixties science fiction entertainment. Even if you can't tell a TARDIS from a Time Loop or an Auton from a Sontaran, you'll still enjoy this charming and fun science fiction romp.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
WELCOME TO THE GRINDHOUSE: POLICEWOMEN - Bring the grind to your house!
While I thought that Tarantino and Rodriguez's experiment in resurrecting seventies cheese with Grindhouse more or less a failure, I am grateful for one thing. They did manage to raise the audience awareness of the genre, and of course in true Grindhouse fashion, dozens of DVD companies have jumped on the bandwagon, releasing dozens of low budget crap on disc.
Some are more successful than others, but the best one of the lot is probably BCI/Navarre 's Welcome to the Grindhouse series. BCI has managed to get their mitts on a ton of flicks from Crown International - one of the bigger distributors of schlock and trash from the glory days of the drive-in - and are releasing them as double features at a very reasonable price.
The first one in my DVD player is 1974's Policewomen (not to be confused with the Angie Dickison television series) and 1975's Las Vegas Lady
Policewomen (which, strangely enough only features ONE policewoman of any note) is about a perky young officer named Lacy Bond (played by Sondra Currie, who A) still looks pretty damn hot in 2008, and B) has a surprisingly active career post her Drive in schlock phase) who languishes in her boring old post at the local women's prison. During a mass escape attempt, Lacy manages to use her mad Kung Fu skills to prevent most of the prisoners from getting away, attracting the attention of her superiors.
She is assigned - as soon as she undergoes some testing to prove that she's capable as any man-cop - to stop a gang of women who are in the middle of a crime spree. The mastermind behind this Woman-Mafia is the elderly criminal Maude Anderson (played by Elizabeth Stuart, and you're pretty much looking at her entire film career), who is married to a big muscle bound thug in his thirties called Doc (Phil Hoover, who had a nice long career is B-movies, appearing in drive-in greats such as The Thing with Two Heads, SuperChick and Chain Gang Women).
During the course of the investigation, Lacy falls in love with her boss, makes, sweet, sweet love, gets drafted into Maude's gang and kicks like eight kinds of kung fu butt along the way.
While not the best flick in the world, Policewomen is still pretty entertaining (and a darn sight better than the second half of the double feature on the disc). Sondra is reasonably charming with her sassy "take no crap in a man's world" deliver, and of course her Captain Kirk school of Kung Fu - highlighted when the men subject her to a misogynistic training course to prove that she can handle herself in the field just as good as any man could - is so shamelessly over the top that that it's funny.
The plot is surprisingly coherent and moves along briskly. The fight scenes are well staged, even if Lacy is using her Goofy Fist Kung Fu style, and of course Sondra is very pleasing to the eye - and being that this is a seventies exploitation flick, we do get to see a lot of the softer side of her.
Ok, the character development is non-existent; the All Girl Gang is nothing more than a bunch of archetypes lounging around the Cabana looking beautiful all day long as they sun themselves, and Maude is the most annoying criminal mastermind ever, but it's a fun mindless flick.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 4
EXPLOSIONS: 1
ROUNDS FIRED: 12
PUNCHES THROWN: 32
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 0
CAR CHASES: 1 (2 counting the boat chase)
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
AFROS: 1
F BOMBS DROPPED: 2
SEVENTIES FASHION SENSIBILITIES: 40%
BEST LINE: "Why honey, I don’t understand your attitude. I've always said nice things about gooks. "
THE DVD -
We get a widescreen anamorphic print of Policewomen, which I gather is the first time a DVD this good looking has turned up. Considering the low cost of the DVD, the low budget of the content and the treatment that the prints have probably undergone in the last 30 years, it looks pretty good. Not stellar or anything, but the print seems reasonably free of flaws and damage. It doesn’t look pristine, but one could argue that a print like that only enhances the grindhouse experience.
THE EXTRAS -
We don’t get much in the way of extras, but we do get a really cool presentation. Like the Warner Brothers "Night at the Movies" discs, where hitting play all gets you a news real, cartoon and a trailer before the main feature. Here, we get a Grindhouse Experience option, which plays a "Coming Attractions bumper", a trailer for Chain Gang Women ("When you live like an animal, anything goes!") and Superchick ("She's more than just one woman - and she's too much for just one man!") and then a "Our Featured Presentation" bumper - then the movie runs.
After Policewomen wraps up, we get an Intermission bumper, a "Please keep our theater clean" spot a trailer for Chinese Hercules ("The superhuman Beast of the East!")and Weekend with the Baby Sitter ("She is every man's first love, but she is trouble!") before the second movie on the disc runs. It's a very cool presentation that really makes you feel like you're in a nasty, run down old theater on 42nd Street. Just pour some sticky soda on the floor and your illusion is complete!
THE BOTTOM LINE -
This film is aimed squarely at drive-in film fans who like their stories with a little touch of female exploitation. Not a bad film with enough breasts and bullets and brawls to keep ones eyes focused on the screen.
Some are more successful than others, but the best one of the lot is probably BCI/Navarre 's Welcome to the Grindhouse series. BCI has managed to get their mitts on a ton of flicks from Crown International - one of the bigger distributors of schlock and trash from the glory days of the drive-in - and are releasing them as double features at a very reasonable price.
The first one in my DVD player is 1974's Policewomen (not to be confused with the Angie Dickison television series) and 1975's Las Vegas Lady
Policewomen (which, strangely enough only features ONE policewoman of any note) is about a perky young officer named Lacy Bond (played by Sondra Currie, who A) still looks pretty damn hot in 2008, and B) has a surprisingly active career post her Drive in schlock phase) who languishes in her boring old post at the local women's prison. During a mass escape attempt, Lacy manages to use her mad Kung Fu skills to prevent most of the prisoners from getting away, attracting the attention of her superiors.
She is assigned - as soon as she undergoes some testing to prove that she's capable as any man-cop - to stop a gang of women who are in the middle of a crime spree. The mastermind behind this Woman-Mafia is the elderly criminal Maude Anderson (played by Elizabeth Stuart, and you're pretty much looking at her entire film career), who is married to a big muscle bound thug in his thirties called Doc (Phil Hoover, who had a nice long career is B-movies, appearing in drive-in greats such as The Thing with Two Heads, SuperChick and Chain Gang Women).
During the course of the investigation, Lacy falls in love with her boss, makes, sweet, sweet love, gets drafted into Maude's gang and kicks like eight kinds of kung fu butt along the way.
While not the best flick in the world, Policewomen is still pretty entertaining (and a darn sight better than the second half of the double feature on the disc). Sondra is reasonably charming with her sassy "take no crap in a man's world" deliver, and of course her Captain Kirk school of Kung Fu - highlighted when the men subject her to a misogynistic training course to prove that she can handle herself in the field just as good as any man could - is so shamelessly over the top that that it's funny.
The plot is surprisingly coherent and moves along briskly. The fight scenes are well staged, even if Lacy is using her Goofy Fist Kung Fu style, and of course Sondra is very pleasing to the eye - and being that this is a seventies exploitation flick, we do get to see a lot of the softer side of her.
Ok, the character development is non-existent; the All Girl Gang is nothing more than a bunch of archetypes lounging around the Cabana looking beautiful all day long as they sun themselves, and Maude is the most annoying criminal mastermind ever, but it's a fun mindless flick.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 4
EXPLOSIONS: 1
ROUNDS FIRED: 12
PUNCHES THROWN: 32
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 0
CAR CHASES: 1 (2 counting the boat chase)
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 0
NINJA? No
AFROS: 1
F BOMBS DROPPED: 2
SEVENTIES FASHION SENSIBILITIES: 40%
BEST LINE: "Why honey, I don’t understand your attitude. I've always said nice things about gooks. "
THE DVD -
We get a widescreen anamorphic print of Policewomen, which I gather is the first time a DVD this good looking has turned up. Considering the low cost of the DVD, the low budget of the content and the treatment that the prints have probably undergone in the last 30 years, it looks pretty good. Not stellar or anything, but the print seems reasonably free of flaws and damage. It doesn’t look pristine, but one could argue that a print like that only enhances the grindhouse experience.
THE EXTRAS -
We don’t get much in the way of extras, but we do get a really cool presentation. Like the Warner Brothers "Night at the Movies" discs, where hitting play all gets you a news real, cartoon and a trailer before the main feature. Here, we get a Grindhouse Experience option, which plays a "Coming Attractions bumper", a trailer for Chain Gang Women ("When you live like an animal, anything goes!") and Superchick ("She's more than just one woman - and she's too much for just one man!") and then a "Our Featured Presentation" bumper - then the movie runs.
After Policewomen wraps up, we get an Intermission bumper, a "Please keep our theater clean" spot a trailer for Chinese Hercules ("The superhuman Beast of the East!")and Weekend with the Baby Sitter ("She is every man's first love, but she is trouble!") before the second movie on the disc runs. It's a very cool presentation that really makes you feel like you're in a nasty, run down old theater on 42nd Street. Just pour some sticky soda on the floor and your illusion is complete!
THE BOTTOM LINE -
This film is aimed squarely at drive-in film fans who like their stories with a little touch of female exploitation. Not a bad film with enough breasts and bullets and brawls to keep ones eyes focused on the screen.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON - Ed Wood's "When Sharks Attack!"
I have always enjoyed When Nature Attacks movies, like Jaws or The Swarm or Alligator. I have always loved Doctor Who. So when Who co-star John Barrowman turned up on DVD in a "Nature goes amuck and eats people" movie, I knew it was my destiny to own this movie.
I was not disappointed!
The story - and I use the term very loosely - opens with Ben and his appropriately ethnic (and therefore doomed) partner Sy out doing their life guarding duties when they dive for lobsters. During the dive, they discover a Trans-Pacific fiber optic cable that has been damaged. . .by a shark! Ben removes a shark tooth that was imbedded in the cable and puts a photo of it on the Internet Shark Tooth Database (ISTD.com?), trolling for scientists.
Meet our other co-star of the flick, Cataline Stone (played hawttie Jenny McShane), paleontologist. She recognizes that the tooth is not from a great white like Ben thought, but rather from a shark that has been thought extinct for the last 50 or 60 million years - the Megalodon! As it turns out, the fiber optic lines are giving off electromagnetic energy*. It seems that the Evil Developer (is there any other kind?) laying the lines is using poorly insulated material, cutting corners to save billions of dollars - with the side effect that the cables are drawing these beasts up from the depths of the ocean to the surface so they can dine on all sorts of new and exciting foods!
* Do I need to point out the logical impossibility of this, since the nature of fiber optics is to not leak energy? That's the whole point of the technology! So no electromagnetic energy, no sharks.
And so Cat and Ben (along with a crew of redshirts) head out to sea to try and tag the beast. And during the ferocious battle with the Megalodon, our heroes discover that this is only the baby. And if this shark is just the baby - then where is the mother. . . .?
Ok, let me get this right out of the way. This is a dreadful movie - absolutely horrible! Hear that thumping noise? That's Peter Benchley hitting about 157 RPMs in his grave.
The acting is average to poor, save for John Barrowman, the only person on the planet who could be charming and fun to watch while delivering lines like "I’m wired. Let take you home and eat your pussy". (Which, I gather was not scripted, but an ad-lib on set by John, who wasn’t intending for it to make the final cut - but there you are). Oh, and I love salty seaman Chuck 'Fucking' Rampart, submarine driver and owner of a war surplus torpedo (handy, that). He and his liberal usage of the word "Fucking" as punctuation or hyphenation (as in abso-fucking-lutely") every line out of his mouth almost steal the show, if not for John already stealing the show left right and center.
Speaking of Mister Barrowman, I'm shocked and amaze (and of course pleased) that he managed to make the leap from B-movie actor to lead on Torchwood, one the BBC's biggest shows. The man knows how to act and it's the only really legitimately good thing about the movie. The rest of the cast feel more like the days footage was swapped with an early dress rehearsal and nobody noticed in the editing booth until the film was done.
Yeah, but we're not here to watch Captain Jack get laid or the acting chops of some Bulgarian extras. We're here to see some sharks eating people! That's what we paid for, after all!
When it's not shamelessly ripping off Jaws, it's offering up some of the worst special effects I've ever seen in my life. No - seriously. When the Meg shows up and swallows an entire patrol boat (complete with ethnically appropriate secondary character) the effect is achieved not by the use of intricate computer CGI or elaborate miniatures, but by someone in the editing suite taking some stock shark footage and overlaying the Helpless Victim with an adobe desktop publishing program. I kid you not.
The end effect is so gloriously bad, so mind-blowingly silly, so "What the hell was THAT?!?" that it's fantastic. The kills are so . . . words fail me. Honestly, this movie is like the Matrix, when I cannot tell you what it is, just that you have to experience it for yourself! It's that astounding!
The shark growls. Not a huge roar, but every time it appears there's this grunting "Hungh!", like a dog bark or something - EVERY TIME we see the shark on screen we get a "Hungh!" - by the end I was rolling and couldn’t breath.
THE DVD -
The quality is about what one would expect with a no-budget direct to video release. The color look pretty good, and there is some dirt and speckles, but the disc looks fair overall. The stock footage takes the hit, showing the worst of the damage.
Not outstanding, but nothing to be ashamed of either.
THE EXTRAS -
The only extras included are the trailers for Shark Attack 1, 2 and 3. They look dreadful, but if they're a tenth as good as this one is, I'll have to pick them up someday.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
I'd try and sum up here, kind of tie things up in a nice neat package, but words fail me. This is not quite Plan 9 From Outer Space level of bad, but it's damn, damn close. There are heavy doses of cheese, some really bad effects and all kinds of fun lines delivered from some big hams.
Absolutely essential viewing for any self respecting bad film enthusiast!
I was not disappointed!
The story - and I use the term very loosely - opens with Ben and his appropriately ethnic (and therefore doomed) partner Sy out doing their life guarding duties when they dive for lobsters. During the dive, they discover a Trans-Pacific fiber optic cable that has been damaged. . .by a shark! Ben removes a shark tooth that was imbedded in the cable and puts a photo of it on the Internet Shark Tooth Database (ISTD.com?), trolling for scientists.
Meet our other co-star of the flick, Cataline Stone (played hawttie Jenny McShane), paleontologist. She recognizes that the tooth is not from a great white like Ben thought, but rather from a shark that has been thought extinct for the last 50 or 60 million years - the Megalodon! As it turns out, the fiber optic lines are giving off electromagnetic energy*. It seems that the Evil Developer (is there any other kind?) laying the lines is using poorly insulated material, cutting corners to save billions of dollars - with the side effect that the cables are drawing these beasts up from the depths of the ocean to the surface so they can dine on all sorts of new and exciting foods!
* Do I need to point out the logical impossibility of this, since the nature of fiber optics is to not leak energy? That's the whole point of the technology! So no electromagnetic energy, no sharks.
And so Cat and Ben (along with a crew of redshirts) head out to sea to try and tag the beast. And during the ferocious battle with the Megalodon, our heroes discover that this is only the baby. And if this shark is just the baby - then where is the mother. . . .?
Ok, let me get this right out of the way. This is a dreadful movie - absolutely horrible! Hear that thumping noise? That's Peter Benchley hitting about 157 RPMs in his grave.
The acting is average to poor, save for John Barrowman, the only person on the planet who could be charming and fun to watch while delivering lines like "I’m wired. Let take you home and eat your pussy". (Which, I gather was not scripted, but an ad-lib on set by John, who wasn’t intending for it to make the final cut - but there you are). Oh, and I love salty seaman Chuck 'Fucking' Rampart, submarine driver and owner of a war surplus torpedo (handy, that). He and his liberal usage of the word "Fucking" as punctuation or hyphenation (as in abso-fucking-lutely") every line out of his mouth almost steal the show, if not for John already stealing the show left right and center.
Speaking of Mister Barrowman, I'm shocked and amaze (and of course pleased) that he managed to make the leap from B-movie actor to lead on Torchwood, one the BBC's biggest shows. The man knows how to act and it's the only really legitimately good thing about the movie. The rest of the cast feel more like the days footage was swapped with an early dress rehearsal and nobody noticed in the editing booth until the film was done.
Yeah, but we're not here to watch Captain Jack get laid or the acting chops of some Bulgarian extras. We're here to see some sharks eating people! That's what we paid for, after all!
When it's not shamelessly ripping off Jaws, it's offering up some of the worst special effects I've ever seen in my life. No - seriously. When the Meg shows up and swallows an entire patrol boat (complete with ethnically appropriate secondary character) the effect is achieved not by the use of intricate computer CGI or elaborate miniatures, but by someone in the editing suite taking some stock shark footage and overlaying the Helpless Victim with an adobe desktop publishing program. I kid you not.
The end effect is so gloriously bad, so mind-blowingly silly, so "What the hell was THAT?!?" that it's fantastic. The kills are so . . . words fail me. Honestly, this movie is like the Matrix, when I cannot tell you what it is, just that you have to experience it for yourself! It's that astounding!
The shark growls. Not a huge roar, but every time it appears there's this grunting "Hungh!", like a dog bark or something - EVERY TIME we see the shark on screen we get a "Hungh!" - by the end I was rolling and couldn’t breath.
THE DVD -
The quality is about what one would expect with a no-budget direct to video release. The color look pretty good, and there is some dirt and speckles, but the disc looks fair overall. The stock footage takes the hit, showing the worst of the damage.
Not outstanding, but nothing to be ashamed of either.
THE EXTRAS -
The only extras included are the trailers for Shark Attack 1, 2 and 3. They look dreadful, but if they're a tenth as good as this one is, I'll have to pick them up someday.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
I'd try and sum up here, kind of tie things up in a nice neat package, but words fail me. This is not quite Plan 9 From Outer Space level of bad, but it's damn, damn close. There are heavy doses of cheese, some really bad effects and all kinds of fun lines delivered from some big hams.
Absolutely essential viewing for any self respecting bad film enthusiast!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
MISSING IN ACTION - Chuck amuck
The eighties, I've always contended, are a golden era of action films. Rocky had burst onto the scene in the late seventies, but it was in the eighties it became progressively more cartoon-y and fun. Of course 1984 saw The Terminator which elevated Arnold Strong's career from B-Movie Hercules to a catchphrase saying juggernaught. Amid all this action movie. . . um, action, there were a couple of studios that could be counted on to turn out flick after flick of Grade-A cheese. Orion Films always could serve up huge portions of Drive-in movie fair, Carolco pictures shaped the eighties with Rambo (and of course the formetioned Terminator) - but to my mind, the kings of eighties low budget extranvaganza is the Cannon Group, purveyors of such fine cinematic treasures as Breakin' 2; Electric Boogaloo, American Ninja, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and of course Missing in Action.
Somehow Menahem Golan and his cousin Yoram Globus managed to tap into what we wanted the eighties and deliver it quickly and cheaply and packed with a whole lot of fun.
We open right out of the gate with some action, in a unnamed, presumably Vietnam-ish jungle (but really a rainforest somewhere in North America, a billion miles away from Saigon), and a squad (platoon? Group? Herd? I don’t know my military jargon) of besieged solders are under attack from some non-descript, presumably Vietnamese-ish solders. At the pickup point things go horribly wrong and GI Joes are dropping left and right. Faster than you can say "Cobra Commander" Chuck's buddies are impaled on Charlie's bayonet and Chuck leaps onto the dieing solders with a fist full of grenades! BOOM!
Well, that was a short movie. Oh, wait - dream sequence.
Turns out that Chuck recently escaped from Charlie, and now back in the states has been actively pushing for investigations into the plight of the MIAs still left behind. And so the state department ships him and some diplomats off to 'Nam to shake some bushes and get some results. Of course, being a Chuck Norris movie, the diplomacy phase of the mission is exceptionally brief as Chuck turns out to be a complete embarrassment to the government - so they try and ship him home.
That's fine with Chuck, since he snuck into the home of General Trau (played by James Hong, better known as freakin' Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China - sadly we get no kung fu between the two, which would have been sweet) and learned the location of some MIA currently in custody.
And so off Chuck goes into the jungle to free some captives. He taps an old friend (Played by M. Emmet Walsh, fresh off such classics as Blade runner, Airport '77 and The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh), gets his mitts on a bullet proof raft (handy, that) and lots of stuff blows up real good before the missing vets are saved. Booh-yeah! That'll learn Charlie to mess with Regan's America!
And - I swear this is true - Jean-Claude Van Damme appears as one of the stunt men, which suddenly makes his rumored appearance in Breakin all that more credible to me.
Director Joseph Zito, who would go on to give us Invasion USA the next year, knows how to keep things moving. While not the "Gratuitous violence every 10 minutes" that Invasion was, Missing in Action cruises right along with Chuck either sneaking into places, breaking up barroom brawls (ok, Whorehouse brawls - but who's nit-picking) or rising up out of the water all slo-mo style, ventilating some of Charlie's finest with a browning machine gun. The movie slows down a little while Chuck is actually getting to the camp, but it doesn’t bore - and then of course kicks into overdrive for the climax.
Of course logic is not this movies strong point. If the Prisoners of war were still being held for some kind of bargaining chip, why would the Vietnamese government deny that they had them? Or do they just like torturing people doing peace time? And if the American government isn’t looking for the missing solders, and nobody is likely to stumble over them in the woods, then why have all the guards and military hardware to watch over them*? And then when Chuck finally storms the camp, there are only three men?!? All this hardware and effort for three guys locked up? I'm gonna stop now - my brain is starting to hurt.
* As it turns out at least that one was answered in the prequel/sequel: Braddok's camp also doubled as an opium farm, manufacturing all kinds of high grade drugs for the French, of all people. The POWs were just cheap labor, and the guards were protecting the opium.
Ok, lets not mince words - while Missing in Action is one of Norris' better flicks (still unable to beat Invasion USA for all time best), it's really dumb. It's cheesy, it's jingoistic, it's terribly acted and has ridiculous stereotypes instead of characters. But you can't help but get suckered in by the fun factor. Golan-Globus may not have made good films, but they did make simple, bullet-riddled, crowd- pleasing entertaining films.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 5
EXPLOSIONS: 76
ROUNDS FIRED: 6,809
PUNCHES THROWN: 43 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 0
CAR CHASES: 1
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 1
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
BEST LINE: Do you mind? I'm a bit shy.
THE DVD -
Hold the phone - a Cannon film in anamorphic wide screen? Be still my heart! Ok, the print isn’t that great, but it looks on par for a cheapy from the eighties. Oh, and there's a pan-and-scan version on the other side of the disc, but I refuse to sully my player by putting that in - and you should too! For SHAME!
The print they used looks pretty good - only the occasional scratch or blemish here and there. Considering the vintage of the movie, we get a good looking disc.
THE EXTRAS -
We get . . . wait for it. . . . a trailer. Not even a promotional booklet insert!
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Missing in Action is goofy fun from the golden era of action movies. They don’t make them like this anymore.
Somehow Menahem Golan and his cousin Yoram Globus managed to tap into what we wanted the eighties and deliver it quickly and cheaply and packed with a whole lot of fun.
We open right out of the gate with some action, in a unnamed, presumably Vietnam-ish jungle (but really a rainforest somewhere in North America, a billion miles away from Saigon), and a squad (platoon? Group? Herd? I don’t know my military jargon) of besieged solders are under attack from some non-descript, presumably Vietnamese-ish solders. At the pickup point things go horribly wrong and GI Joes are dropping left and right. Faster than you can say "Cobra Commander" Chuck's buddies are impaled on Charlie's bayonet and Chuck leaps onto the dieing solders with a fist full of grenades! BOOM!
Well, that was a short movie. Oh, wait - dream sequence.
Turns out that Chuck recently escaped from Charlie, and now back in the states has been actively pushing for investigations into the plight of the MIAs still left behind. And so the state department ships him and some diplomats off to 'Nam to shake some bushes and get some results. Of course, being a Chuck Norris movie, the diplomacy phase of the mission is exceptionally brief as Chuck turns out to be a complete embarrassment to the government - so they try and ship him home.
That's fine with Chuck, since he snuck into the home of General Trau (played by James Hong, better known as freakin' Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China - sadly we get no kung fu between the two, which would have been sweet) and learned the location of some MIA currently in custody.
And so off Chuck goes into the jungle to free some captives. He taps an old friend (Played by M. Emmet Walsh, fresh off such classics as Blade runner, Airport '77 and The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh), gets his mitts on a bullet proof raft (handy, that) and lots of stuff blows up real good before the missing vets are saved. Booh-yeah! That'll learn Charlie to mess with Regan's America!
And - I swear this is true - Jean-Claude Van Damme appears as one of the stunt men, which suddenly makes his rumored appearance in Breakin all that more credible to me.
Director Joseph Zito, who would go on to give us Invasion USA the next year, knows how to keep things moving. While not the "Gratuitous violence every 10 minutes" that Invasion was, Missing in Action cruises right along with Chuck either sneaking into places, breaking up barroom brawls (ok, Whorehouse brawls - but who's nit-picking) or rising up out of the water all slo-mo style, ventilating some of Charlie's finest with a browning machine gun. The movie slows down a little while Chuck is actually getting to the camp, but it doesn’t bore - and then of course kicks into overdrive for the climax.
Of course logic is not this movies strong point. If the Prisoners of war were still being held for some kind of bargaining chip, why would the Vietnamese government deny that they had them? Or do they just like torturing people doing peace time? And if the American government isn’t looking for the missing solders, and nobody is likely to stumble over them in the woods, then why have all the guards and military hardware to watch over them*? And then when Chuck finally storms the camp, there are only three men?!? All this hardware and effort for three guys locked up? I'm gonna stop now - my brain is starting to hurt.
* As it turns out at least that one was answered in the prequel/sequel: Braddok's camp also doubled as an opium farm, manufacturing all kinds of high grade drugs for the French, of all people. The POWs were just cheap labor, and the guards were protecting the opium.
Ok, lets not mince words - while Missing in Action is one of Norris' better flicks (still unable to beat Invasion USA for all time best), it's really dumb. It's cheesy, it's jingoistic, it's terribly acted and has ridiculous stereotypes instead of characters. But you can't help but get suckered in by the fun factor. Golan-Globus may not have made good films, but they did make simple, bullet-riddled, crowd- pleasing entertaining films.
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 5
EXPLOSIONS: 76
ROUNDS FIRED: 6,809
PUNCHES THROWN: 43 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 0
CAR CHASES: 1
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 1
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
BEST LINE: Do you mind? I'm a bit shy.
THE DVD -
Hold the phone - a Cannon film in anamorphic wide screen? Be still my heart! Ok, the print isn’t that great, but it looks on par for a cheapy from the eighties. Oh, and there's a pan-and-scan version on the other side of the disc, but I refuse to sully my player by putting that in - and you should too! For SHAME!
The print they used looks pretty good - only the occasional scratch or blemish here and there. Considering the vintage of the movie, we get a good looking disc.
THE EXTRAS -
We get . . . wait for it. . . . a trailer. Not even a promotional booklet insert!
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Missing in Action is goofy fun from the golden era of action movies. They don’t make them like this anymore.
Monday, March 10, 2008
THE DELTA FORCE - The Force is with you
I think that everyone can pretty much agree that war is a bad thing. It means a whole lot people getting killed, a ton of money wasted and just an all-around inconvenience for everyone involved - unless of course you're in America during the eighties. If Hollywood was any barometer to go by, in the eighties, the United States was into war like Soccer Moms were into Tickle Me Elmo at Christmas time.
Why did we love our fictional war so much in the eighties? Probably because the last war that the United States actually did any good in, where there was a clear winner against an unambiguously evil villain that posed an actual genuine threat, was World War II. Since then it's been an endless parade of pathetic and ineffectual wars where we just run in, stomp a developing nation into the dirt and run out again declaring victory before the indigenous population have a chance to know what the hell is going on.
Leading the charge of the Emulsion Print brigade was the Cannon Group and two successful Israeli producers named Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. On their watch this whole "War on Terror" thing would be much simpler. Oh, I mean sure - nowndays we have all kind of high tech resources at our command, with cruse missiles that can hit a bunker 600 miles away in Unspecifiedistan and satellites that can read a newspaper from orbit and secret CIA prisons in Cuba and all that - but what we really needed was just one thing: Chuck Norris. Being able to pop a patriot missile into an enemy tank from half a world away is all well and good, but when was the last time you saw one of them fancy high-tech missile clobber a bad guy with a roundhouse kick? Yeah - I didn’t think so.
Based vaguely on the real-life hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, the story opens in Athens Greece, at the airport as the flight back to New York is preparing to board, allowing us ample time to meet all our hostage cliches for the duration of the movie - the pregnant woman that could go into labor at any moment, the couple on their 50th wedding anniversary, the Irish priest and so on. If fact, if you're checking the scorecard, I was shocked to find that they didn’t have the "Little girl in need of a heart transplant and has to get to New York in the next 12 hours or she'll die" box ticked.
Meanwhile, amid all these happy travelers, we meet our terrorists for the movie. We know they are terrorists because they look vaguely Middle Eastern and all have beards. Nope - no racial profiling here! These chaps are from the evil militant organization called New World Revolutionary Organization (led by Robert Forster of all people) and of course are preparing to hijack the plane.
Once in control the plane, they go on to prove how EEEEE-vile they are by sorting out the Jews from the rest of the passengers (and they make the German stewardess do the sorting - how EEE-vile is that?) and demand that the flight be diverted to Beirut, and as terrorists often do, they intend to kill off passengers one at a time until they get what they want. Of course what they want is never actually made quite clear - beyond threatening our helpless God Fearing Americans with hand grenades and uzi machine guns in the name of Allah, that is.
Our only hope of restoring Freedom and Democracy (tm) to the world and bringing home our helpless God Fearing Americans: the DELTA FORCE. Lead by Chuck Norris and the second toughest man in Hollywood - Lee Marvin, the Pentagon deploys them to the field to do what they do best - infiltrate and track down Allah luvin terrorist groups just like this - and blow them away!
The movie holds back the action, building the "drama" in the early part of the movie until the last reel where Golan (who also co-wrote and directed Delta Force) suddenly turns the movie into a live action episode of G.I. Joe where the Bad Guys get theirs but good in a gloriously stupefying sequence that was so fundamentally illogical I wouldn’t have noticed if the Ayatollah Khomeini suddenly showed up riding a giant robotic spider,.
The acting is surprisingly decent, not a surprise considering the star studded list of B-Movie actors appearing throughout. In addition to Chuck and Lee, we get George Kennedy and Shelley Winters - never a good sign appearing together on an airplane - Robert Vaughn as a four-star general, Mazes and Monsters alum Susan Strasberg, Cannon Films favorite bit player Steve James, Martin "Mitchell!!" Balsam and Bo Svenson fresh from a stint on the Fall guy.
The problem is not the cast, but the script. Now, Big Dumb Action movies from Cannon are very often light in the plotting department, and I have no problem with that. However in Delta Force we've got too much action for a dramatic movie and too much drama for an action flick. It's nearly an hour into the film before we get to our first car chase and another thirty minutes after that before we get to our big climax. In a Big Dumb Loud action movie from the eighties, I should be subjected to Chuck delivering so many lefts that I'll be begging for a right every fifteen minutes or so. The amazingly long running time of 128 minutes wouldn’t be so bad if the flick gave us something to chew on - you know, meaningful character development or something. But all we get is a bunch of empty threats from obnoxious terrorists to generic hostages.
EXPLOSIONS: 62
CAR CHASES: 1
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 1
BODY COUNT: 203
ROUNDS FIRED: 4,419
PUNCHES THROWN: 27 (and one roundhouse kick)
NINJA? No
BEST LINE: "Sleep tight, sucker."
THE DVD -
Sadly, Delta Force is presented in a full frame format - but I don't think it's 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.
As far as the condition of the print, it's fair but not outstanding. There are scratches and print damage in places, and it looks like the low budget 25 year old movie that it is.
I should also point out that it seems the DVD is missing the subtltle track. Normally this isn't a big deal, but I'm willing to bet that your typical Chuck Norris enthusiast hasn’t brushed up on his Arabic.
THE EXTRAS -
Typical of MGM's low budget DVD offerings, all we get here is the trailer.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Shamelessly Jingoistic and schizophrenically inconsistent, Delta Force can't decide if it's a story of desperate people in a hopeless situation or a big and loud blowing things up real good story. In trying to please two masters, it ultimately serves none. If you're looking for a flick from an age when Terrorism was still fun, go get Invasion U.S.A. instead.
Why did we love our fictional war so much in the eighties? Probably because the last war that the United States actually did any good in, where there was a clear winner against an unambiguously evil villain that posed an actual genuine threat, was World War II. Since then it's been an endless parade of pathetic and ineffectual wars where we just run in, stomp a developing nation into the dirt and run out again declaring victory before the indigenous population have a chance to know what the hell is going on.
Leading the charge of the Emulsion Print brigade was the Cannon Group and two successful Israeli producers named Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. On their watch this whole "War on Terror" thing would be much simpler. Oh, I mean sure - nowndays we have all kind of high tech resources at our command, with cruse missiles that can hit a bunker 600 miles away in Unspecifiedistan and satellites that can read a newspaper from orbit and secret CIA prisons in Cuba and all that - but what we really needed was just one thing: Chuck Norris. Being able to pop a patriot missile into an enemy tank from half a world away is all well and good, but when was the last time you saw one of them fancy high-tech missile clobber a bad guy with a roundhouse kick? Yeah - I didn’t think so.
Based vaguely on the real-life hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, the story opens in Athens Greece, at the airport as the flight back to New York is preparing to board, allowing us ample time to meet all our hostage cliches for the duration of the movie - the pregnant woman that could go into labor at any moment, the couple on their 50th wedding anniversary, the Irish priest and so on. If fact, if you're checking the scorecard, I was shocked to find that they didn’t have the "Little girl in need of a heart transplant and has to get to New York in the next 12 hours or she'll die" box ticked.
Meanwhile, amid all these happy travelers, we meet our terrorists for the movie. We know they are terrorists because they look vaguely Middle Eastern and all have beards. Nope - no racial profiling here! These chaps are from the evil militant organization called New World Revolutionary Organization (led by Robert Forster of all people) and of course are preparing to hijack the plane.
Once in control the plane, they go on to prove how EEEEE-vile they are by sorting out the Jews from the rest of the passengers (and they make the German stewardess do the sorting - how EEE-vile is that?) and demand that the flight be diverted to Beirut, and as terrorists often do, they intend to kill off passengers one at a time until they get what they want. Of course what they want is never actually made quite clear - beyond threatening our helpless God Fearing Americans with hand grenades and uzi machine guns in the name of Allah, that is.
Our only hope of restoring Freedom and Democracy (tm) to the world and bringing home our helpless God Fearing Americans: the DELTA FORCE. Lead by Chuck Norris and the second toughest man in Hollywood - Lee Marvin, the Pentagon deploys them to the field to do what they do best - infiltrate and track down Allah luvin terrorist groups just like this - and blow them away!
The movie holds back the action, building the "drama" in the early part of the movie until the last reel where Golan (who also co-wrote and directed Delta Force) suddenly turns the movie into a live action episode of G.I. Joe where the Bad Guys get theirs but good in a gloriously stupefying sequence that was so fundamentally illogical I wouldn’t have noticed if the Ayatollah Khomeini suddenly showed up riding a giant robotic spider,.
The acting is surprisingly decent, not a surprise considering the star studded list of B-Movie actors appearing throughout. In addition to Chuck and Lee, we get George Kennedy and Shelley Winters - never a good sign appearing together on an airplane - Robert Vaughn as a four-star general, Mazes and Monsters alum Susan Strasberg, Cannon Films favorite bit player Steve James, Martin "Mitchell!!" Balsam and Bo Svenson fresh from a stint on the Fall guy.
The problem is not the cast, but the script. Now, Big Dumb Action movies from Cannon are very often light in the plotting department, and I have no problem with that. However in Delta Force we've got too much action for a dramatic movie and too much drama for an action flick. It's nearly an hour into the film before we get to our first car chase and another thirty minutes after that before we get to our big climax. In a Big Dumb Loud action movie from the eighties, I should be subjected to Chuck delivering so many lefts that I'll be begging for a right every fifteen minutes or so. The amazingly long running time of 128 minutes wouldn’t be so bad if the flick gave us something to chew on - you know, meaningful character development or something. But all we get is a bunch of empty threats from obnoxious terrorists to generic hostages.
EXPLOSIONS: 62
CAR CHASES: 1
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 1
BODY COUNT: 203
ROUNDS FIRED: 4,419
PUNCHES THROWN: 27 (and one roundhouse kick)
NINJA? No
BEST LINE: "Sleep tight, sucker."
THE DVD -
Sadly, Delta Force is presented in a full frame format - but I don't think it's 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.
As far as the condition of the print, it's fair but not outstanding. There are scratches and print damage in places, and it looks like the low budget 25 year old movie that it is.
I should also point out that it seems the DVD is missing the subtltle track. Normally this isn't a big deal, but I'm willing to bet that your typical Chuck Norris enthusiast hasn’t brushed up on his Arabic.
THE EXTRAS -
Typical of MGM's low budget DVD offerings, all we get here is the trailer.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Shamelessly Jingoistic and schizophrenically inconsistent, Delta Force can't decide if it's a story of desperate people in a hopeless situation or a big and loud blowing things up real good story. In trying to please two masters, it ultimately serves none. If you're looking for a flick from an age when Terrorism was still fun, go get Invasion U.S.A. instead.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN - Big is Beautiful!
Much like Plan 9 From Outer Space, the original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is best remembered for being the pinnacle of bad movies, and sports quite possibly the most iconic movie poster of all time. While I'll dispute Plan 9's claim to that title, I have a hard time defending it here. Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was brought to you by the director that gave us The Brain from Planet Arous and the writer that was behind Roger Corman's Not of This Earth - so there's some B-movie pedigree here.
The story, as if you couldn’t tell from the title, goes something like this: Nancy Archer (played by the reasonably hawt looking Allison Hayes) is the 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's antics by going on a rampage.
And that's pretty much about it.
While Plan 9 is a perfect storm of bad movie making, the complete opposite is true here. Nothing works in 50 Foot Woman. Giantess Nancy never really looks convincing, outside of a couple of moments when she smashes a couple of models. Her ginormous hand that occasionally makes an appearance looks about as convincing as the Mona Lisa done in crayon and the matte shots wouldn’t convince Stevie Wonder. In short, this is a incompetent example of film making.
That said, 50 Foot Woman is great fun to watch (and I don't mean that in the "Mmmmm, giant boobies" sort of way - that’s what I have the Darrel Hanna remake for). While the script is not as memorable as Plan 9, there are plenty of bizarre lines to laugh at, like line from Harry to his wife: “Now you pulled a boner tonight and you know it!” - which I know is about as mature as laughing at when someone says "Uranus", but I cant help myself.
THE DVD -
50 Foot Woman looks and sounds about as good as you would expect it to. The print shows some dirt and grain, but is perfectly acceptable for a film of this vintage.
THE EXTRAS -
Released as part of Warner's Cult Camp Classics Volume 1: Sci-Fi Thrillers, the movie includes such cinematic classics as Queen of Outer Space and The Giant Behemoth, the movie fairs better than the two discs it's bundled with. We get a commentary with Yvette Vickers and horror historian Tom Weaver, and the original theatrical trailer. Not much, but pretty good considering the extremely low budget nature of the series.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is silly, cheesy and very much recommended.
The story, as if you couldn’t tell from the title, goes something like this: Nancy Archer (played by the reasonably hawt looking Allison Hayes) is the 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's antics by going on a rampage.
And that's pretty much about it.
While Plan 9 is a perfect storm of bad movie making, the complete opposite is true here. Nothing works in 50 Foot Woman. Giantess Nancy never really looks convincing, outside of a couple of moments when she smashes a couple of models. Her ginormous hand that occasionally makes an appearance looks about as convincing as the Mona Lisa done in crayon and the matte shots wouldn’t convince Stevie Wonder. In short, this is a incompetent example of film making.
That said, 50 Foot Woman is great fun to watch (and I don't mean that in the "Mmmmm, giant boobies" sort of way - that’s what I have the Darrel Hanna remake for). While the script is not as memorable as Plan 9, there are plenty of bizarre lines to laugh at, like line from Harry to his wife: “Now you pulled a boner tonight and you know it!” - which I know is about as mature as laughing at when someone says "Uranus", but I cant help myself.
THE DVD -
50 Foot Woman looks and sounds about as good as you would expect it to. The print shows some dirt and grain, but is perfectly acceptable for a film of this vintage.
THE EXTRAS -
Released as part of Warner's Cult Camp Classics Volume 1: Sci-Fi Thrillers, the movie includes such cinematic classics as Queen of Outer Space and The Giant Behemoth, the movie fairs better than the two discs it's bundled with. We get a commentary with Yvette Vickers and horror historian Tom Weaver, and the original theatrical trailer. Not much, but pretty good considering the extremely low budget nature of the series.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is silly, cheesy and very much recommended.
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